Canterlot's Rats

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I cannot begin to describe how much I hate rain. It soaks through your mane and ruins it, weighs down your fur, and worst of all, it waterlogs the cardboard box that took you forever to find in a size for two. I always loathed having to waste a day going about town looking for a shop with a spare box after the one I had fell apart with sogginess. Let alone having it be an appropriate size for one to call home. Ironically, the box was for a queen size mattress.

That’s something to worry about tomorrow. For now, I cast a small shield above myself and my sister to keep the rain out. It never stayed up the whole night, but not being soaked is always worth an attempt. I glanced at the little pink filly snoring in a cocoon of blankets. I have no idea how she can sleep through the noise, especially the lightning.

Oh, Sabrina… I’m sorry a box and a spell are all I can give you. I ran my hoof across her golden mane, I’ll do better someday. I promise.

I forgot to mention how the day after it rains, the humidity takes the heat and magnifies it. Another item on the list of ‘reasons I hate the rain.’ At least my spell held up through the night. Our square home was saved another rainstorm, and our bedding saved from another day of hanging out to dry.

My stomach growled, it reminded me of more pressing matters. It’d be a shame to have to wake her. Lucky for me, I don’t have to. Broken Record, the loudmouth foal the Canterlot Daily hired as a crier, flailed his bell about, halfway down the block, yammering on and waking anypony that dared attempt to sleep in, ‘Extra, extra! Read all about Prince Blueblood’s possible Timberwolf ancestry! This is an issue you don’t want to miss, ponies!”

Broken Record had a streak of hamming up whatever the headline was for the day. I remember a time when a spell from a mare in Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns backfired and turned the water green for a day or so. The Canterlot Daily had everyone believing that it was a poisonous attack from the Everfree Forest with a very convenient ad for Sparkle-Cola placed just below the headline. He was proof that the loudest voice is usually the one better paid.

I looked at Sabrina. She was tossing and shifting in her blankets, throwing me a tired glance before rolling over to avoid talking to me. I looked down at her and smiled warmly "Now now, Sabrina. We gotta see Paid Tab before the brunch rush comes in." I nudged her in the back with my hoof, and with a groan she tossed her blankets aside and stood up, the cardboard crackling beneath the sudden shift in pressure.

"That mean old stallion yelled at us the last time we came around, why do you think he'd give us anything?" huffed Sabrina.

Paid Tab is the restaurant owner that we could trust to give us surplus eggs, a bit of hay, or on a good day, some candy for Sabrina. Though she was right, the last time they came around, he shouted at us about being too dependent on him. Word was starting to spread that he was feeding rats.

My stomach growled along with Sabrina’s. I know the wounds were still fresh with him, but we don’t have a choice. No other business gives us the time of day. No legitimate business, anyway. I put a hoof on Sabrina, “Even if he’s mad at us, is he gonna turn down the best show pony in town?”

Her mouth straightened from a frown and then curved into a smile. “There’s no chance!”

I grinned. “That’s my Sabrina.”

“Look, Trixie, you an’ Sabrina gotta stop comin’ round here. I’m already gettin’ enough flak from the press ‘fer feedin’ yas. I already said my piece yesterday, and if I’m honest with yas too, I was a bit harsh. But you gotta understan’ where I’m comin’ from, see?” The white stallion scratched his patchy beard. “My reputation’s on the line, an’ I can’ be seen feedin’ yous. You understan’, doncha?”

I looked Paid Tab up and down, and then back to Sabrina who was kicking her hoof in place on the sidewalk, and once again to the alabaster pony before me. “You know what I understand, Tab?” I put a hoof down for emphasis. “I understand that Sabrina is hungry right now. I understand that this might be her only meal for the day, and that everypony else turns their nose up at us!”

Paid Tab ran his hoof across his beard once more. “I get all that, Trixie. But look at things from my eyes, eh? You broke glasses o’ mine, you broke a damn window too. Don’ think I forgot about that. I had to shut down business for a whole two days to get an estimate and an installation. That’s not even mentionin’ how long it took fer folks to forget about it.”

I huffed, “And so what? Do those accidents prevent us from being able to eat?”

Paid Tab blinked, taken aback. “No, no Trixie, you got it all wrong. One accident, fine, cool, whatevers. Everyone has one once in a while. Two, close to the first, yeah again, no big deal. But when yer lil sis keeps havin’ em, and keeps drivin’ away business I gotta turn yous away.”

I pressed a hoof into his chest. “And just where are we supposed to go then, Tab? The soup kitchen we were tossed out of? The shady poorhouses that make our empty stomachs and soggy alley feel like Celestia’s castle?”

Tab wiped my hoof off him, “That ain’t my fault Trixie. It ain’t my faults if yous got nowheres. I feel for yous both, I really do. If I had it my way you twos would have a damn medal for what you gotta do to get by. An’ a damn Bridleway show fer all yer talents. Sabrina, the lil squirt, she’s got the brains an’ ability of two unicorns, I tell ya.” I looked down, I was waiting for the ‘but’. And then he put his hoof on my head and turned it towards him. “But,” there it was, “I have foals to feed too, you know? I got a reputation and restaurant to uphold on top a’ that. It might hurt, Trixie, but somepony’s gotta tell you: I got something to lose, and you ain’t got much more to.”

I felt weak as despair washed over me. I couldn’t look Tab in the eye, I couldn’t say anything at all. It was as though in one line he defeated everything I’ve done or stood for up until that moment. Sabrina saw this, and tugged at my tail. When my eyes met hers, I could tell she felt as I did. I looked back to Tab. “S-so… So what do you suppose we do then? Forage? Get a job? Starve? We’ve tried all of those and are doing the third now. We’ve tried getting jobs, but everypony is acting just like you are now. Stuck up and -”

Paid Tab stamped at the ground. “Trixie, I’m a lotta things, see? But stuck up ain’t one of em’. Why would I help you if that were the case? Why would I even have answered the door for you when I should be in there prepping? Cause I care about yous. But you gotta save yourself from drowning before you go savin’ somepony else. And if the papers are sayin that —”

“Stop!” The world was spinning and I lost my breath. Panting, I trembled to ask, “What papers, Tab?”

“Oh, what? You didn’ hear?”

I shook my head weakly

Tab scratched his beard before returning back to the doorway he was standing in. “A fella by the name of, er… Paper Trail, yeah, Paper Trail wrote this piece about you an’ yer sister ‘ere.”

“What?” I couldn’t believe Tab. Why would anypony care enough about the doings of two ponies like my sister and I?

“Yeah, it was somethin’ malicious that Paper Trail. The long and short of it was, he’d been followin’ yous around town, getting a bead on ya. Supposed to be a piece about Canterlot’s underbelly, but he called you twos ‘Canterlot’s Rats.’”

I had to lean against the wall under the window to prevent falling. “So, you’re saying… That some spineless, silver spoon writer called my sister and I vermin and that you believed him enough to turn us away?”

Paid Tab shook his head. “Not me Trixie. Canterlot. Trail believed it enough to impact me, that’s why I was so harsh on yous yesterdays.”

“Why would somepony do this?”

“I don’t know, Trixie. I wish I knew where these ponies got off. But I don’t. What I do know though, is that I can’t keep servin’ you free grub outta the kindness of my heart anymore.”

I hung my head and heard Sabrina sniffle by where the sidewalk met the road. “So what do we do then, Tab?”

He sighed, “I don’t know Trixie. But whatever it is, you gotta do it away from my business. It hurts me turnin’ you away too, but between takin’ care of you and takin’ care of my two colts at home, I’d choose them. I’m sorry, Trixie.”

I stepped away from him and to Sabrina. I embraced her and looked back to Paid Tab. He wouldn’t look me in the eye, and silently closed the door. He gave us a slow wave, looking as dejected as we did. Whatever it was we were gonna do started elsewhere, so I started walking. I felt tears drip out of my eyes and my pace quickened into a run.

I had no idea where I was running to. My hooves must've known where I needed to go before I did. I was fortunate that Sabrina kept up with me, she has a habit of wandering off when we’re not holding hooves. We found ourselves in the square we usually perform in. We never had any formal magical education, like most other unicorns in Canterlot, so our variety of spells were limited. What we did have though, was charisma with a crowd. It usually gave us enough money to feed us that night.

I always told Sabrina that we should move out of town and into that smaller town to the south, Ponyville. Things were cheaper there, and I might be able to get a proper performing job. We never seemed to keep the money needed to get a train ticket down. Between paying off the guards to not kick us out of the alley and meager meals that kept us from collapsing, there was a smattering left. But that might be all we need…

I looked down at Sabrina, who sniffled before looking up at me. Those emerald eyes. I place a hoof beside her horn. “Sabrina,” I cooed, acting stronger than I really was. “How about we save for the Ponyville train ticket, hm?”

She beamed up at me, and I won’t forget that look. The twinkle in her eye, the bounce she did, and that smile. Sabrina knew how I spoke of the town, all that opportunity for work and for her to go to school and make friends. She wanted this more than I did, after all, only one of us was skipping in a circle.

I placed a hoof beside my face, and she stopped, sitting in place and copied my stance. I smirked, putting on a mock-serious tone and closing my eyes. “I, Trixie Lulamoon.”

I peeked one eye to see her mimic me. “I, Sabrina Lulamoon.”

I shut my eyes again. “Vow to save all bits for a train ticket to Ponyville.” She repeated. “And not to use my share of performance earnings to buy sweets from the bakery.”

There was a pause. I peered at her once more to find her fidgeting. She really did love the eclairs down at that bakery of Flaky Crusts’. “And to… Tonotusemysharetobuysweets!”

I knew it was going to be hard for her. It was going to be difficult for both of us to ration what meager money we did make for a train ride to a place that didn’t guarantee a better life. Though, if Ponyville didn’t pan out, there was always a rock farm in need of hooves somewhere in Equestria.

I stood, and Sabrina followed, looking to the ponies around us who stared for a moment too long at our giving of vows. I stamped on the grey city brick. “With that, the Lulamoon Magic Show has begun! My sister and I here were just sharing our vows to guarantee you a solid show, as is the Lulamoon Standard!” Sabrina put her back into mine and saluted with me to a now gathering crowd, our eyes half-closed in steely determination. One such stallion towards the front levitated a handkerchief and blew his nose loud enough for the ponies near him to put distance between them and the possibly ill him.

Our shows weren’t nearly what they could’ve been, I’d never managed to actually learn magic formally. All I could do were simple spells, but I always managed to find a way to make things interesting and different for the usual crowd that had gathered. You’d be surprised the show a pony can put on with simple illusions. Though, I was wary of the crowd. I never knew if they came for enjoyment or pity. Some may have gathered and thrown their bits in the ring thinking it their good deed for the day. Regardless, I tried to create a show that varied and kept people coming back, and with any luck, from a genuine interest in the show, not the wellbeing of the two performing.

I looked to Sabrina and nodded, smirking for what was about to occur. “Ink Behemoth.” Her horn glowed a dim gold and the ground began to rumble. I let my eyes flutter shut as my horn sparked. In my mind, I could see the spell coming forward. Our eyes snapped open in a white gleam of power. Black splotches splattered across the bricks, seeping further across them, the crowd backing away from it as it drew closer to their hooves. Then, from what looked like the bottom of the inky lake forming, Sabrina created two dots, which faded in from nothing, and grew brighter. Twin pairs of a foul crimson floated their way to the top of the murky advance. Then… Stillness. Nothing stirred, the mirage of an abyss with its piercing eyes held fast. The onlookers, now a much larger crowd, held their breath, anticipating the creature’s next move.

The ground erupted in a spout of opaque ichor, the blinding eyes flashed brighter and a crevice formed under them, sharp lines of white light forming the rows of knife-like teeth. The crowd collectively screamed, running and creating distance between them and it.

Now for my favorite part. My hooves dug into the ground, my legs moving away from each other allowing for a stronger stance. My horn glared brighter with an extra layer of light forming around my already radiant horn. I grunted and heard the same in a softer, higher pitch beside me. The illusion gurgled out an earth-shaking explosion of a roar and drew itself closer to the ponies running away before crashing down upon them, dissipating into a sea of glittering specks.

I released my magic, I collapsed but caught myself before I hit the ground, turning my loss of balance into a bow. Sabrina wasn’t so graceful. I raised my head to stamping hooves. Bits rained down on us, and mares ran to us with handkerchiefs demanding a signature. The stallion that blew his nose helped Sabrina to her hooves and sputtered a few coughs will doing so. He called for an autograph in a nasally pitch. Sabrina obliged, ignoring the more… used areas.

After the show, and all the bits were counted, we set out for Paid Tab’s restaurant, aptly named Tab’s. Though we only had enough for one ticket to Ponyville, and a sore hoof from signing all those autographs, we had enough after the cost to eat a meal at a dignified establishment. Tab’s was not a high-end eatery, but it was good enough to feel like we've gotten ahead.

I felt pride swell through me as I drew closer to Tab’s. I couldn’t recall how long it’s been since I had a meal in a restaurant. And I never had enough to afford one with Sabrina. Today was a fluke in terms of success. A day’s pay matching this one hasn’t happened since we first stepped foot into Canterlot. Before then, it was Manehatten, which was up to its snout in magicians looking to make their mark the same as me. We could never afford to sit down in a restaurant in Manehatten. The best we could do was forage in the dumpsters of those restaurants, or on particularly nasty streaks of starvation, steal vegetables from farms on the outskirts of the city. Today marked a turning in the tides for the Lulamoons, and I hoped Sabrina could see it past her hayburger and soda. On that note, I hope she can settle down enough to sleep after the soda.

The pride then withered away into hollow ennui. There at the sidewalk is where I nearly lost hope. No. I did lose hope in that spot. Looking to the skipping filly at my side, however, reminded me that she was my hope. Today’s success and our eventual move to Ponyville would be with her and for her. The once decayed pride grew again, regaining its place. We were the Lulamoon sisters, masters of the minor illusion and the rats of Canterlot. With pride, I held the door open for Sabrina, and we slipped inside Tab’s to claim our discount.

The smell of sweet stewing vegetables and earthy searing hay greeted me along with a condescending glance from the hostess. The carpets were a dull dark red, going well with the dim lighting to set a mood that one was eating in a cushy hayburger joint, and not one of the common folk. A gentle melody floated above us as we were shown to our booth, light chatter from ponies wearing suits and dresses nestling just under it.

I gritted my teeth as I sat down, but loosened tension when I saw Sabrina’s curious glances to everything within the diner. This wasn’t about being better or worse than anypony else, and it wasn’t about the silent judgement coming from the pony’s fine clothes. it was about showing Sabrina a good night. And promising that this wasn’t the last of them.

We never got within eyeshot of Tab throughout the night, the stallion was a chef as well as an owner, and he liked to produce his product alongside the cooks in his employ. We did catch side-eyed glances from the wait staff from our booth, however. I couldn’t care less, I was beaming as I ordered, as I ate across from my sister, and as I paid for her sake. Even if she didn’t know how much ketchup lined her cheeks or how fidgety Sparkle Cola made her, I’m still happy she got to have ketchup on her, and be hyper from the Sparkle Cola.

I cannot begin to describe how much I hate the snow. It’s cold, especially on your underhoof, and makes the roof of your cardboard box sag down. But worst of all it gets in your underhoof and that frosty pain needs not to be described. I shudder thinking of it now.

“Right, Sabrina? Don’t you feel the same? Isn’t snow just the absolute worst?”

Glancing at her resting within the first snow of the winter season, a patchy plane of slush covering her blanket. She looked pale, but ever since our breakout performance she had always looked of a brighter hue. I nudged her. “Hey, Sabrina. Cmon, you’re not gonna miss your chance to talk smack on the weather, are you?” No response. “Oh well… I guess I’m gonna have to go to Flaky Crust’s alone today…” I trailed off, making my way out of the alley.

Sabrina slumped over. Must’ve been really tired from yesterday, we did try to outdo our breakout performance, after all. “Alright, I’ll let you sleep in today. But I expect you bright-eyed and at attention when I get back with a chocolate eclair.”

I smirked as I made my way towards the bakery and tuned out Broken Record after he droned about a sheriff in Appleloosa being some drunkard from Ponyville imposing a simply unbearable tax on apples to pay for a booze import. Ignoring him was easy with the newfound jingle of bits at my side and a tune in my head from a street performer I saw yesterday. Maybe I should pick up an instrument in Ponyville. Magicians with a score accompanying them would be a sight no one could ignore, or refuse donating to.

The sign on the sidewalk of Flaky Crust’s read, “We made too many! 2 for 1 eclairs and tarts! Get them before they’re gone or before we fire the new baker!” I snorted, what luck. The smell of pastries floated gingerly out beyond the plain glass doors. I took in the smell deeply before stepping through the doors and right into the back of a line. Great, what luck.

During the wait, I savored the thought that my sister and I have moved up in the world. At least, certainly higher than we were a month before. An apartment was out of our financial grasp, as was most eateries. We did have enough to make our box a comfortable one. Thicker blankets, a book on a warming spell and even a sound muffling spell for Sabrina so that she could make all the noise she wanted without drawing the guard in our alley. While I’m embarrassed to admit, she did use it to sneak behind me and make me nearly jump out of my fur more than several times. Such is a filly, I suppose.

I was next in line, and glanced towards the billboard of a menu behind the barista. I knew what I wanted, but it was always a sight to see everything Flaky Crust had on hoof and made every day. We had enough money to nearly afford two tickets to Ponyville. While we did have enough just a few days after our big day, the railways got wind of the whole Nightmare Moon fiasco and jacked the prices. Even though she was gone and the moon was now was mareless, the prices remained. Crooks, I tell you. Though, I was engaging in crooked behaviour by breaking our vows. We earned it and could afford it, so no harm done.

I picked up my two eclairs I set out for, now four thanks to Lady Luck, and winked to the light-green mare behind the counter before heading out. I was feeling on top of the world. Within a few days Sabrina and I would be riding the rails to our future. After so long, aimless and destitute, we were going to succeed. I can finally feel like somepony she looks up to. Though, she was never one to sleep in. Come to think of it… I didn’t see the blankets rise with her breaths at all.

The plain brown bag hit the sidewalk, and I bolted back to the alley with such haste I nearly tripped over my own hooves. I slid into the crack between two buildings to find the top of the box slumped over in a heap of snow. I levitated the snow off, with a shaky magical grip and a shout of her name. The opening returned to its position as a rigid shape and revealed Sabrina. Motionless.

I ran to her, shook her, hurling the blankets off her. Her mouth hung open limply, her eyes stared back at me blankly and unfocused. Her fur was cold to the touch.

“No... No, Sabrina!” I shrieked out into the cold city for help. Broken Record was the first to run to me, and immediately started shouting for help. The city guard came and saw me, clutching my sister’s body to my own, bawling and shaking my head. I was a sputtering mess of ‘no’ and ‘cmon, Sabrina. Come back’. We were so close. We were gonna make it and we were gonna do it together. She couldn’t have...

A guard tried to separate us, and was met with an arcane blast into his chestplate. He and his partner responded by casting a nullifying spell on my horn and barked, “We’re trying to help you!” My vision went red, and I broke through their nullification to cast a forcefield between us, pushing them to the edge of the sidewalk outside the alley, and cracking the bricks to either side of me.

I looked down to Sabrina. She was a cold doll in my hooves, I embraced her again, wailing as the guards pounded on the field. I didn’t care what they did, or what their muffled voices were saying. One of them trotted off, but the other calmed and tried to open negotiations. I will not be reasoned with, especially not by some lowly grunt who would do so by the book. I shivered and cast the warming spell over Sabrina and I. I winced as I finished it and looked down to her glassy eyes. Closing my eyes, I cast Sabrina’s sound muffling spell and let myself scream until my voice gave out.

The second guard returned with Paid Tab in tow. His mouth hung open, and his expression was blank. I threw him a searing look that I wished burned every patch of fur off him.

“What in Celestia’s name are you doing here, Tab!?” I coarsely barked.

“Trixie, when they told me I thought, I dunno, I thought it’d be another one of Sabrina’s tricks. Like that time she —”

“Does this look like a trick, Tab!?” I held up Sabrina’s body, her head jolting and then slumping down.

He cringed, and averted his gaze. I seized him with a magical grip, forcing his eyes open and his head towards her. “Look Tab. Don’t you dare look away.”

“Alright! I get it Trixie, Celstia damn it. I’m sorry. I wish I could do more.”

“Oh is that it?” I held Sabrina back in my hooves once again, “What was it you said Tab? That you have something to lose, and there ain’t much more I can?”

He looked down, regret soaking his face, only to be yanked up to face me. I saw his eyes begin to water. “Trixie, I’m sorry. Really, I am. I thought you twos would —”

“That we’d pull ourselves up by our bootstraps? You believe that, you silver spoon stallion? This world isn’t fair, Tab. How is this fair. We were so close.”

Paid Tab sighed, wiping away a tear. “Look, Trixie. I wish I could’ve done more. I wish Canterlot was more to second chances. And third, and fourth.”

I shot him a glance. He flinched and resumed, “I can help you still, though. Look, I’ll pay for Sabrina’s funeral, out of my own pocket. Maybe even give you a job.”

“Now you wanna help me? Are you joking?”

“Trixie, if not for you, then for her. She’d want to be put to rest.”

“What did you say?”

“She’d…. She’d want to be put to rest.”

“She’d also want to make friends in Ponyville, get her cutie mark, go to school, grow up! She would’ve wanted a meal when her stomach was empty, how dare you.”

He gulped, looking to the stoic guards at either side of him. “Trixie. You’re gonna have to come out of there eventually. And you’re going to have to bury her some time. Let me help you, I know I was wrong to turn yous away, but allow me to do this. For her. For Sabrina.” The guilt on his face was painful. He was being genuine, and I wanted his help. I just… I couldn’t let go.

I hung my head, giving Sabrina a look then one to Tab. “Ok, we’re doing this today. You’re paying for the — “I winced, “—the autopsy too.”

“Of course.”

I glanced to the two guards, casting a longer one on the stallion with a singed chestplate, “And these guards aren’t going to press arcane assault charges either.”

The three gave each other mutual stares and nodded. I released the forcefield, and we made our way to the mortician’s building, as per the direction of the guards. One guard blew a whistle, and a crowd of guards drew close, forming a tight circle around us.

The autopsy ruled it as an airborne disease he’s only ever seen in one stallion before. I wish I could’ve heard him better, but the walls were making waves like a plaster ocean and his voice was out of focus. I did hear that it builds up without any noticeable signs, other than a sniffling nose, which is normal in colder months, and then kills in one’s sleep. Of course, I was then tested for it, and miraculously didn’t catch it.

I had been tuning out what the mare leading the funeral was saying, flashing back to the autopsy room. The words, “Trixie, if you would say a few words,” came into sharp focus and I snapped up and made my way to the north point of her grave. A small black coffin in a filly sized grave with a small mound of soil beside it.

“Sometimes,” I began, my voice shaky. “Silence speaks more than words can.” I hung my head and let a tear fall, a small splash against her coffin. My eye twitched when I grabbed the first hoofful of dirt from the pile and dropped it in. I felt a piece of myself drop in with the clump. After the second I felt it again. The first shovelful, more. When the coffin was covered, and the mound was gone, I felt no trace of myself. I was an empty shell.

All at once, a fire ignited in my heart, and it quickly rose to an inferno. I felt a new identity forcing itself to life. I felt Trixie Lulamoon leave me in the dirt. In her stead, stood the Great and Powerful Trixie.

Paid Tab silently walked behind me, and put his hand on my back. “I’m sorry Trixie. She was a talented filly.”

I spun to face him, his hoof outstretched. I shook it, and with a sneer, leaned in and whispered, “The Great and Powerful Trixie forgives you.”

Rising Action

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Opinion Piece

Canterlot’s Twin Rats

Paper Trail

Sunday’s Canterlot Times

I’ve no doubt you’ve seen the Lulamoon sisters about Canterlot during your time living here. They’re outstanding performers and have amazed me to the point of donation more than once. In recent times, they’ve even improved, instead of performing a trick or two (grand as they are) and then retiring for the day, they’ve taken putting on a series of smaller tricks strung together and making a genuine show. What if I told you that their personal life was just as exciting? That their story reaches beyond a street corner? Would you like to know?

The tale of these two sisters is one of tragedy, past and present. A tale of mischief and a tale of spoiled potential. Let’s begin with tragedy. The Lulamoons were once a cherished family of performer ponies, like Trixie and Sabrina themselves. So talented were they, that Hoofdini himself asked for advice and gave it in return to them. Of course, he would never tell of his Moonshot Manticore Mouth Dive. The Lulamoons were the very definition of success, earning them a mansion and renown that stretched across Equestria. But what you didn’t know was that their wealth was never there. It’s true, behind the doors of that mansion was nothing but a broken family toiling with alcoholism and debt. We all remember the fire that claimed the estate along with Ivan and Silvia Lulamoon’s lives. Celestia herself was woken up and aided in the extinguishment of it. It was too late for them, but it wasn’t for the two sisters.

Trixie and Sabrina were very young when the fire happened, Trixie had just gotten her cutie mark that week. If the story’s to be believed too, Trixie was seen carrying out Sabrina from the flaming doors. Whether or not you trust it is up to you, but knowing Trixie’s love for her sister, I do. From there, they lived on the streets, getting used to a rhythm of poverty. From this, Trixie and Sabrina perfected their performance magic in between scavenging for meals. Eventually, they found Paid Tab’s restaurant and in so found a stable source of food there. They didn’t pay or work for it, and such were accepting handouts.

If you’re a longtime citizen of Canterlot, you’ve likely seen the Lulamoon sisters walking about the street when they weren’t performing. If you’re one of the unlucky ones, your pocket was picked by them as they strode by you. You’ve likely seen a waitress at Tab’s working on a broken hoof to support her foals at home too, if you frequent the part of the city they’re in. Sabrina tripped her, causing her to break it and then subsequently work on it. You might’ve seen a stallion walking about with a jaw cast. I remember such a fellow because he works for the Canterlot Times, and he spun quite a story about how Trixie bucked his jaw and displaced it. For what? Complimenting Sabrina. Mischief like this roams where Trixie does. This moves me to the final part of this tale: Wasted potential.

Trixie obviously is the guardian of Sabrina, and as such all her needs must be met by her. I don’t think anypony should have to live in an alley as Trixie does. A filly should not grow up where rats roam, lest she becomes like one herself. Between this and her life of trouble, Trixie and her sister very much are rats. Trixie has incredible magical talent, that I believe she limits to performance magic simply because that’s what pays. She could be a royal wizard if she applied herself, but she doesn’t. Trixie is a mare of wasted potential, and it’s rubbing off on Sabrina. Dare I say, it’s rubbing off on Canterlot too.

Knowing all of this, would you still want to see them around? Would you want to eat at a restaurant that rats eat from? Would you want to see ponies who squander their talents and actively hurt others stay around? Let me ask you one final question, this one directed at Guard Chief Shining Armor, would you let rats keep spreading blight across Canterlot, knowing you could stamp them out?

My back sang a song of soreness and my body joined the chorus. The past two months on the rock farm have been arduous on my whole body. The pay was decent enough, and I’ve made myself comfortable in the guest cabin they keep for any workers. Being as I’m the only one working, I have it to myself. I turned over to my desk, the stiff guest bed protesting as I did so, and looked at my space.

The other end of the room was usually for anypony else’s things, but I instead moved everything over. A desk, a bookshelf, and even a clothes hook for my… Costume. It had also been two months since that goody-two-horseshoes ran me out of Ponyville. Twilight Sparkle. I ground my teeth and let them go in a huff. What can that mare ever achieve, she’s just a librarian… Sent by Celestia herself.

I may be great and powerful, but Twilight’s plain better than me. At least, she was. I haven’t been idle during my time at the Pie’s quarry. I’ve lifted boulders with my magic alone! With a tiny bit of help from the Pies as well, but it was through mostly my force that it got up the quarry! Let’s see Twilight do that, ha!

I made my way to my desk and all the residents of its bright brown surface, the chair groaning as I sat. I carefully added that nickname to the bookmarked part of my small journal that existed only for mean names for Twilight and cool names for tricks I have planned. I levitated a grip weight and magically pressed down on it idly as I grabbed one of the spell tomes I got off a lost trader. Some merchants get lost, and I send them back to where they need to go for a small price. Usually, it’s something off of their cart, like a book or some food if they’re selling it. This spell was about cryokinesis. Ice magic. It was handy while I worked to keep me from passing out in heat exhaustion, but this chapter was about manifesting ice in liquid bodies. Like making ice cubes in your drink from the drink itself. Imagine having a Sparkle-Cola and having cola ice cubes! I should probably think of more practical applications for my spell tomes, but it’s not like I’ve had a place to practice them or any need for them. The only real magic that helps me is magical blasts to break apart rocks, and I have those completely nailed down.

I held my head high, and made my way to the door, replacing the grip weight with a pickaxe. Today’s work was breaking down the boulder that we moved up yesterday and to harvest crystals with Marble Pie. It was a rather light workload, but they always were on Pie family Sundays. ‘Sunday is for the Sun’ echoed Igneous Rock from somewhere in my head. The Pie family has a whole long list of odd beliefs and customs that I’m sure somepony who cared more than me would take down. I know Twilight would have a field day trying to learn all of them.

I closed the door behind me and took in the radiant sight of the quarry. A dingy gray sky overlooking gray uneven sand, silent pebbles, and pine trees with needles caked in gray stone debris. Towering over everything was the boulder, a light blotch on an otherwise dark backdrop. I heaved a sigh, “Another day in paradise.”

I shook when I got to striking distance of the monumental stone. I was going to have to tear this thing down by myself? Some ponies like the Pies don’t understand the meaning of the word accident. I struck it, sending fractures across a small side, another reduced them to shards. I found myself striking harder and faster with each blow. Soon I was almost attacking the boulder with all my magical might. The head of the pickaxe cracked and shattered from my ferocity. I flung it aside and blasted the boulder with all my arcane strength, “Stupid!” The boulder was a smoking heap of rubble before me. I hadn’t even noticed the tears on my face, or how the sand below me clotted with them.

In that instant, I heard a stone hit the sand behind me. Panting, I turned and saw a mare in an EUP officer’s uniform standing in between where the fences parted. She matched the scenery with a grey coat and faded white and dull brown hair. Her eyes were a striking pink that weighed me down to look at. She was an embodiment of the word formidable, but that’s what an EUP officer is supposed to be.

“You,” She jabbed a hoof at me, “Come here.”

I made my way towards her, wiping the tears from my eyes and putting on a strong face. I don’t know what made me cry, but it wasn’t the first time crying fits from nowhere struck. I had one on the train ride to Ponyville, and again a week after coming to the rock farm. Then this one now, and it just had to happen in the presence of powerful company. “Your name is Trixie, isn’t it?” The shadow cast on her eyes from her ornate cap only added to her intimidating presence.

She stood just a few hairs shorter than me, but the bags under her eyes communicated she’d been around much longer than I have. Her black cap has golden lines drawing from the royal seal, a picture of Celestia and Luna in a circle chasing one another with the sun and moon follow above them respectively. Her officer’s coat was closer to a black trenchcoat, and the rows of ribbons confirmed her menacing veneer.

“How -”

“I know you from my sister Pinkie Pie. You put on quite a show in Ponyville.” Her medals clinked beneath her collar, holding a single star at either end of it. I hung my head. “At first, I didn’t believe it. A pony that boasted like you did about being the most talented unicorn in Equestria is working at my family’s rock farm. But seeing what you did to that boulder, there’s no doubt in my mind of some talent in you.”

I raised my head and grinned, she wasn’t here to scold me in that coarse voice of hers. Ha! She was here to kiss the ring. “Forgive Trixie, who are you? Anypony that recognizes the talents of the Great and Powerful Trixie is a pony to know. Especially one as well dressed as you.”

She raised her eyebrow and held a hoof to her chest, “I am Brigadier General Concrete Pie, and I must admit, I wasn’t here for you.” So much for my ring being kissed. “I was simply visiting my family before I tend to my work in Las Pegasus, but I’m glad I happened upon talent like yours. I’ve got an eye for potential, but I didn’t have to open it very wide to see yours. Have you had any thoughts about joining the EUP?”

I gulped. No, I haven’t ever considered it. “Yes, of course, Trixie has. She -”

She put her hoof to my mouth, looking behind me “That’s all I need to know before I come back. I don’t have a lot of time between here and my next assignment. Wait here and we can discuss this over a walk.” She made her way past me and to Igneous Rock and Cloudy Quartz standing in the doorway to the farmhouse.

How dare she blow me off like that! I am the Great and Powerful Trixie! She’s just some earth pony with… A much higher position than a quarry worker. I slumped down by the fencepost, leaning my head into it and letting my mane cushion me. Surely I can’t be a worker like this forever. This might be my chance to break out of here and make a name for myself. A name powerful enough to raise the dead. I pushed a sigh through my teeth. That was something the silence here was good for, letting your own thoughts be the noise. Sabrina’s memory always clawed its way to the forefront of my mind to torment me. Two months ago I vowed to bring her back, and I’ve been doing my best to get stronger and keep that vow by breaking rocks. If she saw me now she’d laugh in my face. I leaned further back into the post and rested my eyes.

“You’re right, I would.”

I sprang up, seeing Sabrina in front of me. I lunged into her for a hug, but she jumped back and laughed at me as my face smacked into the sand. As it settled into my fur I shut my eyes. “You’re not real. Sabrina’s dead, and I haven’t brought her back yet.”

“Yes, I am!” More laughter.

I squeezed my eyes shut, “No! You're dead and gone, Sabrina!” I roared. The rest of my body quaked and collapsed in the sand, and I sobbed. Visions like this weren’t uncommon. Sometimes I saw her in the trees, other times she was right outside the window, most times it was her voice. No matter where she was, she wasn’t real. Even though I reminded myself of this, I didn’t always follow the reminders.

“You know, usually ponies get shell shock after they see combat.” A gravely and stern voice called from above me. I opened my eyes and Concrete Pie’s commanding pink eyes nearly stabbed through me. I leapt to my hooves and dusted the sand out of my coat.

“How much of that did you see of Trixie?” I stroked flecks of black soot out of my mane.

“Enough to know that we definitely need a walk. Come.” She made her way through the fences and I followed. Lines of sunlight pierced through the faded gray sky. She looked to the sky, “Don’t you hate cloudy days like this? You’d think that with the ability to schedule weather, pegasi would make it sunny every day that didn’t need rain or snow?”

I wiped my eye, “Yeah, and it doesn’t help the cheerful atmosphere here.”

Concrete looked over her shoulder, and I copied. The farmhouse moved out of sight. Then the windmill at the edge of the farm. Then we couldn’t see the fences anymore. Concrete turned back and retrieved a cigarette from her coat, turning to me with her mouth leaned forward.

“Oh!” I lit the end of it, and without hesitation, she drew in deeply from the stick, nearly a quarter of it turning to ash that she flicked with a swift motion of her mouth. “A test of Trixie, she passed didn’t she?”

“Sure, Trixie. Look. I’ll be honest with you, I was being kind to you because my parents could see us. Truth be told, I’ve seen stronger unicorns in better fields of magic.” She drew in another deep breath of cigarette smoke, exhaling it in a cloud. “We’re just short on the numbers. We’ve been repelling the changelings now for weeks, but they don’t seem to run out of resources. To this day, I’ve never seen, or had intel confirming, them eating a damn thing.”

“So you want Trixie to be a number to toss at them?” I frowned, I was after power, not bloodlust or a deathwish.

“No, no. It’s the pegasi’s job to throw themselves at the enemy and die. Earth ponies are smarter than that, and unicorns aren’t on the front lines anyway. What we, The Crown, need is warlocks.” She drew in a shorter breath. “And you don’t seem very stupid. A little off, but capable.”

I huffed, “Trixie is not weird, she’s -”

“Great and Powerful. She also refers to herself in the third-pony. And you spouted off about somepony being dead and sobbed about it. You don’t exactly have the appearance of a mare playing with a full deck.” She drew in the last breath of her cigarette and tossed the butt aside. “Regardless, I think you can make it past basic and learn a thing or two on the battlefield. Maybe even make officer someday.”

I recoiled. She already had a good read on me, although I didn’t make myself a hard book to read. I had to know, “What makes you think I want to learn about magic? Let alone in a military application of it?”

She let out a hearty laugh, one that boomed across the trail and into the field that neighbored either end of it. “Unicorns with any sort of power always want more. They can either study for it or fight for it. I think fighting’s the better way to get stronger, and getting a strong unicorn in fighting shape boosts my already good reputation.”

“And what are you known for?”

She took out another cigarette, and I instinctually lit it again as she instinctually drew in from it. “I’m Celestia’s Unyielding Wall. If she needs a portion of Equestria defended, I’m the mare she calls. Then once the enemy’s exhausted all their supplies holding their line, she sends in someone else to swoop in and finish them. This is besides the point though, do you want power or not Trixie?”

I was befuddled. Concrete knew exactly where I was at any point in time. There isn’t much I could say that’d surprise her, or do that would catch her off guard. “How many mares have you given this talk to?”

“Not many, kid. Recruiters do most of that work for me. But Celestia’s orders for this sort of thing is to route any potential towards the EUP or towards her school. I don’t like war, you know?”

I shook my head.

“Don’t let the getup fool you, as stylish as it is. I’m in the business of keeping ponies alive, not in sending them towards their demise.” She offered me a cigarette from her coat, I refused. “Suit yourself. Everypony under my command usually takes it up though.”

“Why’s that? Do you make them smoke?”

She laughed, “No, not directly.”

I cocked my head.

“I’m a general. Even if I don’t want anypony to die, I still give the command to post ponies in places that they do. I make widows, widowers, and let me ask you, Trixie. Do you know what Vilomah is?”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“It means ‘Against a Natural Order’, but we always use it to describe a parent who has to bury their child. For someone like me, it’s natural to try and escape that in a cigarette, even if the getaway is brief. But let me ask you what makes them smoke.”

I hung my head and gravely spoke, “Because they have to do the same. They make all these of the enemy.”

She offered me the cigarette again, and I accepted. Drawing it in, I felt like my lungs shrank instantly and I sputtered out a cough, dropping the stick. Concrete laughed uproariously, “Ahh, it never gets old watching somepony try their first smoke.” She patted my back and pointed to the sign that I hadn’t noticed in front of us put between a path that I hadn’t noticed had split. A pair of thick wooden arrows pointing in either direction. Left to Las Pegasus and right to Ponyville.

“Well Trixie, this is where we part ways,” I saw her stifle a laugh, “Should you want to expand on your power, which the impression I get is that you do, you’ll make your way to the embassy in Las Pegasus, a few blocks from Gladmane’s Resort. Tell them I sent you and you should be put through to me or a recruiter, understand?”

I nodded to the sounds of hoofsteps behind me. Concrete looked over my shoulder and I turned to see a traveling merchant with an azure coat and light yellow mane fumbling with a map. “I’ll let you take care of this one.”

I started towards the trader but Concrete’s voice stopped me, I turned to see her walking away, a thin line of smoke following her, “This is your choice Trixie, remember that. Nopony’s forcing you to join up... Unless you got drafted.” She chuckled, “Wouldn’t that be funny?” I turned back to the trader with a grin, she looked like she was carrying a bunch of trinkets that looked anywhere from recent time to outside the confines of time itself.

“Are you lost?” I looked over the mare’s shoulder, to an upside-down map. I was unphased as I magically turned it right-side-up with a roll of my eyes. “Where are you headed?”

She blinked, bewildered that she could make such an elementary error as map alignment. Her eyes were a lovely gold, they matched her mane. “Uh, yeah. Sorry, I just… Wow, I can’t believe I had it the wrong way this whole time.” Her voice was delicate and high, rising and falling with her words. It reminded me of when I saw the South Celestial Sea, the waves rising and crashing.

I nudged her, “This isn’t the first time Trixie has seen this, you must be new to this whole thing…” I trailed off waiting for her name.

“Dainty Sunbeam, and yeah. I am kinda new to this. I’m not a merchant, I’m just carrying this heap of stuff from Canterlot to an oddity shop in Las Pegasus.”

What a coincidence. “Well lucky you,” I said, positioning myself in front of the sign, obscuring Dainty’s view of it, “Trixie happens to know the way there. But she’s gonna need something off this cart.”

She scratched her mane, “Look. I uh… This isn’t really my stuff to give away, so I can’t do that.” That’s a shame, there’s really nothing else I want from her. “But” Her voice rose again, “I could put in a good word for you with the shopkeeper.”

I sighed, “It’ll do.”

“Oh trust me, you’ll want something from his shop. You’re a unicorn, you probably wanna get stronger, right?”

“Why does everypony know that?”

“Hm? It’s common knowledge, but my mother always told me unicorns don’t notice that kinda thing cause… Well her words were that you were stuck up and didn’t realize your faults. Her words, not mine.”

I felt my eyebrow raise, “Go on. About the shop, Trixie doesn’t need to know about your mother’s frankly incorrect opinions about unicorns.”

“Well, these are magical items.” I felt my eyebrow raise higher. “And there’s this one amulet there, that gives unicorns like crazy amounts of power.”

I felt my interest skyrocket. There was a third way to get stronger. Not in books or brawls, but in relics! If this was to be believed, then I wouldn’t have any need for the EUP or training. I could skip right to being powerful! But I had to play it cool, otherwise, this mare might get scared away. “WHERE IS THIS SHOP!?” Smooth Trixie.

“Well hang on now. Where is Las Pegasus?” She asked, distancing herself from me.

I blinked rapidly, “Oh yes that’s right. Las Pegasus is right down this path, keep following it and you’ll make it there. You were just lucky I was here and you didn’t come to the Pie family rock farm instead.”

“Rock farm? What do you grow rocks?”

I heaved a sigh, “No. It’s a misleading name, it’s just a quarry. We break up rocks and send them to construction companies or whoever needs them.” I droned, whirring my hooves in a mechanical circle as I spoke.

“Ok… Cool… So his shop is just a few blocks from Gladmane’s Resort” Perfect. “It’s the only curio shop on the whole strip, so you can’t miss it!”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie thanks you for your service.” I bowed to her.

“Yeah… Thanks too, I guess. I gotta get going now.” She sped off leaving me in a plume of dust. Great, more dust in my mane.

The crystal caverns tucked into the side of the Pie family quarry were in complete contrast to the rest of the farm. Shining pink crystals jutted out from the cave walls at every possible angle and shone in magenta radiance. Even after two months on the farm, I still found myself transfixed by them. Especially the massive transparent pillars that stretched from the bottom to the top of the chasm, or from one end to the other. My job wasn’t to admire them though, and I couldn’t fully appreciate their resplendence with my mind on Concrete’s proposal. Still, I let my thoughts wander into the crystal in an almost meditative trance.

I heard Marble snap one of the crystals and place it in her basket from somewhere behind me. It snatched me from my awe and back to Equis. Marble Pie wasn’t the most talkative pony, but she wasn’t the dimmest on the farm either. That honor went to Limestone. Or maybe even Pinkie Pie was she still living here. Marble could probably help to clear some air about this matter.

“Oh Marble, dear, Trixie would like to… Begrudgingly ask for advice, she’s unsure of what to do.” I magically severed a crystal from its base, placing it into one of the few baskets I levitated around me.

“Mm?” She replied, basket in her mouth as she carried it to me. I leaned one of mine to hers and let her empty it.

“Concrete’s your sister, right? Older sister?”

“Mhm.”

“She offered Trixie a chance to join the EUP as a sorcerer. Do you think she should accept?”

She shook her head, “Mm-mm”

I huffed, “Why not? Is it because of that speech she gave about ponies dying?”

“Mhm.” She moved further into the cave, the walls becoming narrower as she progressed. I followed, emptying another basket of hers into mine. Around half were filled up now.

“Well. Trixie won’t die anyway. she’s much too talented and fair maned to be taken so young.” Marble pie giggled. “Hey! You can’t deny it, Marble.”

“Mhm.”

“Oh yeah? We’ll see what happens the next time Limestone finds another one of your dirty books. Think you’ll get silence from Trixie then?”

Marble didn’t say anything, she mechanically took another crystal and placed it in the basket. She looked back at me stoically, to the untrained eye she would appear emotionless. But to my trained eye, she was sweating bullets.

“Trixie will take that silence as approval of her image. Now Trixie doesn’t have to go to the EUP. A little songbird told her that there’s an amulet that can give her all the power she needs.”

“Mm.”

“Do you think Trixie should get the amulet?” I cleanly sliced several crystals from the ceiling, catching all but one, which fell unceremoniously on my head. “Ignore that, Trixie is talented.”

Marble giggled again, but her tone turned grave, “Mm-mm.”

“What? Why?” I whinnied.

She mimed herself putting on a necklace and shrugging indifferently.

“Oh, it will not! Do you think Trixie can be duped? If it’s a fake I’ll just get my money back.”

Marble shrugged again, emptying another basket into mine. All of them were full, so we started for the mouth of the cave. Usually, the light from the outside of the mouth of a cavern spills into the cave itself, but the light grew dimmer and dingier as we approached the exit. As we both made our opposing way around a beautiful crystalline monument that stood from the top to bottom of the grotto, I started to feel doubt creep into my thoughts. What if the amulet was a dud? Then I would’ve blown all my bits on a lark and would end up having to join the EUP or come back here. As much as I liked Marble, I couldn’t stay here forever, something about the atmosphere erodes at your psyche.

I felt assured then. Even if it is just a necklace, I don’t lose anything by buying it. I won’t be able to take my bits with me to the various EUP stations I’d eventually be posted at. I might as well try it. Best case scenario, it works and I don’t have to go to war. Worst case, I have to go to the EUP as I had planned before. Well, the worst case is that it kills me, but it’s a necklace, not a guillotine.

I shielded my eyes when we exited the cave, allowing my eyes to adjust to the darker scenery. It was The further we went up the stone spire that led down into the cavern, the more restless I felt. I wanted to get to that store as soon as I could, but I couldn’t just leave Marble. I had to see the task to its end, as menial as it was. We went up to the farmhouse, my skin feeling as though it were suddenly replaced with ants. The instant my baskets touched the porch, I rocketed into my cabin like a bolt of lightning from a jar. Crashing into the side of the lodge, I floated the drawstring bag that I kept my earnings in. I opened it to see nearly 700 beautiful golden coins reply in a golden gaze. A sneer stretched across my face.

I rocketed past the fence, past the farmhouse, past the two cigarette butts, and past the sign. Before long, I saw the glowing sea of neon that was Las Pegasus outstretching past the horizon’s sunset like an artificial aurora. I stilled my anxious shakes, I was at the gates of my future, and I couldn’t wait to pass through them.

I thought the strip from a distance looked amazing during the twilight hours, but actually being on the strip at night was like being plucked from my world and placed in another. Every brightly lit sign called out a different attraction from a monolithic building, with a beautiful cloud road intersecting all of them. Pegasi jetted past overhead, ponies were running every which way to their brand of a good time. I had to steady myself, even if every fiber of my being was calling me towards something called a strip club. I had no clue what it was, but something made me feel gravitated towards it. No, Trixie, we’re here for one thing! Right…

I sat on the sidewalk, letting a stream of ponies pass by me. Most of them visibly were drunk, but some were sober enough that I could ask them a question or two. I tapped a stallion with a brown coat and black mane on the shoulder, “Excuse me, but can you do Trixie a great and powerful favor?”

“Wha-? Sure who’s Trixie?” His head tilted in confusion, blinking sleepily.

I rolled my eyes, simply pointing a hoof at myself. I waved my hoof, “No matter. Can you tell Trixie where the curio shop is?”

“Uh sure, it’s down that-a-way, the last shop on the left.” He unsteadily pointed down a road to my left… The one with the strip club on its corner.

I caressed his face, “Trixie thanks you. Now begone.” I shooed him away, making my way down the path. My eyes drifted to the neon sign of a mare circling around a pole. No! I tore my eyes from it and hurried down to the last shop on the left, barging in to see Dainty Sunbeam talking with an older looking stallion. He looked like he came from a few hundred years ago, dressed as a scholar, even going as far as to wear his light blue mane in a braid.

His store was a labyrinth of shelves and display cases, holding relics from all across Equestria and seemingly from every time period in it. The air felt like a weight on my lungs and filled them with the scent of an old book. The lighting was dim, provided only by candles placed on tables away from displays. Just outside was a bleeding sea of artificial daylight, in complete opposition to this building. It was as if someone had plucked a crowded museum from Canterlot and placed it where a casino should’ve been.

Dainty point to me, “Oh, that’s the mare I was telling you about, Toffee, Shmixie right?”

I scoffed, “How dare you get the Great and Powerful Trixie’s name incorrect.”

She and the stallion laughed, “See? I told you she’d react like that too!”

I felt myself get hotter and hung my head. I heard Toffee call, “Come now, don’t feel so embarrassed. We don’t joke with just anypony. Sunbeam here was telling me how you helped her and clamored for this here,” He tapped a display glass holding a red-jeweled black amulet bearing the likeness of an alicorn. “Yes,” He pushed his small-framed glasses up, “This is a dangerous piece. The Alicorn Amulet.”

“Hmph, as if it even works. Trixie should turn around and leave this rude establishment.” I scoffed, turning my head from Toffee but my eyes drifted back to the amulet. It drew me towards it, like metal to a magnet. Once I made eye contact, I couldn’t break it. I needed to have this amulet.

“Oh, it works, alright.” He called from beside me. His voice seemed muffled despite him being close. “But, I’m not keen on selling it to you, or anypony for that matter. It’s a dangerous artifact, it corrupts anypony that wears it.”

I tossed my entire bag of bits on his counter.

I pushed everything in my shed to the wall, or as close to the wall as I could manage. I wasn’t sure what would happen when I put this piece on, but if it was enough for a pony whose come across all manner of relics to call this one dangerous, I’d imagine donning it wasn’t a completely safe venture. I floated the case’s lid off from the amulet, what little light was in the room instantly dimmed. All light seemed to be drawn directly towards the pendant.

I gulped as I felt the cold metal touch my neck, all the hairs standing up in revolt. Click. The back piece snapped into place. I closed my eyes and awaited fate. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. Nothing happened. I fell to the ground, breaking out in sobs as waves of despair crashed down over me. I heard Paid Tab’s words, “I got somethin’ to lose, and you ain’t got much more to.” He was right. I had nothing but a few books I pawned off lost ponies, a newspaper with my reputation’s obituary, and this stupid pendant!

I went to take it off, but a black miasma floated from it. They were like tentacles seeping out from my neck, they wrapped around my hooves and placed them near my chest. It floated me above the faded wood floors. Then the pain set in.

I wanted to scream, but my body didn’t respond. Every single molecule of mine felt like it was being corroded away and being forcefully replaced one at a time. My veins exploded in boiling pain like my blood was being reduced to a new darker ichor. I wanted to scream, but the amulet silenced me. I felt tears stream down my face before they boiled away in a puff of steam. Everything went white. Words and images started flashing past me. Every page of every book I’ve ever read, every sign I’d ever passed over, every thought I’d ever have tore across my vision. Conversations started to float replay in front of me, as though I was watching it and living it at the same time.

“Trixie is a mare of wasted potential, and it’s rubbing off on Sabrina.”

No! I did my best for her… But it never was enough.

“Aww, Trixie, you got your cutie mark! You’re gonna be a magician just like your father and me. Well, let’s hope you’re more like me.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean Silvia? What did I do wrong this minute.”

“Oh nothing dear, it would just be nice if Trixie could hang onto her bits for more than five minutes.”

“Well, at least I can keep my mouth off a bottle for more than five minutes.”

They were always like that. They never could agree on one thing and were always on the offensive to point out each other’s flaws. I thought that being a magician like they were would make them stop fighting, if only for an instant.

“Trixie I’m hungry.” No…

“I know Sabrina… I know. I am too. I’ll tell you what, wait here and I’ll go find something.” I remember this night. This one beyond any others and I was living it through my own eyes again. I felt the weight of her hunger and my own. I was crushed under my own boulder of emotion, she deserved better but I wasn’t the pony to give it to her. This night I waded through the dumpster, finding husks of molded bread, flecks of cupcake clinging to its paper wrapper as tight as the maggots clinging to it did. I remember finding a rotting apple core and mustering what remaining strength I had to reconstitute it into something edible for her. I could barely walk it back to her, but I managed. For her.

The next thing I remember I hit the deck with a crack. Everything around me in the Pie’s cabin was smoldering piles of ash. I would’ve felt terrible had I… Felt anything but raw power. I felt it crackle through me with new blood and a stronger body to carry it. I smirked as instinctually drew everything in my magical aura, sending it back to its unburnt state in an instant. The cabin walls reformed and nailed themselves back in place, the furniture’s ashes floated in position and reformed themselves as though they were just built, the book’s spine and pages spun into place, words reappearing and covers taking form once again. So this was the power of the Alicorn Amulet.

I strode towards the door, changing my once purple star-studded attire into a sleek jet black robe. I phased through the door and made my way for Canterlot. I had one pony to thank for putting me in this place. For sending me to this blasted rock farm, and Sabrina to that infernal graveyard. The Great and Powerful Trixie had a Paper Trail to burn.

The Sword Proven Mightier

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My shielding spell has gotten strong enough to evaporate the rain the instant it touches the barrier above my head. I still very much detest the rain, this amulet has given me many things but tolerance to falling water was absent from the list. Come to think about it, I think I’ve been losing empathy for other ponies, but I couldn’t be sure. I especially wasn’t empathetic towards him.

I had lured Paper Trail to the very same alley that I called my home but several weeks ago. I sent a letter with instructions to his office detailing a lead so juicy that even he couldn’t pass up. There was a murder in Canterlot a long time ago, but nopony knew who the killer was. Murder was among the highest of crimes in Equestria, punishable by lifetime imprisonment in Alcoltraz at the least. A young filly was found in an alley not far from mine, lifeless. There were no leads and the case was cold on arrival. Nopony could even identify the body. Naturally, any information on the matter was of extreme urgency and interest to those who possessed it. Especially for a pony as callous as Paper Trail.

I heard his trot coming down the sidewalk and immediately changed my entire appearance. My azure mane changed to blonde and my cold blue coat shifted to dark pink. The instant his rear legs passed into the alley, I silently sealed the opening with a visual and sound concealing spell. To an outsider, it looked like a brick wall, but to Paper Trail and I, it looked like the same city street he entered from.

“Are you Cherry Grove? The informer?” His voice was colorless and urgent.

“Are you Paper Trail, editor in chief of the Canterlot Daily?”

We both nodded. Paper Trail removed his cloak hood, revealing his electric blue eyes. They somehow looked curious and blank all at once, like he was studying every detail of me but had no response to what he saw. They matched his alabaster coat in regal symmetry. This was the first time I saw Paper Trail in the flesh, and I stared with all the fire in Tartarus.

He kept his black umbrella hovering above him but tugged at his collar. “So… Out with it, I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to.”

“Likewise. But you need to give me something I want.”

He scoffed, “As if I would buy into this quid pro quo. You made no mention of offering something in return.”

I held a hoof to his face, furrowing his eyebrows, “Paper Trail, this is quite the story, one that would shake Canterlot to its very core. You have a choice,” I gritted my teeth, “before you. You can choose to be the one that shakes this city or the one that let a killer slip through your hooves.”

“And you would tell a different paper about this meeting?”

“I will now. That is… If you don’t want to give me what I want.”

He looked to his sides, eyeing the mirage of a sleeping city street, to his left. “What is is you want, Cherry?”

I removed my cloak hood revealing a simulated pink horn, “I want to become a better sorcerer. Unicorns often do, right?” I bit my tongue in disbelief at what I just said.

“Of course.”

“What I want is the names of three powerful wizards in Canterlot. I want where they live, I want their habits, and I want to know how to convince them to take me as a pupil.”

He scratched his golden mane apprehensively, “Why can’t you learn at a library?”

“You’re the eyes and ears of Canterlot, aren’t you? Information like this in exchange for something that would elevate your career so high should be a steal. Plus, it’s faster to go to the experts than learn to be one yourself.”

He heaved a sigh, “Anything else?”

I looked to the street, “Your silence on this matter, as you must want too.”

“Of course.”

I held a hoof out, “Well?”

He looked skyward, “Well… There’s Moondancer. She was almost at the top of her class at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.”

“Almost? Who exceeded her? I asked for powerful, not some runner-up.”

“Yes, I know… I think it was Twilight Sparkle who was her superior. But she’s in Ponyville.”

I ground my teeth with such force I thought they might burst. “Go on.”

“She’s an isolated one. I’ve only ever seen her go to three places: The library, the market for food, and home. Sometimes in that order.”

“Good,” I hid a grin, “And how would I reach her?”

“Moondancer doesn’t like Twilight Sparkle, that’s as much as I know.”

“On that, she and I have that in common.” I narrowed my eyes.

He tilted his head, “Why’s that?”

“You don’t need to know. But why doesn’t she like her?”

He scratched his chin, “I believe it was due to a falling out between the two. They grew farther and farther apart until… I think Moondancer threw a party on the same day that Twilight left for Ponyville. She didn’t even say goodbye. It was out of that, from my uphill perspective, that this habit of isolation formed.”

“Thanks, next.” That was excellent intel on the enemy, as Concrete would say. At least, I think she would say.

I could spot his eye twitch, he did not take well to being treated like an inferior. Something we had in common.

“Two doors down from Moondancer is an EUP veteran by the name of Corporal Sterling Glint. He was the squad leader of a small detachment sent to Griffonstone, he was sufficiently gifted in fire magic. I recall him saying it worked wonders against feathers.”

“Was?”

“Since his retirement, he’s taken a vow of pacifism. He wouldn’t hurt a mouse. But he has taken up cooking as a past time. If you bring him some expensive ingredients, I’m sure he’d love to cook them for you. Maybe teach you all you need about fire in the process.”

“You’re doing very well, Paper.” For a pony backed into my corner.

He smiled, seeming pleased with the assessment. “Then I’ll tell you of Canterlot’s hidden jewel, Fleur De Lis. She’s kept her magic hidden, likely out of Fancypants’ jealousy.” He leaned into me, “He wasn’t admitted to magic school, but Fleur De Lis passed near the top of her class.”

“How do you know she’s talented?”

“If you can get her alone, like I have before, and get her to perform, she’s nothing short of prodigal.”

I reared my face, “I’m no elite, Paper. How can I possibly be alone with her?”

He glanced swiftly to his sides again, “I think… I think I can arrange it. If your information is good.”

“I think not. I don’t want to be seen, especially not with you.”

He gasped, “And just why not!? I am the pinnacle of sophistication in Canterlot.”

“Exactly.”

Paper Trail nearly fainted. Steadying himself, he demanded, “Well I gave you three ponies that I know the talents of. Now you need to tell me what you know.”

“You’ve given me a name, a has-been that uses fire for cooking, and a friend of yours who can do parlor tricks.”

“Why I never-!”

“I’ll tell you what I know for the sake of the filly, not for you.”

“Good! Now tell me who was killed!” He nearly bounced with glee

“Seriously? You newsponies have absolutely no discretion.”

“Yes yes, I’ve heard it a million times from bottom-feeding ponies. Who was killed!?”

I took a brick from the wall, and transmuted it instantaneously into a knife, “YOU!”

I threw off my disguise and saw his eyes shrink in mortal horror. I felt hot air on my hoof as I pressed the knife into him and slashed his throat open, spraying blood into the dirty puddle where I shoved his body, my seething hatred flowing into the blade, boiling the blood cleanly off of it. I transmuted it back into a brick and tucked it back into the alley walls. I turned to the puddle containing Paper Trail, bubbles helplessly flowing up from its shallow crimson reaches. I watched as they became less frequent. I watched as they stopped. The instant they did, red smoke floated into the now glowing ruby of the Alicorn Amulet. I heard my heartbeat in my ears, time slowed, and I felt energy creep from every inch of my body. I lurched forward and sputtered a cough. I had to get out of here.

I enveloped myself, envisioning the inn I passed on my way to Canterlot. Within the same second, I was there on the trail overlooking it. The night was still, the sounds of insects of the wind filled its quiet air. I galloped to the distant inn as Canterlot’s rain started to trickle from above, moving towards Ponyville.

What did I just do!?

I paced back and forth across the cramped room’s wooden floor, the boards near the door squeaking as I traversed them. My mane was still dripping with rainwater, and it left a trail across my path. I had just killed a pony, a very important pony. The whole Canterlot population will know and be on high alert. How am I gonna get back into the city now? Wait… No… I could just keep the mirage barrier up, nopony will know that he’s dead. Just that he’s… Missing.

I stopped, my hair still dripping down. Why don’t I feel bad?

The question thundered in my head, growing louder with each repetition. Was it because Paper Trail had cut off our food supply? Was it because he indirectly caused Sabrina’s death? No. I had made up my mind to kill him as soon as I put… I looked down at the amulet.

I threw my head back up, looking for even a morsel of horror or guilt. Anything. I dove onto the mattress and levitated the covers over me, everything growing dark except the amulet’s glow. I looked into its gem, searching for any emotion, and I found one. Vengeance. I felt it surge through me. I couldn’t find the guilt because I wasn’t guilty. I couldn’t find any fear because I wasn’t the one who should be afraid. I sneered.

I still had questions, behind the voracious hunger for revenge. What was that smoke? And why did I feel stronger when I…? Two and two added themselves together. Killing Paper Trail, a unicorn, fed his magic to me. I felt my sneer stretch wider.

I didn’t have to learn from anypony. I didn’t have to force a friendship to get what I wanted. I could just take it. And why couldn’t I? The amulet has justified me in my retribution. This world’s ways made Sabrina die, and in my quest to bring her back, I was justified to take from the world.

No. I wasn’t going to learn from Moondancer or Sterling Glint, and I’m not going to bow down to Fleur De Lis. I’m going to kill them. Same as I did with Paper Trail. This inn wasn’t just a getaway or a place to lay my head, it was an alibi. No one could suspect it was me, through my disguises or through my stay here. Even if somepony did catch me, I have untouchable power that will only get stronger.

I cackled as thunder exploded outside my window. It was within my reach! I could really do it! Her resurrection was finally within my grasp! I’ll locate every last sorcerer in Equestria and snatch their power away. I’ll scour every corner of this land to find them, I’ll even plunge into Tartarus!

This wasn’t evil, I wasn’t evil. I’d be taking from the world what it took from me. That’s right! This wasn’t evil.

This was getting even.

In The Core Of A Blazing Sun

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Knock, knock! The faded wood impacting with my purple hoof felt brittle, like it was threatening to break.

I could feel the weight of the knife in my cloak pocket, transmuted from a stone I passed on the way to Canterlot. Even from its fabric home at my side, I could feel how cold it was and it matched how cold I was about to be. I knew what I was going to do was wrong, murder was something of an atrocity among ponies and the worst tragedy to those who lost. I put my hoof on the damp step and noticed how nearly perfect it was. Nearly no cracks or imperfections to its surface other than the dull brown layer the rain gave it. There was a stack of mail, soggy with last night’s rain. It reminded me of Twilight Sparkle, the pony I was playing. Perfect, but with a layer of condescension just above it with a pile of useless words beside it.

I knew Moondancer wasn’t fond of Twilight, and if she felt anything like I felt about her, she’d find her pretentious and too perfect. Though, if my impression of Moondancer was anywhere close to true, she wouldn’t be very personable. I smiled, just like Canterlot.

The city was on high alert for any suspicious ponies and any unsavory rats that may have wandered into the city to sever its eyes and ears. As I was passing everypony here, I felt as though they could see through my disguise. That I was the rat that ran from the city some time ago. Most ponies were indoors, taken the day off likely with an issue of Canterlot Daily detailing a missing pony report of Paper Trail on their tables or in their hooves. For Moondancer, this wasn’t out of place, and I doubt the news even reached her, making it easier to remain undetected.

I was going to make amends with her. It was the least I could do. Moondancer wasn’t a bad pony, a little off and rude from time to time, but even through my nearly opaque lens of apathy, I could see that she didn’t deserve to die. So, I figured, I would put her at ease before sending her.

The door swung open, catching itself on a leash of a chain lock. A set of violet eyes peered from the crack, locking onto me. They were narrow and almost aflame. Did she know I wasn’t Twilight or was it that she thought I was?

I cleared my throat, “Good afternoo—” The door slammed. Just as expected.

“Moondancer, I came to apologize. For…” Ugh, how would that egghead put it? “For everything.” Nailed it.

I heard her voice come through the door, applying a muffled wooden filter over its matter-of-fact tone, “No thanks. I don’t want your apology. You can leave now.”

I let a sigh slip through my teeth. This was going to be a delicate operation, the type I was the least qualified to undertake. I sat on her step, looking around to her dilapidated home. It was clear that nopony came around to her home, and that she had let herself and her house get to this point. Nopony would want to come towards it or its litter filled yard “I mean it, I—”

“And I meant it. Scram.” Her reply was prompt and colorless.

“Would you hear me out? I know I wasn’t there for you in the past… But I want to be here for you now.”

I heard the lock unlatch and the door opened, revealing a very unkempt and impatient looking Moondancer. The smell of body odor wafted from the door, one that carried the implication that Moondancer hadn’t bathed in days and by the looks of her sweater’s loose strings, she hadn’t changed clothes in that same time. Her glasses were cloudy and caked with dust and grime, her fur was matted with dried sweat. It took genuine effort to stifle a gag. “Why would you want to be here for me? You had every chance to before you left for Ponyville.”

“Because,” because I wanted to give you a bath, “I regret what I did. I want to make things right.” I rested a hoof on her shoulder despite my brain adamantly refusing. Oh Celestia, why was it greasy!?

She tossed my hoof off her, which I debated whether or not that was a bad thing. “Oh, you regret what you did? I regret even giving you a chance. It should’ve been clear that you were pushing me away.”

“I didn’t mean to —”

She squeezed her eyes shut, leaning into her scream, “But you still did! You were the only pony I cared about! The only one who thought like I thought, studied like I did! Everything I did was try to get close to you!”

I tried to lay a hoof on her, to reassure her. But she threw it off of her and pushed me to the damp path. “I put myself out there for you, I gave life outside books a chance because of you and you weren’t there!” I collected myself, keeping my distance from her.“Do you know how many nights I spent thinking you hated me? That I wasn’t important? That ponies wouldn’t talk to me because I internalized my worthlessness?”

“I don’t, Moondancer. But I’m—”

“No! I don’t think you feel any guilt!” She wasn’t too far off. “I think you’re coming to give me some hollow apology so you can sleep better. You have no idea how it felt. I thought I was a useless pony! That if I read every book in Canterlot, I might finally be useful to somepony. But...“ She looked to her surroundings, down at herself, and to her home. “I’m not even useful to myself…” She started to sob on her step, I approached and embraced her.

Moondancer didn’t resist, instead, she drew in tighter. I rubbed her back, holding in my recoil at the greasy lint that was collecting on my hoof and foreleg. “I’m here for you now. I won’t ever leave you again.” She was recovering from Twilight’s betrayal remarkably fast, but I guess when the most important pony in your life comes to apologize, especially when no other pony would give you the time of day, you’d be quick to forgive her too.

I spun pulled from her grip to look her in her eyes, “I’m sorry, Moondancer.”

She pushed me weakly, ending our embrace, “Cmon,” She sniffed, “I think I have a book inside that belonged to you.”

This was gonna hurt.

She led me inside her home, and I thought she smelled bad. There was trash littered across the floor, crumpled up pieces of paper, apple cores that had gnats and flies warring over its horribly browned territory, identical dirty sweaters scattered. I thought I could manage to see some floor beyond this trash, but then I realized it was shed hair from the mare. I turned, closing the door and letting all my repulsion hang on my face as I latched it.

“Was it Haycartes or Neighcrates that you lent me?”

Uh oh, philosophy. That was my weakest subject. I never focused in that class. But… Why then can I remember everything the professor was saying in perfect clarity? Was it the amulet? It must be, I only ever cared about folding paper into likenesses of myself. Without a hint of hesitation, I proclaimed, “I believe it was Marcus Mareuelius’ Meditations.” I hoped that Twilight had lent that book to her, otherwise I might have blown my own cover.

“Oh. Right! It should be…” I wiped my forehead in relief. She threw books off of their shelves, scanning for the one that Twilight had lent to her. “Here!” We transferred magical grips, and I set it on a table that stretched nearly from the door to the other wall. There was more trash on the table than the floor, somehow. I dared not look inside the cups that adorned it. How could anypony live like this? Ha, says the alley pony.

She paused, looking to the ground, “I’m sorry it’s so dirty here.”

Shit. “Not at all. Believe me, I think my house here in Canterlot was worse than this.” I had no idea if that was true or not.

“Ha! That must be why you never had anypony over.” And neither did she.

I laughed nervously, “Must be.”

There was an awkward pause. Neither of us said anything but we both felt that we should say something.

“A-Are you hungry?” She broke first. “I have some oats, I think.”

“No!” I couldn’t stand to think that I’d be eating with insects doing the same next to me. “I mean… No thanks, Moondancer. That’s ok.”

“No, I understand. It’s a mess.” She sighed, “It’s just… With nopony coming to visit, I just gave up, I guess.” No kidding.

I rested a hoof on her, “It’s ok.” What would she do right now…? “We can clean it together!” I beamed.

She rested her head on my hoof, “You’d do that for me?”

“Of course! I’ve become quite the clean freak after moving to Ponyville.”

She pulled away from me and nodded, turning and began fetching a broom that I doubted she had. In the time she took to get it, I had all the trash in my magical grip floating above the table like a tiny planet. “Would you be ok with me burning this?”

She dropped the broom, looking on in amazement. “I’ll take that,” I reared, the planet incinerated instantly, turning to a ball of smoke, which I turned to a light citrus-scented cloud before letting it descend gently on the home. “As a yes.”

As I landed back on four hooves, I felt the knife still in my pocket. Its weight reminded me of what I came here to do. Moondancer threw herself around me again, her odor clashing with the light orange scent. “I forgive you, Twilight.”

I placed my hooves around her, casting a silent barrier around us. She pulled back, but not completely out of the embrace. She had a warm smile and a warmer stare. “I’m sorry I pushed you.”

I lent myself a bittersweet smile, “I forgive you. But you didn’t have to let it get to this point, did you?”

“No… I have other friends but I just… You were so important to me, I wanted your attention and your admiration.” She laid her head in my chest, leaving her neck exposed. No. A knife wouldn’t kill her instantly, I would have to do it silently and painlessly.

“I’m sorry I didn’t. But you know I can’t stay in Canterlot forever.” Knock her unconscious and then kill her? No. A magical burst to her head? That might work. “You have to move on from me, I’m sure there are other talented and studious ponies like yourself. Some closer than you might think.”

“I know you can’t… I’ll try asking ponies if they want to come over.”

“But you have to clean up the place first.”

We shared a laugh. She smiled warmly as I built the charge by her head. I smiled as I drew her in for one final embrace. I smiled as I heard her say, “I love you.”

And I smiled as I released the charge.

In my time at Paid Tab’s, I came to know that he wasn’t afraid of much. But one mare frightened him to his very core: Zesty Gourmand, the mare I was impersonating now. She was the culinary elite of the city, and her opinion was worth royal gold. It could mean your restaurant makes it, or it doesn’t. He’s shown me her picture in magazines before, always with caution, like she was inches away from him. He probably shooed me and Sabrina away to curb her ire. How ironic that I should be that mare. How infuriating it was.

I strode down the sidewalk of Canterlot like I owned the city, my head held high above it as though it were beneath something as trivial as my gaze. I wanted to hang it. What I had just done was infernal, unspeakable, but yet. I still didn’t feel any remorse.

“Hey!” A low voice barked from behind me. “You, imposter!” I froze. That’s impossible, nopony can see through my disguises. If Moondancer, who was second to Twilight, couldn’t see through it. Who was this to call me out? “I saw some purple mare enter that building, and you come out. So either there were two ponies and Moondancer in there,” I spun to face him, with a frenzied, wrathful glare. He was a stallion, shorter than myself, with a coal coat and matching grey mane. He looked young, like he’d just gotten his cutie mark last week. “Or… Or you’re…”

I put on my coldest sophisticated voice, I had never heard Zesty Gourmand speak, but I knew her character, and it was a frozen one. “Or I’m what? An imposter as you say?” I closed the distance between us and glared down into his sheepish eyes. He shrank into the sidewalk. “Listen here boy what I do is none of your concern. You’d do best to,” I charged my horn, shooting a thin bolt of amnesia into his forehead. “Forget all about it.”

He looked blank, devoid of any thought. “Go on home now.” He obeyed, turning and walking away. I let all the air in my lungs out when he left my sight. That was too close. If there was anypony else on the street, I would’ve been done for.

I quickened my trot to two doors down. I needed to get out of Canterlot as soon as I could. If ending some hermit was drawing this much suspicion, then I might as well forget Fleur Dis Lee. I slowed myself upon arriving at Sterling’s front door. His house was picturesque, everything in immaculate detail and orderly. I took a moment to collect myself among the houseplants sitting on the windowsill and the alabaster picket fence between a lovely stone path to his robust and perfectly smooth door. Was this house really a neighbor to Moondancer’s disheveled home?

With a long breath, I knocked on the door. It didn’t open immediately, and I took the time to note the second-story. Were there many ponies living here? I hoped for Glint’s sake there wasn’t. The door opened and a handsome stallion opened the door. Sterling Glint, from Paper Trail’s description, seemed old and frail, but this salt and pepper maned stallion was in complete contrast. “Oh my! Zesty Gourmand! I… I, uh, what can I do for you?” His voice was low and smooth, like molasses pouring into a cup from a high height.

I blinked, realigning myself, “I heard from a good friend of mine, that you were an excellent home cook. I came, in his memory, to confirm this.” I emphasized next to every word in a posh accent, raising my voice with certain words and lowering it for others.

Sterling nearly jumped out of his fur. No, he actually jumped, landing on a hindleg and wincing. “Sorry… It’s just that. It hasn’t been the same since Griffonstone. But come in, come in. I’ll make you a meal you won’t soon forget.” He rushed inside, as rushed as he could be with a limp. I followed, instantly leaving a barrier of silence behind me. If the outside of his house was any hint, the inside was an evidence locker. Everything looked like it had a proper place and was put there mathematically, and was preserved there like a museum display. I looked to a mantle overlooking a fireplace in the living room. A couch sat directly across from it, with a chair on either side of it, and two near the empty fireplace. There was a picture frame of a younger, somehow more stunning Sterling Glint with his hooves around two younger ponies, a colt of the same color and a filly of a white mane, white coat, and milky eyes.

“Oh!” I heard approach me from behind, “Those are my kids. They’re all grown up now, and left me for bigger and better things off in Manehatten. My son’s an architect now and my daughter… Well, my daughter’s doing ok.” He scratched his mane, wincing again. “Sorry, you probably don’t wanna hear me ramble about them.”

I narrowed my eyes, as I thought Zesty would. We both wouldn’t like to hear about this dead pony’s family. That makes it harder on me and redundant for Miss Gourmand. “No,” I coldly replied, “I don’t. Show me to your kitchen.”

He gulped and gestured to a tiny hallway to a checkboard tiled kitchen. The warm aroma of garlic and mushrooms sauteeing washed over me. He quickly attended the pan, tossing it and adding hooffulls of vegetables and flipping them. The scent was nearly orgasmic. I’d never had a gourmet meal before. Sure, I’ve eaten at Tab’s and pastry shops, but those weren’t exactly what high society would eat. Especially not the pinnacle, like Zesty Gourmand.

He finished and laid a plateful of greens drizzled with oils and spices, accompanied by an entourage of herbs. Sterling stared hungrily at me, desperate for a good opinion. I looked up at him, what a shame it was. I picked up a fork magically and took a bite. Even I, skilled a performer as I was, couldn’t hide my reaction. This was the single greatest thing I’ve ever eaten! Everything in the meal sang a symphony of rich taste, with earthy lows and spicy highs, all with a smooth finish provided by the premium olive oil. I teared up as I chewed, shoveling it into my mouth.

Sterling beamed, his own eyes watering. It really was such a shame. I rose, and grabbed his horn and snapped it promptly. He shrieked and folded to the tile. I stamped on his bad foreleg and his scream grew guttural. I picked him magically, cramming his face on the pan he’d just used to feed me, stuffing it back on the stove and lighting a fire beneath it. Smoke and the smell of burnt hair rose from him.

“Please! Stop! Please, please! I’ll do better! Zesty I won’t tell a soul just let me go.”

“You really aren’t that skilled of a sorcerer. You couldn’t even see through,” I tossed my disguise off, “Trixie’s guise. It’s no surprise,” His screams rose to a pitch I didn’t think possible and a sinister sizzling started up in the skillet. “She is great and powerful.”

“Why…?” He started to break down, his body dropped, threatening to fall but I forced him back up, mashing his face much further into the iron. “Why would you do this?” He spoke between screeching sobs, “Who are you?”

Maybe I was being a bit harsh, but I couldn’t really tell where the limit was or whether or not I’d crossed it. Was this bad? Yes, absolutely. I’m murdering this… Well, once good looking stallion. I still couldn’t find a drop of empathy for him, my mind wasn’t finding a place for him, the same way it wouldn’t find a spot for chopping up an apple. Regardless, I was too far to stop now.

“She just told you, idiot.” I jammed his head back into the pan, hearing a thick plink. Oh, I’d gotten to the skull. Well, he’s too far gone now. “Oh, it doesn’t matter.” I flung him out of the skillet and into the counter. His head cracked against it, fried blood and oil caked his face, his teeth were smoldered and visible from the side. He looked like an anatomy book diagram gone terribly wrong.

“Please… I have a filly. She’s blind and she’s in—” I bashed him across the boney side of his face, knocking out and fracturing several teeth. I looked on with bitter disdain. He didn’t even fight me back, some sorcerer. I hammered him with his own pan like a smith would hammer an ingot, until he stopped moving. Red smoke floated out from his horn and into my amulet, and I tossed the indented pan onto the adjacent counter. I felt my blood turn fiery in my veins and I breathed in a deep breath through my teeth. It felt good, warm. A pleasant feeling like your hoof waking up after falling asleep.

“Papa?”

Impossible. He adopted.

I turned and a blonde, bubblegum maned filly looked at me with glassy eyes. She looked like… “Sabrina!”

“Who are you!?”

“I’m Trixie,” I collapsed in front of her, “I’m your big sister. You remember me!”

“No! You’re not Papa!” She ran screaming, crashing into the door directly behind her. I ran to her. She scrambled her hooves across the door in a frenzy, finding the knob and throwing the door open, she knocked herself back as it opened towards her. I grazed her mane as she ran out screaming.

I gave chase outside the door… Right into a crowd.

Dozens of ponies glared at me with all the hatred in Equestria. The filly ran into the heart of the gathering, which parted for her and closed again once she was inside. The sickening smell of cooked meat floated out from the door, paired horridly with the rubbery scent of burnt fur. Some ponies held in their disgust, others let it flow onto the street. One pony stepped forward with a familiar patchy beard.

“Trixie…? Is that yous?”

“I… Trixie… Needs... “ I wrapped myself in aura and teleported away, the haunted stare of Paid Tab my last glance of Canterlot.

I crashed onto a wood floor. That’s impossible, I always teleport to… My overturned mattress. My room was in the middle of being raided by Canterlot’s royal guard. Drawers were torn from their dresser, boards were upended, and the bed was pushed against a wall. The golden clad guards stared at me with wrathful content. They crowded around me. This was bad. This was really really bad! I redied to teleport to somewhere I haven’t been in months: Ponyville.

As a hoof impacted with my cheek, I snapped into the railway station in Ponyville, to a train about to take off. I sprinted to the conductor, readying a lever. “Where is this train going!?”

“Woah there, calm down.” His low, raspy voice took the edge off my panic with its calmness, but it didn’t fully remove it.

“I need to get out of town, now!”

“Ah understan’, you’re in a rush. But you gotta calm down ‘fore I can seat you.”

I gulped in as much air as I could fill my lungs with and let it all go. I felt some of the panic go, but some remained.

“Better?” He leaned on the window of the engine car.

“Kinda.” I panted softly.

“Good. Ah can’t leave fer Appleloosa with a panicked passenger. Then everypony’d up and panic.”

“How much for a ticket?” I plunged a hoof into my pockets, finding only 5 bits.

“You don’t look like you have all that much, ‘cept that piece around yer neck. How about 3 bits, and Ah’ll take you.”

I passed the bits to him and let out my final sigh of panic. I was going to a place where nopony knew my name. They’d come looking for me, but for now, it will do.

“Right, now board. Yer makin’ me past schedule.”

I hurried onto the train, the rows of plain beige seats looked like rows of teeth. I chose the one nearest the back of the train, opting for a window seat. As I glanced out, panic began to creep its way back into my mind.

A mare who knew what she was doing wouldn’t have had to rush a getaway with only pocket change. Yeah, such is the mare of wasted potential, I guess. This is the only option I have. What was I supposed to do? Fight the royal guards, the elite of the elite? Yeah right.

The train hissed in protest as it took off from the station sluggishly picking up speed. The small town scenery slid past me, giving way to an empty desert backdrop. Nopony really would find me out here, but they’d look. Oh, they’d look for Trixie... But they’d only find a red-headed earth pony, down on her luck and looking for work.

What I did would probably be taken extremely poorly. There was no hiding this one like I hid Paper Trail. All they know is that he’d gone missing and… Would presume I murdered him. Everypony would know the name Trixie, and they’d know to hate it direly.

But that paper hasn’t been written yet. The news hasn’t left Canterlot, and in that slim frame of time, I had made my escape. This would have to do. Who was I going to be? Trixie would be captured near instantly. So... A sand color coat with that red mane. Perfect! No one will look twice at me. A cutie mark… What should it be? Something nopony would care about. Ah! A horseshoe. Perfect. Now a name… Dry Gulch. It was Appleoosan slang for an ambush, I believe. How fitting.

While Dry Gulch toils away in some two-bit town like Appleloosa, Trixie will bide her time just beneath her surface, hiding in her shadow. Equestria’s most heinous nesting inside Appleloosa’s most simple, evading Canterlot’s best. I laughed. I couldn’t discern if it was genuinely funny or if it was gallows humor.

Laying Plans

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“Uh… Crown 6, this is Sparrow 14. You’re not gonna believe this.” Corporal Acoustic Burst shakily called into his hoofheld radio inching himself towards the clifftops surrounding a starless fissure in the sky overlooking the aftermath of a magical calamity. Craters of molten glass smoldered with lines of crystal shards carving the sand in glimmering dotted lines, turning the desert into a map of annihilation.

“Sparrow 14, this is Crown 6. What am I not going to believe?” The familiar bassy, calm voice of 2nd Lieutenant Lilac facetiously came through the speaker. Burst loved to hear her but didn’t as much anymore, as the reports in the desert were either nothing or complete fabrications in an effort to talk to her. A behavior he ceased after being threatened with court-martial and more time in isolation.

“Look. I know I haven’t been honest about my reports here, but you gotta take this one seriously.” He quivered, the radio unsteadily shaking in his hoof as pebbles trickled over the edge.

“Go ahead, Corporal.” Several drops of annoyance were introduced to her already snide tone. She didn’t trust his word any more than she’d trust somepony else’s who’d never been to the area.

“The… The sky above the Badlands has… Well, it’s split.”

The speaker sounded like it was fumbled before a gravelly voice came over the comms. Major Flak Jacket, the ranking officer at the communication towers. “Oh, I’m sure, Corporal. I’m sure the sky just split in two and let Nightmare Moon through. Or how I’m sure a meteor struck your tent while you were out on patrol.”

Burst suddenly stiffened at hearing the coarse voice, as if the brooding stallion was barking directly in his face. “Major, with all due respect, this is very serious.” He shuddered at how concerned his own voice sounded.

“Then why don’t you humor me. Give me a spot report. And if I don’t like it, your head is gonna be on a fucking pike.” His last few words blended with a terse laugh. The way an executioner would laugh hearing a clearly guilty criminal say they’re innocent with a noose around their neck.

“Sir!” He straightened into attention. “Following an engagement between an azure mare in a black cloak and what looked to be Scorpan, the Badlands’ canyon is badly damaged.”

Flak chuckled, “Oh yeah? And what’s the extent of the damage? Besides, of course, a split sky.” His voice came to a roar, barely discernible among the now peaking audio.

Burst gulped. “There are craters where the sand fused into glass, and crystal shards embedded everywhere, including the cliffs. And even some of those cliffs have split apart. The sky itself just seems black for a stretch of it, but it’s localized only to this area. The sky’s normal just over Appleloosa.”

Something came through the radio, but none of it was comprehensible. He heard a slam, likely the radio being thrown against a desk. Lilac picked it up and sighed. “Did you get any of that?”

“Not a word.”

She snorted. “I figured. Look, he’s pissed. So I’m going to ask you to take as many photos of the area as you can, and a video if you can. I’ll send a messenger there under my authority within the hour. Understood?”

“Yes, Ma’am!” He heaved a sigh. The Corporal never would’ve thought filing an actual report would be so difficult, but he was the one who cried wolf enough times to run his credibility thoroughly into the ground. Though, even Liliac knew that in that story, the wolf did come eventually.

“And, Burst.” She started. “If there isn’t anything out there like any of the other times, I will file the paperwork to get you discharged. Scorpan being dead is extremely serious. Your lying would leave me with no choice.”

“Understood.”

The radio clicked off, and the blonde pegasus immediately kicked off the sand with as much force as he could muster, launching himself off the ground and into the sky at a breakneck pace. He barely ground to a halt in front of his dingy green tent. Forcefully rummaging through its contents trying to locate the camera and magical device that allowed for videos, flinging everything unrelated away. He found them at the cost of breaking the photo he took of Lilac at boot camp. He would feel regret for it at another time, he felt the two chevrons on his shoulders weigh on him. He needed to capture a picture of this mare, whoever she was before she got away. For his own career and for Equestria.

Concrete surveyed the document mounds before her: In one pile, a case file of a string of murders with gruesome evidence and witness reports. In the other, a full report by a Corporal complete with pictures and a magical recording. She was reviewing this one now. Normally, she’d applaud the diligence for delivering such a detailed report. This was far from a normal occasion and she was further from the mood that allowed her applause. Concrete furrowed her eyebrows, taking a long drag from her cigarette before tossing the report down.

She ground her smoke into a cloudy gray ashtray, a graveyard to its brown filter brethren. Major Flak Jacket paced in front of Concrete, going from one end of the tidy smoke-filled office to the other, the ground slightly trembling with each step while puffing himself on a cigar. He would say that it helps him focus better than the ‘grunt cigars’ that soldiers usually get.

He was a large pine colored stallion, well seasoned and seared in the fires of Equestrian war. Scars and burns clung to his body and made him closer to a walking cadaver that refused to die than a pony. His long service lent itself to shocks of white in his garnet mane and patience in those he deemed had earned it, but less for those who’d lost it.

“Why in the hell should we believe a single word of the Corporal?” He ashed his cigar in a huff. “He’s done nothing but give me fabricated intel and headaches. He’s a delinquent, General.”

Brigadier General Concrete leaned back in her seat, which groaned in protest. She felt for her chest pocket daring for another cigarette, but she retreated her hoof back to the desk. Her gaze went to the piles of paper before her, then to the Major before her. “This speaks for itself, doesn’t it? Why would a fabrication be so detailed and evident elsewhere in reality?”

Flak Jacket allowed himself a short chuckle. “Because he’s done this kind of thing before. I recall a time where he said a mirror image of himself appeared and was wreaking havoc on the region. He had photos then too.”

“This is different.” Concrete clicked her hooves together, looking again to the contents on her desk. “Tell me what you see here, Major.”

He took a breath in and gave his answer. “I’ve seen these reports, and I know what you’re -”

“Answer me, Major.”

“I see a made-up report and real evidence for a set of unrelated murders.” He took a drag from his smoke.

Concrete leaned forward, allowing her weight to rest on the desk. “Major. Do you want to know what I see?”

“Of course.”

“I see a report whose contents are extremely dangerous, and I see reports of the murderer who relates this...” She tapped the murder reports. “To this.” She taps Bursts’ report. Flak Jacket opened his mouth to speak but was swiftly cut off. “And I see an officer who is ignoring perfectly good intel.”

“Given by an untrustworthy soldier ordered to be given by another officer who undermined my authority.” The Major threw up his hooves.

“Given to you by an isolated, demoralized soldier ordered to be given by an officer who didn’t want to take a chance.” She ground her teeth and swatted at the table. “In any other circumstance, I’d condemn your negligence. This situation requires your particular expertise.”

Flak Jacket sunk his teeth further into his cigar. “And why’s that?”

Concrete lost her patience and slammed her hoof into the dark wooden frame. “Did you read the report, Major Flak Jacket? You must not have to not know. I’m outraged that you’d lie to me, and after this situation blows over, your career is in question.”

“No. No, I didn’t, General.” He pressed a hoof into the opposite side of the desk. “As I said before, I don’t trust a word of the Corporal.”

Concrete wordlessly pressed the magical device and a translucent screen projected itself forward. The exact scene Burst was describing was displayed. The camera panning to the fractured cliffs and the melded sand below, then up to reveal something the report couldn’t quite describe. The orange sky was bisected by a hollow fissure, an inky nothingness where light ventured but never returned. There was no indication that it was even there save for its amber neighbors. It was a skyward void that fell upward and Concrete was staring directly into it.

Then the recording moved down to the valley itself, and there was a figure striding away from a billowing fog of black smoke opposite it. A cloaked figure with glimpses of cerulean fur below walked away from this as it would walk away from a weekend errand. The recording closed in, losing clarity for closeness’ sake. The shape turned and red eyes transcended the recording, piercing directly into Concrete’s own. She winced, but it turned into a shudder when she saw what hung around its neck. A black onyx amulet bearing the likeness of an alicorn with a crimson jewel resting ominously below.

Concrete gulped. She had wanted to dismiss the reports. To have the story be that this mare couldn’t have killed those unicorns, or that the amulet hadn’t found a new host. But there was no room for doubt left in her mind, this was the mare she’d seen at the quarry. This was the murderer, Trixie Lulamoon.

“So what?” Flak Jacket ashed his cigar again, it now being half burned away. “He got one of the locals to dress up and take the fall for this rampage of his.”

“And I suppose one of the locals got ahold of the Alicorn Amulet and did all this for a laugh?” She pointed to the insidious necklace around Trixie’s neck.

Flak blinked, squinting to see the image and then recoiling from it. “That’s impossible!”

“I would’ve thought so myself. But it gets worse.”

“How could it possibly?”

“I know that mare.”

The room’s air grew still, the smoke from the two that once floated weightlessly now felt like an iron fog that found respite on their shoulders. Both of them knew of the horrors that the amulet and their wielders were capable of, but not personally. They both received a briefing on it once upon a time, but it was always a distant threat. One that was always in the next kingdom over, one that was always in the past, and one that was never domestic. But here it was, right in their kingdom, in their time, around the neck of a mare that the General knew.

Flak ground his cigar into the murky ashtray, losing his appetite for its drags. Quietly, and gravely, he said, “General… I wasn’t fully on board with this, but something like this is beyond Burst’s knowledge, there’s no way he could fake this. But I need to know. How do you know this mare?”

“It isn’t a personal relationship if that’s what you’re asking.” She felt for a cigarette, but reluctantly put it off again. “Based on what we know from these documents, specifically a one Paid Tab’s testimony, Trixie’s sister died and she ran to Ponyville before being run out of there too. Then she found her way to my family’s rock farm, and that’s where I met her.” She paused, rising from her chair to peer outside her window. Blocks of soldiers marched in identical formations across her paved sky compound. It was an uphill battle to get to her position, an earth pony overseeing a unicorn training compound was unheard of. Despite her race, she knew of magic thoroughly, enough to strategize with it at or above levels of similarly ranked unicorns.

Flak switched the recording off, wincing at the eyes that the unknown mare possessed. It wasn’t so much a frightening look, but one of serenity. Given the context, he would’ve preferred a crazed bloodlust stare. He understood frenzy. What he couldn’t fathom was that a murderer and an amulet bearer could be so calm. “What happened there?”

Concrete turned back to Flak. “I offered her a position in the EUP. She was strong when I met her, but nothing like this.”

“Obviously, this was the amulet’s doing.” He nodded.

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” She ran a hoof across her chin.

“Oh? How’s that?”

“In all your knowledge of the amulet, do you know what happens when the wearer kills somepony?” She stared emptily at the magical device in between the documents, hints of fear in her vision as though Trixie would come through it and wreak havoc.

“Something else happens?” He raised an eyebrow.

“I figured. If the victim is a unicorn, their power, their very essence is drained to the killer. So on top of its otherworldly power, it can get stronger.”

Flak eyes the ground, horrified. “Why would she want it? Who is she anyway?”

Concrete took her seat once again. “She’s Trixie Lulamoon.”

“The magician’s daughter?”

“One of them, yes.” She nodded. “She means to resurrect the other daughter. Her sister.”

The already still and tense air seemed to be sucked out of the room. The heavy gray smog was proof that it remained, however. The Major walked to face the window from behind the desk, glancing out. “This is bad, General.”

“This is worse than bad. It’s potentially a cataclysm.” She gravely uttered.

“What do we do?” Flak surprised himself with the fear in his own voice.

“Major!” Concrete called, snapping the officer to attention. “Here is our course of action. Violence is not our first priority, but it is a close second if I can’t talk her down.”

“You’re going to try and reason with her?”

“Yes. I know Trixie. I know she won’t do anything reckless and I know she can be reasoned with. She wants her sister, I can play to that.”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

“Your orders are to relay this information to Princess Celestia and General Stellar Solstice. Tell them to assemble Solar Team 8 and tell the unit to standby on the outskirts of Appleloosa and await my orders.”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

“Dismissed!” The two exchanged salutes. Flak made for the door, opening it wide to fit his frame, but was stopped by Concrete. “One more thing, Major.” He stared back at her expectingly. “Be careful. I don’t mean to pressure you, but know that the situation demands it.” He nodded and shut the door behind him.

Concrete felt for a cigarette, and this time, she decided to indulge herself. As she breathed in a deep breath of Appleloosan tobacco she realized her hooves were faintly trembling. In her time as an officer, nerves presented themselves to her but never overtaken her. She was scared, genuinely and uniquely fearful.

She let a breath out in a smoggy sigh. Why should she be scared? She was a famous General about to be joined by the most effective small unit in Equestria. Solar Team 8 has never failed in their missions, or so much as been harmed. In the South, they repelled a dragon invasion unscratched. In the West the stamped out the changeling insurrection without injury and in the East had gone to quell a Kraken and returned with calamari. The small unit of six’s might was not in question.

Then she must doubt herself. No, that can’t be true. In all her dealings, she too had found near-complete success both martially and diplomatically. Negotiations have always remained open and beneficial to an Equestrian victory with her heading them. Then it must be Trixie.

Such a gifted mare, spending her potential in the wrong place. She wanted power, this much Concrete was sure. The EUP tempted her, she could see it in her eyes, but the amulet must have tempted her more. The prospect of power without earning it is overwhelming. Concrete was unsure of just how powerful Trixie and the amulet could be. She saw the damage in the Badlands, she knew that it was immense but doubted that example was the limit.

The General took a long drag, scorching nearly half of the cigarette in one breath, before letting it seep out through her gritting teeth. She didn’t want anypony to die, and she’d spent her life minimizing the death count. She knew that Trixie was reasonable, and she knew what she wanted. But she also knew that Trixie wasn’t herself anymore. She was a corrupted killer who showed no intention of stopping. Concrete took another puff, and she made the calculation as Generals often do. If she was successful, as she was known to be, the EUP would know an insurmountable ally or at the least, had neutralized its greatest threat. But if she failed. Concrete sighed. If she failed, her life would likely be forfeit and Solar Team 8 would be a band of martyrs. More than that, if she didn’t succeed, Trixie would have unstoppable power.

Her mind turned then to the area, the Badlands. A red desert valley devoid of any life or hospitality, it was where Flak sent his troublesome soldiers as punishment. Of course! How could she forget? A great prison lay beneath the sands of the Badlands, one containing the greatest and most primordial threats to Equestria. Creatures of unparalleled power and unbridled malice, things that rightfully earned their place behind that indestructible door. Trixie was nearing such a status.

Concrete shook her head, finishing her cigarette and grinding it down. She cursed under her breath as she missed her mark of the ashtray, leaving blackened scorch on her desk. She instinctively moved to clean it with a handkerchief in her pocket but stopped. Instead of removing it, she opted to keep it, what was the point anyway. However this was going to shake out, this post wasn’t going to be hers anymore, let alone a replaceable desk.

Concrete spun in her chair to face the outside once again, hunching over in contemplation. Trixie was a snowball mid-roll down miles of winter hills, she needed to stomp her out before she became invincible. The General knew that this was going to be the most difficult interaction of her life, and it would require every last ounce of her skills and then some. Strategically and diplomatically, she would try and quell her. She would try and reason with Trixie, but if she couldn’t, Solar Team 8 would be tested as Concrete would be. And if they failed, she would have no choice but to banish Trixie to Tartarus.

If she only knew where Tartarus’ doors were, or how to pry them open. However, Concrete knew somepony who could: The Sun’s Crown. Princess Celestia has been the only pony to her knowledge that has used Tartarus to sentence, and if she was properly convinced, would allow for Trixie’s imprisonment. She sat up, her back cracking painfully in response. Concrete winced, knowing that her age was catching up with her. She’d been hiding it from her superiors, dying her hair off the record and stoically enduring pain that came from her wizening body. She’d been hiding it for Equestria’s sake, lives needed to be prevented from being lost, and she was the only mare she knew that could deliver on that desire.

There was one loose end in this story: Scorpan. What was he doing in the Badlands and how could he have possibly known Trixie was there? It was probably happenstance that they happened to meet one another, or maybe. Something drew him in… Regardless, was he seeking redemption for what happened in Griffonstone? No one blamed him for leaving. In fact, we expected him to. Lieutenant Colonel Orange Marmalade intentionally made the fight bloody so Scorpan would flee, thinking that him being scarred and alive was better than dead.

What Marmalade couldn’t have predicted was something beyond his control or understanding taking Scorpan anyway. The beacon of friendship was dead seeking the redemption it thought it lost.

Even when facing a near doomsday threat, she remained adamant in her non-violent prerogatives. Trixie didn’t need to die, nor did anypony. But despite this, despite her knowing that she’d be spared and that the odds were on her side for success, she couldn’t shake the feeling of demise. That in the next coming days, either six would die or one would.

Beneath Heaven's Fissure

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Appleloosa proved accidentally perfect for nearly everything I wanted to accomplish. Work? Check. Cherry Jubilee’s plantation didn’t pay very well, but it was better than huddling in hiding. An alibi? Check. Most of the workers on the plantation were runaway criminals like Dry Gulch was. So even if anypony came looking for me, they wouldn’t find me on any paper. Much less know that I was Dry Gulch. An anchor? Unfortunately, check. Cherry put her workers at the end of a contract as well as the end of a sultry, fruit-scented whip. Half of these poor souls couldn’t even read their terms.

I was set for a measly month of work, and I had served to this point three weeks of it. If I ran out, not only would I look suspicious to any searching party, but I’d have Cherry’s hoof pointing directly to me as I ran. Which means that my actions in the Badlands will leave me completely vulnerable, as I’m to stay posted for another week while they mobilize against whoever put a ravine in the sky. They, likely being the EUP, will come looking and find only off-the-book ponies laboring for essentially slave wages. Even if they wouldn’t find me, I loathed the possibility of some General poking around for me.

Who am I trying to fool? They would come looking for me. There was no question that everypony in Appleloosa saw the sky split, they were all at the rodeo while it happened. Sheriff Silver Star wasn’t, but he could hear it crack open from his office. I thought a target would’ve been on my back since I was the only pony out of town at the time, but I was Dry Gulch to them, an earth pony with surreal strength. Only an alicorn could’ve done that kind of magic or somepony with alicorn-like power.

I let out a sigh, shifting in my stiff, rickety cot to face the faded splintering wood in my cramped dim work cabin. I got the top bunk because nopony was going to deny the mare that snapped a tree when she bucked it her place of sleeping. The work was easy, especially when I can’t get fatigued. It left me time at the end of the night in between drowsiness and sleep to think about things like this. I couldn’t discern if it was something beneficial or detrimental. The other ponies barely had any strength left to remain up and fell asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow.

It wasn’t a possibility that they’d leave me be, the EUP. Likewise, it wasn’t a possibility for me to flee. I had my hooves ensnared firmly in train tracks, and could only watch as it barrels towards me. It made me wonder if this was the end for me, that I’d be captured by some band of sorcerers with power beyond my comprehension and banished to the moon. Or if they’d just kill me outright. Is this my fate? If that is the case, at least I’m blessed to know it. Most ponies wander through their lives uncertain of if their cutie marks dictate their lives or if they do.

I knew my answer, and I knew it before now. Three seconds was all it took to confirm that my path was my own and it was possible.

Take a mouse caught in a shabby trap, a poor creature trapped in a rusted iron bar. Pathetic, really. Its body flattened, its ribs piercing its organs. Did it deserve this fate? I’m not the one to make the call, but I was the one to reverse it. There in the Badlands, my actions were justified. The town would likely be rubble if I set off the energy needed to bring it back, moreover, using magic would reveal who I was. But, in just three seconds in the canyon, the mouse sprang back to life! It gazed up at me, confused. To the rat, it had just been dead traveling down the rat Styx, but here it was among the living again. It scurried away, and I let it go. I had done what I needed to do.

It ran right between the legs of some gargoyle, Scorpan.

He’d been looking for me on his own, searching for me was searching for his forgiveness. Killing me was to earn it, and failing was to die in shame. Scorpan was way over his head, he could barely put up any resemblance of a fight despite his menacing appearance. I tossed him around, played with him more like. Somewhere near the end of the encounter, I found the idea to test my limits. I annihilated the canyon and rended the sky. All that was left of the gargoyle prince was his ornate necklace, now mine, and a pillar of smog overtaking red mist.

A sigh slipped as I turned again, readjusting the thin straw pillow. Come whatever may, but it had better wait a week before coming to find me. If some flimsy contract from a desert cherry farm or some happenstance gargoyle chains me long enough for someone else to snag them in their hooves, I’ll be beyond livid. I will have been prevented from my assured destiny, and Equestria will be permanently set back. If I can prove to the Princesses of my own accord that I can bring the dead back, they’d forgive me! If I’m arrested, I’ll be presumed guilty before I can prove my worth. I can prove it to them. That I can add back what I’ve subtracted. That I, The Great and Powerful Trixie, will be the beacon of the Equestrian future!

Concrete clutched a piece of royal paper in a vibrating hoof atop a railroad outside Appleloosa. The page might as well have been a column of fire directed at her. She tore it to shreds and kept the small stone and page of pink paper inside it, quickly stuffing it in her coat. The General scowled, looking to the soldiers before her, one half of them weren’t unicorns and the other was barely trained in combative magic.

“General, Captain Broadside repor-” A lemon-lime colored pegasus stepped forward from the line behind Concrete on the rails.

“Captain you will only speak to me with a fucking response, I initiate conversation.” She looked as though she was completely prepared to mangle this young stallion. She could feel the heat across her leather officer coat multiplying in the desert sun. She tore a hoof across her forehead, flinging sweat from it.

“Aye, ma’am!” He gulped, stepping back into the line, his chest slightly heaving from both the heat and the sudden outburst from a high-ranking officer.

Concrete paced in front of them, shaking her head while her frown only soured and grew. She threw a murderous glance to the line and turned to address them. “I send word to the Princess that the Alicorn Amulet has returned and made its way into our borders, its wearer enacting a killing spree on our citizens. I send a requisition for Solar Team 8 to deal with this threat, and what does she do?” She narrows her eyes, directing her seething eyes directly into the ginger unicorn next to Broadside, she couldn’t have been enlisted for longer than a month. “She sends me you baby-faced sardines! And you’re gonna stop Trixie?”

“Ma’am, with all due respect, we’re Solar Team 12.” The unicorn peeped.

“With all due respect,” she glanced to the mare’s shoulder, “1st Lieutenant whatever the hell your name is, I could kill you right now and make it look like an accident.” She heaved all the air from her lungs in a sigh, regret trickling through her mind. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. Look, this is an incredibly high stakes operation we’re undertaking today, and I wanted the best fit for the plan. Even if you aren’t the specific Solar Team I was after, you are a Solar Team. What was your name?”

“1st Lieutenant Silver Lining. M-ma’am!” She sounded like she was trying to make her voice deeper, and it wasn’t working very well.

“Silver Lining… Ha. Go figure. The princess must have some sense of humor.” She scanned the rest of the line, she didn’t recognize any of these soldiers. If she was going to execute this plan with any semblance of competence, she’d need to know them. “Attention!” Solar Team 12 somehow managed to stand straighter than they were. “I want all of your names and talents before any of us go any further! From Broadside onward, report in!”

“Captain Broadside! Specializing in stealth reconnaissance flights!”

“1st Lieutenant Silver Lining! Portal magic and illusions!”

“2nd Lieutenant Brass Tacks! Laying traps, invisibility, and head strategist!”

“1st Sergeant Muscle Memory! Swift flying!”

“Staff Sergeant Sea Salt! Navigations expert!”

“Sergeant First Class Peach Cobbler! Explosive magic!”

The gears in Concrete’s head started to turn. She didn’t need to modify her plan that much for it to have the same outcome, but the heat sweltering in her brain wasn’t helping in her formulation process. An idea sprang into her head. “Brass Tacks!” She motioned for her to stand close, and the bronze unicorn obeyed.

“Ma’am!” Her voice was delicate and floaty.

“I haven’t been entirely honest with the situation here, so allow me to brief all of you.” She gave them the details of Trixie’s past, her obtaining of the Amulet and what exactly that means, where she was last seen and what her motives are. “Knowing all of this, my plan is to use this.” She produced the pink piece of parchment. “To seal her in multiple anti-arcane barriers and lead her to the canyon. While I’m leading her there with half of this group, all but one of us is teleported away to a safe location nearby, replaced with an illusionary copy, one by one. And once the last of you reaches the mannequin that will be waiting for you, we’ll teleport them to us. Then, we’ll communicate with her through that mannequin.”

Brass tacks ran a hoof through her mane, wiping the sweat away and letting out a fatigued sigh. “A mannequin?”

“Yes, the soldier that gave us the report was given a mannequin by me and ordered to position it in the center of the Badlands. Acoustic Burst is his name, and he should be circling it overhead.” Concrete explained.

“He won’t interfere?”

“No. His orders are to evacuate as soon as he sees a group of three. And being that time is of the essence, I suggest that the two pegasi of the Team go rendezvous there while the others join me to search the town. We’ll need a unicorn waiting to teleport us and keep illusions of us in their place. Silver Lining, you go with Broadside and Muscle Memory to the desert. Now!”

”Yes, ma’am!” The pegasi instantly tore themselves to the sky, while the 1st Lieutenant levitated herself, matching their pace.

“Ok, now that they’re in place, how exactly do you plan to lure out a murderer?” Brass Tacks blinked.

“There’s one thing missing from that scene.” She pointed to the tear in the sky. “Scorpan’s necklace. We find that, we find her.”

“Do you still think she’s in this town?”

“I suspect that she’s on a work contract and values her anonymity. Running out on the contract would give her away if we went looking for her.” She looked into the sky again, unable to break her fixation with the void.

“Smart.” Brass nodded. “So it should be as simple as locating her.”

“It should, but plans never survive contact with the enemy. I want this to be peaceful, but if it gets violent…” Concrete returned the pink page and produced a molten obsidian stone with the symbol of the sun emblazoned across it. “This is a sigil that opens the doors to Tartarus. If we can’t convince her to come with us, or join our forces, we’ll seal her in there. It’ll take all of your combined power to teleport her to the doors. It’s also why we’re communicating through a mannequin, and not face to face.”

“And where are these doors?” She sounded somewhere between curious and terrified.

“At the furthest point South etched into the very walls of the cliff face.”

“Understood. Is that all?”

Concrete sighed. “Assuming she’s still here, and that we can find her. That should be it. The pegasi won’t see much action here, but the glory should be enough for them.” She winked. “That being said. Solar Team 12!” They stiffened. “On me! Today we cancel Equestria’s cataclysm!”

Acoustic Burst was straining under the continuous exertion of circling this plastic mare. He desperately wanted to land, but his pride and his orders kept him suspended in a loop. He flicked his head, tossing sweat below in odorous rain. His wings ached, his thoughts barely came to him but one. The image of Lilac kept him in the air despite the exhaustion. He regretted breaking that photo of her, but he regretted the picture that remained out of its frame blowing away from his tent while he slept more.

Orders are orders, and his were to remain up directly in the sun’s fury. How long was that group gonna take to arrive? It felt like hours, though he probably was airborne for hours. He squeezed his eyes shut to relieve the burning they felt, and when he snapped them open, three figures were barrelling towards him. All uniformed in the special Solar Team garb of brown dusters, a sun patched just above their rank on the forehoof. He let out a sigh and dipped in altitude, before changing his trajectory to his tent. His head spun from going straight instead of making a turn.

His shoulder exploded in pain, and he shot towards the ground. He collided with the earth and searing pain tore its way across his body as sand ripped across his coat. He tried to open his eyes, but his body didn’t respond. A sniffle escaped him at the thought that he was now paralyzed and blinded. A fall with that velocity from that height, it was a miracle that he was even alive.

“Listen, rookie. That General thinks she knows it all and sent us here knowing we wouldn’t see action.” A gruff, nasally voice emphasized with wing beats announced from above. Burst could hear another pair behind him, and the sound of a magical aura close by it. If Burst were in a less threatening situation, he wouldn’t have taken this voice seriously. “She thinks we’re just gonna sit here while she talks down some bi-i-ig threat. And she really thinks that we’re gonna take that disrespect sitting down? She should think again.”

A kick somehow sent even more pain through his aching body. A mare’s voice came with the sound of aura following it. “Aww, look. He’s gone blind. He must not know who we are either. Can you believe that? Who doesn’t know Solar Team 12 by the sound of us?”

Acoustic’s racing heart suddenly stopped. He’s heard of them before from Lilac, they’re the Team that has the nickname of Solar Team Harbinger. They’re known for inching towards the line of a war crime with every operation they undertake. But there’s never a living witness, so the only report the command has to go off of is theirs. Did concrete send for these goons? Just how bad was that azure mare?

He started weeping. His life was in the hooves of cruel torturers and they seemed eager to put him down to get to somepony else. What else could he do but weep? Pray. He could pray and hope that somepony came to his aide, but he doubted any would come for him in time. There were only three figures, so he knew the other half was in the town. Concrete told him part of the plan, but he didn’t think to ask for any of the specifics or how long it would take. He was only concerned with his part. On top of all his pain and all his tears, he felt stupid on top of it.

A blow to his ribs sent him flying through the air with a sinister crack. He landed directly on a wing he’d forgotten was outstretched. Every hollow bone in it shattered, lacerating his inner tissue. His guttural scream echoed across the valley, but anypony who could help was too far away to hear it.

“Cmon, Muscle Memory, leave some for the rest of us.” Called the nasally voice.

“Oh, sorry boss.” A voice that sounded like it couldn’t have passed the seventh grade responded. “I don’t know my strength’s all.”

“Pff, you don’t know anything Memory.” Stated the mare. “So what do we do? We can’t keep hitting this kid until she gets back. What’s the plan Broadside?” A bubble sounded like it popped, and a set of hooves hit the sand.

“Ha!” A set of wing beats stopped and another set of hooves crunched into the sand. “What we do is wait until Cobbler gets back, and then, we get him to rig this fucking thing...” He kicked the mannequin, toppling it. “To explode.”

“What about the barriers?”

“What about them? You’re telling me you can’t break some two-bit anti-arcane spell?” Scoffed the voice.

“Well… That’s Celestia’s own magic. I don’t even think that Fever Pitch could break those.” The mare remarked.

“Ugh!” It stomped. “Wait… We don’t have to break it.”

“What?”

“We just have to make an attempt. That’ll freak this psycho out, and then she’ll break the barriers.” He explained.

“If she can break them. I hope for our sake she doesn’t, but it just ruins her plans. What’s the worst that happens? We toss her ass into Tartarus kicking and screaming, won’t be that big of a deal.”

“Bingo! That’s the plan then!” Beamed the voice.

“What would I do, Cap’n?” The dopey voice asked. “And what do we do with this guy?”

“This little shit’s orders were to evacuate. So why don’t we evacuate him to his final destination, eh? As for you... Just uh… Stand there and look pretty.”

General Concrete stood in Sheriff Silver Star’s office, which doubled for a compact jailhouse. There’s no way in Celestia’s name that this was up to any kind of legal standard, but she doubted that she’d be dealing with Celestia’s law in this town. If the cleanliness was any giveaway to their handling of things legal, they’d be in Alcoltraz. She understood though that to catch a crook, you had to sink yourself down to their level. If you tried to reason with them from your position, they’d evade you by going lower. Matching them gave them no quarter.

Concrete’s steely entourage just behind her outside the door. What she was about to do was against regulation, but she had thrown out the possibility of following the law when she walked the rails coming into town. Concrete slammed on the desk and looked down furiously at the mustachioed stallion who fumbled for his place in his chair. Shock snapped across his face, then wrinkled to anger, then fear washed it away within a span of one moment. He wasn’t in the presence of some petty outlaw looking for work, or some vagabond coming to get his fake papers. He was sitting on the weaker side of the table with an EUP General standing on the other.

“I’m looking for somepony new in town.” She glared down at him.

“Now, now. Just hold on a gosh darn minute.” He gulped, searching within himself for dignity. “You gon’ apologize t’ me?”

“No.” She colorlessly replied. “Help me find this mare, and maybe I don’t report your undocumented workers, or falsely documented workers.”

“Ahnd if I don’t?” He shakily asked.

“You will.” The rasp on Concrete’s voice doubled.

Silver Star’s eye twitched while he attempted to find a path in this conversation he was forced into where he’d be the one with power. He glanced over to the pinup poster of Cherry Jubilee, hoping to find some courage there. He sighed, relenting to the clear authority. “Who do you want?”

“Who’s new here?” She smirked.

“Well a few ponies, Cherry’s runnin’ some kinda plantation an’ givin’ the workers slave wages. New ponies come in now an’ again.” He leaned back into his chair, agitation creeping into his tone.

“Can’t you do anything about that?”

“An’ destabilize the Appleloosan economy? Not a chance, she keeps the trains runnin’ ‘round here.” He started swinging a set of keys around his hoof.

She shrugged. “Still, I’m looking for a pony that’s come here around three weeks ago.”

“You know a name would help me.”

“You know you’re not helping? In fact, keep this up and you’ll be obstructing EUP business.” She lowered her head.

“Fine!” He threw up his hooves. “You wan’ a miracle General! I cahn’t give you much off an estimated amount ah time. You should just go to Cherry’s, at the far end of town.”

“You were very helpful.”

“Ahnd you were very polite.”

“Ohhh Dry Guuulch!” A familiar sultry voice called me from the cherry sorting line. I loathed having to manually do such a menial job when my magic could finish it in seconds. Or the thought that yellow and red cherries would grow on separate trees, and sorting the fruit on harvest would make this job redundant. I wasn’t on contract to improve things though, I was there to work. And for the time being, I was on break for however long Cherry talked to me.

I walked outside, the smell of fresh orchard air pleasantly countering the sterilized factory scent. I inhaled a deep breath as the doors swung behind me, only to expel all of it out in a single instant. There was General Concrete, two stars on her shoulders now instead of one, with three of the toughest looking ponies I’ve ever seen. Impossible! How is it that I slip up and the next day I’m caught?

Was everything I had accomplished so far for nothing? No… They don't know who I am yet. As far as Concrete and these goons know, I’m just surprised to see EUP soldiers. I turned to Cherry, who wore that familiar seductive face, the kind that drew you in with those half-open eyes and perfect lipstick. “What’re these soldier boys doin’ ‘ere?”

She brushed a hoof through her hair, bowing her head. “Why, honey, they’re here to buy some time off your contract. Said it was some kinda important business. Dangerous stuff, the kinda thing somepony with your strength would be thrilled to oblige in.”

I internally winced. She may have blown my cover by giving away my superpony strength. No no, relax. It’s an uncommon disorder, but common enough to be mainstream, you’re in the clear. “What kinda business? And why me?”

“Why, I think you should ask miss Concrete.” She glanced longingly at the black-clad General, who gladly took up her cue.

“Yes, you should ask me what it is I want from you.”

I gulped. I was pinned, I had no other way to go but through them. “Alright, Ah’ll… Ah’ll bite. What’s the damage?

I swore I saw her smirk. “I just want you to come with me. I’ve paid your employer here a handsome retainer for your time. She said you weren’t the type to ask so many questions.”

I slammed pressure onto my teeth. How dare either of them pull this on me. Don’t they know who I am? What I’m trying to do!? “That’s correct.” Cherry rubbed her chin slowly as if searching for a sensation across her own jawline. “Quite a handsome retainer. And it doesn’t, ahem, void, your contract, only… suspends it. Yes, that’s it.”

I wanted to scream and tear all of them apart, and I was well within my own ability to do it. “And if I refuse?” I could atomize them in an instant. I glared at Concrete, she stared back with satisfaction. She saw through me and knew that I was in checkmate.

“Now Dry Gulch! You will do no such thing!” She patted my cheek, restraining the strength needed to make it a slap. “You will go get your things from your cabin straight away! They paid you to be on their clock, and you’re only stalling it.”

“Yes, Ms. Jubilee…” I thought my teeth would explode.

“Oh…” Concrete started, producing a golden necklace from her coat. “That won’t be necessary. This is all she had.” Impossible! She returned it and started walking away, her underlings following closely. I looked to Cherry, and she nudged her head towards them optimistically. I went with them, displaying my scowl. The three with her closed in behind me, forcing me next to Concrete.

“Did you think you could hide, Trixie?” She didn’t look at me, only up at the rift in the sky.

“She thought so, yes.” I stared at the sky with her.

“We have nothing but time, money, and intel. We would’ve found you eventually.” She was smirking!

“What do you want?”

“I want you to follow me into the Badlands, we’ll discuss what I want when we get there. We don’t want a fight, mind you.”

“Oh, you don’t want a fight. Right, that’s why we’re going to an open area with no civilians, and that must be why you brought these bruisers with you.” We passed the railroad and were close to the desert.

“I don’t appreciate sarcasm. They are here in the event that there is a fight. You know me, Trixie.” She tossed a glance my way. “I don’t want any deaths.”

“Right” I rolled my eyes. “Vilomahs and all that.”

As we walked, I picked up the magical presence of another unicorn nearby, but they must’ve been hiding. An ambush? No, Concrete wasn’t underhanded like that, she would lay her cards out on the table, not keep some hidden up her sleeves. Along the way, the three behind me had teleported away and been replaced with copies at the same time. They thought I wouldn’t notice, so I let them have that thought. Deception is the key to all wars, that old General Sun Song once said. In doing this to me, Concrete had declared war on my army of one.

Then Concrete was teleported away. All of them vanished and all that was left was a mannequin perched precariously in the sand in front of me. I could feel all of them behind cliff faces, but which one. They seemed to be coming from two opposite directions. East and West? No. Northwest and Southeast? That was it, I could pinpoint them. They weren’t expecting that I could line all my ducks in a row right under my boulder.

I threw off my disguise, it wasn’t required of me to hold my cover anymore, they had me where they wanted them, I might as well look the part they wanted too. The plastic pony spoke, bobbing up and down as Concrete’s voice came from it. “Now that we’re in a position to negotiate, tell me what it is you want?”

I glanced at the cliff face Concrete was behind. “Trixie doesn’t want anything you can give her.”

“Think again, Trixie. The Crowns can give you whatever you want.” The plastic was smooth, and the voice sounded perfectly like Concrete’s.

“Then why haven’t they?” I glared at the orange stone wall.

“They haven’t been made aware. I can make them aware.” It leaned in.

“Impossible. Trixie’s read the papers. Celestia’s called her a Threat to Tranquility. She wants me dead or on the moon.” I waved my hoof as if brushing away her offer.

“She’ll come around. Or Luna might.” It tilted.

“Concrete.” I sighed. “You asked Trixie some time ago if she knew what a Vilomah was. She knows it personally.”

“I know, I want to help you.”

“Do you? She died because ponies like Celestia in their ivory towers let her die! The papers said it might as well have been Trixie’s fault Sabrina died!” I felt my muzzle quiver.

“Do you think that? Do you blame yourself?”

I paused, what a parry of a question. “She does. But she can make it right again. She can take from the world to make up for what it took from her. Trixie shouldn’t be a Vilomah, and Sabrina should still be alive.” I hung my head, searching for any morsel of sadness to feel, but found none.

“But look what you’re doing. You’re creating Vilomahs just so you don’t have to be one.”

“She knows! You don’t think she knows!?” My body rattled. “Trixie knows what she’s doing is wrong and she knows everypony thinks so too! But she can’t feel anything but this yearning to make it right. To get even.”

“Get even with who?”

“The world!” I roared.

“No! You want to get even with yourself! You blame yourself for her death! Even if you did revive Sabrina, you wouldn’t forgive yourself.”

“You don’t know that, Concrete. Trixie was her hero! Trixie was her guardian! Trixie was supposed to raise her!” I desperately yearned for tears, but none came.

“And you still can. I’m giving you a chance now to turn this around, do the right thing.”

“And what’s that? Get arrested and accept that the world was right to take Sabrina?”

“No. We’re offering amnesty and aid in your cause.”

“So long as Trixie’s under your hooves?”

“So long as we’re helping each other.”

Concrete was making it hard to resist joining over. Complete amnesty and aid in my resurrection? I knew that I wanted to do this on my own, that it was my mission and not the EUP’s. But in involving them and setting my sights to aiding Equestria after I brought Sabrina back, I had made it their mission too. As much as my mind screamed this was the wrong move, I relented. “Trixie… Would like to -”

The mannequin exploded, molten plastic shrapnel hurled itself in every direction at mach speeds. I effortlessly deflected them away and instantly teleported every pony within the desert to where it stood, holding them firmly in my telekinetic grip. Concrete looked surprised like this wasn’t part of her plan, and the rest of her group looked stunned like this wasn’t part of theirs. “They’re here in case there is a fight, huh? Which one of you spineless fools did this?”

A red-headed mare stamped her hoof weightlessly in the air above the sand. “This was Peach Cobbler’s doing, his talent was explosive magic.”

“Thank you, traitor.” I released every pony but Concrete and forced a shield around her. At that same moment, she produced a scrawl of pink paper and instantly it incinerated itself and three bright pink anti-arcane barriers, each bigger than the last, closed me in my place. “IMPOSSIBLE!”

“Now!” Concrete roared. The unicorns enveloped me in their auras and I popped from where I was to the southernmost end of the Badlands, looking forward into a cliff face. Concrete snapped next to me and ripped a stone from her coat, the cliff face trembled, fiery blue light radiated across the cliff until it resembled a door. It couldn’t be.

“Concrete… Did you want this to happen?” I asked, optimism dying with each word.

“No.” She hung her head. “Plans never…” She trailed off.

“Survive contact with the enemy.” I closed my eyes, picking up her sentence. “Well, I need you to tell Celestia three things.”

“Those being?”

“My condolences for the death of Solar Team 12.” I knew that there was one flaw in the barriers around me: They didn’t protect underneath me. I teleported all of her soldiers in front of me and forced an inky black barrier around them. All from energy sent into the ground. Concrete’s eyes shrank in horror, then slammed shut as her troop became an explosion of bone and blood within the forcefield. Gore hit the sand in a series of wet slaps, sand caking across the pieces of muscle and coagulated the blood. “And that she needs to have these barriers protect below me too.” I gravely laughed. “One more thing. May the Unyielding Wall never falter.”

The doors howled open and Concrete walked forward with sorrow in her eyes, pushing me with any strength she could find. It wasn’t her aim for this plan to fail, and it wasn’t mine to be banished to Tartarus. The last view of the world above was heaven’s fissure and Major General with tears in her eyes beneath it as I sank into hell. I could’ve sworn I saw Sabrina clutching Concrete’s coat.

Impossible darkness sprawled in every direction around me. My barriers remained up, and it turned it more into a bubblegum night. Then the silence set in. In the waking world, silence never happened, I remember hearing in school about how in silence your brain makes a sound because it can’t process silence. Yet, here I was in absolute silence.

My barriers shattered, and the pink shards fell below me and became eclipsed by the infinite black below. I looked at what I thought was forward and sighed. This is life now.

Then failure set in.

I wept, all my tears running down my mane. I let out a shaking, wailing, roar letting all my emotions ring out into the unending expanse. Sabrina’s gone! I’m gone! Even if neither the General nor me wanted it, I’ll be touted as a victory over evil, this wasn’t the day that Equestria won at all… This was the day a monster died.

I stood there nebulously, sobbing, time stretching on for hours. Hours turned to days turned into weeks. Then again, it may not have been. It could’ve only been the span of minutes, but there was no time but mine running out, no sound but my own sadness and no light but my own dying flame.

Emotions. I’m feeling emotions! Why? The Amulet kept me from them before, even when I committed atrocities, so why can I feel them here? Perhaps it’s part of hell, letting your emotions finally seep through and haunt you for eternity.

Then there was light. In the distance, a pink and light brown visage approached me. It looked to be a pony wrapped in bandages with glowing pink runes. At least, the figure certainly seemed like a pony, but its shape kept shifting around like sand in a bag being grabbed from various points. On where its forehead should be, a single red eye dimly sat, staring into me. Then it snapped down to my neck, then back to me. The bandages around its mouth stretched into a misshapen smile, much too wide for any real pony to wear.

It spoke directly into my mind, the caustic sound coming from all directions, deafening and rattling me all at once. The noise burned to process as if I refused to acknowledge it. It reverberated painfully into every fiber of my physical and mental being. “Hello, Trixie. I am Arkon, the previous Amulet Bearer.”

Accelerant

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The heat woke me up that night. Sensations of warmth across my body started and then rose, uncomfortable at first then climbing to become unbearable. I flung the blankets off me and decided it would be best to get a glass of water before returning to bed again. It was when I recoiled from the hot doorknob that I noticed the smell of smoke.

I sighed, maybe it was my sister trying to cook something again. It wasn’t unlike her to try and impress Mother or Father any way she could, magic being one and culinary attempts second. Sometimes she managed to break through their shell, only for it to barricade itself again soon after.

I started for my bed again. Maybe tomorrow night she’d make something that smelled good instead of burnt. That would be the day that I’d eat toast instead of drinking it.

Wait. The doorknob was hot.

The sound of glass shattering accompanied by an earth-shaking crash came muffled through my door. A banging on my door started as I stumbled back, tripping over a piece of upturned carpet. I trembled when screams came from behind the door, and I blacked out when the door flung open.

The next thing I remember was being terrified. The overwhelming feeling of terror and sorrow nearly overtook me as I stared at our home being reduced to embers. That was until I felt my sister’s hooves around me. We were both quaking in each other’s embrace, silently exchanging our grief. Our parents didn’t make it out, nor did any of our belongings.

Our emotions were chaotic, spanning from dread to loss to anger to fear to love. Whatever I felt, my sister matched me there on the sidewalk. We came to equal realizations at the same time as one another. The world we lived in wasn’t fond of our family, let alone us two. It wasn’t going to be kind, even at our lowest. It was a dog eat dog world, and the jaws were around us.

We sat watching our lives burn away until the sun rose behind us. We were weeping but there were no tears left to cry. It would come in waves, emotions swelling intensely and then subsiding into gloomy pauses.

As soon as I realized it, so did my sister. Even as the support beams gave in, and even when our home was reduced to glowing ash and stray embers, we understood that we couldn’t dwell on it. That despite the best efforts of talented firefighters, our house couldn’t be saved. They said it was unlike anything they’d ever seen. As though the fire were alive and wouldn’t relent.

We didn’t care. My sister and I silently carried the knowledge that our parents likely started the fire, never telling one another we knew. It didn’t matter, though it hurt nonetheless. We couldn’t live our lives in this moment, tragic it may be. We had to focus on our future and try to rise like a phoenix from our ashes.

I turned to her on the sidewalk and beamed my optimism to her, hoping that by any stretch of miracle, we could make it out on top. “We can do it!” The dawn was behind her, and as the sunlight shone, she looked like Celestia herself. “It’s ok, Trixie! I believe in you, big sis!”

Concrete didn’t want to look them in the eye, to accept responsibility for their deaths. The families of Solar Team 12 sat solemnly, some of them foals. She couldn’t reconcile with the look in their eyes, that it was her fault they were gone. Sets of eyes sorrowful, others wrathful, some not breaking contact with the uniformly cut grass below them.

She’d seen this scene play out dozens of times, a funeral for the uniformed soldiers she commanded. The parents, spouses, siblings… Children of the departed all hated her. They blamed her for their deaths, and they weren’t wrong. It was by her authority in her theater that they died, but she couldn’t ever seem to convince them that she didn’t want this. Her expertise was entrenchment, and they knew it. They resented her for using their loved ones as a body to stall the clock out. Concrete understood them, and even if they never forgave her, she didn’t judge them.

She stood behind a podium atop a slightly raised stage. She loathed that this funeral was a public display, but the crowns said that everypony had to see and remember them. Perhaps there was a better way to accomplish this, but none that came to mind before or during this moment.

Concrete closed her eyes, taking in a breath before opening them and starting into the microphone, unphased by the sea of ponies that stared back.

“Fillies. Gentlecolts. Mothers. Fathers.” She paused, her gaze wandering to the six closed coffins, each draped identically in the Equestrian flag. “These six are heroes.” She glanced down at the empty dark wood podium in front of her before looking directly into each set of eyes that held fury and grief. “History today was written by them, by your son, your daughter, your wife, your husband.” Her mouth straightened, holding in a sob as she stared into the crying eyes of a filly. “Your father and your mother.”

Exchanging glances like that was the hardest thing Concrete had ever done in her professional career, despite having done so before. This time carried with it the magnitude of the nation. She let out a shaky breath before starting again. “The cost for harmony and tranquility is a high one, and these heroes have paid it. In defeating the greatest threat to tranquility Equestria has ever seen, they have set on them the eyes of everypony, now and in the future. The eyes of the world are on them, and though they may weep now, as yours do, they will look back to this moment with utmost pride and admiration.”

Their glances softened, become more forgiving or more resolute, less demoralized and less hateful. Concrete continued. “For this defeat of the most infernal threat, I, with the agreement of the Crowns, award each of them the Equestrian Pink Heart and the Solar Service Medal, both of which are the highest we can give to both ponies and soldiers respectively. The Pink Heart is for those who have done no less than save the very nation, the Solar Service Medal for the highest display of valor and dedication to the Crowns. I thank them. Princess Celestia and Luna thank them. Equestria thanks them.”

Concrete felt the two stars on either of her shoulders weigh down on her with the weight of the world. She knew that Solar Team 12 didn’t do much in the dealings with Trixie, and thinking back she could’ve done what she did by herself. No, she could’ve done better by herself. Though, there was no way she could say that to anypony. Regardless, they were soldiers of the highest degree who had fallen in this endeavor.

Concrete didn’t even feel that Trixie was an evil pony like she was espousing her to be. She would view her more as misguided, in desperate need of steering towards the right path. But in killing Solar Team 12, she had made a permanent enemy of Equestria. Even if she were somehow able to break out of Tartarus, she would never be able to accomplish what she was after.

The General glanced at the two princesses sitting to the left of her, communicating in one look her pitiful regret that things couldn’t have gone better. She turned back to the crowd, now hanging on her words, but she only glanced at that front row. “I know the pain you’re feeling now. I was in that row of seats, feeling the same emotions you are now. While they are similar, there is no way I can put myself exactly where you are. If it was within my ability, I would give my life to bring theirs back.” She hung her head.

Concrete lifted her head, her eyes glassy with the thought of her slain wife and the daughter they never had. A casualty from a short conflict with the Eastern Deer nation, before she was ever a soldier. She would give anything to have her back again, but she knew that there was no way for them to come back. Even the longest of shots was Trixie, and she was banished forever.

“In the best of all possible worlds.” She choked. “There would be no war. In the best of all possible worlds, there would be no sadness. But this is not the best of all outcomes, but because of your family’s sacrifice, it will be an outcome that is forever better. It is through them that the entire world was saved, and it is through them that the future of it is an outcome that is forever better.” She stood taller, wiping a tear from her eye. “And it is through you all carrying their memory, and cherishing their actions that Equestria’s ultimate outcome will be forever better!”

Concrete sniffed, turning away from the podium, one hoof on the steps down. She turned around, feeling that she needed to say one more thing. “In the past, we looked up to the stars to find our heroes. Their glory shining out amongst the darkness. When you look to the night sky tonight, I want you to see these six, shining infinitely bright among the darkness they slew.”

“How did you know Trixie’s name? She’s great and powerful, certainly, but not so much that someone like you would hear about her exploits.” I looked at this amalgamation of form and motion with disbelief, feeling my amulet being drawn towards it. Power radiated off whatever it was with powerful vibrations, and it burned my bones with each reverberation.

The bindings, engraved with bright pink anti-arcane magic, same as the barriers around me, shifted around the being. Surrounding every path of vision I could take, wherever I looked, there were pink runes staring back at me. “I know of the world above me without having to be there. I even know your past. Especially those additions you just had.” The world swam forward from me, and there was the form of this pony-like thing, pursing its lips as if the very words it spoke were sour on its nonexistent tongue. “How many would that make now…? Nine?”

“Who are you?” I ground my teeth.

“I told you before, I’m the one before you, Arkon. Haven’t you heard of me before?” Its face scrambled itself, appearing in an impossible amount of different places all at once before settling back where it was before.

“No, Trixie has never heard your name before now. What, were you some kinda big deal?” I smirked, knowing there was nothing he could do. What’s the worst? Kill me? Please, I’m in Tartarus, killing me would be for my benefit. I’ve already lost everything, so my life isn’t much more. I was prepared to give it up for Sabrina, but that possibility was out the window now. If anything, he'd do me a favor by killing me.

The entire world erupted in a roar, every one of my bones splintering, then shattering into powder. My organs swelled and exploded, every drop of blood boiling and then evaporating. Pain didn’t begin to describe it, this was something beyond pain. Something far beyond the pain I felt from putting on the Amulet, that pain was only physical. This pain struck and wounded the very fabric of my soul.

Words that before stung with acidity to hear now scorched across my mind like balefire. If my brain refused to comprehend it before, this would be beyond its understanding even if it could understand. “I WAS BEYOND A BIG DEAL!” Deafening ringing came from every direction including within myself, all the while I felt my essence corroding away. Suddenly it stopped. The ringing, the ghastly otherworldly pain, the burning in my head. “I can do that any time I please, Trixie. You had best listen to what I say carefully.”

“Yeah, you uh, definitely have my attention.” I wanted to reel from what I just felt, but there were no remnants of pain for me to reel from.

“Long ago, I was called the Harbinger of Final Demise. I had taken the Amulet and with it, tore my desire across Equestria. I wanted it to burn, I needed it to burn.” I could not only hear this voice clearly in my head, but it began to take on a more natural stallion’s voice. It sounded young and regretful. “Not for any crazed bloodlust. I foresaw a creature not from this world coming to do worse.”

“Destroy the world?” I asked, seeing visions of fire draped across decaying plains. Swords littered the landscape, each a monument to the wielder, and each an increase to Arkon. This wasn’t imagination, it couldn’t be. This was a memory, Arkon’s memory. I saw him, an alabaster unicorn with golden hair, the Amulet cluning to his neck, a wispy red afterglow floating around it.

I saw in his eyes both fury and regret. As they cried, I felt his sorrow. As they narrowed I felt his anger. It was as though it were my feelings, I felt exactly what he was in that moment with perfect clarity. He didn’t want to do what he did, committing mass slaughter. But he also didn’t want whatever was coming to end all life either.

“More than that. Destroy every planet in our solar system.” I saw images flicker by a spherical entity, its shadow overtaking entire planets and tendrils that wrapped around them, threatening to snap it. “It sounds crazy, insane even. But I knew it was true. I just knew that what I was doing was the only way to prevent this monstrosity from…”

The image of Princess Celestia, six orbs around her came into my mind. “Then Celestia stopped you, didn’t she?” Her gaze was one matching divine fury.

“More than that. Trixie, I killed tens of thousands of ponies. What she did to me… Let me ask you something. Do you know that only you can remove the Amulet from yourself?”

“She did not.” I glanced at the Amulet. It made sense that only I could remove it myself, otherwise Concrete would've done so by force. A twinge of embarrassment ran through me. Somepony who wasn't wearing the Amulet knew more than I did, and I was using it for a cause of my own.

“It’s true. Do you remember what happened when you put on the Amulet? That feeling like you were torn apart and put back together?” I saw the memory of Arkon placing the Amulet around his neck and a castle from far away exploding in a sphere of balefire. A haunting scream rattled in my head, Arkon's scream.

“Yeah, that was the… Second most painful thing Trixie’s ever experienced.” I winced at the distant memory and trembled at the recent one.

“When you put on the Amulet, that’s not just a feeling, that’s exactly what happens. The Amulet is only as powerful as the kills it absorbs. The first one it always accepts is the wearer’s.” The look of Arkon inside my head was murderous, wrath defined his eyes and fury surged outward from him.

“Pause. You’re telling Trixie that she’s… But she’s right here, she’s not dead! She’s alive! Though while she’s in here, she might as well be dead.” Moreover, everything I've been doing was real! It had consequence, being sealed in here was proof that I was alive!

“You’re alive, but in essence, you are the Amulet now. When you take it off yourself, it puts you back the way you were before you put on the Amulet, and then… How would they say it now? Keeps the change.” It sneered.

I glanced down to the Amulet, then back to Arkon confused. “So why doesn’t Trixie have the power of tens of thousands of ponies?” I would've certainly liked that sort of power. I could've achieved my goal long ago and had all the crowns beneath my hoof.

“Good question. It keeps the power you gave it when you voluntarily take it off, but I had it forced off. So as of now, I am energy that has yet to be expended on the world. These bandages hold me in a state of near solar levels of heat. It’s excruciating. But… it’s also eternal.”

Its form became scattered again and returned stable once more. “Trixie. I should’ve known that Celestia would try and erase me from history after what I did. I decimated the entire Equestrian population. I’m a villain to end villains.”

“Did you stop that thing?” I leaned towards Arkon, feeling unnatural heat from it, even through my barriers. The bandages held in most of the heat, but the amount that still escaped was beyond any definition of hot.

All its form seemed to deflate, as though it lost its strength. “There never was a creature like that. It was a phantom image. A nightmare that I had wholeheartedly believed, and never questioned it out of my undying love of Equestria and my desire to be its hero.”

I could feel sadness from this heap of balefire like it was beaming its emotions directly into me. “But why tell Trixie all this?”

“Because I regret what I did. I thought I was just in what I was doing as you do. Except… Well, except your sister’s real and your goal is attainable. But more than that, you can get out of here.”

I laughed, starting as a snicker but quickly working its way into an uproar. “Really!?” I said between screeches of screaming laughter. “Trixie can get out of hell!?”

“Not alone. However Trixie, when I tell you you’re going to do what I ask. Deal?”

“Of course.” I calmed down, still giggling. “Anything to get her out of this dump.”

“You have to kill me and use my power to blow the doors, as they were, off their hinges.”

Concrete attempting to locate the Princess in her own castle was like trying to find a single needle in a haystack the size of Griffonstone. A needle that seemingly appeared everywhere she was not, and shifted locations often. Whenever she entered one room on one side of the castle, her mane was exiting the doorway of another on the other side.

The newly-promoted Lieutenant General had a sinking suspicion about two things. That she wasn’t being entirely honest with her about Tartarus, and that Tartarus couldn’t hold Trixie. The Princess had told her in the letter she got on the day she sealed Trixie that there were unspeakably powerful evils in that hell. Evils that upon seeing the royal anti-arcane barriers would smite her. Concrete doubted both the extent and hostility of these imprisoned.

A creeping dread that they’d work together to break out of hell grew on her, heating her uncertainty to a roaring boil. As she turned a corner chasing after the princess, her Pink Heart nearly flew off her neck with the impact of crashing into somepony.

A dignitary brushed himself off, cursing before seeing who he ran into, and then profusely apologized. A scratchy gravel voice came from behind her, calling her towards it. “Hey General. A word?”

Concrete turned and on the other end of the cavernous marble hallway stood Glass River, leader of Solar Team 8, clad in black dragon scale armor. Both were both legends of the EUP, each earning a nickname with their fame. The Unyielding Wall approached the Infinite Swordsman, the very stallion she needed to face Trixie was here. Celestia could absolutely send for Solar Team 8! How dare she not!?

“Follow me, you can tell me whatever you need to tell Celestia.” His eyes were neutral and unexcitable beneath a flat red mane. He led the General into what looked like his own personal quarters, his glowing cobalt sword clacking against his armor. Though it was a royal bedroom, there was nothing luxurious in the room, save for the door, which was beyond his choosing. Only a simple bed, a plain table, and a desk which was heavily populated with papers.

“What kind of connection do you and the princess have to be able to personally message her?” Concrete narrowed her eyes as Glass River placed his sword on the side of his plain oak table, gesturing for her to sit.

“I never said that Lieutenant General. I said whatever you need to tell her, you can tell me. I can’t personally contact her the way one of her named Generals can.” His face was blank, devoid of any emotion except perhaps a fledgling curiosity.

Concrete wondered why such a powerful swordsman, especially one with magic to aid his technique, would be so unexcitable. He’d slain krakens on his own, traded wounds with the building-sized dragon lord, and been a major asset in the recent war with Sombra. Perhaps it was the ability of the sword he used itself.

This purple unicorn carried a thick magical blade, one that cut with whatever force was required to slice through. If it needed to cut through a boulder, the sword would provide the necessary force to hew it. Through an entire cliff face, it would rend it in two. If she could instantly win any fight, Concrete reckoned, she would get bored of conflict as well.

She glanced at the desk, three picture frames aligned left, right, and center, each equal distance from one another in a triangle. They contained multiple Pink Hearts, every ribbon the EUP carried, and a photo of him with Solar Team 8. Then she turned back to the stallion. “I suspect that Tartarus cannot hold Trixie.”

“Ha!” Glass River let out a chuckle. “That’s a good one, General.”

“I’m serious.” Her look turned stony and flat.

“Look, I’ve seen all manner of the infernal go in that place, and I’ve never seen one come out. For all we know, they’re dead in there already, Trixie included. But hey, good job on getting rid of that Amulet. I’ve heard it’s a constant in villains’ stories.”

“That’s exactly it.” She placed a hoof on the table, applying force. “You’ve never sealed the Amulet in there.”

“What? Yeah, sorry we can’t all be the great ‘Unyielding Wall.’ Two promotions with your rank and a Pink Heart in one year? You had better quit while you’re ahead.”

“No. What I’m saying is that the Amulet grows in power with each victim the wearer kills.”

“Yeah, and…?” Realization came across his face. “Oh, that is bad, Concrete.”

“I know. And I want you and your team to help me make it right again.” She leaned back into the stiff oak chair. “Can you?”

Glass River’s face was still unphased, only now with some clarity mixed in. He tilted his face, shadows falling on the bags under his eyes. “The better question is, can you? You’re no 4-Star. More than that, I have express permission from Field Marshall Solstice that I can refuse any order. The princess agrees. My team is the Sun’s own sword; I can’t order my whole team over there on your suspicion, even if it’s probable.”

Concrete balked. “Did you hear what I just said? Trixie has a very good chance of breaking out of Tartarus, and you’re flashing your authority in my face?” She wiped her hoof across the table.

Glass lowered his head just barely. “Yes, I am Concrete. I don’t think you fully comprehend this. You tried to call us in to fight Trixie the first time. Celestia thought it was a good idea, in case things got out of hoof. I disagreed. And until I see those doors blow off of that cliff, I still disagree.”

“How dare you!” She slammed her hoof down. “You would risk the entire kingdom just for some show of force on me? Am I really extending beyond my reach by asking that you help me protect our nation?”

“Yes, I would and yes you are!” His head snapped forward, like a vulture picking at a carcass. “You don’t seem to care about any of the lives that are lost under you. That funeral speech may have been all well and good, and it may have fooled everypony else there, but it didn’t convince me. I’ve done digging on you, ‘General’. Exactly 2436 soldiers have died under your authority, and just this week, an entire Solar Team was lost because of you! And on the eve of their being put to rest, you want me to order my team to be thrown against this impossibly powerful threat!?” He rose from the table, starting for the door. “You’re a joke. What you want is insulting, and I won’t relay this to the princess out of respect for her crown. But there’s something I wanna know. What exactly was the plan with Solar Team 12?”

“What?” Concrete scoffed. “You read the report, you know what happened.” Concrete was hoping he wouldn't press the issue much more as she hadn't read the contents of that report.

“No. I know what the report said, not what your plan was.” He turned to face Concrete. “I know the aftermath, but not the intentions. Tell me what they died for.”

“Why should I?” Anger began to fester inside Concrete, partly at Glass challenging her and partly at his arrogance. How dare he admit that he'd defy her orders, especially when the kingdom was at risk.

“You want my help.” He smirked and Concrete's frown threatened to sour into a scowl.

“My plan was to locate Trixie in Appleloosa, bring her to the Badlands away from civilians and the town, and while I was bringing her, have a unicorn teleport us away one by one. If we went all at once, there was no certainty she would negotiate, so we were to teleport away one by one and replace ourselves with an illusionary copy.” Concrete explained with a sigh. “Then I was going to talk her down, or banish her to Tartarus.”

“So you could’ve done this without them?” His eyes narrowed.

Concrete squirmed in her seat, intimidated that he saw through her professional facade. “Yes. I believe I could’ve.”

“Then why didn’t you?” He paused, waiting for an answer, then starting for the door when there wasn’t one. “Good night, General.” Glass River was closer to the door now.

The General glanced out of the ornate windows of Glass' room, finding moonlight gently illuminating the plain carpet. She saw in that dim moonlight her own mortality and the kingdom's. That swordsman was about to risk the fate of Equestria on showing her up. She wasn't going to let the nation die, not after she had just lost a Solar Team to save it by the skin of her teeth!

“If you won’t help me, then I will rally any force I can to throw at her. “ Concrete choked back a sob, tears building in her eyes as she glanced from her seat. “I know what I ask of you… It’s difficult, especially after what happened. But would you rather see a hundred more lose their lives for a slight chance, or an invincible six try with a near-certain chance?”

His aura was around the doorknob, still not turning back to face the officer pleading behind him. “You fucking Generals and your calculations. Even when I’m in front of you, you speak to me like I’m a number. Let me be clear, I believe you.”

“What?” Concrete rose, now facing the stallion, who was turning the knob. She looked pleadingly at him while wiping her eyes.

“I trust you and what you’re saying. In most other circumstances your discretion and tact are peerless, but in this one, you’ve insulted me. I won’t tell Celestia what you say, but I will do what you ask. Only myself, not the rest of my team. I will stay in the Badlands for one month, no longer. To answer your question, I would rather one with a certain chance die than six.”

“One moment you hate my guts and disagree, and then the next you want to help me?” She adjusted her hat, wiping her nose with a sniff.

“No General.” He said exiting the room. “I still hate your guts, but I want to help you. Not for you, but for the crowns. I won’t say it again. Good night, Concrete. My condolences to the family of Corporal Acoustic Burst.”

As the door clicked shut behind Glass River, Concrete couldn’t have felt more alone. She had damaged her reputation with the single most powerful pony in Equestria and completely forgotten about Corporal Burst. As far as she knew, he evacuated from the area. She hadn’t even bothered to read the report after the fact. A surveying team came through and cleaned up the… Remains of Solar Team 12, but she didn’t read the parts of the report she didn’t write. She was there, why would she need to?

To find out information like this. By his words, he was dead. Concrete crumpled to the ground and let the tears fall on her Pink Heart. She hadn’t even known. He wasn’t at the funeral, he wasn’t buried. He wasn’t remembered. His family still thinks that he’s out there in the Badlands, proud that he’d done his part.

Concrete tore the Pink Heart from her neck and placed it on Glass River’s desk. She didn’t deserve it, but he was going to. For the time being, she needed to find Bursts’ parents and personally apologize. And she needed to pray that hell wouldn’t break loose, and if it did, that it could be put back on its leash.

Hell's Jaws

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The hall Glass River walked through was the mouth of a marble beast. Statues and stained glass uniformly stood along the edges like dull ensnaring teeth. His iron hooves echoed like a thunderclap with each methodical step, undampened by the impossibly long red carpet which imitated the chamber’s tongue. He had been in the vices of the EUP and royalty before, often for the same reason. He strode to the three that commanded the jaws. It was them that decided who they closed around and who they let free. Glass River was going to defy the jaws whether or not they were around him.

Around a massive blue-tinted crystal table, they sat light from the stained glass windows illuminating them in various shades. Field Marshall Stellar Solstice a dull blue, 5-star General Point Blank a scalding scarlet, and Princess Luna a benevolent violet. Each sharing a look of impatience and annoyance that they were called from their duties. Though none of them said it, they all projected expectation.

“So.” Stellar Solstice started, ashing his thick cigar freely into an ashtray that rose from the table. His stature was hunched, bent from the decades of experience in service. He’d started a lowly grunt himself, and was now in the highest position in the land, save for the princesses themselves. “You called us in here.” He adjusted his beige cap, which looked chewed by age. “You mind telling us why, Colonel?”

Glass River blinked slowly. He wanted to bait out an outburst from the 5-star.

“Celestia damn it, Glass!” Point Blank slammed his hoof on the round transparent table, every medal on his chest clinking in protest. “If this is about the war with the zebras you had better not tell us you’re abstaining from that right before we strike the final blow!”

Glass smirked, just as planned. “I am, General.”

Point Blank’s face was one of explosive anger, his mouth souring to a bitter scowl. He opened it, ready to put the Colonel in his place but a hoof from Princess Luna calmed him. “Why would you refuse? Your team has made substantial progress. Wouldn’t you want to finish what you started with them?” She folded her hooves on the table, her mane flowing. The bags under her eyes demanded rest, but the gleam in her worn eyes demanded an answer.

“You’re right, Luna,” Glass replied with a nod “I would like to finish what I started with them. However, I feel that they can finish without me. I have credible intel that there’s a threat to Equestria that needs my attention more.”

The three leaned forward in their seats, perched attentively to hear what could possibly send the Infinite Swordsman out of line. Solstice spoke up, his tone weary and serious. “What would this threat be? Lieutenant General Concrete put away a threat to tranquility. Are you meaning to tell me that there’s something more out there?”

Point Blank scoffed, adjusting his cap. “You’ve got to be joking. There might be something comparable out there, just like there could be at any point in time.” He shifted in his seat. “If you ask me, I think that an entire nation of zebras trying to break down our border is a credible threat that demands your attention.”

Luna raised a hoof again. “Let’s hear what this threat might be gentlecolts, hm?” She nodded at Glass.

“Thank you, Luna.” He started, straightening himself. “What I say is not a joke, General. I have reliable intel that Trixie may break out of Tartarus by killing everything inside and breaking out.”

The tense air multiplied, as though it were manipulating gravity. Suddenly, the nation weighed on all of their shoulders and regret formed around promoting Concrete. In sealing Trixie away, she possibly made her foe stronger by an impossible measure. Glass River realized this as a possibility, but understood that she wouldn’t ask him personally to help if she wanted to help Trixie. While the named Colonel knew this, the three jaws of Equestria did not.

Point Blank looked pale and Solstice hollow. Princess Luna, once drowsy, was now completely attentive. Glass River read the room and began again, still retaining neutrality in his voice. “I know what you’re all thinking. That Concrete should be punished for this potential world-ending scenario, and while normally I would agree, I have to advise against it now.”

Point Blank nearly combusted. “Why the hell should we not!? She potentially cost us everything, and you yourself didn’t want to go help her defeat Trixie when she came up! What reason would you possibly have to stick up for her now?” Luna didn’t attempt to calm him and stared on with a similar conviction.

“Because she realized this around the same time she asked him for help.” Stellar exhaled a cloud of smog, leaning back in his seat. “She’s already given her Pink Heart to the Colonel here, so she recognizes her shortcoming too. We shouldn’t punish her more for something she couldn’t plan ahead for. She was given very little time to plan an operation, the wrong team to execute it, and was given explicit orders from Celestia herself to send Trixie there if things got out of hand, which they did.”

“Thank you, Field Marshall.” Glass nodded, receiving a wink from the old stallion in exchange. The Colonel was surprised that he could piece that together, though he wouldn’t be in the position he was in without being able to read ponies and their intentions. “His thoughts are mine exactly, and upon hearing from Concrete, I promised that I would help her and that I wouldn’t tell Celestia about this.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Luna asked. She was right to object. Why would anything being told to her not be able to be told to her sister? They both had equal sovereign power over Equestria and thusly had an equal right to know what their prized soldier was objecting for.

The swordsman lowered his head. “The interaction that she and I had insulted me personally, so within the space I could resist her and still protect the kingdom, I did. She asked me to tell Celestia, and I refused. So I tell you now, and I expect that you’ll tell her that I refuse to participate in the zebra campaign, but not any reason why. As far as she knows, I didn’t give you a reason either.”

“You’re asking us to lie to the princess?” Point Blank remarked. “For no other reason than a personal spat?” He shook his head.

“I’m asking you to lie because of a promise. One that was made, I remind you, to protect Equestria.” He raised his head.

Luna leaned into her seat, hooves clasped around her chin in thought. “This isn’t unusual for Glass River to protest; she wouldn’t bat an eye or even try and refute him. We’re close to winning that war, and have the rest of Solar Team 8 anyway.”

Point Blank turned to her, mouth agape. “You can’t be serious. We’d be lying to her majesty!”

Luna turned her eyes to him. “Your loyalty is commendable. However, we’d be telling an inconsequential lie that won’t be questioned. She’d be none the wiser and the nation would be safer if Trixie does break out.”

“Fine!” He folded his hooves across his chest. “I’d vote against this, but there’s two of you and one of me. Even then, the Colonel can just say that our version of the story we tell Celestia is wrong anyway! Why did we ever give him the right to refuse orders anyway?”

Solstice interjected. “Because he’s better out of line on our side than in line with any other.” He ground his cigar down, finishing his last puff from it. To him, the conversation was over long before this.

They all rose from their seats, light dancing across them. Glass River bowed and rose back to his hooves with a salute. “Best case scenario, nothing happens.”

“That would be best, yes.” Solstice said, matching his salute.

“It would, and maybe we can get you back before the war’s over.” Point Blank sighed.

“However long it is, we wish you luck Colonel.” Luna nodded, before taking her leave with the other two.

Glass sighed. The jaws had let him go of their own accord. Another success, though this was easier than any other time. As he walked out of the halls, his own footsteps closed in on his psyche, each thundering step drawing in closer on his mind. He was about to transfer himself from the EUP’s jaws to Hell’s.

“Trixie does not want to kill you.” I shook my head. After all this time in excruciating exile, hundreds of years at that, it struck me as odd that he’d only want death and not vengeance as well. If I were sent to Tartarus by Celestia, not hard to imagine, and was atomized and stuffed in a bag of bandages by her, I’d want to disassemble her. Her entire kingdom too, for that matter.

There’s another thing that didn’t quite add up. He’d killed tens of thousands of ponies, strong ponies at that. If he were really trying to prevent some sort of otherworldly creature from destroying the solar system, he’d unite all the forces under the sun. Killing them on such a scale would only lessen the odds to win.

I scratched my neck and glanced to my left. Only a sinking onyx greeted me. To my right, a slightly darker black, but still nothing discernible. I could only see myself and Arkon, but I had the sinking feeling that the unknown hid something distant at any direction from me. My barriers might’ve been intended as a detriment, but they’re coming out to my benefit. These pink royal barriers were the only thing between me and whatever unspeakable horrors dwelled here.

The one that did speak, however, spoke again. His voice thundering from all directions. “What!?” I recoiled as I felt that familiar pain beyond words. “You can leave here! You can escape Hell itself and resurrect your sister! You could have everything you’ve ever wanted and more with my power. Why won’t you kill me and take it!?”

I choked a pained cry as a response. I could feel a grip around me, adding to the already indescribable pain. It pressed into me, nearly popping my head off. Then all at once it stopped, and left no remnant. “A better question.” I hacked, blood splattering across my barrier. The grip must’ve punctured my organs. It didn't matter. If Arkon wanted what I suspected he did, he wouldn’t kill me. “Why haven’t you killed Trixie yet?”

Arkon’s laugh echoed across the infinite dark expanse. It rattled my very bones, embedding themselves deeper into my organs. The being’s face contorted into a twisted smile. “You’re smarter than I thought.”

“That doesn’t answer her question.” I slammed my eyes shut, enduring the pain coming from everywhere inside me.

“You haven’t answered mine either. Why not kill me and leave?” His freakish sneer barely straightened. The heat coming through my barriers was growing hotter.

“And she’s already answered you. Trixie doesn’t want to kill you.” I didn’t feel any pain, at least not beyond the internal one. I had expected that he’d tear me in half and piece me back together. Instead, I only felt the warmth grow more intense.

“WHY DON’T YOU!?” There the pain was. It was equally insufferable, but it felt weaker somehow. Instead of every nerve sending a signal of mortal pain, they sent one of near-mortal pain. It was far from tolerable, but it meant that Arkon was either growing weaker or I was growing more resistant.

“Trixie feels that you aren’t being honest with her. That you’re up to something. You could kill her, take her form and the Amulet and free yourself. What are you up to that you won’t do just that?” I placed a hoof on the bloodstain of my innermost barrier, then yanked it back when I felt it starting to boil.

There was no reply. Arkon’s form only swelled, his contents threatening to burst and potentially annihilate me, even through my protection. I saw visions within my mind of my bones piercing through my skin, each one a knife carving me. I saw myself, splayed open burning all the while hearing my own screams climbing in pitch as I saw myself die. This was Arkon’s reply. I could almost feel it, as though it had happened to me dozens of times.

He was right. He was giving me the opportunity to claim all the power I’d ever dream of. Certainly enough to not only bring Sabrina back, but eliminate the world if I so chose. All I had to do was kill him. Then I realized it. How was I going to kill him? I looked down, and there was a familiar pink shell.

Odd. Before I came into Tartarus, the barrier wasn’t closed off on the ground, but here it was below me. If I was going to kill Arkon, I’d have to remove my barriers. Within that same instant, he could seize upon me and do just what I questioned him of. He wasn’t a hero, even if his threat was imagined or not! He was a villain to end villains! I was nothing more than the Amulet returned to him. He didn’t care whether or not I escaped or conquered death. He wanted to be death itself!

“Arkon. Trixie will not kill you. She will find her own way out of Tartarus.” I stood straight, only to return to a pained hunch after pain shot through my body. I expected Arkon to do anything to me that would bring me as close to death as possible, but I didn’t fear him anymore. He couldn’t kill me. Even if it took me years, even if I felt unnameable pain all throughout, I would free myself from Hell.

The heat evaporated the blood in front of me, and a sickening iron smell haunted my nose. I was breathing in my own blood. Arkon’s form had been scattering itself before, but it had always returned stable soon after. It had become scattered, but it hadn’t returned itself. As light started to peek out from under his bandages, another thought had occurred to me.

There was nopony else here. Maybe it was because Tartarus was as close to infinite as something could be, or maybe… Arkon had slain everything here. These barriers were the only things protecting me from hell itself. Were it not for them, I would’ve been dead. Worse than dead, my body would be used to bring about the apocalypse!

“There’s no escape from here, Trixie. I am your escape, your only option.” His glowing unstable form approached me, the heat growing unbearable as I could smell my fur burning.

“You’ve lied to her about your past, and Trixie knows you’re lying to her about your plans. What’s to say that you’re not lying now?” I backed up as far as I could within my pink sphere.

“Nothing. You can trust me and leave, or distrust me and stay here for eternity with me.” His form now swam across my entire field of vision. He was above me, below me, all around me. Pink runes amid a brown sea was my sight.

“Wrong. Trixie can trust you and die, or she can distrust you and escape, and see you tortured the entire time while she tries to find a way out.” I returned to the center of my bubble, focusing my magic to regenerate my wounds, but finding no success. Whatever I repaired was torn apart directly after.

“How could you torture me within there?” Laughter came from all around.

“Trixie has the Amulet, and will always have it. The thing you want the most will always be hers!” I felt my eyes begin to melt, only to be held together by Arkon’s unseen force. I ignored the pain, feeling beyond it with the knowledge I can win.

“But I always have you here, is that not the same?” His voice sounded distorted, like it was coming through water.

“Exactly. You will always have Trixie here, but you will never escape. You’ll always be here with me. You’ll lose Arkon. And when Trixie’s gone, you’ll be reminded of how you lost everything twice!” The glow, initially dull, was now blinding. Light radiated from all around me with the brightness of the sun. Arkon was about to…!

Glass River leaned on a cliff face, the sun baking him inside his black scale armor. He’d been greedily drinking down water for hours staring into the canyon wall before him, stopping to shake sand from his body occasionally. Concrete had given him directions to this specific spot, and he could still see shards of molten plastic embedded in the walls on his way here.

He knew this was the right spot, but he’d been positioned here with his tent just a brief walk from the wall that held Tartarus for almost three weeks. He’d lived off of rations and MRE’s before, but even then he could usually scavenge the local area for some food to make it interesting. There was nothing in this desert except sand and the occasional skull pepper. That novelty lasted all of one bite.

He chuckled at the thought of some innumerably powerful threat coming out and seeing him sputtering for air, steam practically pouring out his ears. At least it’d be somepony else out here. The Colonel empathized with the Corporal that patrolled this very area. He remembered being a young recruit and having to do punishment assignments like this one. Though, he had gotten a lucky break in the form of a sword. Burst never got his.

The autopsy ruled it a murder, with the time of death before Solar Team 12’s. Concrete wasn’t in that area then, only half of the team that she ordered to be there. He let out a sigh. There was no way she could have known he was dead. He thought that he should probably apologize.

He shook his head. Concrete knew better. She must’ve known that he didn’t know better about her knowing better. He shook his head again. He’d give anything to hear Major Overdrive play her cello right about now. She always knew how to play her emotions in the strings, sometimes triumphant or screeching melodies of anger. Most times it was just to fill dead air like this.

He chuckled. He’d give his sword just to hear one of Lieutenant Hindsight’s jokes. That stallion always knew how to make a heavy situation lighter, or a light situation enjoyable. He sighed, or one of Captain Bear Claw’s war stories. He could always feel like he was there in some legendary fight. Glass liked hearing them even though he was a war story himself, and could fill a shelf with his experiences. It made him feel like a foal again to hear Bear’s gruff voice weave a tale of battle, the stallion illuminated by firelight.

He sniffed. Or have one of Sergeant 1st Class Apple Turnover’s rations they made before an expedition, or the ones he’d make with whatever they had on the road. The whole team would always laugh when he described anything with that thick Hayseed Swamp accent of his. He sounded like he’d eaten nothing but cigarettes since he got his cutie mark.

Glass wiped a tear from his eye. He missed most of all that steely conviction of Lieutenant Colonel Diamond Dust. Solar Team 8 was already a crack fighting force, but they were stronger, smarter, and faster with her around. She was like a mother to the group. One of the few unicorns from Cloudsdale, she’d faced adversity as long as she could remember. She was used to burden, and saw to it that they were too.

Though, under all that toughness and determination, lay a heart of flesh and blood like the rest of them. He missed his whole team, he missed Equestria. Less than that but still present, he missed action. A great war with the zebra nation, and here he was watching a wall. He might as well have been watching a wall of paint dry for weeks, or a patch of grass grow.

With a nod, he packed his stuff and started for his tent. He was done with the Badlands, and he was headed back to the frontline of the war, where they needed him. He wondered if there was even a war left, or if they’d won and had already celebrated. Surely they’d save some cider for him, or some of that wine Turnover was aging.

A deafening explosion behind him drew his attention. Rune inscribed boulders hurled themselves at him, meeting the end of a sword, which flurried them to glowing pink sand. He heard chuckling, low at first but rising to a series of blood curdling screams that barely resembled a laugh. The dust had yet to settle, but there in the dust was a figure, a sickening crimson glow lighting all the fallout.

The EUP had let him from its jaws voluntarily. But whatever this was had broken every tooth of Hell to break from its grip. All alone, his blue glowing blade was challenging a bloodied ruby. The Infinite Swordsman held the world on his shoulders in that moment. This was his last stand.

Mutual Annihilation

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Blinding light grew only brighter around me, filtered only more intensely by the pink around me. Arkon was preparing to explode around me, and I was powerless to do anything but brace myself. From every plausible direction, two words scorched across my mind in Arkon’s haunting voice, which shifted itself up and down constantly. “Hell’s Singularity!”

I slammed my eyes shut as I felt indescribable heat erupt from all around me, the sound of glass shattering exploded in my ears twice and the sickening noise of cracking filled my ears. I opened my eyes, only to see white greet me. I felt my fur burning away, and my blood beneath it boil. I crumbled onto my only remaining, cracking barrier and waited for death.

***

“‘Ey, Trix’, yous mind comin’ o’er ‘ere a second?” Paid Tab called from behind the service counter adjacent to the bar and overlooking the many tables. The lights were their usual dim, and the band played its familiar casual tune. There weren’t many customers today, as some opera I couldn’t pronounce the name of had just come to the opera house. Anypony who was anypony, or at least wanted to be somepony, was watching it. Still, the band was paid to play, and so they did. Sometimes, a stray saxophone melody would play as I stepped out into the dining room, the band liked to have fun that way.

It was an easy night, the kind I loved to work and Sabrina detested. She always loved talking to the patrons about her drawings or what she learned that day. Anything to keep their attention, really. Paid Tab wasn’t paying me much, or above the table either, but it was something. Enough to amass a small savings, and in time I would be able to get an apartment on the lower end of the city. It wouldn’t be enough for furniture, or a fridge full of food, but it would be a roof. More than that, it would be dignified.

I met Tab in the kitchen, which was lit brightly like a warehouse would be, as opposed to the dim moody lighting of the dining room. I leaned my mop against one of the stainless steel counters and jerked my head up at him. “Whaddya need, Tab? Gutters cleaned? Sidewalk swept? Grease trap cleared out?” All were met with him shaking his head. “Oh, I get it, you want me to rough somepony up. I was waitin’ for the day you’d ask me, oh, who is it?” I clapped my hooves together slowly. “Is it that Paper Trail? Or that Zesty Gourmand, let me at 'em!”

He slapped a hoof on my shoulder, snapping me from my train of thought. My face dropped with my stomach. There was a glassiness in his eyes, whatever he was about to say, and I could figure out what it was. He wasn’t going to like telling me. “Trixie, I gots to lay yous off.”

“Why? Purse running tight? I can work for cheaper, honest!” I tried to keep my lip from quivering, unsuccessfully. He couldn’t do this, not when I was so close.

“That ain’t it, Trixie. I’ve been runnin’ in the red fer a while nows. An’ look, if it were up to me, you an’ your sis wouldn’t just be on Bridleway, I’d put you up on Madison Mare Garden.” He raised his hooves up, as though reaching for the ceiling. “But you knows I ain’t got that power.” He dropped them.

I shook my head. “I don’t understan’, Tab. Why is it when things go wrong, they always break on me and my sis? Why can’t you lay off one of those waitresses from Manehattan? I’m sure that Ginger Root doesn’t have a filly to feed!” I felt my anger rise with my volume.

Tab quickly glanced over both his shoulders before leaning into me. “Look, Trix. You know I don’t wanna do this, don’t twist the knife, dig? I can’t fire them cause, well, cause they ain’t unsightly.”

My eyes snapped open wide. “Excuse me?”

Paid gulped. “Look, that ain’t what I meant. What I mean is that yous have a filly sittin’ at the bar, that kills the mood for most folk comin’ in ‘ere. You understan’ dontcha?”

I wiped my eye. “No, Tab. I don’t. I’m this close to gettin’ a place, and you’re takin’ the rug out from under me.” I squeezed my eyes and shook my head. “No Tab, I don’t understand why you have to do this to me.”

He wiped his eyes. “I know. I don’t understan’ why it’s gotta be this way. The best I can do is what I usually do, and for you, it’s laying you off and gettin’ you back when things are better, capiche?”

I felt my emotions hollow out, then anger bubbled in their stead. In one motion, I pushed him away and picked up the mop from the counter, snapping it promptly. I stomped out of the kitchen, grabbing Sabrina from her kid’s menu that she was happily coloring in. “C'mon, Sabrina, we’re not welcome here.” The band ceased playing and looked on in curiosity. To them, this was drama as usual from that homeless mare. Even though they were paid to entertain, I was their show.

Pad Tab came from behind the bar, as I looked down and saw Sabrina’s eyes filling with tears. “Look, Trixie, it won’t be long. I promise.”

“Your word ain’t shit to me, Tab. It will be when you got work for me.” I was at the door when Sabrina said something about crayons.
Tab called from behind his counter.“This ain’t personal Trixie, don’t make it.”

I only huffed. I didn’t want to make it worse, and I knew that saying something would only pick at the wound. I already wasn’t taking the high road, and I knew I could go lower. It would feel good to put him in his place, but that would only make it worse. A chance at work was better than a chance I lost.

We sat in the alleyway. To Sabrina, it was always familiar. This was what home looked like since the fire, after all. But to me, it looked like disappointment and it was going to stay that way for however long Tab took to get me back. Anger coursed through me, only magnifying when I looked to my shoddy belongings and the rundown lowlife in the puddle looking back at me.

“I left my crayons in there you know?” Sabrina pouted, kicking a pebble into the other side of the brick alley. She said it as though it was an inconvenience, that her crayons would return to her eventually.

I broke my stare from the bum in the puddle and looked at Sabrina. A simple blonde and pink filly, unlike any of the other Lulamoons. Her hair was matted, flecks of dirt clinging to split ends. I sighed. Paid Tab was right, we were unsightly. I looked back to the unkempt mare in the puddle, whose image now rippled. He was right.

“I’m sorry, Sabrina. We’ll do better.” I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see her anymore, that rippling mare.

“I know, but you always say that.” She said matter-of-factly. “It has gotten better, you know?”

“What?” I opened my eyes again. It was still an alley, still had rats wander in as though they were roommates. It still didn’t have any protection from the rain save for an umbrella with holes. Though I could manage a forcefield spell strong enough to keep out the rain, I wasn’t able to do so overnight.

“I mean, it could be worse. We could have no money. You could have no library card instead of just me not having one. We could be hungry right now, but I’m not and I don’t think you are.”

She was right. Even if we were still living in a gutter, it wasn’t completely a wreck. And though it looked like rock bottom, there was still a lower life to live somewhere beneath us. As for hunger, I was happy to hear she wasn’t, and I’d let her keep thinking I wasn’t. “Yeah, I guess so, Sabrina. I just want it to be better than this, you know?”

“I know.” She plainly said, levitating a book I recently checked out for her. Sabrina couldn’t care less about today, and I admired that. Even though I lost my job, however unstable it was, and even if we were in an alley together, she still was perfectly fine with everything. It must be that undying optimism she has. Long live that filly’s hope.

“Well.” I started, leaning my head in front of her, breaking her view of the book. “I think somepony needs an éclair.” Her face lit up.

“Can I? Can I, sis, you mean it?” She tossed the small blue book on the faded blankets beneath her.

I put my hoof to my chin. “I don’t know… I think I need to hear some magic words.”

“Oh! Ple-e-ease!” She bounced with glee.

“Did you say something?” I tilted my head, feigning confusion.

“PLEASE BIG SIS!” She closed her eyes and giddily shouted in my ear.

“Yeah, I think I can do something. Wait right here, okay?” I slyly said, walking out of the alley with a few bits in tow.

It wasn’t much for her, but it was enough to keep her happy. More than happy, really. Sabrina was nearly obsessed with pastries like this, and luckily for her, the baker down the street knew me and my situation and threw a discount my way. If only he had work for me too...

Though Canterlot always tested us, it was her optimism that always pulled us through. The world could throw us its worst and we’d prevail, cause no matter what, we’d have each other. The one thing the world couldn’t take away was all that we needed. Though, I couldn’t shake that determination to do better for her. Even if all we needed was each other, I wanted more for her. I breathed a small laugh. It was nice to know that if I shot for the stars, Sabrina would be okay with the planets.

I returned with a small paper bag with a pastry for each of us. Sabrina was… coloring in the same kid’s menu she was before. That Paid Tab had apparently found his heart. As we both sank our teeth into the flaky sweet, it was nice to know that we weren’t alone. It was at that moment that my anger for Paid Tab subsided. He meant it and he cared. It was while I licked the remaining bits of chocolate from my hooves that I realized, Sabrina and I didn't have to brave the world on our own.

***

A disorienting ringing blared in my ears as I stepped out from Tartarus. With Arkon gone, I could, and did, finally heal my wounds both internal and external. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. My sides hurt, my stomach ached, and my mouth hurt. I laughed as I strode out of Hell’s very own mouth, and I laughed as I looked to my body which has singed hair in patchy portions and burnt flesh everywhere else. And I laughed when the dust finally settled, and there was a single Solar Team swordsman glaring daggers at me.

“Trixie assumes the crowns sent you to kill her.” I couldn’t keep from giggling. I couldn’t believe it. After everything, here I was. General Concrete couldn’t stop me, Hell couldn’t stop me, and the EUP as a whole couldn’t stop me, though they still tried. I was invincible, there was no other reason for it. How could I have survived a fire as a child, the streets growing up on them, the Amulet disintegrating me, and the Harbinger of the Cataclysm himself. If there was a higher power, it was looking out for me.

No. I was that higher power. I was a god walking among Equestria now with Arkon’s power. Tens of thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of ponies power, now at my hooves. That possible higher power wasn’t looking out for me, they were appeasing me. They feared me, as should this insolent welp before me. His eyes cast no fear and that sword… I’d seen that sword before.

No! I squeezed my eyes shut, shaking my head. I hadn’t, Arkon had. He’d slain the previous wielder of that sword as I’d slain him. How funny. I shook my head once more, harder this time. This wasn’t me, this wasn’t how I thought! Could it be that absorbing Arkon had made me this way? No, that wasn’t possible. I’d killed Paper Trail and knew his memories, sure, but my way of thinking remained the same.

Sterling Glint as well, upon killing him I had inherited his memories and muscle memory too. But I didn’t think anything like a soldier or a cook. Solar Team 12 had compounded this too. So what more could it be…? Did Arkon have some kind of connection with the Amulet that he hadn't told me about? No, if that was the case, I’d be able to look into his memories and find it.

My eyes shot wide open. There were no memories of Arkon’s life because Arkon was never alive. Memories of the previous Amulet bearers swam back to me. King Sombra, who used its power to enslave a nation to war with Celestia. Emperor Skeleton Key, who used it to conquer all of the known lands at the time, from sea to sea. Then there was Black Ice. The one Celestia called that Harbinger of the Cataclysm.

A cold, sadistic stallion with bloodlust to burn the entire world. I understood him because I felt him. Within the mass of bandages wasn’t just Black Ice, it was every pony who had ever worn the Amulet, dare I speculate that it was everypony in Tartarus. A small nation’s worth of ponies wasn’t enough for Black Ice, he had to take the lives of every pony in Hell itself. I blinked, seeing my last barrier barely remain intact.

Indeed, Arkon wasn’t one pony. It was everypony who wore the Amulet and came in contact with it, save for Celestia. And even in multiple deaths, Black Ice remained to claw at their psyche and mine. He won. He had taken me over, however briefly. If I was going to survive and revive Sabrina, I would not only have to defeat the most powerful swordsman in the world, but also the most powerful threat to all worlds within me. No, I would defeat them.

Celestia’s barriers had saved me, though I doubted she had wanted them to do so. No, that couldn’t be. Celestia’s thousands of years old, and wise even beyond those years. Her tactical acumen is peerless, and her knowledge of things magical is second to only her sister and maybe Starswirl the Bearded. She would have known the barriers would survive. To her, I was a massive threat who took out the worse one. And in killing me, Arkon would die too.

I underestimated her, that sly goddess. She played me for her own interests, she gambled her entire nation and won. Even then, she’s the princess, she could rebuild it and remain in power regardless. Nopony challenges her, and I don’t blame them. If somepony could lift the sun itself, I’d avoid their bad side. Even I didn’t want to cross the sun. Hell, her using me like this is a bargaining chip for me.

I could absolutely spin this in my favor, that there was no threat in Equestria beyond me. I had killed every threat in Tartarus, and from that I could ask for my pardoning and permission to revive my sister. I could convince the sun, but first I’d need to convince her sword.

The swordsman leaned his sword further forward, it was a glowing arrow pointed at me, begging to be loosed. “The crowns did send for me, yes. But it was General Concrete before that. You knew her didn’t you?”

I snorted. “Knew her? She was put here by her. If she predicted Trixie to break out of Tartarus, then give her a third star.”

“She already has her third. She’s brilliant, I’ll give her that, but she’s been without tact recently.” He leered. “Regardless, she isn’t here to face you. I am. I’m Colonel Glass River, the Infinite Swordsman. I usually don’t care for introductions, but I figured it would be the historical thing to do here.”

I nearly laughed. How chivalrous this one was! I glanced behind me and found that Hell’s door was now a gaping maw. “Look, if you want history to remember you well, help Trixie close this up.” I jerked my head at the blown apart entrance.

“You’re serious?” The sword withdrew upward, only slightly. His guard wavered but remained. “You expect me to trust you?”

“No, she doesn’t. But she does trust you to think about this: It was only her and this thing, Arkon, in there. But Trixie doesn’t wanna take the chance that whatever might be left in there could get out. It’d be bad for both of us.”

“Fine. But I’m keeping my sword on you. You seal it up. I won’t strike.” His face still remained an intimidating glare. Or it would if I had been intimidated. I knew that if this ended with diplomacy or a bloodbath, I’d be the one winning both.

“On your honor?” I mocked, smiling with all the faux friendliness I could manage. His eyes narrowed. “Fine! Trixie won’t push her luck.”

I grasped every piece of rubble from the blast and reassembled it in the chasm of a cliff crater, a blizzard of sand and stone all fitted into one place. Anti-arcane runes scorched across the wall in a blazing red, the signature of the Amulet.

My barrier shattered and a sword grazed my cheek, instantly cauterizing the shallow scrape, and embedding itself into the newly created cliff face. I jumped, instantly turning to face my now combatant. He still had his sword despite it being in the wall at the same time. Two swords? Then the memory of it surfaced again: It could multiply itself, and did so to near-infinite amounts when striking something. The sword and its user had no issue sending a duplicate wherever. It was the illusion that it could cut anything, but it was really a rather simple, but clever optical trick. The scarier part was that each of those swords could also duplicate to strike.

“So much for your honor!” I laughed. “You really should treat her better, don’t you know what Trixie has just done?”

“Enlighten me.” I could swear I saw a stripe of confusion on his face. “What will I tell the history books?”

“Oh, how bold! You think you’ll be the one writing it. May Trixie remind you that it’s the victors that write history?”

“I’m aware.” A hoofful of swords circled above him in an iridescent halo.

“Then she’ll be writing that she had just killed Arkon and sealed Tartarus behind her.” I looked skyward, pride practically dripping from my face.

“I’ll be writing that but what’s your point?” The circle of swords doubled, picking up speed as they spun. I felt a shock of anxiety spark through me. I know I could just teleport away from any other combatant, but this wasn’t just anypony. He’d be prepared for anything I’d do, except maybe….

I placed a hoof on my chest. “Trixie saved Equestria. The princess knows what she did in there, and likely sent her in there for that express purpose.”

“To kill a prisoner that wouldn’t have broken out?” The number of blades was getting uncomfortable; he was definitely planning something, and I was letting him build towards it.

“Yes, but Trixie takes it you have no idea just who that prisoner was?” His look didn’t change and the number behind him only grew larger. I tugged at my collar. “He was Arkon, the amalgamation of every evil in there. Killing him was in Celestia’s interest, wouldn’t you speculate?”

“No. You’ve become stronger than him, so you’ve only increased the danger.” A few swords shot towards me, I barely had time to react. Luckily I could slow it to allow me to nimbly dodge each one. “If what you say is true, and I expect you to lie to me, Celestia would want all evil she’s previously contained to be wrapped up in one neat package? And in killing you, would end all of them?”

I nodded. “Killing Trixie would be her order, but forgiving her would be her will.”

“What!?” There it was! Genuine confusion across that violet face of his! I could seize on this doubt to weasel a pardon out of him, at least for a certain time. Maybe even an audience before Celestia herself!

“Listen to Trixie.” This would be a pitch for the angels, but I was a showpony before I was the conquering hero. “The princess imprisoned them, showed them mercy, would you agree?”

“No, I wouldn’t. She put them there because killing them was too kind a mercy.” His voice returned to the usual unchanging low it had started at. Sand buffeted both of us, and though it stuck to our manes and coat, I was the only one to shake it loose. His voice refused to move even a single octave. “Even if Celestia forgave you, Equestria wouldn’t. We buried Solar Team 12 just recently. You made an enemy of the nation. Hating you is not only normal, but it’s looked upon as a favor to the nation itself. Before them, though, I’d have to forgive you. At this moment, I’m the judge, the jury, and the executioner.”

I sighed. “So, Trixie’s the villain? Again?”

He let out a single note of amusement. “That would make me a hero on top of that then. Again.” A smirk found its way across a small corner of his mouth, just barely noticeable. “I can tell that diplomacy isn’t your forte, and truth be told I’d love to smite you.”

“You couldn’t.” I scoffed.

“However.” He emphasized, taking a few steps towards me. Each crunch in the sand was deafening, as though Equestria itself took a step when he did. “Concrete’s report lays it out like she trusted you. Your intentions aren’t evil, but your methods are. Here in the EUP, the means make the ends, and your means are unjustifiable.”

He launched a volley of swords in my direction, each one missing and peppering the earth around me. Glass took a few more thundering steps towards me, his figure backlit by the sun stood center in between two canyon walls. I backed away, my tail hitting the dull side of a sword. I gulped.

“History will remember this, Trixie, as the Second Battle Beneath Heaven’s Fissure. The day that evil died, and you’ll take your place as the bloody ink that writes that chapter in history!” His aura spread across the hilts of every sword, the ring of swords behind him lit with a new red glow to their cobalt.

“Trixie… can make it worth your while… she swears!” I wished I could sneer. That I could smile the widest grin I could manage. He was falling right into my trap.

“Not interested.” The swords all shot forward through the sand, like a shark’s dorsal fin through the ocean. Within the same moment that they were about to connect, I created a wormhole dome around me, and around the Colonel. He could never see this coming.

I was expecting the sound of muscle tearing from sinew, bones being shattered, anything. I peeked from my rippling navy dome and saw no swords but one poised to pierce my head. Impossible! He could make them all vanish! That wasn’t in any memory! The idea to even do this came from Black Ice doing this very same thing to the last user of that…. sword…

No. I’d have to use the wormholes around me and him.

I shot a magic bolt into the wormhole and I heard it connect with bloody success. A sword fell to the sand with its master, who hadn't thought to do this to me before I did it to him. The next sword user would have the jump on this technique, however. In fact, the next user would’ve invented that technique!

I threw off the wormholes to find a swordsman with a bleeding hole in either cheek crumpled in the sand, coagulated with his own blood, he flung himself upward, throwing his sword to one end of my face and his iron-shoed hoof to the other. I lurched my head backward, narrowly dodging his attack, only for his other free hoof to sweep me off my hooves as soon as his other landed.

Instinctually, I threw a firestorm below me, instantly fusing all the sand into glass, to put distance between him and me. The Colonel saw straight through me and charged through the fire, swords in every direction he wasn’t. The look in his eyes was murderous and focused, he was determined to walk away from this the hero. I was determined to walk away as Sabrina’s. I teleported above him, stealing a sword from his grip and multiplying it myself. I sent a storm of blades down at him, only for each one to vanish before it hit the ground.

Though I knew how to fight with his equipment, he was still far more experienced in combat than I. He’d seen every trick I could possibly throw at him multiple times. This was Equestria’s best, truly. My hooves hit the sand, only to be instantly swept upward. I collided into the scorched glass. Hard. A series of swords rushed straight towards me, each one drawing lines in the sand as they grew nearer.

I sprang up, kicking off one of the sword hilts and launching myself into the air. If fighting defensively always ended up with me on my back, I needed to force him to go on the defensive. Several swords shot out at me, I slowed time to nimbly kick off each one, only gaining more height.

Tossing a quick glance to the sky. My fissure was still there. Perfect. I shot as many tiny bolts of magic as I could manage, I needed to throw him off balance. I needed a clean, decisive strike. He dodged each one with impossible agility, tossing a sword back to counter each bolt. I noticed he was slowing, sputtering blood with every few movements which left a trail behind him.

If I could just stall him out a little longer, I could dodge his assault easily. I could turn this narrow victory into a mockery of the EUP. How dare he try to assault a god! My vision dripped with red, as I shot myself towards him, my hoof outstretched.

I screamed as my hoof connected directly with one of his swords, splitting it cleanly down the middle. I spat the blood bubbling in my mouth in his face. It was black. That couldn’t be... No, it could and it was. Blood was for mortals, but the onyx ichor was for gods like myself.

His face was one of unfocused rage. He still maintained his wrath, but his body couldn’t maintain its ability to enact it. I sent the black blood from my halved hoof directly onto his face and proceeded to boil it. His guttural, gurgling scream was music to my ears. I wasn’t done though. I closed each half of my hoof around the sword, regenerating it just enough to…!

He began wildly slashing his sword, blades dropping from the sky at random locations and intervals. Some blinked into existence only to hurl themselves forward. It was a blizzard and I was caught directly in it, trying to dodge each infinitely sharpened snowflake, all the while my split hoof spilled blood.

Blades had carved up the canyon, nearly decimating it. Cliffs were barely being held together, and with each new addition, threatened to collapse. A fan of swords snapped me from my thinking, catching my left foreleg and disconnecting it from my body. It fell to the ground limply, draining all of its blood in an inky puddle.

Glass’ screams turned to a deafening roar, which reverberated across the landscape. The cliffs barely clung together, but there was no way they’d hold for much longer. A blue aura overcame my amputated appendage. Glass cackled, turning into a ferocious snarl. My leg instantly incinerated.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I wasn’t going to patiently wait for an opening to launch a perfect attack. A poetic end wasn’t fitting for this bastard. I pulled the sword from my remaining foreleg, doubled it, and plunged it into each of Glass’ forelegs. He was sent into a coughing fit, each burst of air sending with it a mass of blood. I magically gripped my hoof, and struck directly into the hole in the side of his face, knocking every tooth from his mouth along with clumps of crimson.

He would’ve been flung had I not anchored him telekinetically to the ground. He took the full force of my blow. I struck him over and over, turning his face to a pulp and reforging it only to return it to a pulp again. I struck my last blow, his face unrecognizable. He fell limply to the ground with a weak laugh.

“What’s funny? That your blood is writing this chapter of history instead?” I sneered.

“No.” He said, nearly devoid of any energy. “Infinite… Tsunami…” His voice was barely above a whisper. It was my turn to laugh. What could he possibly do to me with his face utterly boiled away, and most of his blood lost? He was waiting to die, for me to kill him more accurately.

I laughed as the first sword skewered through my back, pinning me. I laughed as a swarm descended on me, as it pierced every part of my body, and I laughed as I saw Glass River cling to his last breath. Though it was my final breath to administer, his last breath was mine. I turned my mass of blood on his face into a wall of thorny tendrils that shot into his head.

Every sword vanished from my body, my wounds immediately filling themselves in, save for the lost foreleg. I incinerated his body, along with the sand nearby, fusing it into blackened glass. I shaped it into an ornate urn, and gingerly placed his ashes inside. I took the scale armor, and crunched it down into a false leg, connecting most of it with my stump, and using the rest to line the inside of my cloak. This was my souvenir; the EUP would have theirs shortly. I materialized a piece of paper and a quill with ink and began writing.

My head shot up, my head began to flood with memories, too many at once! I tumbled into the sand, the void in the sky staring back at me as I blacked out.

***

“You mean it, really you will!?”

“Of course I’ll marry you, Glass! You goofball! You and your awful cooking!”

Glass fidgeted in a hospital chair, florescent lights buzzing above him in a hallway of polite blue walls and dull white tile. He was reminiscing about the day he proposed to Strawberry Cream. It was a hot summer’s day, the kind that there wasn’t enough sweet tea in the world to cool one off. Still, Glass and Cream tried their damndest to drain every last drop on her family’s farm.

He’d tried cooking for the first time, packing all of his creations in a small wicker basket his mother gave him. It was one of the only things left to him in the will. He thought a picnic would impress his belle, and it would’ve worked too, if he could only cook.

He’d gotten better since then, but no matter how skilled he got, he’d always remember the taste of burnt hay in his mouth as he gave her his grandmother’s ring. It came all the way from the Crystal Empire, and he’d made sure not a single scratch came across any of its transparent surfaces. He felt safe giving it to her, he knew she’d feel the same way he did about it.

They’d been married for years at this point and had been trying for a foal just slightly longer than that. Though, the first few attempts early on weren’t intentional. They’d finally succeeded, and Glass had been told to wait outside until the doctor came to him. This wasn’t the usual way of doing things, and he knew that. If it was within his power, he’d be right there with her, but the powers that be decided to keep him outside her room until it was over.

The door to her room unlatched and the doctor emerged, closing the door behind her. She did not look happy. Glass River hung his head, there wasn’t anything that needed to be said. They had warned them both about this possibility being likely, but they were both young. They thought they were invincible. That always happens to some other couple, but not us. Cream had died delivering a stillborn foal. A large piece of Glass died in that hallway, and the remains left in that chair.

As Glass River walked out of the hospital, he remembered an offer from Brigadier General Stellar Solstice. Maybe he could avenge his wife and child if he climbed through the ranks, but if he did, he’d have to tell no one and trust no one as he rose.

***

A glowing blade snapped into existence above Stellar Solstice’s desk, its point piercing through the thick cherry wood and was stopped by its intricate handle just shy of cutting the cyan carpet below. The sun was setting outside the office windows, casting a warm apricot orange shade over everything the light touched. Within the next instant, an ornate black urn snapped beside the sword, a letter affixed to it.

The greying Field Marshall knew this could be one of two things, but surveying the items on his punctured desk, the Amulet was not one of them. He closed his eyes, which grew heavy with sorrow. He remembered drilling a promising Private back when he was younger, a violet pony with an indomitable spirit. Solstice had been impressed with the stallion’s natural swordsman abilities from a stray fencing performance and had offered him a position in the EUP.

Of all the places he expected that stallion to go, the very top was not one of them. Then again, when he was a private, he never expected to be Field Marshall. He let out a weighty breath, a single solemn note of amusement tucked somewhere within. They were similar like that: Both climbing the ranks, both climbing together, and both starting from the very bottom. Of all the places he expected that stallion to go, the grave was not one.

Solstice didn’t need to read the letter, he knew what it said without having to look at it. It could be one of two things, an apology for his death, or an invitation to war. Of them both, the answer was the same. He shook his head. Declaring war on a single pony wasn’t unlike the princess, Sombra was proof of that in recent history. He just didn’t believe that the nation would have to do so again so soon.

Nor did he want to oversee a war that would likely end in Equestria’s elimination. If this mare had not only broken out of Tartarus but killed what was within the escape, there would be no amount of power the princess could throw at her that could stop her. Except for the six in Ponyville.

He shook his head. That was the very last line of defense, and Equestria wasn’t on its last legs, nor is Trixie only stoppable by them. He hunched over with the weight of the knowledge that Equestria’s final lines of defenses were being eroded away one by one. Soon they’d have to be deployed, but that time was not now.

The Field Marshall knew that when you start a war, you don’t send the calvary in first. You send in the scouts first. He’d have to order Solar Team 8 to follow General Concrete to intercept Trixie wherever she might be. If the General’s reports were accurate, and they seldom were off by even a single degree, she’d be headed for Canterlot. Now with all the power in the world, she’d want to try and resurrect her sister.

The distance between Tartarus’ gate and Caterlot was vast, it would take even an athletic pony two weeks to accomplish this on foot. If the items on his desk were any indication, Trixie could simply appear in the graveyard, and could already be there now. Concrete laid out though in her contingency plan, that Trixie would walk, attempting to gain as much power as she could before attempting.

If there was anypony who could remove Trixie as a threat, it would be Concrete. She was close to an agreement in their last interaction before unforeseen events altered their arrangement. If the General was to undoubtedly convince Trixie that she could be forgiven, she would need a pardon. It would require Solstice’s own signature or the crowns’. If it were to be foolproof, he would need their signatures and his.

A pardon in ink, with the most powerful ponies in the land agreeing to it would be impossible to reject. She would get what she wanted, and Equestria would get what it wants. A sister and peace respectively. A document like this, in the hands of Concrete and Solar Team 8, both who are known for their absolute discretion, would see to executing the operation with integrity. Nothing could go wrong because all of them would know the stakes, and would not impede.

Solstice removed his cap, placing it gently on his desk before slamming his hoof down. He was going to make reparations to a threat to tranquility after they killed the nation’s hero. He didn’t know whether to explode or weep. This was the corner he was backed into. This was the corner that the crowns were backed into. And this was the corner the nation was pinned into.

This meant that he’d have to tell Celestia about the death of her prized swordsman, where he was and why. The right hoof of the sun would have to be incinerated by it, and it would endure for the fate of the world.

Snakes in the Garden

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Princess Luna shuffled through the cavernous royal hallway, with its impossibly high ceiling and marble floors that reflected her somber face back at her. She stopped on the trailing red carpet, turning her gaze to one of the many stained glass windows lining the tunnel-like hall. Some displayed the deeds of her and her sister, others martial feats like Concrete sealing Trixie away, or Solar Team 8 along with a sea of soldiers planting the Equestrian flag on the zebra nation. Glass River was setting the flag.

She shook her head, looking to the others, involving the Elements. The most recent of which was Twilight solving one of Starswirl the Bearded’s old spells. She even surprised Celestia with that feat, not with the accomplishment but with the speed that she completed it. She had earned her place among royalty then, though she was close to it before.

She continued with difficulty to the first mural depicting Twilight and her fellow Elements. The defeat of Nightmare Moon. The younger princess could barely look at the image without her vision becoming glassy. She was the villain in this one, and it was because of her that the villain in another mural won. It was all starting to weigh down on her.

Luna understood that on their face, her subjects forgave her. But she couldn’t fully believe that they truly did, or for that matter, that she could forgive herself. A thousand-year reputation doesn’t just reverse itself in a few years. She could always wait until the last remaining ponies who believed her to still be Nightmare Moon to die off, but in that time her own lack of forgiveness in herself would fester into something unmanageable.

She let a sigh slip through her teeth, which she hadn’t realized she was grinding. It was Twilight that helped her that one Nightmare Night to curb her reputation into something better, but even then nopony bought it. She supposed that eventually, the princess of friendship would change their minds. In the best of worlds, she still didn’t see her changing her sister’s mind.

Luna understood that Celestia forgave her for her actions before, but for letting Glass River answer a fatal call? She doubted anypony could change her mind. One of her prized soldiers, her prized pupil after that. It was her along with the Field Marshall who received his ashes, and the General that didn’t want to let him go that allowed him freedom from his duties. Luna knew that Point Blank was filling her sister’s head with thoughts that he was in the right and that he was against it from the first word exchanged. She knew Celestia would believe him too.

The conversation she was about to have with her was not one that she could win, or even so much as wedge in an argument for herself. Luna couldn’t defend herself, more so, she didn’t want to defend herself. Though they were equal in power on paper, in practice, they each had different spheres of power and knew better not to make them overlap. When they did, as sometimes was unavoidable, Luna would often concede to her sister. This was one of those occasions.

Before she exited the huge royal hall, she tossed a misty-eyes glance at the throne that sat on the opposite side of the marble chasm. Only one chair stood proudly among the entire expanse, as though declaring itself sovereign empress of the hall. She closed her eyes and let a single tear fall to the crimson carpet, leaving a darkened stain which she stamped a hoof into. She would not concede this time.

Luna strode past the guards standing post at one of the many mouths of the hall, and out into the royal botanical gardens. The air was cool on her coat as she raced past the uncountable varieties of plants. She had no time to stop and smell the many varieties of roses, for she was on a mission. Her sister had to be somewhere out here, past the exotic fruit trees? No. Past the flowering hedge maze? A quick aerial view confirmed it to be a no. It did show Luna that she was by the lone allfruit tree.

It was truly a marvel of botany. Everything from apples to pears, plums to peaches in its leaves, and its roots held everything cucumbers to melons to pumpkins. A towering testament to the gardeners and scientists of Equestria. Below its branches, however, was her sister and her star pupil: Twilight Sparkle.

From what she could pick up when she landed, they were having a conversation about a phenomenon that Twilight had started reading about. A wonder and a horror of the cosmos, the black hole. They paused upon Luna’s approach, Twilight with a look of concern and Celestia wore her typical stoic look. A barrier to her emotions that her royal place had constructed.

Luna understood its place in official dealings, that you couldn’t show weakness of any kind, or emotion of any kind. She remembered her sister telling her once that concealing her emotions made it so ponies could only take you at your word and their suspicion. Luna didn’t understand why she had to keep that mindset with Twilight, a fellow member of the royalty now, and her very own sister. She surmised that if she held a face for a millennium, it would freeze that way even among close company.

Twilight backed closer to her telescope as Celestia took a step forward, her eyes closed in a serendipitous smile. “Luna, my dear sister, I’m glad you could join us tonight.” She opened her eyes and her smile straightened slightly but remained intact. “We’re celebrating the defeat of the zebras tonight, won’t you join us?”

Luna nodded, doing her best to hide that she felt crushed under Celestia’s infinite royal magnitude. “I will, sister. But won’t you please include me on the conversation with Twilight?” She noticed her hoof was trembling and stilled it. “All things cosmic do fascinate me so.”

Twilight beamed and opened her mouth to start a long-winded explanation of everything she read in the past few days, but was hushed by a wave of Celestia’s hoof. “I’m glad you asked, Luna. Twilight was discussing something called an event horizon, and I must say it’s fascinating.” Her eyes opened, revealing that they were reddened and faltering to conceal her rage. “It’s the point in a black hole where you can’t escape. The cusp of annihilation was how my favorite pupil put it.” She closed her eyes and nodded to Twilight, who seemed to be unaware of her sister’s gaze.

Luna all but crumbled before her, and her eyes failed in containing any of the tears that welled up instantaneously. Luna’s voice was shaky, coming from a quaking body. “That’s… That’s very fascinating, Tia.” Her sister’s eyes shot open with her wings, displaying the full extent of her wrath. Still, her voice remained calm and balanced.

“Isn’ it? Once you’re caught in one particular spot, you have no hope of recovering. Twilight describes it that your atoms are ripped out of their usual order, lined up and sucked in. What a delightful name it has, what was it, Twilight?”

Luna understood what her sister was saying. That the kingdom was on the verge of collapse from a single individual, one that Luna let become ever more frightening. An individual that at some point would become too powerful to stop, and would take the whole kingdom down with it.

“Oh, it’s called spaghettification, how silly is that?” She giggled. “You know not many ponies know about that? Especially in Ponyville where everypony’s concerned with their jobs more than they are any kind of science.” She caught herself, realizing what she said made the residents sound uneducated. “Not that they couldn’t be taught, or wouldn’t want to know. Just…” She trailed off when she saw Celestia glaring at Luna, backing further into her telescope.

“That’s right, Twilight. Not everypony knows about this, and that’s ok. What they don’t know can’t scare them. Or in this case, spaghettify them.” She giggled, with her eyes still holding with them an intense fury, which prompted Twilight to join her shakily and agree.

Luna turned away from the two, and let several tears fall freely before starting for her chambers. She had wanted to stand up to her sister, as she had always wanted to, but it was impossible. She understood that there was no standing up to her, she knew more than Luna and was able to execute on her knowledge with vastly more efficacy than her. Though her face was one of neutrality or polite amusement, it terrified her with the message it carried.

She couldn’t apologize for Glass River because she didn’t need to. Celestia didn’t forgive her, and she wouldn’t soon forget either. She couldn’t even apologize to her subjects because they didn’t know, and Celestia wanted it to stay that way. For all they knew, Glass River was avoiding the party tonight, not that he had died or that he was killed by that mare.

“Oh, and dear sister?” Celestia approached Luna, getting in extremely close, her voice was low and harsh through her gritted teeth. This was the voice of a monarch punishing a peasant. “I was asked a long time ago by a philosopher named Marekiavelli if it was better to rule with an open hoof or an iron one. You know what I told him?”

Luna shook her head and opened her mouth for a reply before an incendiary glance forced it shut.

“I told him that it’s better to rule with an iron hoof, but it’s best to keep your subjects wedged beneath that hoof. Do you understand what I am saying to you?” Luna could feel her sister’s hot breath in her ear and understood that Luna had seen her iron hoof, but her sister was pinning her under it with this exchange. With flecks of her sister’s spit on her ear, Luna nodded sheepishly.

“Good.” Celestia drew back and called to Luna as she walked away, her pace quickening with each step. “I hope to see you at the celebration tonight!” As she broke into a trot, which grew into a sprint, Luna’s tears felt hot against her face. Her sister wanted Trixie dead, not neutralized as Concrete wanted.

It was in her sprint ending behind her closed door that she understood she couldn’t stand up to her sister directly. She would have to stand up to her behind her back. Standing in front of the sun only left her eclipsed by it, but it was when the moon wasn’t visible that it was free from the sun. The new moon would make peace with the amulet, from behind the unyielding wall.

General Concrete sat on the other side of a pierced cherry wood desk with Solstice opposite her. The Field Marshall said nothing, only pushing forth two golden stars, which scraped across the desk. The only sound was their breathing and the ticking of a clock to the right of the general. These sounds found themselves less lonely when Concrete’s heart started beating in her ear.

“These are yours,” the greying Field Marshall croaked. Concrete reached for them, and Solstice placed his hoof on hers. “If you can pull this off.” He pulled them back to him, placing them in a desk drawer. “This will be incredibly delicate, and if we execute this correctly, quick.”

Concrete sparked a cigarette and inhaled deeply from it. With the smoke, she tried unsuccessfully to expel the stress resting within her. Celestia had directly given them both an order to kill Trixie. The previous order had been to neutralize the threat in any number of ways, but this one left no terms uncertain. Concrete’s eyes looked hollow, as though she were devoid of any sleep or optimism.

She had advanced through the ranks rather quickly because of this one mare where other Generals would have to wait possibly a decade to get to the same spot. Concrete didn’t understand the order. The language the princess had used was one of discretion. Kindness. The language she used this time was fiery and spiteful. Was it because she had changed her mind about Trixie after the Second Battle Beneath Heaven’s Fissure? Or was it that she was a loose end? Moreover, why had this specific set of circumstances given her such a boost in rank?

Was it so Concrete would look the other way after it was all said and done? With the Amulet destroyed and peace restored, Celestia would have one less adversary and Concrete would have everything to show for it. That much she could answer for, but what about the others?

“Field Marshall, help me understand something.” Concrete started, ashing her cigarette with a nod from the stallion. “Who is Trixie to Celestia, and who was Glass River to her?” She stared into Solstice’s unflinching emerald eyes, a boulder staring on into a mountain.

“You ask me as though I have a better idea of what the princess thinks. I’m as surprised by this sudden change in the directive as well. Trixie was like every other enemy of the state. That is to say, we treated her as we would anypony else, but we’ve never had somepony crawl out of hell after being sent there. Not even…” He trailed off, his eyes looking outside the window.

It was an unremarkable day, barely any clouds amid a blue backdrop. It had started a rather gloomy grey day, but once the pegasi got wind of the celebration tonight, they immediately busted the overcast clouds.

“Not even who?” Concrete leaned in, taking a drag.

“Well… I think you deserve to know if you’re going to be ending it.” Solstice told Concrete the story of the Amulet, of Black ice, and of Arkon. How it was Celestia’s plan from the start to send in the wrong Solar Team, especially one with as bad a reputation as 12’s. How she convinced Glass River to reject the order Concrete gave just so Trixie could be sent to hell. It wasn’t her plan for Trixie to succeed, but it didn’t matter so long as somepony came from Tartarus.

“So.” Concrete interjected. “Killing her is the last part of this plan? That sounds like Celestia alright. Even if we wanted to forgive Trixie, and we both do, we don’t forgive Black Ice.”

Solstice continued after Concrete. “Correct. Celestia’s a betting mare, and she bets that Black Ice will consume Trixie. And she bets that killing her and destroying the Amulet will strike him from the list forever.”

“But.” Concrete ground her cigarette into the ashtray. “If we can get her to remove the Amulet, we don’t have to, right?”

Solstice let out a long sigh. “I wish that’s how this worked. Even if we could, Black Ice would still be in her, not the Amulet.”

Concrete turned her gaze to the front of the desk. “So he’d take her over and take the Amulet back anyway.” She shook her head. “Fuck.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Solstice stared at the puncture in his table.

Concrete sat up, placing a hoof near the hole. “This can’t be the only solution, can it? There has to be some other way.” Concrete desperately searched her mind for any other option but found none. She didn’t know whether to cry or yell.

The General didn’t feel that Trixie was evil deep down, only driven deep down a dark path that crumbled behind her. Every step in the wrong direction she took, she couldn’t reverse. The first was putting on the Amulet itself, then Paper Trail. Then Moondancer, Sterling Glint… Every step corroded the very ground she walked upon until she took a step onto the EUP. In stepping over Scorpan’s grave, she walked into her own grave.

The room’s energy went from a calm quiet interrupted only by a ticking clock, to one of anger that grew with each tick of the clock. Celestia had been gambling everything on this moment, hadn’t she? Just how much did the princess know? Where did her line of sight end? Where was her end game? The anger slowly replaced itself with dread.

“I’m afraid -” The door behind Concrete flew open, and in walked a sniffling Princess Luna. The two officers jumped from their seats, both saluting the princess, who waved their hooves down. Her eyes let loose a cascade of tears and in their reddened state held a dreadful mix of despair and fear. Concrete and Solstice exchanged glances before returning to the princess. Both feared there had been a tragedy, a devastating addition to the state of Equestria behind the curtains.

“Speak freely, princess. Did something happen?” Solstice took initiative, magically closing the door. Concrete offered her seat and a handkerchief to the princess, who took both without hesitation. She blew her nose as Concrete drifted to the left of the table, standing adjacent to both Solstice and Luna. “Is the nation in danger, princess?”

She shook her head, prompting a sigh from the other two in the room. Concrete spoke up, placing a hoof on Luna’s shoulder. “So what is the issue, your majesty?”

Luna’s puffy eyes tossed a glance to both of the officers, then to the plain crystal flooring with a shake of her head. “I don’t think my sister is well.”

Solstice cautiously took his seat. “Not well how? Is she ill? Where is she?”

Luna shook her head, dismissing the possibility of illness. “She’s still here, but I feel that this situation is corrupting her. She told me, her own sister, to stay ‘pinned beneath her iron hoof.’ Or such similar terms.”

“That’s awful.” Concrete spoke in a hushed tone. “You’re rulers together, you shouldn’t be put down like that. Much less, she should know not to talk to her own kin that way.” She rubbed her hoof on Luna’s shoulder in slow strokes.

“The General’s right, your majesty.” Solstice folded his hooves across the desk. “But you say she’s being corrupted. How do you know?”

“Are you going to take her side? She’s the bigger sister, her crown’s heavier I understand. But for once will somepony listen to me?” Her eyes welled with tears as her voice grew shakier.

“Now hold on, princess.” The General started. “We’re not taking anypony’s side, we’re just trying to get to the bottom of this. Why do you think your sister, is being corrupted, as you say?”

“I don’t have any proof if that’s what you’re asking for.” She blew her nose. “But I know that she never talked to me like that before. She spoke like the kingdom was on its last legs and almost wanted to blame me for it.”

Solstice leaned forward, tossing a cautious glance to Concrete, who nodded. “Princess Luna.” He cleared his throat. “How much do you know of Trixie?”

“Everything you know. I know that my sister wishes to kill her, and I disagree.” She waved her hoof as if dismissing her sister’s wishes.

“Then, Luna, we’re in agreement with you.” The Field Marshall leaned back into his large, ornate chair. “If you’d join us in our plan to offer amnesty, we could override your sister.”

Luna began to tremble with the memory of her sister’s words. She hunched over, as though Celestia’s iron hoof was real, and pressing the mare into her seat. She knew that such a decision would split the kingdom in two, with her sister’s half being considerably larger than her own. There were far more followers for the sun than the moon.

“I…” Luna quaked. “I would, but then I’d be taking the side of a serial murderer.”

“Maybe so, Luna.” Concrete’s voice was rolling and low. “But answer two questions for me: How many have been killed by your sister’s orders? And could she ever bring them back?”

Luna rose in her seat just above a noticeable amount. The weight was coming off her. “Too many. Many more that I wasn’t around to count, too. While I’m sure my sister could raise the dead, she would be morally against it.” She straightened herself. “But I want you to answer a question for me: Why should I support the Amulet over my sister? My sister kills ponies for the sake of the kingdom, but Trixie kills for herself.”

Concrete opened her mouth to respond, but a wave from Solstice closed it. “We are aware this decision makes no sense on its face. If what you say is true, Celestia is losing her grip on reality.” He shifted in his seat, haphazardly staring in every direction before back to Luna. “As you had just over one thousand years ago.”

“Excuse me?” Luna tossed Concrete’s handkerchief on the desk, disdain draped across her face.

“What I mean, your majesty.” He tugged at his collar. “You turned into Nightmare Moon because you were losing your grip, for lack of a better description. What I fear, and likely what the General does too, is that Celestia might turn into something similar.”

“With Trixie dead…” Concrete interjected. “The one thing that could put up even a semblance of a fight would be dead and would have taken any other powerful sorcerer down with her.”

“You forget me and Solar Team 8, General.” Luna turned her disgruntled gaze to the greying mare.

“I do not, your majesty.” She flexed her shoulders. “Would that team fight Celestia? And would you have the strength to?” Concrete then leaned into the princess, gambling her alliance on her next sentence. “If her words now can devastate you, imagine what her actions can do then.” She took a single step back, straightening herself. “Her and her army of loyalists.” She added.

Luna looked near her boiling point. “I came here for emotional support, and you two talk about your own princess as a pawn in your plan!?” She sprang up, the chair beneath her crashing into the door behind her. “You look at my loyalty like a rebellious child!”

“Your majesty!” Solstice interrupted. “We do not like these circumstances either! If you want us to stop looking at you like a child, then act accordingly!” He slammed his hoof on his desk near the hole, sending small fractures out from it. “We ask this of you because you are the only pony in the position to make such a call. Your sister is going to implode, or your nation is, and your only action now is to choose which you side with.”

Luna’s anger melted to depression, and her face told of that transfer. Her cobalt aura surrounded the chair and placed it back behind her. The monarch walked to the door and opened it, and with half of her body through the door responded. “I’ll see you at the celebration tonight, both of you. You’ll have my decision then.” She closed the door behind her, hiding her emotions poorly, leaving two saluting officers behind.

I was amazed that my disguise fooled the royal guards. I thought for sure they’d see my dragon scale leg and take me straight to Celestia for judgment. It was the only thing I couldn’t cast an illusion over. Perhaps it was anti-arcane, or maybe my magic refused to acknowledge it as a part of me. Either way, the worst thing I got from it was a few sideways glances from toy soldiers.

What amazed me further was that they were throwing a party tonight, one that they weren’t exactly being humble about. As much as I wished for it to be about me and my triumph over the Infinite Swordsman, it was for the victory over the zebra nation. Those poor fools over there never stood a chance. What did you expect when going to war with a monarchy whose namesake can move the sun with her mind? They had to be expecting defeat in flavors of crushing to humiliating, and this party sweetened it towards the latter.

Tonight, I was Dry Gulch again. Tonight, I was in Equestria’s heart despite my lesser instincts telling me to hightail it to the Crystal Empire and lay low. Tonight, I was going to be the belle of the ball!

Though, as fate would have it, the moon would be. There in the decadent hall, with a band playing a classical epic in full swing, There with all manner of gourmets being served amid the best dressed. There among the most powerful. She and… General Concrete and Field Marshall Solstice marched to the center of the ballroom floors, just beneath an impossibly intricate chandelier.

“Celestia!” Luna bellowed, in a familiar royal Canterlot roar. “We three stand against you in your decision to kill Trixie!” Oh? Perhaps I was going to be the star tonight after all. “Furthermore, we stand against you and your martial tyranny over the surrounding regions! We stand before you tonight and demand peace with the surrounding nations and peace with the Mare That Split the Sky!”

“How dare you, Luna!” Celestia rushed at her sister, wings outstretched. She exceeded her in every discernible measure: Volume, intensity, height. Whatever Luna carried with her, her sister surpassed her. “I have kept Equestria sovereign and prosperous for millennia! I do not wish to fight either, we are a nation built on the principle of harmony.” She stamped her hoof into the shining marble beneath her. “Your hatred doesn’t lie with my wars, but with the Mare.”

“Perhaps that is the case, dear sister.” Luna took a step back. “We still stand against you in your decision. She is not in Tartarus, nor did Colonel Glass River succeed in quelling her!” Luna shouted, looking in every direction, then to her sister, who practically exploded. The crowd that drew in, surrounding the four, murmured in uncertainty.

“Luna! Do you know what you’ve just done!?”

“Told the truth! What the ponies of Equestria need to hear.” The two were just inches from each other.

“You have given power to that evil fiend! Her banishment was a success, one ponies could rally behind! If she was to die, she would do so in darkness, but you have given her success a spotlight! You stupid foal!” Celestia looked as though she were about to cry. As though everything around her, though luxurious and plentiful, was rotting away.

I stepped forward, marching just before them and tossed my disguise off. The crowd withdrew with horrified screams. I looked to both parties, a smile growing across my face into a wicked sneer. “Celestia, you know Trixie's willing to share that spotlight. Just say the word.”

Makeshift

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It was a shame that the band had to cease playing, I did love that classic they were playing. Especially when the violins swelled and the bass played a chilling string, perfect for my entrance. Cut short just before I could maximize its effect, shame. I looked around the room, deathly silent save for the rush of iron against the marble. A ring of golden-clad guards closed in around us. I let out a single low note of amusement. I was among the most powerful in the land this night, both in terms of wealth and ability. They were all staring at me, though it was appropriate. I would become the guest of honor.

I turned back to the four, the two crowns of Equestria, and two of its martial leaders. There was a clear distance between Celestia, Luna’s party, and myself, all of us formed a triangle in some kind of all-powerful Appleloosan standoff. I fixed my eyes on the solar princess. “Trixie admires the display you prepared for her, what’s the occasion? A treaty between us?” My sneer took on a smug air.

“Over my dead body will Equestria concede to you.” Celestia ground her teeth, but somehow maintained a composed demeanor. “Equally unlikely will this nation give into your will. We do not make concessions for serial killers!” She outstretched her wings, they really were well maintained. I wondered if I could tear them from her body and take them for myself. Alas, I did not come here for that.

I only wanted for all this drama to end, for me to be able to be with Sabrina again. But in my journey to that end, I had to jump across the sun’s table, and risk being pinned beneath its hoof. Here I was, watching the hoof coming down on me, and I could jump out of the way and risk being stamped out by the other hoof waiting for me. Or, I could stop it before it got to me. Of course, there was always the option of cutting the hoof from its foreleg, and as much as I wanted to do that, I knew I’d lose that fight.

“If that’s what you want.” I facetiously remarked, instantly turning the ground around the princess into crystal swords that surrounded her, their shining jagged points barely grazing her regal coat. A circle of guards enclosed around us with their spears drawn.

“Trixie!” General Concrete came from behind Luna and stood between the princesses and across from me. Her face was one of indifference, but I could sense she was running dozens of calculations as to how this interaction would go. The one I was going through now was sure to end badly. I trusted the General’s judgment and sunk the crystals into the reflective marble.

Celestia lowered her wings, turning to Concrete. “What do you think you’re doing, General?” Her stare would’ve liquified anypony of weaker constitution.

“My job, your majesty.” She exchanged a plain look with the princess before turning it to her sister. “While it’s true that we do not protest your wars, admittedly, they’re what keep me occupied. What we do object to is your order of execution on this mare.”

“You dare stand against the crown? I do not make these orders out without thought. She is more dangerous alive than dead. The last pony to stand against me died.” Her voice trembled. “If my kingdom stands against me now, I fear the same.” There was fear in her voice, but I could feel something behind it. Some force pulling her strings to make her play notes of fear or concern.

Concrete turned back to Celestia. “Glass River made a calculation both times, and he was right each time.” She lowered her head.

The princess scoffed. “Excuse me? Are you saying he was right to die? I should court-martial you here and now!” There! That force was much clearer now. It felt somewhat like the Amulet’s own force on me, like a weight on just the right places to make one emotionally move a particular way it desired.

Luna interjected. “No, sister, that’s not what she meant. The Colonel died to bring Trixie here so that we’d make peace with her. She’s only dangerous alive if we make her so.”

I wanted to laugh. That’s not what that swordsman said at all. He wanted me dead because of something about killing me being mercy. However, I wasn’t about to blow this golden opportunity to get off easy. All I had to do was nod and look pretty, both weren’t hard to do. The crowd behind the ring of guards whispered in uncertainty. I could make most of them out clearly, and they all were worried about me leveling the place. As much as I would love to do that, that wasn’t nodding or looking pretty.

“Oh, Trixie agrees,” I nodded. “She doesn’t want any beef between us any more than you do.” All four of them look at me like I was a ghost. Maybe I misspoke, I did just kill a hero of theirs and then say I didn’t want any trouble. “Not that she doesn’t regret what she’s done, of course. If she could make it up to you all, she would.”

Celestia took a step towards me, reducing the distance between either of us. With that single step, the world seemed to close in on me. Despite my godly power, I still buckled under the power of someone closer to godhood than myself. “You wear his armor on the leg he took from you, and you claim that you don’t want any animosity between us? Unbelievable, why should I be listening to you or Concrete?” I gulped.

Celestia didn’t break her gaze with me, and Concrete was dumbfounded, staring at me with widened eyes. “Your… Your majesty, forgive her. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. Think of her more like a defendant.”

The princess spun around, anger building in her voice higher than before. “That would make you her lawyer. You had better have a good pitch here, General, because it seems like she knows exactly what she’s doing.”

“Thank you for hearing me, princess.” She adjusted her collar.

“Yes, thank you, your majesty.” Solstice stood next to Concrete, the two exchanging uncertain glances before he spoke again. “Let me be the first to say what we are all thinking about: If there is violence, everypony here will minimize it. And make no mistake, that if violence does indeed break out, however unlikely that may be,” He glared in my direction. “We will end it.”

“Thank you, Field Marshall.” Concrete continued. “And Celestia, if it calms you, we will not stand against you if we fail to convince you. This is our chance to change your mind. If we should not succeed now, things will be as they were, better really. We’d have less of a worry on our minds.” Concrete gestured to Luna, who hesitantly nodded.

No way! They’re gambling my life, no, their lives on a single argument? An argument with a monarch that wants me dead, and one they’re already losing! Much less one that I can’t participate in!

Celestia heaved a sigh, and it seemed her patience was returning to her, however frail it might be. She closed her eyes, looking pained. “I just have one question for all three of you: Why would you risk everything for this murderer? What has she done for you or could do for you that would make you go against a standard order in this case?”

“Celestia.” Concrete adjusted her cap. “As you know, I am wholly against unnecessary death, despite my profession.” Celestia nodded. “And that it’s a principle I hold across everypony, innocent or guilty.”

“So you’re not denying the guilt of Trixie?” Celestia tapped her hoof.

“Of course not, your majesty. She’s clearly guilty of multiple murders, the topic of discussion is not if she did it, but what we are going to do about it. The usual pony would read the details of this mare and conclude that death is not only fair but merciful. But I ask that you spare her life, as the least and most a monarch can do.” She paced the distance between the princess and me, controlling her breath with the lifting of me and the nation on her shoulders.

The princess’ eyes followed the General as she walked, her eyebrow raised. “You’re asking me to spare her life on the principle that the death sentence itself is wrong? And by extension killing her would make me wrong?”

Concrete stopped. “Yes and no, your majesty.” She took off her cap. “Yes, I am asking you to spare her because killing is wrong, but if you were to do so nopony here would complain.” The crowd murmured in agreement, proving her point. “So you would not be wrong in doing so. But the way you’ve spoken about her would…” She gulped, as though there was bitterness in her mouth. “Well, the way you’ve spoken about her would put even savages to shame.”

Everypony, save for Concrete and myself, gasped. I opened my mouth to say something, only to have Concrete tap the smooth floor and silence me. Celestia’s tone took a turn for the grave. “You had better explain yourself, Concrete, before you lose your chance.”

“I apologize, Celestia. What I meant to say is that you so ferociously attack her, when I don’t think this is like you. You’re usually forgiving to the point some of your officers and advisors consider it reckless. In a case as egregious as this one, I understand your desire. But if killing her is your decision, I would rather you make it with her in front of you than from your throne with her in the dungeon.”

I bit my tongue, holding in the desire to tell the room that her wars were also opposed to this forgiving nature. Almost the exact opposite, she’d declare war over the smallest infraction as of lately. If I were to make it out of here without fighting, I’d have to shut up and let Concrete’s nose brown itself.

“Go on.” Her voice was noticeably lighter, though it had a gravelly undertone. That force seemed to be backing off with resistance. She was being slowly persuaded into mercy! More than that, her heart itself was being changed by her speech. Oh, Concrete when this is over, you’d better get a promotion!

“I am not asking this as a favor from you in solitude nor am I doing it as a favor from her. I am asking you to spare her as a gesture towards the future.” She turned her head up at the princess, making eye contact with the sun itself. “Since before Equestria was founded, blood was spilled in the name of justice, but we look to such tribal warfare with disgust. Barbaric, we call it. But yet, when we sentence ponies to death, we call it an eye for an eye. It’s simply getting even.”

Celestia smirked. “Are you saying that a death sentence is the same as tribal war? I would disagree and would think you would as well. It’s not just about getting even, General Concrete. It’s about setting an example. We should let everypony know that this kind of act is met with this kind of punishment.”

Concrete shook her head, a single strand of gray falling from her head. “The only example it sets is one of misplaced vengeance. If dying mattered to Trixie, she wouldn’t have murdered a single pony. If it had mattered to any murderer, one execution would end the crime altogether. It doesn’t set any example, moreover, such a punishment can make martyrs out of killers.”

“What are you suggesting, General?” She craned her head down towards the mare. “Are you saying that killing Trixie would make her some kind of figurehead?” She returned her head up, with an amused sigh. “You’re comparing Glass River to her, aren’t you?”

“I am. But I am also making a claim to you that we can honor Glass River and forgive Trixie at the same time.” She blinked.

“Why would I? Am I to really believe that doing nothing is the best course of action? Killing her may not set a meaningful precedent, but letting her go will surely set a dangerous one.” She glanced at her sister, who was watching intently. Her Field Marshall the same. Her guards perched still with the spears pointed to me. Then she stared at me, who was standing silently amid the blades poised to kill me.

She knew that they’d sooner bring the ocean home with them in a jar than kill me as I stood there. “Lower your arms.” Concrete and I both let out a sigh, the crowd, however, stiffened in response. “If I am to believe what I’m hearing about Trixie, she would level the castle if anypony provoked her.” That malignant force was faint, almost nonexistent inside the princess. Maybe I would come out of this unscathed after all!

“You and I are both mature mares, you far more than I. We both look upon our past actions with regret every now and then, especially to when we were foals. You may have some recent regrets as well, as I do and I’m sure everypony else does too. If we continue in perpetuating the death penalty here, we will continue in a barbaric tradition that leaves no lasting example and will come to regret in the coming future. When we think of the perfect Equestrian future, killing to move towards a false sense of vengeance and precedents is not what I envision.”

The princess let out a single note of amusement. “You’re saying I’ll regret putting her to death?” She shook her head. “I think I won’t. But tell me, something General, why risk your reputation for her at all?”

It was Concrete’s turn to shake her head. “I’m saying she will be a footnote in history, nothing more if you do. But if you forgive her, she will be the one to end the death penalty.”

Celestia smirked. “And that’s where your name is in history too, isn’t it? You still haven’t answered me, General. What should I do about her if I were to pardon her?”

I could feel the wind changing. Celestia wasn’t asking that as a hypothetical, her voice was one of interest in Concrete’s answer. It looked for her direction, not for a counter to it. Whatever Concrete was about to say, she’d either go fully along with or add more to it. I was out of the weeds! Depending on what the General brought up, I would either go to the fire or the frying pan. Neither was a bad option, considering I was in Hell’s own fire just a bit ago.

Concrete shifted, tension leaving her shoulders as the weight placed itself on both the monarch and the General both. “I suggest you leave her in my care. She can be useful to both of us.” Her voice trailed, holding the ‘s’ sound as well as an implication. One the princess greedily picked up on.

“Yes… Trixie’s quite invincible, isn’t she?” Her smirk stretched further. I could see in her eyes a plot to expand Equestria’s borders in every direction until they all met. World domination, with me at her beck and call! Not that I minded all the bloodshed that would inevitably take place, I would mind however being under orders from the very mare I came here and challenged. What other choice did I have though? Killing everypony in the place? Sure, but what after that? I’d bring Sabrina back in chaos, or I could bring her back as a hero. I’d always pick the option that shows me in the better, truer light.

I was shocked Concrete hadn’t brought up the nature of my murders They weren’t in any sort of hatred. That is to say, they were for a goal and not for the sport of it. I wasn’t crazy, nor was I evil. Even then, Celestia could say I planned those, but Concrete would simply respond by saying everypony plans. Animals plan, any brain that works would plan towards something. Mine happened to pick the highest crime in the land.

“Now hold on!” Luna stamped in frustration. “I came here because I didn’t like wars or the death sentence. Concrete and Solstice might, you and Trixie both as well, but these only benefit all of you. In the meantime ponies of this land have to pay for their own children to fight and die in these useless conflicts!” She hurled electric glares to each of us. “You may have sold it to my sister, General. And you may very well have spared Trixie as well. But you have not convinced me.”

“Then allow me a chance to.” Tension returning across her, in one day she’d manage to purge corruption in a monarch, spare an enemy of the state, and likely secured a promotion. If she didn't become Field Marshall after this, the title was meaningless. “Celestia, if we were to go through with this, would you agree to a pact with every nation? That we will not be the aggressor in any war, and moreover, be laxer with what we consider aggression?”

Celestia laughed as Luna’s frown grew into a grimace. “You gave a profound speech, Concrete. But now I cannot take you seriously. You want me not only to pardon her after what she did, but also change my military policy? Who is in charge of who here?”

Luna took a step forward. “What was the phrase you used when starting this war we’re celebrating now? Trot softly, but carry a big stick? Sister, if you grant mercy on her and go to war with every nation at the same time, you’ll be sprinting and bashing everything before you with a big stick!” She panted, her voice shivering with anxiety, but there was a look of pride in both her and her sister’s eyes.

“I’ll tell you what.” Celestia began, trotting slowly around us. “Here’s my proposal: She takes orders from you, Concrete, not as a soldier of the EUP, not as an involved civilian. She will be something in between. Your orders will ensure that she will only be used in circumstances that require her. I will not be the aggressor in any more wars, as I think I and our subjects have had enough.” Everypony let out a sigh, but the crowd looked apprehensive. They, much like myself, could not believe what was happening. “However.” Her tone plummeted. “The Element’s eyes are on you, Trixie, they are on my immediate summons, if you step so much as a micrometer out of line, I get to decide your punishment, not any court. And you will wish for my death sentence, understood?”

I nodded with a sheepish gulp. Even through all my power, I understood that she surpassed me and could utilize it in far better and more terrifying ways. An unstable mix of success and anxiety brewed itself in me and spread throughout. I had won in this exchange, all by standing there and looking pretty. But at what cost? I was now a pawn, and as the crowd would spread this and the papers would report it, I would likely be a pawn in shame.

“And.” My blood froze. “You will allow us to research that Amulet, so we can properly counter it and you. The Elements might be able to stop you, but I have something in mind for after you step out of line.” She closed her eyes in a gleeful smile. “If you do, of course.”

I nodded like a child in trouble.

Of all the things I expected to happen, the crowns forgiving me was further than the last thing I would have predicted. Concrete’s impassioned defense of me after all I did, after she had to bury the ponies I killed right in front of her, was a testament to the innumerable lengths she’d go to protect life, however diabolical that life may be.

I learned later that night that I was feared across the nation before I was sealed away. Something akin to a Sombra, I heard off Solstice. If that was the case, then they really wouldn’t like me now. I may have gained the Celestia and the EUP’s favor, but the people still didn’t approve of me. They only looked at me in side-eyed glances, only talked about me in hushed whispers like I was listening, which I was, and thought about me only in villainous terms. I guess they weren’t wrong.

What had I become? What had I just done? I'd strolled into Canterlot’s main castle, on a night where everypony was there and demanded I be let go. Was I insane? Maybe I was. Maybe I was on my way there, and maybe I’d been there and come back all at once. This Amulet’s blessing was power, but its curse was your very soul. Who you are was robbed by this infernal jewel. It was all I had left, or it had been anyway. My glowing personality, that’s what everyone always talked about, especially in the papers. Who was I kidding? All I had left was hope on a gamble.

It was only theoretical to be able to raise the dead, there was no guarantee that I could do it. If I couldn't, all of this really had been for nothing. Less than nothing. I was a part of the EUP now, in limbo between civilian and soldier. A special agent to the crowns, whose laws shakily apply to them at most and don’t at the least.

That was probably why Celestia hadn’t vaporized me on the spot: she’d wanted a special soldier. That blasted monarch! She had known this would happen! No, that couldn’t be true, there was something off about her, I could feel it. I was never one for the politics of this country. What could a peasant do to a princess or their royals in the way of convincing them? That’s all we were, well dressed, well-fed, and well-off peasants. That was neither here nor there, what was, however, was that Celestia had been fighting wars on every front, using the weakest of excuses to justify a war.

Her motive, it seemed was to take over everything under her sun, especially if it meant seizing it from other nations. She wanted war, she loved it. Each victory, from what Concrete’s told me in the days that followed, pushed her more and more off the edge. Her defense of me was as directed at me as it was at saving her. That General wanted to show beyond any shadow of a doubt that what she was doing was wrong when none of her advisors or other Generals would step up to.

The economy of Equestria lent itself to producing materials for whatever war we were fighting, which lent itself to contracts, jobs, expansion with each increase of the border. In short: profits. Celestia didn’t strike me as someone who’d go after money. What could she possibly want that her money or her influence couldn’t get her? Money could get power, certainly, but only so much. She understood like I did that power that beats other power becomes greater. Her country being geared to war created a cycle of it, and though she promised to be laxer, Concrete and I weren’t fools. Celestia already viewed the motivations for war as self-defense, nothing would change except her power.

Other countries weren’t foolish either, and they’d want revenge or vengeance. That fucking monarch was playing chess with everypony’s lives and she was winning. She knew I’d show up, and that Concrete would try and defend me. It didn’t matter what Concrete said, Celestia would’ve forgiven her anyway. There was no way she could plan this from the start, but if this really was a chess game, she’d have options for each move. By some miracle, she’d gotten everypony, including me, to play right into her hoof.

I sat in a dimly lit empty servant quarter, alone. The lightbulb above me flickered, sputtering to keep lit. I debated whether I should fix it or let it remain on the cusp of fizzling out. I decided on the latter from my rickety, chipped wooden chair. Beside me was a bed that looked worn by time and rats. Springs poked through the mattress, which itself was stained where it wasn’t chewed through or faded to an almost cracking white texture from a once sky blue. It was a place the kingdom forgot, where they placed those they wished to forget.

But what was that feeling I got off of her? That maligned force that I felt myself? Maybe she was losing her mind, driving herself to bloodlust with each day her soldiers fought. Or perhaps, she was playing me too. She knew I could sense it, and that I’d feel it slip away. She could control it! She’d been playing politics and war for over a thousand years, nothing was accidental with her anymore! I couldn’t believe it. I'd lost.

Then again. Why should I keep my word? Because I would die? I’d like to see them try, they’d only make me stronger. Because I’m honest? Please, a life of the streets and the stage would turn even an apple farmer to a compulsive liar. For the future? Maybe. If I'd ended the death penalty, which I did, then I was one step closer to my goal beyond Sabrina. Fuck, Celestia had won again. She'd not only forced me into place but made sure I’d cooperate in being there.

Wait. If I had ended the death penalty, my leaving wouldn’t make a difference to the law. The precedent was already set, no one would be executed if I stayed or if I left. But, where would I go and what would I do? How would I get there?

The Crystal Empire seemed like a safe bet, not a lot of ponies there. What’s more, it was a nation of ex-slaves who would see Sombra in me more clearly than any of the ponies around here. They wouldn’t fight back at all! Why was I just sitting here? I could grow ever more powerful with the only threat against me being life imprisonment in a jail that cannot possibly hold me! If they could even catch me, the only one that could stop me was the sun herself!

I started for the door, only to catch myself. What was the feeling just now? Something maligned had convinced me of that. It had to be that same force that led me to stroll into the castle, the same that broke me from hell. Black Ice. Well, maybe we can get along after all. If he kept hatching ideas like this, then I'd be the one in charge of things before long. I turned the doorknob imagining Empress Trixie’s banners hanging from Canterlot’s castle with a warm smile.

As the mechanism slid further out of place in the door, another inkling protested. Why do this? Power? Yes, but why did I feel like that wasn't the whole of it? Fun? While I was sure it would be a hell of a time, that wasn't it either. Was it because it was a divine inspiration, that some higher power wanted me to? Black Ice was a higher power than either Celestia or myself, and he did want this, but to call him divine or this his will? No.

Bloodlust. That felt correct. That force within me, the same as the sun’s, was building up within me, calling out almost for carnage. Yes. It was just like the sun’s, that was why she fought, to satisfy that craving. That’s why she would keep fighting. And that’s why I was going to.

The door swung the wrong direction, smacking me squarely in the face and knocking me to the ground in its sudden force. There in the doorway stood 5-star General, Point Blank. I remembered him in Glass River’s mind’s eye, the legendary unicorn known for his brand of combat. Constant bombardment and assault, giving the enemy no chance to breathe. Some, including Glass himself, called him the Demon of the East Theater.

I slammed the door behind him, casting a sphere of silence around the two of us. What a perfect place to start. He barely had any time to react to me slamming my black scale foreleg into his face, turning it from a mind of superior strategy to a pile of pulp. I opened the door as I cast invisibility over the two of us, heading for a nearby window. From there was a breathtaking view of the entire land below, maybe a hundred stories from the ground.

Then the pride of the EUP took a great fall. Why he came into my room I would have no idea, maybe it had been to intimidate me. To work with me, possibly. Either way, it was likely marching orders. Funny, I was wearing his costume now. My mind was given one of rushing warfare, of ruthless dominance and pride. This ‘General’ would take a train to the Crystal Empire to spread the news.

And then all the ice in the north would be black.

Black Ice

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How embarrassing of Point Blank to get his mind splattered across the wall. How could he walk into the room holding a world-class threat and expect anything less than an attempt on his life? He hadn’t even shown up with an entourage to guard him. His memories told me it had been to further ensure my submission. His mind, now mine, was one of incredible strategic maneuvering. He knew how Celestia thought, what her end game was, and what her immediate plans were. However, his tangible mind was likely in some traumatized sod’s mop bucket.

If his thoughts were to be believed, Celestia and that fucking Twilight Sparkle were plotting to make a device that would force the Amulet off me. That’s all he knew, and he believed he was being kept in the dark on purpose. I felt my teeth almost pop with how hard I ground them. They weren’t going to experiment on me, they were going to kill me. Removing the Amulet involuntarily would make it detonate, killing me and whatever stood near.

How dare they!? Plotting against me! Their savior! Their new God! How dare Twilight become a princess beyond that? If anything, I should be a princess! After all I’d done and planned to do, how come I didn’t have wings…? Yes, that was right, Cadence had wings. I could never take Celestia’s wings, that eternal monarch. But Cadence’s? Of course! They would do for now.

Why should I stop at some irrelevant princess’ wings? Why should I have to sleep in some inn, or some alley, when I had the power to seize a castle? Why should I have to quake in my boots at anypony anymore? Why shouldn’t the world be mine? If I should take death away from the world, why shouldn’t everything in it belong to me? I'd give it eternity and ask only for dominion over it. Nopony in their right mind would refuse this!

This train, for instance, a first-class seat free of charge from my rank, was mine. Everypony in it should submit to me. The lavish gold trim windows, decadent red carpet free of any blemish, and the plush booth seating with a wooden finish. All mine. The engine, the staff, the coal, and the very tracks beneath it! All mine! The world should be mine!

My train groaned to a halt in the station and I strode out into my crystalline empire. The very bricks beneath me had a sheen across them unique to the region. The ponies passing me by had a majestic glow to them, as though they themselves were fashioned from something greater than fur or flesh. The gates that brought me here were a series of colorful transparent pillars, casting an awe-striking shadow matching them, occasionally intercepting in a gorgeous fusion.

I felt that force within me rise, starting as a knot in my stomach moving slowly up through my body until it found respite in my throat. Yes, I came here to claim my empire, beautiful though it may be. It almost felt wrong to reduce the place to rubble, it was incredible. A testament to the beauty ponies could foster.

It would make an excellent example of what I meant to do. Destroy the very world and rebuild it in a better image. My divine image. I shall claim this empire for my own and then come for the sun’s. It really was a shame that so much insect life would be lost, but it would get my point across.

Then I felt the sun’s heat on me. I looked up in the perfectly parted clouds to see it there, that glowing orange ball casting its noble amber hue over everything. My face felt warm. Everything came to me all at once. The immaculate lush grass bursting with flowers of every glistening crystal variety. The air was perfect and clear, carrying with it the warming scent of food in the distance. Emotion bubbled up within me: Love.

As I stood in the train station looking at the grand palace, glancing to the surrounding village, I was overcome with an overwhelming love for this land and the world beyond it. Was I really here to destroy this place and reassemble it? No. Black Ice was. I wasn’t in control at all.

I wasn’t in control when I walked into Celestia’s ball, nor was I as I sat there and watched Concrete defend me. Oh Celestia, what had I done? Point Blank had been coming to ensure my submission, sure, but that meant he accepted me within the graces of the EUP. I would have been a soldier under him, not an enemy. It was Equestrian nature to forgive, and he forgave me as his ruler did. I killed him.

It was in his brain matter that my pardon lay, and now it was in that traumatized sod’s bucket. I was an enemy of… the world at this point. Who would grant me refuge? I could make it for myself, but that could only last so long. Beyond that, I could never get Sabrina if I was always on the run. The only directions in front of me were forward to destruction or backward to oblivion. The Amulet felt heavy around my neck, and that noxious lump in my throat spread itself across my body.

Was this sensation Black Ice? It couldn’t be, the first thought I had when I put on the Amulet, after dying, was murder, and the next thing I did was kill. This confounded necklace corrupted me, and Black Ice magnified this. He and it made me walk a line of a bad version of myself and the worst version and caused me to crash between either side.

I wandered to a nearby fountain, flowing with sparkling and radiant water. Bits were peppered across the base of it, their image rippling with the spray. I peered down at my reflection, and in between the waving image saw a pair of eyes I didn’t recognize. They weren’t Point Blank’s, they were my own.

My own vision began to ripple as I looked into this mare’s eyes. I was between the sun’s army behind me and a complete massacre in front of me. Only one of these paths brought me Sabrina. Another single ripple joined the fountain.

I hated Black Ice. I hated this Amulet. I hated the world for putting me here. I hated that stallion that infected Sabrina. I hated Paid Tab for his best not being enough. I hated the rain on our box. I hated the empty funeral ceremony and I hated myself for dying there too. I pursed my lips as several more tears fell. I hated myself most of all. I was evil. I was a Threat to Tranquility. And I hated more that I was going to win.

I felt the sun’s heat leave me as a familiar icy embrace overcame me. I lied. It did feel bad to destroy the Crystal Empire.

***

A messenger pegasus was tasked with delivering a parcel to the Crystal Empire but missed the train and begrudgingly flew herself over. Her wings ached, and her forelegs felt a slight soreness from shifting the package between each of them as she flew. Her eyes didn’t take themselves from the emerald grass below her but flew up dizzily when she ran into something.

This week was not a friend to this mare, and mistake after mistake landed her from the hot seat to the frying pan to the fire. First, it was being sent to warehouse duty, then to menial desk work. Then she was tasked with the demeaning rookie work. Her last chance was this package, which was already running late. She looked up with a sigh, this recipient would probably give her a tongue lashing, and her boss a complaint. The last nail in her postal career.

What she found when her gaze turned up was not a wall or another pony, nor was it a pole or anything of that variety. She only saw the impact where her face has collided with a seemingly invisible wall. A forcefield? That didn’t make any sense, the Crystal Heart kept the Empire temperate, but it certainly didn’t keep anypony outside.

Then she heard it. A sickening crash of metal hitting stone and the shrill, bloodcurdling screams of ponies. Her eyes shot wide, her brain pleaded for her to move but her body failed to respond. She could only look on in horror, paralyzed, as the invisible border before her splattered with the blood and brain matter of the unlucky ponies.

It was a single blink that freed her from her frozen limbs. The first step led to another, led to more, led to a trot to a sprint. She cast a cursory glance behind her and her pace became breakneck. Her mind once again pleaded with her body, this time to take flight, but her wings couldn’t bring themselves to spread. The flight here made them spent. Any more air time would likely result in them failing while she was airborne.

She sprinted past the distant mountains, past the picturesque plains, past the train station in Canterlot and though the town on a path leading to the castle. She narrowly scraped past ponies in her mad dash, stammering an apology as she ducked and dodged from their paths.

Her chest was a tight, burning knot whose quickened pulse only added coal to the furnace. Each time her hoof hit the ground as she ran, it felt as though it might liquify. Soreness was a distant memory compared to what she was feeling, the same way a cup of water compares to the ocean. Each breath was a fiery plea for her to stop, which she rejected.

A cyan blur came from around a corner with impossible speed, crashing directly into the near-dead dehydrated mare. Both of them spiraled in a tailspin, the blur shooting off somewhere distant, and the mare only spun into the bricks. The blur returned as quickly as she’d shot away, looking as though she meant to tell the gulping mess on the ground off.

Through her twisting vision, the mare on the ground recognized her as Rainbow Dash. She only croaked her message and told her to pass it on to the princess. Before she could finish her thought, she became a rainbow blur that tore through the crowd that had formed.

Derpy closed her eyes, finally. Rest.

***

Five stars weighed on either of Concrete’s shoulders, and some of them weren’t hers. In the wake of Point Blank’s murder, Canterlot and the EUP was sent reeling, a ripple effect reaching from that decrepit room to her desk to Celestia’s crown, growing stronger as it progressed.

For the EUP, it meant a kingdom-wide search as soon as news of Blank’s murder became apparent. For the greying General, it meant near the highest rank in the land temporarily, as she knew Trixie best and would know how to lure her out and combat her. For Celestia, it meant something darker and more nefarious than she could’ve predicted.

The search wasn’t going to bring anything, and Concrete would’ve been surprised if they found even half of a clue. Trixie could disguise herself as anypony, even a completely made-up one. With so many names on file, it would be impossible to sort out who wasn’t real. But it kept the ponies of the land content with the way things were being handled. A search was better than doing nothing, after all.

Concrete had hoped to contain the news, but such a figure dying in such a cruel fashion was impossible to keep from the public. A flare shot up in a night sky was visible to everypony, not just those who can best answer its call. The local guards were straining to contain the panic, and the seams of society itself threatened to tear apart.

Celestia had forgiven Trixie, and this too, was a flare shot up that everypony saw. It was unpopular, exceedingly so in light of recent events. It marked an exponential turning point for Equestria, those on death row no longer feared the gallows and instead faced prison for the rest of their days. They’d come to grips with their life there, and if this decision was any indication, would likely get out eventually.

It marked a time when harmony and mercy were words that would encapsulate the kingdom. At least, domestically. The heavy-hoofed policy of Celestia would likely become exponentially more aggressive in light of a superweapon. Would. The princess spent most of her time locked away in her chambers, unresponsive, her gaze fixated on the sun. To anyone else it might as well have been a mirror, but to her, it was a mockery. She was known as the sun, but she was nowhere near as majestic or powerful. All life existed on Equis because of the sun, but life persisted without her.

Indeed, wherever the light touched was not hers and that infuriated her. All the power in the world in exchange for some policy that was irrelevant to her. The trees in the forest didn’t matter to her if she could own the very ground that the entire forest sat upon. She’d give them anything to look the other way as she took the world, and Concrete knew what she was doing in that room. Plotting from a corner, searching for any fleeting plan that led her to victory.

Concrete stared at Colonel Glass River’s sword as it sat plainly on her desk. She was a chess piece to be certain, but she was far beyond a pawn, the five stars on her shoulders declared that. She could do whatever she wanted, save for a few unreasonable options, but at this point in the kingdom, even that might not be met with surprise or even disdain. The options before her were as numerous as all paths on every map, and she could take whichever one she wanted to.

Yes, the five stars weighed on her with all the heft of the world. The path she was determined to take was to lure Trixie out of hiding, and use one of the contingency plans the princess had laid out. A trap must be laid, and the Elements must descend on her. Twilight Sparkle especially had a gruesome addition that even Concrete herself was entirely against when it was proposed. Now? The General knew the word forgiveness, the word mercy, but she no longer applied them to Trixie.

Her door burst open to reveal two elite royal guards, clad in gleaming black-coated gold armor and Rainbow Dash between the two. Concrete rose, and the two exchanged salutes. “What is it, Private Dash?” Concrete croaked.

“The Crystal Empire is…” She ground her teeth. “Is under attack, General.”

Perfect. Concrete knew exactly where she was, and she knew precisely what to do next, though it would not blow over well with anypony. The General walked to the window, the valley becoming more clear in her view as she approached with a very slight limp. She looked down at the tranquil hills and the trickling river, and closed her eyes. She turned back to the cyan mare. “You know who did this, only one mare could possibly have. What I need you to do is get your friends together and wait in Twilight’s old home here in Canterlot, she’ll know where it is and what’s going to happen next. Do you understand?”

Rainbow Dash only nodded, but her head drifted in uncertainty. “So we’re not going to do anything right now?”

“No.”

“Well why not!?” She took a leering step towards Concrete.

“I don’t expect you to like this order, but I do expect you to carry it out. If we send anyone there now, they will die.” The General glanced at the sword on her desk. “And our job after will only get harder. Go, if you want to do something, then do what I ask! You’re wasting time. Dismissed!”

“But–”

Concrete stamped her hoof, and the room trembled. Dash gulped and instantly took off to find and assemble her friends. At least, that’s what Concrete had hoped. She had no doubt that Rainbow Dash would carry out what she asked, but the past weeks have shown her that anything could happen. She expected deviations from her plans, certainly, no plan could survive contact with the enemy and their plans wouldn’t with hers, but Dash was no enemy, and this plan was to counter the enemy before she came around.

A preparation to snag her where she stood, send her to trial, and banish her. The death sentence was still illegal after all, but that didn’t mean creativity was. Celestia, Twilight, and Concrete were all in agreement. A new graduate of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns was going to be the bait. The General couldn’t believe herself.

She sat with a note of amusement escaping her nose. She cut a cigar and lit it, exhaling a puff of virulent smog as she chuckled to herself. Violet Star would have to die to catch Trixie, but it would be a certain end. Concrete’s orders have always been made with death in mind, and knowing that it was inevitable that soldiers under her should die. But never did she give a direct order to kill a civilian, until now. If history should remember it as a terrible, wicked act, then history should be thankful it could record anything after this event.

***

I lied again. It felt great to destroy the Crystal Empire. With each death I grew far stronger, far smarter, far better. The screams, the smells, and sights! Oh, how beautiful the Empire was, but how much better it looked in red. The clear majestic sky was a candle to the inferno of a red, misty one. My favorite addition couldn’t be to the Empire, no. It was my new pink wings! They even faded to blue, how delightful.

I strode past the hissing rubble, hopping into every crimson puddle I came across and skipping when I exited them, making sure to paint every brick in my miracle. I had used the trains to level most of the buildings, crushing most of the ponies with their tremendous force and flattening them under the rubble they brought. Only a brilliant mind such as mine could devise such a tactic.

There was no sound but the fires, no joy but my own, and no life except for my superior one. There was no regret in the air, at least, not anymore. I’m sure that as the weight of the crystal beams bore down on each inhabitant of each home, they regretted their living here. No matter, they were gone and I was here.

The Amulet no longer felt heavy and I no longer felt cold, for I was strong enough to carry it and warmed enough by my own actions. I could stroll right into Canterlot and take it if I so wanted to. I could resurrect Sabrina now if I wanted to, but I couldn’t resist the siren call of more. More power, more memories, more. Why would I bring her back in a world that fears me and actively tries on my life, when I could make the world worship me. I would not bring her back as her sister, but as her god!

Yes, it’s true! I no longer hated the Amulet! I couldn’t find contempt for it anywhere within me, save for the small corner where I tucked who I used to be. A weak street rat who couldn’t make a right decision for her future if her life depended on it. She did make one right decision, however: Buying this Amulet. I suppose I could thank her by giving her what she wanted. After I killed that one mare he was talking about. Who was it?

Oh yes, Sunburst had a fair admiration for a mare who recently graduated, that Violet Star. Could I be the only one thinking that? Ha! I’m the only capable of having thoughts like this, no one expects me to kill her. They’re insects and I am their new god, they cannot possibly think like me!

I began walking away, stepping over bodies who squashed beneath my hooves. The ones beneath my false leg splattered. The sounds of mortality, it was a beautiful piece of art, a thing of music and image all at once. That a pony can live their entire life, they can love and hope and fear and dream and hate. They can have favorites, hates, day-to-day happenings, they can have hobbies, jobs, degrees! All of them for nothing.

It was a work of art, and I had painted it with a canvas of a city. I had made a masterpiece displaying to all who view it how feeble and worthless their lives were. That this is fate regardless of how rigorously they pursue their qualities. You be the smartest pony, have your head filled with theories and explanations galore. The strongest pony, whose life was dedicated purely to tending to your body and improving it at every conceivable turn. Or the most loving pony, whose life mission was to provide an equal playing field to everypony. All of their heads popped with the same sound, a song of death. Melody of mortality. They all died, and their lives were all worthless.

I started walking only to catch myself. What was I doing? I could fly now! I looked down to the rubble and the thought of rebuilding crossed my mind. I felt magic swell to my horn and I blinked. In the time it took for my eyes to swiftly close and open again, the Empire stood in a new majesty. Banners of my figure covered every wall, black and red dominated the crystal’s colors, matching the Amulet.

It was a shame that nopony would see my art, though I was a performer at heart after all. A travelling performer. I wouldn’t need to leave examples of me wherever I went, I could take it to them directly.

Not an ounce of rubble, a single speck of misplaced debris, or a drop of blood or fragment of bone. It was perfect, just like me. But like perfection, it was fleeting and must be improved. Perfection was to constantly best yourself, and I intended to do just that. One more, only one more star to snuff out.

Recoil

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News of the Crystal Empire had never reached Violet Star, nor had any of the plans that included her in them. It was unlike how she usually lived her life, she had kept a close eye on the world outside her from newspapers and letters from the princess and other royal staff. Violet lived quietly in her room, with her copious volumes of books delivered with bundles of food. Which was torn through first always changed. Sometimes, she’d eat through the shipment quickly and be left to read on an empty grumbling stomach, awaiting the next supply shipment. Other times, she’d be overstuffed and read with blurry, drowsy eyes.

One thing was for certain with this mare: Her absence in the outside world was only matched by her knowledge of it. Since her foalhood, some time before she got her cutie mark, she had begun voraciously consuming every word that she could set her eyes on. Before long, she had gone through the entire library’s stock, and then every menu across town, soon every nutritional fact or price tag on every product in every store. Nopony could stop her, nor did they want to. Sure it was strange to see a violet filly reading the price tags at the market with crazed eyes, but it was far from the need for intervention.

Life was aloof, but normal for the mare. Then came the checkup after she got her cutie mark. Her mother had skipped the day just to celebrate her Cute-ceañera but regretted it the day after the party. Violet was barely clinging to life in her bed, an illness, unlike anything the doctor had ever seen. It wasn’t unusual in the strain, no it was just the common flu, but the symptoms seemed unrestrained. The doctor concluded that Violet had no immune-system, that if any disease came her way she would likely react in this same way.

The day the fever broke was a day of both miraculous recovery and tremendous realization. Violet had always gone out to find reading material, making it somewhat of a mission to read everything. But now, the four walls of her room were her only friend and whatever lay outside the cleansing bubble around the house might as well have been on the moon. She was locked away, lest she contracts any illness and died.

The doctor had said that she was extremely lucky to have not only lived but not to have caught anything until now. Violet just wished he’d go away. She knew it wasn’t his fault that she was stuck here, on the contrary, she knew she was alive because of him and was grateful. But she hated the reminder that she was sick, that she was a glass eggshell in a cage waiting for anything from the world to reach in and shatter it.

She’d wished that the doctor would go away and come back with medical books, or something of the variety. It was on her sickbed that she relayed this to her mother who relayed it to him. He said what all adults did, “I’ll see what I can do.” That’s what the librarian said when she asked for more books, what the teacher said when she asked for more lessons, or when she asked her mother to visit her father.

Though, that was impossible. His tombstone lay somewhere between Equestria and the deer nation. She knew from military history books that somepony in the deer nation, Shattered Hoof, had said something of the matter. “One death is a tragedy, but thousands are a statistic.” Violet often looked out from her window to the town below, masked in a milky veil from the bubble, and pondered. They were wrong, it could be both. His death was a tragedy to her, one that was one of many numbing needles that peppered her body. At the same time, he was a statistic to the Generals that sent him there, just another casualty. How could she hurt so much, so personally, but they overlook it robotically and simply repeat that order somewhere else?

How could they feel anything? Somepony at a high enough level to order death en masse must have a disconnect from everypony emotionally. Some sort of psychopathy reigned over their minds, making deaths just a number that went up and not a life-altering tragedy. They cheered when their numbers were smaller than their enemy’s and were silently livid when it was the reverse. She hated the EUP, and she hated the Princess for waging such wars.

Indeed, from a young age, Violet came to hate many things from her room. When her mother left for work, she slaved away her time as a waitress by sunrise, a janitor by sunset, and a mother by evening. But when that door closed behind her, and that bubble rippled as she left, Violet was left all alone in her room. She hated the EUP for somehow misplacing her father’s pension. She hated her mother for leaving her alone, and she hated the world for making her do so. But more so, and possibly most of all, she hated herself.

Her feeble and frail body, lacking a functioning horn, could barely manage to move her own bed on a good day. Her own mind for tormenting her with doubts, casting a warped image of what she was and still displayed it even when she accepted it. She tormented herself in that small room, accepting her depressed mind’s view of herself, and days laboriously dragged themself forward, becoming weeks then months than years.

It was in the second year of isolation that word of her had reached the highest pair of ears in the land, the very mare she hated the most. When that crown stepped through her bubble, she was shocked the princess herself didn’t suddenly dissolve, the disease she saw her as. At first, Violet hated the princess with every atom of her being. She softened as the visits frequented, eventually, her hatred completely eroded away.

Then reading came back to her room, books and lesson plans designed for her exclusively made their way to her room. She became a prized student of Celestia, and with time, became a valued advisor to her, even earning herself a magic candle to send letters directly to and receive letters from the princess. The questions were never about recent happenings, political, economic, or martial in nature. Rather, they were more academic. Problems the court wizards were having, or solutions to the kingdom’s problems that could only be solved through magic. Though she couldn’t answer them in any way but theoretical, it was more than enough for any magic-minded pony to work with.

As Violet Star reached her adulthood, she was a respected pillar of the crowns as well as the kingdom. Though Violet would never be able to see the solutions she devised, she was never kept up at night as a result of that. Her mother always confirmed the changes she had made and said that most of the city was pleased with her work.

What did keep her up at night was loneliness. She hadn’t really made any friends, and on the rare occasion anypony visited her, it was for business. Even less common still was a visit from the princess herself. There were many nights where Violet cried herself to sleep, silencing her sobs and drying her bedding of tears magically.

She had company, in the form of important, regal ponies and endless tomes of the world’s sciences, but yet, misery remained. She’d pace around her room with the various lessons and problems of the day, grappling with those of Equestria’s and her own. She could solve the former’s without much difficulty, but her own?

It was when she had sat on her bed, sulking, that a letter came from Celestia. The first of its kind: A question about war. Violet knew that all the things she’d intentionally been avoiding were connected, helping in one would assist all the others. Equestria was a country built off of a war economy, the gears turned with bits and gore clogging them, and it was Generals who cleaned them out only to cram more of the same into them.

Celestia knew her objections, but she also knew that Violet wouldn’t refuse her. They had grown to be the closest of ponies in the land, exchanging letters as frequent as waves frequented a beach. The princess knew that it was at this point that her advising could swing into something that could help her more important ventures.

First, it was a victory over the deer nation. Then came the zebra nation. Then the promotion of Generals. There was something in between these two, however, that made Violet tremble in her bed. Trixie Lulamoon. She’d seen gruesome pictures from the frontlines, ponies blown apart, burned, and stabbed. But what she had never seen, was a pony’s own muscle cooked in their own pan.

She had held convictions about aiding in war, helping with questions of politics, but she still assisted knowing that her help here would allow her to further help in stopping this brutal killer. Violet and Celestia were plotting against the pony at every turn and expertly predicting her every move. It was Violet’s idea to put her into Tartarus and was beside herself when it worked.

She wanted to choke herself when she found that Trixie had gotten out, and more than that, had successfully killed the single best agent Equestria had. She almost did throw herself out of the window when she found out that wasn’t the only piece of bad news of that operation. Trixie had become more powerful then either the princess or her pupil could predict because of something calling itself Arkon.

All secrets known, it was nothing more than an amalgamation with each individual holding an untellable amount of power, but one pony stood at the top of that mountain of doom and gore: Black Ice. Trixie before this was motivated only until a certain point, one that Violet thought she reached around the time of Sterling Glint’s death. But with the addition of Black Ice into her, the limit and lengths she’d go to reach it were well beyond the population of Equestria. Trixie could kill every single living thing in the world and still not be satisfied.

Celestia was furious, more so when Trixie marched into her castle on the date of a victory and demanded an asinine pardon. When Point Blank’s death reached her, it was in the form of a newspaper, not a letter from the princess firsthand. Violet knew what this meant. She had only wanted to help but had put the kingdom in a very dangerous corner.

No news of the Crystal Empire had reached Violet Star, and that was unlike how she usually lived her life. In that grand apparatus of war, burnt flesh and cracked bones, with bloodied bits intermingling between them and the gears, Violet Star never saw herself in them. In all the replacement parts placed in the machine, she never felt herself being shoved into it. That is until there was a creaking in the stairs, a light step followed by a thump that tried and failed to quiet itself.

No news of the Crystal Empire ever reached Violet Star.

Yesterday, there wasn’t a hole in Concrete’s wall, but today was different. Yesterday, Concrete wouldn’t have ordered the death of an innocent student in a reckless, final gamble. But today was different. Yesterday, the Acting General was confident in the kingdom and its motivations. But today was different.

Concrete’s time in the EUP numbered somewhere close to three decades, two of which were spent on the frontlines. Scarcely had she gotten into trouble or had overstepped her boundaries. She’d been careful that way, not to step on anyone’s hooves, including the soldiers beneath her who were used to it. She treated them with respect, then indifference. Then she found herself at a crossroads every officer in the EUP arrived at eventually, to view their soldiers as a tragedy waiting for a stamp on their death certificate, or a number.

Usually, officers who picked the former retired early or moved away from the front, and the latter advanced in rank and pushed the front forward. Concrete was unlike either. The wizening General saw no point in gaining land for the kingdom if that territory was a graveyard. Nor could she fathom seeing ponies as anything less than a precious life. The line of work she was in, and they were in, was a dangerous one. A tightrope walked with lightning and balefire, one that threatened to give way whenever it pleased.

Beyond that, she worked for an authoritarian monarch that controlled the sun. Stepping out against her orders would result in something between the death of a reputation or a death against a brick wall. Celestia did what she pleased, and that meant you either helped or got out of the way. Concrete had always hated dictators of any stripe, kind or cruel. However, she also knew it was never her place to reposition the government, but it was to minimize the damage it inflicted.

It was in that order, made without reaching out to the princess for approval, that she became the dictator. That’s when she put a hole in the wall and cracks leading away from it. It was just before her hoof connected with the drywall that she understood she had traded a life for the stability of a monarch’s reign. She had acted against everything she stood for, and for what? An extremely brief period of peace before launching another campaign? One she’d be promoted to oversee?

That order was not alone, the phrase ‘misery loves company’ came to mock Concrete. Solar Team 12 dead in a single instant, a pack of cruel warmongers themselves but they had families all the same. A pulse, a life. Then there was Acoustic Burst, that pegasi whose remains live on in the form of a bloodstained pair of dog tags.

Concrete hated herself for what she had done, and for not realizing sooner that she was being led down this path. She’d been so singularly focused on fighting Trixie that she hadn’t taken the time to look at anything else, least of all, herself or her place and what directions they were going. She should’ve realized that when she was cornering Trixie, she herself was nearing that same corner.

She had advanced in rank while treating every death as a catastrophe, but now in her place near the top, she had to treat them like numbers. Numbers were all that floated through her mind: Those saved, those killed, those traumatized, and those otherwise affected. She was in a position to make them all smaller, by her direction the kingdom could fight a war with a hoof tied behind its back.

No, that wouldn’t do. A merciful war? How oxymoronic. She’d relinquish her rank if she did that, and blow her chances of saving what lives she could, leaving some much crueler General to take her place and disregard those below them. This task was a test of the crumbling wall that once stood impenetrable. If she succeeded, she’d keep her spot. If she failed, which she wasn’t in the habit of, she’d retire to a doomed world.

There was nothing more to do but sit at her desk, her shoulders being crushed by the weight of her stars, and wait for the report. Wait to be told that she had succeeded in murdering an innocent. A tear fell from her eye, connected and pooling on the dark wood. She was trapped in a box at the top of the kingdom, with a hole punched in the side. If she did nothing to stop Trixie here, the world may have been perched for destruction. If she did nothing in the wars to come if she stopped Trixie, more would die.

Acting General of the Armies Concrete Pie had betrayed her values but not the kingdom, and she would sooner die than betray the ponies who fight for it. Whatever they believe is justified is the sign of a working mind, a life innumerably valuable. If she should be at the top, she would do her best to ensure that an order like this would never happen again.

As a pounding came at her door, and the voice of Twilight Sparkle shakily reported the success, Concrete had hoped that one day the new princess and her friends could forgive her for Violet Star. As a tear hit the tile at the sight of Trixie imprisoned in harmonic stone, she had hoped that she could forgive herself.

Celestia knew what the kingdom thought of her. That she was a brutal, warmongering monarch with her eyes set on the world and perceived any hoof out of the line she stretched across the world as a declaration of war. That she was slipping into her mind, obsessing over the sun outside her window as though she never wanted it to set. Not only in the sense of borders, that everywhere the sun was, it was shining on a piece of her land. But also in the sense that she wanted the sun to remain in the sky at all hours.

That the princess had driven everypony away from her, advisors, officers, and subjects. Even her own sister. She understood them, and how they could come to such a conclusion, and if she was truthful with herself, would agree. In her years of power, numbering well above a millennium, she had learned that the pursuit of self-improvement, and by extension, the improvement of her kingdom stemmed from a lack of acceptance in either. She endlessly searched for a path that made her better, and life better for her subjects because she felt that both could be better.

Celestia was right in that regard, that things can never be perfect and thus always require improvement, she knew that much. What she didn’t understand was that she wasn’t perfect. In her mind, she was the peak of what all life could be, and all should do their best to follow in her hoofsteps.

It was true that the endless pursuit of improvement stems from a lack of acceptance, but Celestia accepted herself. It was in her mind that everypony else didn’t. If something is judged to be perfect, why shouldn’t it be unanimous? Everypony accepted her as their leader, her continued residence above them implied to her a continued acceptance of that fact. More than that, an acceptance that she was perfect and what she was doing, as a result, must be too.

Celestia understood what the ponies beneath her thought about her, the same way that she understood a pet thinks about their owner. It was a line of thinking only an authoritarian could arrive at, but here she was, completely at home with it. Then she remembered that in this home, she was not alone.

Indeed, it was not a home fitted for one, it was a school of thought open to those who could afford admission, with a tuition of blood, bones, sinew, muscle, tissue, souls and… Power. Kings and Generals like her also resided here, but there was one who didn’t belong to any royal blood or martial uniform. Trixie Lulamoon also found herself at home here.

Celestia knew her to be a trespasser at the most, and somepony who forged their check to get in at the least. She stole her power while ponies like Celestia clawed at it for centuries. The princess had earned her godhood and this stranger, some nopony from the street, had seized it from the subjects she nurtured! The audacity!

Celestia’s eyes widened. Her and Trixie were no different in that regard, wanting to claim the world for theirs and mend the image of it to theirs respectively. What’s more, they both wanted each other annihilated and were willing to do it themselves.

Celestia had faced death down countless times, each time victorious and each time growing stronger as a result. Trixie had done the same, but not for nearly as long. She chuckled to herself. Trixie only got this strong because of an underling’s mistake, a very valued one. The kind that wasn’t unique in their own right, geniuses are all alike just isolated to different fields. They were, however, rare in frequency. Who knows how long she’d have to wait to find another like that.

Celestia’s chuckle grew into a laughing fit. That’s right! She had several! Twilight Sparkle was a valued pupil, who even surpassed her own mortality with her actions. There would be no downtime in her plans, Trixie became somepony who could help her, but now was just a setback, an easily disposable obstacle in the endless road that the princess was paving. One that Twilight would happily assist with and had a ready-made motivation for doing so.

Twilight’s brother was in the Crystal Empire when it was wiped from Equis. She’d want revenge, and Concrete had given it to her while also expending our last resort. She would make an excellent General in the years to come. Twilight would make a fine Lieutenant herself, her entry test being the destruction of Trixie.

They had already set up a plan for just this occasion: Operation Event Horizon. There was no death penalty anymore, Celestia had submitted to her General in this regard. Though, she had done so as a trade. Concrete’s loyalty in the wars to come for something she couldn’t have cared less about. But, just because you can’t execute somepony doesn’t mean you can’t order their death.

Celestia and Twilight had developed a device to rip the Amulet from Trixie forcefully, and would put it to action somewhere far away from the planet. Celestia closed her eyes in a warm smile, pride welling up within her for her pupil. Twilight had planned to focus this release of energy on a single target: Trixie’s old brooch. Such an amount of power fixated on one point would create a miniature black hole, obliterating Trixie and then exploding outward in the process.

What came after was Twilight devising a series of barriers and wormholes around the kingdom to displace the force. Everywhere else? Celestia cackled. This grand war of hers would hit the ground sprinting, many birds with one explosive stone.

The door behind her announced a victory in three quick, consecutive knocks. A sneer stretched itself across her face. Trixie was not the first to challenge her, nor would she be the last. As the princess rose and walked to greet her cornered adversary, her grin grew wider. The sun always rose. The sun will always rise.

Borrowed Time

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The movie playing in front of me was an interesting one, the characters acting their parts perfectly and emoting with clarity. It took place in a courtroom – well, this scene did, but it was the only one that had me in it, so it was the only one that was relevant. The title was something like: The Trial for Tranquility. The director? Princess Celestia herself, guest-starring her younger sister. I did so hate nepotism in the workplace, but she did fine enough, though she didn’t say much that Celestia hadn't already said, so her lines could’ve been cut.

The co-stars were the Elements of Harmony themselves, a motley crew of goodie-four-horseshoes that Equestria placed higher than everypony else, on six separate pedestals. They each testified; somehow each of them had been hurt by the actions of the protagonist of this film. Her lawyer, by the way, was doing her no favors in her defense. That’s what you get for getting a public defender to defend the best pony.

I was the star of this show, I was the best character, and I was the victor. Make no mistake, this was only a show, it couldn’t possibly be anything else. A joke played on me to humor me and my newly assembled empire to the North. As the Sun claimed the land below its light, I could make equal claims that everything under the scar in the sky should be mine as well. We were equals, Celestia and I, but she had tipped the scales and kicked sand in my eyes, bringing those Elements into it.

She was no better than me. In fact, I’d declare that she was the worst of the two of us. She had been killing more than myself, and for far longer. That liberation in the Crystal Empire? How many Crystal Empires had been toppled by Celestia? How many races of creatures wiped out from the world, and their names and records scratched from time. At least in my image of perfection I cast out on the world, mine promised immortality for all.

They had the decency to unpetrify me from my stone prison. It was nice knowing that I had been an honored statue even if it was only for a brief moment. Those should be erected all across Equestria once I got out of here. However, they did not have the decency to remove the multiple anti-arcane barriers around me. Truly, they were of incredible strength. They had even learned to seal the ground below me.

“What could you possibly have to say in your defense, Trixie Lulamoon? Everything levied against you in this court has proven to be irrefutable.” The sun boomed from high above me, on her legal throne of marble, a banner of her visage on either side of her. The room around me was still, the only sound being the fluttering of clicks coming from the press’ cameras positioned around the room.

I smirked, which turned to a silent giggle. I would’ve liked to raise it to a maniacal laugh, but somehow I get the impression that righteous ponies don’t do that. I stood up, which prompted my public defender to rise and gesture for me to sit. I refused, looking down at them.

“Trixie believes the princess has asked her for her defense, not you.” That was another of the seemingly endless perks of this Amulet, it made me taller than everypony, as though I was declaring I was above everypony by simply existing!

I turned to the princess. This was a mare who had been careful about what she had done, who she associated with and what she told them. What she could never account for was the dead speaking or their memories living on within me. I knew how many Crystal Empires had been leveled because of her, because I was every Empire that fell. I was their leaders, their soldiers, the ones left behind. More than that, I was the princess’ associates: Her Generals, her pupils, even that Violet Star. Not only did I have an ace up my sleeve, I was the ace.

“Trixie has plenty to say, but where would you like her to start?” I glared daggers at the princess, who responded with her own sworded glare. “She can start with Emperor Skeleton Key and your massacre of his society. She could start with the battle plans you laid with Point Blank, or maybe… She could start with your manipulation of that poor Violet Star to get me where I am?”

“You will watch your tongue in my court. What you say is contemptible at the least and blasphemous at the most. That being said, start in your story wherever you see fit. Your credibility is diminished completely; nopony would believe a single word you say. I allow you to speak your mind as an extension of mercy. Your last words before Equestria.” She leaned back in her alabaster throne chair – how decadent for a courtroom.

“Blasphemous? That would imply divinity on your part, wouldn’t it? Trixie will speak as she pleases, she does not recognize this as a court because she does not recognize you or your laws as sovereign or divine. However, Trixie thanks you for giving her the opportunity to tell the correct side of history, the one you often seem to overwrite.” I paced around my bubblegum-pink prison before stopping and stomping. The cameras were nearly a wall of vibration with their clicks and a strobe of their flashes. The lights would’ve been distracting, had the pink spheres not dulled their intensity.

“Sitting here, Trixie is troubled with the thought that empires must trample other empires to remain standing, and she wonders how many have fallen to get you to where you are now. One? Two? Five? Twenty? She doesn’t need to wonder for very long, however – she can just reach into her memories and find the answer. Fifty empires. It’s fifty nations of their own sovereignty that you stamped out in favor of your own.” I and the sun exchanged unflinching stares, each harboring balefire behind our eyes.

“Now Trixie asks the court, which would be…” I pointed to Celestia. “You: What are the names of these nations? Have you even bothered to remember the names who fell to bring you where you are?”

“The court,” she ground her teeth, “would like the defendant to get to the point before the court denies her testimony and moves onto sentencing.”

“The court cannot remember, and Trixie will not stall out her clock any longer with this line of thinking, but she would like to leave this point with a question for all of you. Of the two here, who is on trial? The court documents may say Trixie, and that she’s in the hot seat. But from where she’s sitting, her seat doesn’t seem like the only warm one. How can you try somepony as eccentric and powerful as Trixie, when she is the lesser of the two evils in this room?” I wore a venomous smirk.

Celestia slammed her hoof against the towering marble court bench, sending cracks throughout its face and tremors through the room. “I am not evil, you fiend! You keep saying that I am the one in the wrong, but you’ve neglected to explain how! My patience is growing thinner for you.”

“Yours or the court's? Oh never mind, they’re the same thing. You are the court and your desire is the law, definitely not like a dictator. You forget too, princess, that Trixie has explained herself. When she asked how many empires were crushed in your conquest to be here, she was asking that to compare you and her. See, Trixie has killed an empire and claimed it for herself, but you have done the same thing many more times than her, forty-nine more to be specific. You are that many more times the villain that I am, but somehow worse than that.”

“Enough! I will not be talked down to by a murderous psychopath in my own courtroom!” Celestia rose in a huff and was joined by her sister who said a few words in agreement. The court would’ve been out of session were it not for a humble apple farmer.

“Yer honor, if Ah may?” She started, unsure of if what she was saying was proper courtroom procedure. A quick glance between her and Twilight Sparkle confirmed that she wasn’t out of order with a quick nod. “Now Ah think this here is a court of all of us, not just you and yer sister. We should give her a chance to speak her piece, cause to me, it don’t look like she was quite finished. That’s all.” She removed her hat, holding it to her chest. Who let her in with that, to begin with?

“I agree.” Twilight stood up, prompting her more honest friend to join her with a glance to each of her sides, once more doubting herself and her following of procedure. “She has more to say, and if these are her last words, then let her say all of them.” Her voice grew a touch shaky towards the end – she knew that I had killed her brother and her sister-in-law, but still stood up for me. Perhaps they were kind ponies who meant well, or perhaps they only wanted to hear the thoughts of a god.

“Trixie is happy to indulge the court further in her thinking, especially if it displeases the crowns.” I stood straighter, puffing my chest out with confidence. “However, Trixie thinks it would be best to not speak her mind.” I winked at Twilight.

The two sisters exchanged a look between themselves, before turning it to the sea of reporters then to the six sitting below them on a lower bench. The weight of how their actions would be received forced them back into their seats. It was one thing to up and leave of their own accord, but it was another to leave against the wishes of two of the embodiments of harmony. The public opinion of them was already turbulent, it grew tremendously with my capture, but would likely fall if they up and left without a fair trial.

Perhaps it wouldn’t. After all, these were ignorant insects who thought I was the bad mare. Maybe the public would think less of them for sitting back down and tolerating me. Or maybe they’d think more of them for being even-hoofed, then again, there was a good chance nothing would happen.

Celestia’s mouth was a straight line, and spoke with a tone that was somehow stricter. “Proceed. What do you mean you won’t speak from your point of view? Isn’t that the only kind you can give?”

Ok, I didn’t care if the righteous pony wasn’t the kind to laugh maniacally, I was rewriting the definition of the word so I could do as I want, and how I acted would be the new version! I started laughing and stopped possibly a minute later, it didn’t matter. “You don’t realize it yet, do you? I have the memories of all those Trixie kills! She is every single one of those you butchered, she is every associate and enemy of yours!”

Every pony found a new extension to the word ‘apprehension.’ I could feel it, every single one of their hairs standing on end extending from a goosebump. Their posture shifted from sitting straight to leaning forward. If they silenced me now, their public opinion would definitely evaporate. If the story of all centuries went up in smoke, and the princesses were carrying the matches, they’d be hated for sure!

“We’ll start with the memories of…” I felt my fur singing into a light violet, my eyes burning into a light blue and my bones crunching into a more compact body. “Violet Star.”

Oh that look on Celestia’s face, that aghast pale face was just perfect for a picture! The bags under her eyes, the worried lines in her brow, her biting her lip looking at the now murmuring crowd was a wonderful touch! I may go down in flames today, but I knew if that was a possibility, I’d make Celestia’s downfall afterwards a certainty.

Celestia swatted a gavel down, echoing throughout the room, silencing it. “H-how can we even be certain she’s telling the truth?” She gulped a shaky breath, then grinned. Her quaking stilled as she lowered her head. “She’s had a false identity before, how can we be sure she isn’t just putting on this show to pull at our heartstrings?”

“Because I was a precious advisor of yours, Celestia.” I sniffled, forcing my eyes to water. “You can find me on the records of the school you put me through. You gave me a purpose besides just sitting in my room. You gave me the gift of…” I choked up on the outside, but was cackling on the inside. “Hope as well as knowledge. I spent every day helping this kingdom, that’s also on the records. I’m not just a… show.” I wiped a tear from my eye. “I’m your pupil, your special advisor. How could you…?” I crumpled within my pink bubble.

Rarity, at least I thought her name was Rarity, dabbed a handkerchief on her running pastel mascara. “It’s true, your majesty. Violet Star helped me with a few production problems when I was starting to scale my boutiques.”

Applejack rested her hat in front of her and nodded. “Ahnd she helped me with a disease that was gettin’ at ahll mah trees. Then there was that time Apple Bloom was real sick and hurtin’, we all thought she was a goner, but then Violet Star there helped us whip up a home remedy. There ain’t no way this here is a mirage, no sir.” The urge to laugh was like a festering rash’s itch, but I had to resist.

Twilight nodded with a warm smile, her eyes closed, remembering all the letters she had gotten from Violet. But when they opened, they were full of conviction. “Yes girls, I’m certain we were all helped in some way or another by Violet Star, but those are in the past. How can we know, as Celestia has said, that Trixie is not just manipulating our memories of her?”

They had laid the road to walk directly into my pocket. When I answered this with details only Violet Star would know, they’d believe me and everything else I’ve said! I made sure to quiver my lip and shake my voice. “Applejack, if I remember correctly, your trees were growing bruised apples, and I gave you that recipe for a magical fertilizer that fixed them. And I remember Apple Bloom’s illness came from those apples, and those photos you sent me were just awful.” I threw in a few pauses for effect. “Necrosis, right?”

“That’s right.” She nodded solemnly. “Ah don’t think we need to hear anymore. She checks out to me.”

The six nodded in agreement, along with Luna. Celestia only looked on in fury as her challenge on me backfired. But I wasn’t satisfied with only giving her a knife wound, I wanted to twist the blade. “I was nothing but a loyal servant of yours, Celestia. I have the memories that Trixie has too, we’re the same. What she asked me is what I’m going to ask you now: How did the Elements know I was going to be killed last night? How could they have been there so soon, or have known that Trixie killed me? They would be the only ones capable of stopping her, that’s why they did.” I sobbed.

Rainbow Dash stood, jabbing her hoof at Celestia. “Yeah! And how come General Concrete Pie told us to wait outside her…” The cyan pegasus stopped dead in her sentence, the color drained from her face. “You ordered us there knowing she would die. You let her die! Where is that General anyway? Scared she’s gonna get outed for this? Hey General,” She eyed a section of cameras, “the secret's out.” She cast a fiery glare up at Celestia. “And you!” She jabbed a hoof at her. “You let this happen! You could’ve stopped this! How could you!?”

The courtroom’s air was sucked out of the room. The press didn’t move, they didn’t speak and the cameras were still. They knew that even if what I did was staged, and a lucky guess with Applejack’s claim, that there was no way around Celestia being responsible for Violet’s death.

Celestia looked mortified. She had always controlled the information that went out about her, and if it was needed, she greased the hooves of the media to keep quiet. I should know; Paper Trail had been an important journalist who got a check in the mail every month from Celestia just to keep her secrets.

Then her shame turned to anger, her lips pursed holding in her fury and her eyes raced across the room trying to find the words for a response. “What more did you want me to do?” Her anger liquified into sorrow. No, no, there’s no way she’s doing that. “Violet Star would’ve died either way. She was an incredibly talented mare. Everypony who interacted with her knew she was a prodigy of nearly all stripes. Concrete or I…” She trailed off, blowing her nose into a tissue.

The princess shuddered, trying and failing to hold in her emotions. Her eyes were a reddened river, and her nose reflected this. Her voice was a trembling mess of pitches that threw themselves up or down with her wails. “The General or I couldn’t have stopped her death. We sent Trixie into Tartarus, but she somehow broke out of there! We sent Glass River after her, and he lost! We tried making peace deals with her multiple times, and when we settled on a deal, she stabbed us in the back!” Several tissues made their sticky homes on the flat surface in front of her.

She removed her crown, placing it next to the snotty crumples next to her. “If you should want me to step down from my throne, then say so.” She hung her head. No fucking way! She was throwing the world’s most official pity party, and everyone had come! Unbelievable! “But I did not know what else to do. I didn’t want Violet Star to die either, she and I were closer together than she and her own mother. If I could say anything to her now, it’s that I’m sorry. Equestria is sorry. But you were the only way to catch her. If there was any other way, I would’ve done that instead.” She looked into my eyes, somehow communicating a boiling mixture of fury and genuine, aching, sadness. “You are a hero among heroes, Violet Star. And once again, from the very depths of my heart, I am sorry.”

Fuck. That was it. Luna was tearing up. The Elements were buying it too, the spastic pink one was crying the most… somehow. “Is… there anything more you’d like to say, Trixie?” The princess sniffled.

Internally, I wanted to scream. I wanted to shatter these barriers and stab every single pony in this room with the shards. I wanted to tear Celestia in half and sew her back together poorly with a rusted needle and parade her across Equestria. I wanted to scream that she was manipulating everypony in this room, a princess with a heart like this would surely have a heart with the wars she’s going to wage later. Externally I shifted back into my perfect, about-to-die, form and sighed. “What about Skeleton Key? Was the trampling of his empire justified?”

Celestia had a strange talent for communicating with just her eyes, while every part of her was sending a different message. It was in those eyes that I saw her victory – she had cornered me, and was now moving for the kill. “Skeleton Key was a tyrant who stole his empire from captives, and forced them into servitude to build it. I had urged him then, before the war, to set them free, so that we could make peace and prosper together. Do you know what happened next? Of course you do, but would you mind telling the court, for the record?”

I fell silent. She had already gotten the satisfaction of pushing me this far in my own argument, I was not about to push myself further. Skeleton Key’s next move was annexing and enslaving an Equestrian city nearest the border. Celestia’s eyes were fire, and in mine she saw ice turn to water turn to steam. She repeated this for the court, asked again if I had anything else to say. Silence again.

“Then…” Celestia gulped, looking as though she was pained. “As the monarch of Equestria and the highest judge in the land, I find Trixie Lulamoon guilty of all charges levied against her including treason and serial murder among other high crimes against the state. I motion to sentence this mare to practice a new initiative: Project Event Horizon. All those in favor?”

I had never known what defeat looked like, until now. It was eight ponies in a courtroom unanimously mouthing ‘aye.’ Celestia continued. “The motion carries. The Trial for Tranquility is officially adjourned.” I had never heard what defeat sounded like, until now. It was a gavel smacking against a marble bench.

I was led away through a series of fluorescent hallways that all blended together until it became a large white room, also lit by fluorescent lights. I wanted to protest, but it wouldn’t mean anything. To explode, but it wouldn’t change anything. Or even to ask what they were going to do to me, but it wouldn’t tell me anything.

I, a god, lost.

General Concrete Pie was a living embodiment of paradoxes. An earth pony in a military that heavily preferred unicorns and pegasi, much more, she was almost the highest authority of the whole establishment, save for Field Marshal Solstice and the princesses. A commander who believed life to be the most precious thing a pony can have, and used every extension of her authority to protect that. A General that backed herself mentally further into a corner as she pursued her hardest assignment. The further down she went in her psyche, the higher her rank went.

In her eyes, Trixie reflected this too. The more powerful she got, the further away from her goal she became. The further in her mission she went, the further away she strayed from herself. Concrete saw a part of herself in Trixie when she was justifying herself in the Badlands, but that part of her was buried under the new, dominant part of her. Perhaps it remained somewhere within her, but even if it managed to claw itself to the surface, her fate was sealed. Moreover, that better side could not possibly redeem the actions of its infernal one.

As Concrete navigated from her office, whose wall would be repaired that afternoon, to the neverending marble mouth of the royal hallway to a chamber down a sterile white tunnel, all the while her hoofsteps echoed in her ear. Clip clop, clip clop. They grew louder in her ear as she neared her adversary, as did the pounding in her chest and the pace of her breathing.

What was happening? In her hooves she wielded the power of the crowns, but when she looked down at them, she saw iron gauntlets caked in dried blood. She blinked and they were normal, trembling, but normal. She crashed into the wall beside her, back first, and slid down it, her hooves cradling her face. She let out a silent sob in between her shaky breaths. She was a murderer.

Why was this happening? Concrete had entered the hellfire of war herself countless times over the course of decades. She’d been there for successful sieges, entire campaigns starting and ending at her desk, stories of war heroics that centered around her. Why did she feel this way now?

Was it because she didn’t want to kill Trixie? The Event Horizon initiative would surely kill her, but that couldn’t be it. She wanted to destroy Trixie, that much she didn’t feel guilty about. Was it because she knew that beneath all that rubble, the Trixie she once knew was there and she didn’t want to kill her? Possibly, but she understood that she couldn’t decouple the two, letting one live was letting the other off the hook too.

Concrete stood and wiped her nose. With a few deep breaths, she understood where the guilt came from. It was Sabrina, the spark that set off the fire that nearly consumed the world. The General felt pity for the young mare, but she felt a twisting knot forming in her chest. She never did get any justice. Not that there was any for her to receive, as her death was nopony’s fault.

Still, Concrete felt for this filly. She had a heart that bled for ponies like her, and a position to make things right. She knew Trixie didn’t deserve this, or anything remotely close to it, but Sabrina did.

That was it. She would do something good in Sabrina’s name, besides destroying her now evil sister. Only a few loose ends remained before she’d have to face the sun, and provide shade from its glow. With a nod, she opened the large double doors containing Trixie, a simple alabaster room devoid of any decorations, with a door on either side of it from where she entered from. If she was going to head the wars to come, she’d do her best to negotiate as she always had. No longer was she afraid of her position, because it was where she was all along.

A General who operated an ocean of death machines, who forced their restraint. A General who had once restrained herself in her diplomatic actions in favor of those above her and their violent intentions. A military industrial complex was now headed by a mare who wanted to limit it. Nopony would dare stand against the commander that killed the icon of death itself!

The doors sealed shut, taking all the air with them as their dark wood ends met. The sound of Concrete’s hooves against the marble was music to her ears now, and a terrifying symphony to those who could hear it. She marched directly in front of Trixie’s barriers and sneered. “Hello, Trixie.”

Ever the polite one, Trixie responded. “Hello, fascist.”

Concrete’s smile grew as she stared at her enemy. A caged rat who managed to bite the hand that couldn’t catch it until now. The General felt her face grow hot, and a cascading feeling of warmth fell across her body. She enjoyed seeing this mare trapped in a bubble, the rage in her eyes and the fury in that clenched jaw. What almost sent her over the edge was that round blinking device on the back of her neck.

Concrete strutted around the bubblegum sphere, practically prancing with delight. She licked her lips, she enjoyed the new leaf she turned over in herself. “Oh come now, Trixie. I’m no fascist, you of all ponies should know this. I’m a monarchist, among other things. I have a heart too you know? This whole time, I spent giving you the benefit of the nation’s doubt, even getting you a pardon. And this is how you repay me? Unfortunate. I’m almost too mad to tell you about a scholarship I intend to open in your sister’s name.”

A muffled, echoey laughter came from inside the bubble. “Oh, you were almost too mad to tell me, huh? Well Trixie is almost too mad to tell you her plan to break these barriers and paint this room red.” An explosion came from within the sphere, sending the room into tremors. But alas, no damage was done to the barriers.

“Oh, it seems you weren’t angry enough. It doesn’t really matter. Even if you were, it won’t change the fact that in that room there,” Concrete extended a hoof to the door to Trixie’s left, opposite the one she came from and perpendicular to the one Concrete entered, “A team is assembling a vessel to take you to the bowels of space. Do you know what’s going to happen then, Trixie? You’re going to die where nopony can see you, and you’ll be hated for the rest of civilization.”

“Really? How’s that? Trixie went to hell and came back stronger than ever, she liberated an entire empire in a single day by herself. How could you possibly kill her? Plus, isn’t the death penalty illegal by that pardon you gave her?” Trixie leaned against the side of the sphere, inspecting her hoof.

“Oh, that’s because we’re not killing you. We’re sending you inside a black hole, and even if that does manage to kill you, I’m sure nopony would throw a fit about that.” Concrete chuckled. “On top of that, even if all of our theories are wrong, which I doubt, you won’t have the Amulet to protect you like you did any other time.”

Trixie took her turn in laughing, falling to the bottom of her barriers. “And how do you plan that? You’re gonna get Trixie to take the Amulet off? How would you get to her? These barriers keep you from her, as much as it does the other way around.” She cackled louder. “And who’s to say that Trixie doesn’t escape a black hole? Nopony was able to escape hell either, but here she is.”

Concrete nearly leapt with joy. “I’m so glad you asked!” She produced a remote control with a single button. It looked like something out of a cereal box, but it was the key to this whole operation. “Do you see that blinking red light on your neck?”

Trixie’s eyes darted down to the gem around her neck and back to the General. “Yes, it’s the Amulet’s jewel. What’re you getting at?”

Concrete couldn’t help but laugh, her face was starting to hurt from all the glee. “Oh, you didn’t notice did you? When you were a statue we put Twilight’s newest prototype on your necklace there.”

“Amulet.”

“Doesn’t matter!” She nearly sang. “With this remote, it’ll forcefully remove itself from your neck! Then all that power will be unleashed on that tiny brooch of yours in there. And then you know what happens, Trixie?”

“Sorry, she can’t hear you over all that oinking, fascist.” Even through the anti-arcane screen, Concrete could hear her teeth grinding.

“You will lose everything. You will have nothing anymore. You won’t own anything. Nopony will care about you, your sister will stay buried in the earth where you couldn’t save her from, you will be a lesson to everypony on what not to be.” Concrete trotted in place before stopping dead in her tracks and gravely stared at her. “I’ve taken everything from you. Your Amulet, your sister’s resurrection…” She dragged her hoof across her cheek. “Even your last breath is mine!”

“Wrong. Trixie’s last breath is only hers to take, and the Amulet’s only owner is her.”

“Aww! You’re adorable.” Another hoof joined Concrete’s other cheek. “You’re in my barrier about to be killed by my orders, which will end you, and you can only retort by saying you own two things that are going to vanish by my hoof!”

“Is there anything more you want to say, fascist? Trixie would love to stay and chat, but a conversation with a pig in a black leather uniform is getting annoying.”

The General huffed, causing all her medals to clink in response. “Such a potty mouth on you.” A voice spoke in her ear, telepathy from Twilight Sparkle who was in the room over. General Concrete? It’s done. She nodded, and made her way for the door. “There is one more thing I want to say to you Trixie: It’s over. I won.”

“No, Concrete. The sun did.”

The doors shut behind Concrete. The sun was always protected by an unyielding wall, and now was no different even if the sun was hotter now. That burning star being surrounded by the wall was as much to keep threats out as it was to keep the sun in. Nothing had changed for the wall, it only grew taller in response to the Mare Who Split the Sky.

It was a perfect day in Canterlot, the kind where the breeze was light and the air was sublime. The sunlight was just the right amount of warmth, dewdrops clung to blades of grass like a song clung to a pony’s mind. Celestia took in a deep breath, taking all of it in. Though two things irked her about this otherwise perfect day: The song sung by a dying pony in a bubble and the fissure she put in the sky.

Whenever the sun hit its highest point, it passed over that necrotic streak, making something of an eerie eclipse. An ugly eclipse was closer to what it really was. But it didn’t matter, it had stood for long enough mocking her. She had wanted to take it down, and had the ability to, but she wanted to wait for the right moment to do so.

Celestia had told Admiral Seafoam to make today the most perfect day, suited to her tastes of course. Trixie was in place beside her, inside a tiny box that would be propelled by every court wizard into space, and had a spell transcribed upon its back wall to maintain the speed given to it. It was purposely shoddily crafted to inflict the most possible pain to its prisoner while it travelled. The extreme heat and frigid cold of space, coupled with the lack of air would prove a fitting appetizer to an entree of spaghettification.

Perfect described everything about this day. A warm smile found a home on the monarch’s face as she peeled the streak from the sky, and the pleasant baby blue returned. Only one more thing to do.

She took in one more deep breath, savoring the freshness and liveliness in the air. A glance to her left saw her in the company of her top military officials, Stellar Solstice within a hoof’s length of her. To her right, her sister and the Elements along with every noble in Canterlot. It was a thing of beauty, she’d have a painting made of this moment and a mural commissioned in her royal hall so she could gaze into perfection whenever she wanted. Well, to look at perfection outside a mirror.

With a single flick of her hoof, that cube containing her lifted itself up and within an instant was hurled into the sky, picking up speed until it was no longer a shape, but a blur. She stared into the plain blue sky backlit by her beautiful sun and smiled as she saw Trixie go forward into the final frontier.

She had her doubts about the program actually producing a black hole, or that it would collapse and explode right after. But even if it was only going to produce a tremendous amount of force, it would put an impossible distance between Trixie and the Amulet, in space no less. They would never find each other again, or make their way back to Equis beyond that. Though, she trusted Twilight and her math, who was certain it would work.

With Trixie gone, it was the best day Equestria has ever had, and that meant celebration.

What more was there to say? The trip up had been miserable, but the view was pretty nice. The trip still was miserable, but at least I had the view and my perfect self to take my mind off of it. The singing heat when I neared the sun – the actual star, not the phony pony who falsely claimed to be it. Or the burning, piercing cold that crept into the barriers and snuck its way under my skin.

I wished I could just die already, but then again, the last moments were with myself and my own thoughts, so this ‘initiative’ could take as long as it wanted to.

I chuckled to myself; they called it a blanket of stars, but they didn’t seem to be very warm. I kept laughing, the pitch climbing as it went on. It was such a clever play on words, because blankets were meant to be warm, and yet, I was still very cold despite being covered on all sides by a blanket. I laughed as the device on my neck whirred, and I laughed when I heard a click and then I stopped laughing as my barriers dissolved.

Clink.

The Amulet hit the bottom of the cube. The cold, which was intense before, was now unbearable. I gasped but found no air to breathe. I threw myself to the floor, only able to stare beside me to the Amulet. Any moment it was going to go off, any moment it was going to explode and create a black hole and suck me in.

I waited.

My vision doubled, but I still waited. Nothing.

The tightness in my chest was an impossible knot, my heart was a jackhammer, and my eyes a kaleidoscope. And yet, I waited, but then it clicked. Arkon had told me that the Amulet would explode, and Black Ice must’ve told Celestia that at some point, who told Twilight. But he had lied.

There was no explosion, there was no black hole, and there wasn’t going to be. Arkon had lied.

I wanted to cry, but the lack of gravity kept the tears suspended in my eyes, which then froze from the temperature. I would’ve screamed but there was no air, and I wouldn’t have heard anything anyway. I could only sit in the last moment of mortal, unspeakable pain.

My last breath was gone. I was running on the fumes of it. The physical pain must’ve been lonely and called for its emotional sibling, who came instantly. Everything came crashing down on me at once. What Concrete had said was right, but there was something she never could’ve said; she had forgotten it. Then again, I’d forgotten it too.

I hated myself. I was so short-sighted, yet so greedy. I always reached for more, just this much more, this longer, that empire, that mare. I probably could’ve resurrected Sabrina as soon as I put the Amulet on. I realized then, I didn’t need to kill Paper Trail. But the Amulet had made my first thought after putting it on to be murder. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now in my final moment, it was so clear.

The Amulet was murder objectified, it hungered for power and justified its gain to whoever wore it. Arkon thought in their delusions that some otherworldly threat was there, and the Amulet let him see it clearly. I was a showpony on the streets, who in the ashes of my burned down life found the Amulet, and it showed me a solution. Black Ice was a serial killer who direly hated all life, and the Amulet didn’t need to justify anything to him because him and it were on the same wavelength.

I wished I'd never picked up that Amulet. I hadn’t needed strength to bring Sabrina back, I'd needed the inner strength to forgive myself and move past it. I wished I could’ve seen it sooner. I really wasn’t a bad pony, but I had done things that placed me well above the definition of one. What Concrete said was right – I couldn’t save her. Maybe I never could. I should be ashamed of myself.

Maybe that was a good thing about Sabrina being dead. She wouldn’t know what I did. And if I met her after I died here, I could only hope she didn’t know. But if she did, I’d be spending all my afterlife trying to get her to forgive me, and myself after that. If she did forgive me at all.

I curled up in a ball, my eyes frozen in place, each individual hair of mine a stiff, frigid needle that burrowed itself into my freezing body. I could feel my blood turning solid, and the individual crystals of the new ice that replaced it shredding my inner lining. To say it was painful would’ve been a lie. I could only sense this, doing or registering anything was outside my power. How ironic, I was on the top of the world, peerless in power, and now I didn’t even have the strength to feel myself dying.

This journey wasn’t for nothing, I guess. I learned to let go. Finally… Closure. If there had been one last thing I could say, it’d be: “I’m sorry Sab—”

Author's Notes:

Here it is folks, the last chapter of Event Horizon! It was my first large story I've written in my entire writing career, and I'm happy with how it turned out and even happier that all of you have read this far along with me!

Were there mistakes? Imperfections? Scenes that could've been better? Interactions? Character development? Absolutely, and I've learned so much from the writing of this story that I feel confident moving forward with regards to these. Another thing that could've caused this, other than lack of experience, of course, would be the writing of each chapter weekly or biweekly. Yes, I wrote each chapter from a loose plan, also written that week or two week span. I've since learned my lesson, and if I post a story, rest assured that it will be completed! This is better for both of us, I don't have to rush and can write better, and you all can read better fics on a timely schedule!

That being said, Event Horizon isn't over. There's still an epilogue for you all to read, and I'll explain more when you get to the end of that!

Thank you all so much, again!

Epilogue: Slow Day

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Paid Tab’s business once hurt from Trixie’s presence, back when she was a mare on the street with her sister. Canterlot was a classy city, and seeing an unwashed pony and a raggedy kid would’ve driven customers away. If it were up to him, people wouldn’t think too much of it, maybe toss her a few bits.

He sighed. His restaurant became something of a tourist attraction after that one ‘Perfect Day’. That’s what Celestia had called it, and the yesmen in the press had worked hard to repeat it with their printed megaphones. The Canterlot stallion chuckled to himself, stroking the stubble on his chin. It never ceased to amaze him how the press always praised the princess.

Maybe it was just as well, the ponies of Equestria wouldn’t want to hear any critique about her so soon after her big day. He just wished ponies would tone down the harshness that they talked about Trixie with. He knew something was up in that coverage, but the Canterlot Times had just developed the magical finesse to make the pictures in their prints move and play recorded sound. Like a little movie of recent events.

There it was, plain as day, Trixie’s own voice saying absolutely vile things about the princess in her interview before she was sent into orbit, or wherever. It just seemed off to him that Trixie would say things like that, she hadn’t seemed to be like that when she was working for him. Even off the clock when her already loose filter was nonexistent, he’d never hear things like that.

Perhaps he’d get some seething critique of the nobles, or how rich ponies shouldn’t exist and things like that. He didn’t see those as out of the ordinary, he felt the same way about Equestria. Maybe not to the same extent that Trixie felt, but it was close enough.

He was hurting for money when he sent her away, but when the princess sent her away, he was swimming in bits. Funny how that one worked.

He partially blamed himself for this whole fiasco, lying awake in bed at night with the thought of ‘what if?’ What if he had never fired Trixie? What if he’d let them stay in the restaurant after hours? Would any of this have happened?

He shook his head behind the counter of the empty restaurant. It wasn’t his fault, nor did he do any of the things that Trixie did. He couldn’t have any hooves pointed at him. Even though he knew that he still couldn’t stop himself from asking those what-ifs.

He turned to get the ‘out to lunch’ sign when the bell atop the door chimed. A blue and purple unicorn walked in, her face planted between the folds of a newspaper. He could only determine the features about her from her feet and her tail, which if they were any indication, her mane was probably just as wavy.

“Uh, miss? I hope you don’ mind, I was jus’ gonna break fer lunch.” He called out. No response. “Uh, miss?”

“Yeah, uh-huh. I heard you, you can shut the place down and we can both have lunch.” Her face didn’t come out from behind the paper.

Tab shrugged and trotted to the door, sign in tow. He tossed a cursory glance at the paper in her hooves. FIELD MARSHAL CONCRETE PIE TO DEPLOY TROOPS IN YAKYAKISTAN. He rolled his eyes and walked back behind the counter.

“That’s jus’ what we need, innit? Another war, as if we don’t never learn our lesson?” He hollered from the back, as the flattop grill hissed from the oily hay placed on it.

“You said it.” Tab heard the paper fold down. “But if you’re going to say it, please say either ‘as if we don’t ever learn our lesson’ or ‘as if we never learn our lesson.’”

“Oh, you one o’ them grammar students, huh? We charge extra for those around ‘ere.”

“Is that so? What’re you making for me back there, anyway?” He could hear the paper lay flat on the table and a trot coming to the bar.

Paid Tab turned briefly to see the unicorn at the counter. Yep, just as he thought, a mop of wavy hair. “Fried hay hoagies, you gonna turn ‘em down?” He turned his attention back to flipping the greasy stacks.

“Not a chance, wise guy.” She chuckled, and the stallion joined in.

“Oh I’m the wise guy? I think only one of us was correctin’ the other on grammar.” They laughed a touch louder. He finished cooking and sat a plate of a fried hay hoagie with a side of hay fries and spice ketchup.

“Oh, I’m glad to have hay with my hay.” She playfully jabbed, taking a bite of the hoagie, grease coating her lips.

“See what I’m sayin’ about who here is really the wise guy?” He took a bite, and wiped his mouth with his apron. “So what brings you to Canterlot? You must be new in town, cause I ain’t ever seen you before.”

“You could say that.” She dabbed her mouth with a napkin, and took a sip of the glass of Sparkle-Cola, letting out a soft belch. “Call it something of a pilgrimage.”

“Oh, is that so? What, you worshippin’ ol’ Trix now? Ponies today, I tell ya.” He was halfway through his hoagie and still chewing, but he couldn’t help himself from wiping down part of the counter.

The mare laughed. “Nothing like that, no. I don’t think there are any gods.”

Tab mocked a shush. “Don’t let Celestia hear that, eh? Who knows, maybe the next space cadet is you.”

She let out a note of amusement. “No, but seriously. I just came as a tourist, but I’ve been seeing all the sites, as it were. The Badlands and the big runic door Trixie put up, and the site where they blasted her off, even the alley she used to live in.”

Tab held a hoof up. “Wait, pause. You said you were in the alley she an’ her sister used to live in?”

“That’s right.” She blinked. “Why? Is that weird? I’ve heard of other ponies doing that, so I didn’t think it’d be…” She trailed off seeing the confused look on his face.

He shook his head. “No. That can’t be right, when I went to visit that alley when she was still around, right around the time I heard Paper Trail had died, and it wasn’t there. Nopony could find it even though I knew it was where I pointed the cops to.”

“Interesting…” The amethyst mare put a hoof to her chin. “It sounds like she put up an illusion spell to cover the body, if she even left a body.”

Tab wore a bewildered look on his face. “You unicorns got somethin’ off about ya. What’d you say yer name was?”

She popped out of her thought bubble. “I didn’t, but my name is Starlight Glimmer. Sorry if I weirded you out, I’m just a smart sorcerer is all.” She beamed.

Tab cast a sideways stare at her. “Yeah, smart’s one way a puttin’ it.”

She tilted her head and then returned it with a nod. “Oh no! I’m not one of those snooty students from Celestia’s school. I couldn’t stand being around such rich ponies all the time. I don’t know how you’ve managed to for this long.”

He chuckled. “First you insult my grammar, and now you’re callin’ me old. What’s next, eh? Insult my cooking?”

“Well…”

“Hey, don’t start, you’re still eatin’ it aren’t you?”

They eyed each other silently for a second, a cold stare between the two of them. They both laughed. “Fair.” Starlight wiped her eye with the clean side of the now darkened napkin.

“But you gotta point. I don’t know how I’ve managed to put up with these condescending types. I swear to you, Starlight, they look at me an’ my cookin’ like I gotta third eye or somethin’.” He pointed to his forehead for emphasis.

“You know our whole system’s set up like that, right? Monarchy and all that.” Starlight said with a mouthful of hoagie.

“Ugh, don’t remind me. I jus’ wish some ponies who needed help could get it, you know? Like, fer example, would Trixie have gone on a killin’ spree like that if her an’ her sister got help?” Tab popped the last bite of his sandwich in his mouth.

“I certainly don’t think so, then again, I’m not the one in power… Yet.” They eyed each other down again and exchanged another round of laughs.

“Humor me, Ms. Glimmer,” Tab said, slathering a hoof full of fries in ketchup. “What would you do different?” He bowed his head facetiously.

Starlight eyed her empty plate and exhaled with how full she was. “First things first, how much do I owe you?”

“No charge.” He waved his hoof dismissively.

“Cmon, your name is Paid Tab, I can’t just not pay you.”

“Hey, whose name is on the venue?” He tilted his head.

“Well, I won’t say no to free hoagies or fries.” She smiled.

“Yeah yeah, and don’t get used to it either.” He rolled his hoof. “Now out with it, what would you do?”

“Well hey now, I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise.” She winked. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

Author's Notes:

Here we are again, my lovely readers. Now, I know what you're thinking, I can read minds after all.

You're thinking, "Gosh, is Ruby really going to write a sequel involving Starlight Glimmer overthrowing Celestia? With her usual good style, and great characters, and better politics and her great hair and pretty eyes..." Maybe I'm projecting a bit there, but you'd be incorrect! There is going to be a comparable story in the works that pits Celestia against Starlight, on an ambitious and grand scale, but it will not be a sequel. Ir was originally planned to be the case, but not anymore.

But, don't get too excited. As I said in the last chapter, I will not start posting it until it is complete, which could take a really long time. Fear not, I will be writing other fics, shorter stories and one-shots in the meantime, so you won't forget all about me.

As always, I thank you once again, but it's time you should thank some people too. There are a few people who made this fic possible

Krickis who proofread the earlier chapters. Go check out her stuff, and I'm not just saying that. Her work is outstanding, even in the field of fimfiction writers who are usually a cut above the rest. Her character writing is second to none, as far as I've seen. And her Who We Become series is something of a masterpiece! You can start it here with Looking Glass!

RTStephens who proofread a few chapters around the middle. Go show them some love, their Trixcord fic is a great place to start!

Krixwell who proofread a lot of chapters, including the past few ones. They deal a lot in comedy and slice of life fics, both of which are very good! I'd start with Reflections in Black and Pink!