The Dragon is in the Details
⁂
Twilight Sparkle was more tired than she ever remembered being. Despite her reputation as a bit of a night owl, being as big on schedules as she was usually helped her avoid having to do battle with sleep deprivation.
Unfortunately for the Twilight Sparkle of this particular morning, however, Spike had gone to sleep early and she had repeatedly convinced herself to stay up just a little longer so that she could get something done. Down in the artificial magelight in the basement, every decision to stay up had blended into the next, and before she’d known it, she’d been looking cross-eyed at the beakers and wondering why the precipitate was starting to look appetizing.
Still, despite the lack of sleep and the sun in her eyes, it was hard for her to really be upset about spending the whole night squinting at test tubes. It was a rather important project she was working on, after all, and she’d just about finished it. Of course, the fact that she could barely remember her own name—let alone the day’s schedule—might also have contributed to her seeming lack of regret.
Now, however, it was mid-morning, her breakfast was sizzling on the stove, Rainbow Dash was in the next room yelling something about pony disappearances and she just knew that this was not going to end well.
“Come on, Twilight!” Rainbow Dash pleaded. “You gotta! Ponies have been going missing all week!”
Twilight didn’t even turn to look at Rainbow Dash, instead taking a bite of breakfast right out of the pan. “I know, Rainbow,” she said around a mouthful of… whatever it was that she was eating. It had been burned almost beyond recognition, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. “So does the Ponyville guard station. Nothing else happens around here, so they’ve got everypony working on it.”
“They don’t have us working on it!” Rainbow Dash countered, trying to push herself into the kitchen for the fifth time that morning. Every time she tried, Twilight simply teleported her back out into the public area of the library so she could eat her blackened breakfast in peace.
“We are not detectives, Dash,” Twilight said around one particular mouthful that distinctly crunched in her mouth. “And I am apparently not a cook.”
“Oh come on, you’re a scientist, what do you call that?” Rainbow Dash asked from the main area of the library, giving up on entering the kitchen and seeing fit to pace back and forth in the larger room instead.
“I admit they’re similar,” Twilight said with a cough after swallowing a particularly dry bite. “But extensive experience with bunsen burners has apparently not prepared me to operate the common cooking stove. Wow. I guess there’s a reason why Spike always does the cooking around here.”
“What I mean, Twilight, is that all that stuff you do is like detective work! You do research, you come up with theories, you’re good at that stuff! Remember on the train?” Rainbow Dash must have been desperate if she’d bring up one of her less than finer moments.
“I never got any of that cake, you know, so don’t remind me about it when I’m stuck eating this junk,” Twilight said, levitating one blackened piece up above her head and wiggling it. “Want some?”
“Ugh, no.” Rainbow Dash made a face. “How can you eat that? It looks like something Sweetie Belle cooked up.”
“I have a theory,” Twilight said, retrieving the bite she’d been dangling above Rainbow Dash’s head and popping it in her mouth. “I think I killed all my tastebuds trying to drink one of my lab experiments last night.”
Rainbow Dash gave her friend a look that suggested she was beginning to wonder if this was a good idea after all.
“So, what about you?” Twilight asked out of the blue after a few more bites.
“I still have all my tastebuds,” Rainbow Dash answered hesitantly. “And I’d like to keep them. I ate at the Corner, thanks anyway.”
“No, I mean if I’m the detective, then what does that make you?” Twilight clarified as the clatter of pan and utensils in the sink signalled that she’d finally managed to choke down the last of her so-called breakfast.
“I’m the action pony!” Rainbow Dash declared, making shadow boxing motions as Twilight entered the main room of the library. “You know, the rough and tumble loose-cannon mare who’s at odds with the system but can always be counted on to get the job done? I mean, no offense, but you’re not really looking up to catching any ponynappers unless they’re the literal kind.”
“That’s a crime story archetype,” Twilight pointed out. “Not a detective story archetype”
“Uh, what? They’re the same thing, Twilight,” Rainbow Dash disagreed.
Twilight groaned. “They’re really not…”
“Plus,” Rainbow Dash added excitedly. “I know something the guard ponies don’t!”
“You what?” Twilight asked, barely believing her ears. “Rainbow, if you know something, you have to tell the guard. Hindering an investigation, even by withholding information, is—”
“No!” Rainbow Dash shouted, suddenly backing away into the air in panic. “I can’t!”
Twilight shook her head, cradling it with one hoof. “And why in all Equestria can you not take whatever you know to the proper authorities, Rainbow Dash?” she asked with a sigh.
“Because,” Rainbow Dash whispered as she landed, then sidled conspiratorially up to Twilight while looking around. “I think it might be one of them that’s taking ponies.”
“Really, Dash? Really? Ponyville is so small that our guard are all trained in Canterlot. Princess Celestia interviews each one personally. You think she picked a madpony?”
“That’s not entirely true!” Rainbow Dash pointed out.
Twilight just looked at her blearily. “Yes it is.”
“Nuh-uh!” Rainbow Dash declared with the smugness and maturity of a filly who knew something her mom didn’t. “The Moon Guard is picked by Lu—”
“You did not just go there,” Twilight interrupted, somehow glaring daggers at Rainbow Dash through lazy, half-lidded eyes
“No no, you don’t get it! It all makes sense!” Rainbow Dash insisted, waving her hooves, trying to get Twilight to stop and listen to her. “I saw it!”
“It?” Twilight asked skeptically.
“A pony…” Rainbow Dash began to whisper again, eying the sofa suspiciously. “…with bat wings!”
Twilight rolled her eyes and collapsed into said sofa with a groan of exasperation. “A pony. With bat wings,” she repeated flatly.
“I did! I swear!” Rainbow Dash pleaded from where she hovered over Twilight, who looked like she was going to doze off the second the excitable pegasus shut up.
Twilight pressed her hooves into her eyes for a moment, then took them away and blinked a few times in an effort to banish the ever creeping need for sleep. “You’re not gonna let this go, are you?” she asked in defeat.
Rainbow Dash shook her head defiantly. “Nuh—uh!”
“Look, Dash,” Twilight said, trying to reason with her one last time. “You can’t tell anypony what you saw without proof. Accusing Luna’s personal guard is a big deal. Even if you don’t mention them specifically, if you go around talking about bat-winged ponies, they’ll come to the same conclusion.”
Rainbow Dash brightened up. “So, you’ll help me?”
Twilight gave a pained expression, hesitating for a long time as she ran through all of her options. “Fine,” she sourly relented. “But I guarantee you, beyond the shadow of a doubt, it’s not the Moon Guard.”
“How can you be so sure? Ponies can change after they join, you know,” Rainbow Dash reasoned.
Twilight shook her head. “Dash, the Moon Guard are just regular pegasi. The wings are an enchantment on their barding—an illusion. Luna doesn’t employ ponies who are stupid enough to go around someplace they’re not usually seen and abduct other ponies wearing their dress armor.”
“Oh. Yeah, the pony I saw wasn’t wearing anything.” Rainbow Dash frowned with disappointment and crossed her hooves across her barrel to think. “Twilight?”
Twilight’s eyes snapped open. She didn’t remember closing them. “Yeah?”
“That makes it way more creepy,” Rainbow Dash said with an exaggerated shudder. “Like, this just changed from a detective story into a monster hunt.” Rainbow Dash paused to look over at Twilight. “Which might be for the better, since my detective is sleeping.”
“Mm’just resting my eyes,” Twilight slurred. “Anyway you’re still wrong.”
“Oh yeah? What do you call a freaky batpony other than a monster?” Rainbow Dash asked skeptically.
“A hero,” Twilight declared from where she lay on the sofa. “Issa fantasy story.”
Rainbow Dash scrunched up her face in confusion. “Are we having the same conversation, Twilight? Because I won’t hold it against you if you’re hearing gumdrops and rainbows singing you to sleep instead of me talking about some mutant pony with bony bits.”
Twilight blindly raised one hoof and used her magic to levitate a book from one of the library’s bookshelves onto it with an audible thump.
“Bog Weeds: A Reference Guide,” Rainbow Dash read the cover out loud, more than a little confused.
Wordlessly, Twilight flipped the book over with her magic and cracked her eyes open to look at the cover. She stared at the book for a few moments, then made some indistinct disgruntled noise and flung it across the room while magicking the correct book off the shelf instead.
“Scales, Nails and Tails: Pony Oddities Throughout History?” Rainbow Dash read this time.
Satisfied that she had the right book, Twilight flipped it open to a certain page with her magic. The page in question had a picture of a stallion who indeed had bat-like wings as well as a large serpentine tail that ran up his back into pronounced spinal ridges. “This was Rare Find,” Twilight narrated without looking at the book. “He’s the hero that the Lunar Guard outfits are supposed to resemble. By all accounts, he was an ordinary earth pony merchant who specialized in strange and unusual items. He showed up looking like this when he almost single-hoofedly defended the town of Nag’s End from a bunch of bog nags that had been terrorizing them.”
Rainbow Dash lit up. “That’s it! That’s exactly what I saw! Where’s this Nag’s End place?”
“It was east of the Haysead Swamps until a dragon wiped it out a century later,” Twilight explained with her eyes closed.
Rainbow Dash deflated. “Oh. So this Rare Find guy…”
Twilight shut the book dramatically. “Was never seen again after the day he saved the village.” She shook her head as she tried to place the book back on the shelf, only for it to hit the wall and thump onto the ground nearby. “Nopony knows what happened to him.”
Rainbow Dash groaned. “Great, so how does that help us? Our one lead is centuries cold.”
Twilight rolled off the sofa, but her legs failed her and she just flopped over onto the ground face-first. “Well, we can assume that either Rare Find found something that was the cause of the change, or it was something the bog nags did to him.”
“Umm, yeah okay,” Rainbow Dash responded awkwardly, looking down at her friend on the floor and wondering if she was going to get up. “What in the hay is a bog nag anyway?”
Rather than attempt to get up again, Twilight just rolled over on the ground so she could look up at Rainbow Dash. “Nags are supposed to be hideous spirits of bad ponies cursed by Nightmare Moon to torment Equestria in her absence. Bog nags in particular are supposed to have worn the skins of their victims.”
“Oh man, really?” Rainbow Dash made a face, clearly imagining it. “That is…”
“Reprehensible and disgusting, yes,” Twilight preemptively agreed.
Rainbow Dash was less solemn in her remark. “And awesome,” she announced with great wonderment. “It’s like in Daring Do and the Spinel Snake.”
Twilight just rolled her eyes at Rainbow Dash’s fanfillyism. “And like in the book, it’s also complete hogwash. Most nag stories are probably about zebras—or mother-in-laws.”
“Well duh, Twilight. Nopony believes in ghosts any more,” Rainbow Dash said with the confidence a pony always had about such things at nine in the morning.
Twilight rolled her eyes a second time, but this time her body followed the motion, resulting in the wobbly mare rolling right up onto her hooves whereupon she stumbled, trying to stop herself from continuing to roll right back over on her other side. She failed, but Rainbow Dash casually stuck out a hoof to stop her.
“Thanks,” Twilight mumbled as she steadied herself. “In any case, we have a destination!” she announced, thrusting a hoof forward dramatically.
“…The bathroom?” Rainbow Dash asked incredulously.
Twilight looked cross-eyed and confused at the door she was pointing at, which indeed led to the library’s public restroom. Shaking her head, she reoriented herself to the front door instead and pointed again. “To Zecora’s!” she announced just as dramatically as she had a moment ago. She made to step forward, but a queer feeling in her gut reminded her of certain poor culinary choices she’d recently made.
“…Bathroom first, though”
⁂
“Come on Twilight, if you’d just let me fly you, we’d be there already!” Rainbow Dash groused.
“For the last time, no,” Twilight snapped back as she plodded along grumpily on the road to the Everfree forest with Rainbow Dash looping back and forth in the air above her. “If I doze off and wake up hundreds of hooves up in the air, I’m liable to have nightmares for the next hundred years!”
“Yeesh,” Rainbow Dash said. “And I thought I exaggerated things.”
Twilight smiled. “I’m proud of you, Rainbow. The first step is admitting you have a problem.”
Rainbow Dash blinked as she flapped along in silence. “You… totally lost track of that conversation in like, two sentences, didn’t you?”
“…Maybe,” Twilight admitted, sheepish.
Rainbow Dash facehooved. “Great. I can already tell today is going to be just swell.”
“Swell?” Twilight asked in a teasing tone. “Since when do you use a word like swell?”
“Yeah, sorry,” Rainbow Dash apologized, a little embarrassed. “My role model in sarcasm is kind of a dork.”
The barb seemed to go right over Twilight’s head, which wouldn’t have been difficult, given how much said head was sagging. “Anyway, walking is better for detective work. You never know who you’ll run into, or what kind of clues you’ll find.”
Rainbow Dash scoffed. “Clues, right. I’m sure studying your hooves like that will get us all the answers. The only pony we’re going to run into out here on the way to Zecora’s is Fluttershy.”
No sooner had Fluttershy’s name been spoken, than the mare herself appeared in the distance.
“See?” Rainbow Dash said, throwing her hooves up in frustration. “Five bits says she talks our ears off about one of her animals.”
Fluttershy didn’t seem to be in the mood to chat, however. She was running down the road in what looked to be a state of blind panic. “Oh dear oh dear… Twilight! Rainbow! You have to help!”
“See?” Twilight said smugly.
“One of my precious little animal friends has gone missing!” Fluttershy explained in haste.
“See?” Rainbow Dash mimicked back, rolling her eyes. “I mean, please. We have missing ponies to look for.”
“Now Rainbow, as long as we’re looking, we may as well keep an eye out for Fluttershy’s friend,” Twilight chided. “Who is it that’s missing? Is it Elizabeak again?”
Fluttershy shook her head, worried. “Oh no, Twilight! It’s worse than that—it’s Beakany.”
“Beakany?” Twilight slurred with interest. “Not Beakany Beakany? That beakany?”
Rainbow Dash made an exaggerated groan. “A chicken?”
“Um—” Fluttershy tried to interject, though nopony noticed.
“That’s no way to talk about a friend of a friend, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight said with a disdainful scowl.
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “How do you even know the names of Fluttershy’s chickens? You never leave your library!”
“Beakany is—” Fluttershy tried again, but Twilight seemed to have gotten her second wind… or was it third or fourth, by now?
“Hey! I take my friendship studies very seriously!” Twilight insisted with pride. “I’ll have you know, I have all sorts of charts and graphs back at the library detailing all of the relationships in Ponyville!”
“Seriously?” Rainbow Dash asked, “That’s… kinda creepy Twilight.”
Twilight was not amused. “Creepy? It’s an assignment from the princess! I can do friendship trigonometry in my head, but do you have any idea how much time it takes to work through one equation in friendship calculus with such limited socially acceptable sample sizes? Of course I have notes!”
“But Beakany—” Fluttershy started again, distraughtly trying to get a word in edgewise, but it was no use.
“Forget it, Fluttershy. Rainbow Dash is only interested in friendship integers,” Twilight interrupted.
“What does that even—”
“Look, Dash, it’s fine.” Twilight sighed. “Why don’t you fly up and look for anything suspicious? I’ll talk to Fluttershy about Beakany.”
“But—what? Ugh, fine, whatever. Enjoy your little chicken-chit-chat. I’ll be on the lookout for bat-ponies.”
⁂
When Rainbow Dash returned from her less-than-helpful aerial survey, she immediately regretted ever leaving Twilight. Fluttershy was nowhere to be seen, and the mare in question was face down in the mud… snoring.
Typically, finding one of her friends in such a compromising situation would have been prime pranking material, but Rainbow Dash was not in the mood. As a result, the hoof-poking she gave Twilight was anything but gentle. Sadly, it was also ineffective.
Rainbow Dash gave a frown at her friend’s lack of response. Twilight was really out of it. She almost considered calling the whole thing off to hunt bat-ponies some other day. She couldn’t bring herself to give up, though. As a pegasus, she knew better than anypony just how empty the streets of Ponyville were looking lately; ponies were really scared over this whole kidnapping thing. She hadn’t even seen the Cutie-Mark Crusaders in days, grounded as they were for staying out late the day after the kidnappings had started. The fact that the grounding had even stuck spoke volumes.
No, Rainbow Dash knew something, and she had an obligation to follow it to the bitter end. Frustrated, she gave her narcoleptic friend a vigorous shake, and said, “Come on, Twilight, wake up already!”
Twilight, for her part, finally rolled over and blinked herself awake. “Rainbow Dash,” she said calmly, reaching out a hoof to be helped up. “Why am I lying in the mud?”
Rainbow Dash obliged Twilight by taking her hoof. “That’s what I’d like to know! I left you for like, five minutes with Fluttershy, and when I get back, you’re making mud-pegasi in the road.”
Twilight shook her head and gave a yawn. “Oh. Well, it happens.”
“Falling asleep in the road happens, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash repeated, incredulous. “I doze off on a cloud once in a while and everyone calls me lazy, but imitating a speed bump on the road to the Everfree—that’s just business as usual for the princess’ prized student?”
Twilight was unfazed by Rainbow Dash’s outburst. Instead, she cleaned herself off with a flash of magic, and began to once again stumble down the road in the direction of the Everfree forest. “Rainbow—right now, you could walk me into the den of a dragon, and all I’d ask for is a pillow and my book on sleepovers.”
The two ponies bickered back and forth on just how tired it was possible for a pony to be, filling the time as they walked down the road with disbelieving barbs from Rainbow Dash being questionably refuted by confusing contortions of logic and increasing levels of exaggeration from Twilight. Just when Twilight was listing the various possible symptoms of sleep deprivation, they came across something in the road.
“Hey, what’s that?” Rainbow Dash asked. She was already poking at it by the time Twilight had even registered that anything had been said.
“It’s a lump by the side of the road, Rainbow,” Twilight said, slowly stumbling forward one step at a time. “I envy it, but since that’s all I can do, it’s not important. Stop fooling around so we can go see Zecora and…” Twilight stared into the distance, trying to remember why they were going to Zecora’s. “Oh, I need to get some bergamot from her.”
“You can think about burgers later, Twilight,” Rainbow Dash groused, poking at the lump embedded in the mud. “Come look at this. It looks like some kind of brown cloak. Exactly the kind of thing a bat pony would use to hide what they are.”
“Oh for the love of Celestia,” Twilight cursed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “It’s a piece of clothing. It’s brown because it’s been caked in mud for who knows how long. Not everything you come across is going to have some hidden meaning.”
“Oh yeah?” Rainbow Dash challenged, fishing something out of the muddy mess. “Well, what do you think of this?”
Twilight stumbled back from the thing in Rainbow Dash’s hoof and almost fell over. Looking cross-eyed at it, it appeared to be a dirty silver brooch in the shape of a fish. “It’s nice. It’d look good in your mane.”
Annoyed by Twilight’s lack of reaction, Rainbow Dash took the brooch over back over to the lump of cloth in the mud and did what she could to clean it off. “Don’t you see? A little polishing will reveal…”
Twilight’s eyes only drooped a little as she watched Rainbow Dash examine the brooch from every angle, from close up and at leg’s length. She even held it up to the sun, but all she discovered were spots in her eyes.
“Yeah, I’ve got nothing.”
⁂
The path to Zecora’s hut was more harrowing than it had ever been before. The difficulty was not due to cursed trees, manticores or sea serpents, however, but instead the combination of a narrow, winding road and a detective mare who insisted she was just resting her eyes.
Also, walking was for chumps.
Eventually, though, the pair found their way to the creepy wooden hut and Twilight knocked on the door. With her face.
Improperly latched, the door fell open and Twilight fell with it, revealing the zebra they were looking for stirring something bubbling in her cauldron.
If Zecora minded Twilight’s barging in, she didn’t show it. “Ah, welcome, now, my pony friends. Hold a moment, while this concoction I attend.”
Rainbow Dash sniffed the air as she flew in over Twilight’s prone form. “It smells like carrot stew with potatoes and onions.”
“I must commend you, Rainbow Dash, your sensitive snoot,” Zecora said, nodding to her airborne guest. “I am indeed preparing a variety of roots.”
A short while later, Zecora had prepared three bowls of stew and sat her guests down to eat. Rainbow Dash had accepted for the both of them in the belief that some real food could only be good for Twilight after the travesty that had been the breakfast she’d seen her eating.
Zecora sat last, placing her bowl of stew on the table across from Rainbow Dash and Twilight. Once they’d all had a few bites, the zebra broached the subject of their arrival. “Now, you may tell me what it is you need, as I don’t believe you’ve come intending only to feed.”
Rainbow Dash opened her mouth to speak, then looked at Twilight. “What did we come here for, again?”
Twilight stared into her soup, furrowing her brow for a moment before it came to her. “Oh, right! Zecora, please tell me you have some bergamot I can buy from you? Every single seller in Ponyville is completely out. I only need one more jar.”
Zecora gave Twilight an affirmative nod, looking curious. “The balm of bees I do in deed stock, though it isn’t often it enters my crock.”
Rainbow Dash only narrowly missed he soup bowl with her face. “Not that!” she shouted at Twilight. “The other thing! About the bog nags!”
Twilight just stared at Rainbow Dash, and said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“C’mon, Twilight. Work with me here,” Rainbow Dash pleaded. “The missing ponies? The mysterious bat-winged figure? Rare Find?”
Twilight stared another moment, then seemed to suddenly remember. “Oh! Right. That.”
So Twilight explained the situation to Zecora, being amazingly long-winded about it for a pony who just moments earlier hadn’t remembered a thing. Of course, this was Twilight and who knew how her brain worked even when it wasn’t fighting sleep deprivation.
Rainbow Dash was only half listening to Twilight’s explanation as she finished her stew, but eventually the mare on her sixth or seventh wind of the day reached the actual heart of the matter: whether Zecora knew anything about stories of bog nags or if she knew some other way that a pony could grow bat wings and, presumably, other monstrous parts.
Asking Zecora to tell stories about bog nags, it turned out, was exactly like asking Rarity about eighteenth century brocades. Dear Celestia, there was no end to the stories, the trivia, the details—personal details!—about zebra shamans scaring of imperialistic ponies with sleight of hoof and a few herbal tinctures. When asked why they didn’t use proper magical alchemy against the invaders, it came out that zebra shamans were honor bound to never use their arts against the unwilling because to do so was not only horrible in its potential for mayhem, but an act that the spirits would return tenfold on any shaman who so acted.
It was all very fascinating… to Twilight, but Rainbow Dash listened anyway. If nothing else, she was determined not to be the one to fall asleep. If she did, she’d never live it down.
Assuming Twilight even noticed or remembered she’d done so.
⁂
It took three hours—three hours—before they were finally able to come to the conclusion that Zecora knew…
Absolutely.
Nothing.
Useful.
It was another hour and another bowl of soup before they were actually able to excuse themselves politely. The only reason Twilight was still conscious was some sort of herbal tea that the shaman had given her, and as a result, Twilight was whipping her head around tracing floaters in her eyes as they left the wooden hut behind in the distance.
“Well, that was helpful,” Rainbow Dash remarked as she bodily pushed Twilight away from the conversational gravity well. “I mean, that mare is lonely. Somepony really oughta come out here once in a while and talk to her.” She paused, then clarified, “Someone who isn’t me.”
“I doooooo,” Twilight chimed in, distracted.
Rainbow Dash dropped her head dejectedly at her so-called detective. She wasn’t sure if this really was an improvement over the sleep deprivation induced narcolepsy.
Well, fine. If that was how it was going to be, then she’d just have to step up and take the lead herself. What would—
“Oh!” Twilight perked up, derailing Rainbow Dash’s train of thought spectacularly. “I forgot—I wanted to ask Zecora one other thing!”
“Oh, Celestia no. Please, Twilight. We don’t have ti—”
“It’s fine,” Twilight interrupted and began to charge her horn with magic. “You stay here, I’ll be back in a second.”
There was a flash, and just like that, Twilight was gone.
She was not back in a second.
Rainbow Dash waited… and waited and waited. The whole time she waited, she was picturing Twilight asleep in various positions and places. In the state she was in, there wasn’t even any guarantee that she’d actually ended up at Zecora’s hut, and that worried her.
This… was not how Rainbow Dash had imagined this day going. Ponies were scared. Their friends and family members were disappearing, and the local guard contingent was both clueless and useless besides.
There was more to it than that, though. This wasn’t about saving the day and showing up the guard. Rainbow Dash would never admit it, but… she was one of those scared ponies. She wasn’t scared for herself, of course, but for all the rest of her friends. For the longest time, Rainbow Dash had been able to count her actual, close friends on one hoof—that being Fluttershy—and she’d always put a hundred and ten percent into protecting her. She’d moved to Ponyville for her, and they weren’t even—
Anyway, this was serious. She and Twilight needed to get to the bottom of this. Something sinister was going on; she could feel it in the air. The forest felt more ominous than usual, almost like that first night when the six of them had braved it to track down the elements of harmony.
She felt like she was being watched.
Rainbow Dash was just about ready to go looking for Twilight, starting at Zecoras hut, when another flash of magical light deposited the loopy mare right on top of her, because of course it did.
“What did you even need to go back for?” Rainbow Dash groaned from underneath Twilight.
“My bergamot, of course!” she said, holding up a large jar packed full of bright pink flowers and a small paper sachet. Pointing at the sachet, she added in a conspiratorial whisper, “Also, some fudge. Zecora makes the best fudge!”
Yep. This was not how the day was supposed to go.
⁂
Rainbow Dash regretted everything. First, it had taken them at least twice as long as it should have to get back to Ponyville, then she’d made the mistake of taking Twilight past her library on the way to Rarity’s.
“It calls to me, Rainbow,” Twilight said in a droning voice. “The bed. It calls to me. Like a blank scroll, it calls for me to write myself on it and roll myself up like a comfy burrito.”
Point one: Whatever stimulant Zecora had given Twilight was no longer doing much good at keeping her awake.
Point two: She was still loopy as a silly straw and twice as useless.
“Come on, Twilight,” Rainbow Dash whined, pulling her friend away from the library by one foreleg while she reached for with the other. “Rarity’s place is right over there. She has couches! Hundreds and hundreds of couches!”
“Couches?” Twilight’s ears perked up, showing the cognitive capacity of a particularly dim labrador in that particular moment.
“Yeah, couches,” Rainbow Dash repeated. “Soft ones, short ones… uhh, fat ones, skinny ones? Bucking tartarus, they’re couches, what do you want me to say?”
Twilight did not want Rainbow Dash to say anything, because she was asleep.
⁂
Rainbow Dash was tempted to knock on Rarity’s door the same way Twilight had knocked on Zecora’s, but she’d yet to decide which of their heads to use for it by the time they arrived.
“Hey, Rarity!” Rainbow Dash called out, heaving Twilight through the door on her back. “Give me a hoof, here? This mare could use a diet.”
“Excuse you!” Twilight shouted in Rainbow Dash’s ear, surprising her with with her spontaneous consciousness. “I’ll have you know that I calculate the nutritional value of everything I eat down to the milligram!”
Rainbow Dash wobbled under Twilight’s weight as the mare on top of her emoted her displeasure. Finally having had enough, she crouched down, got her hooves under Twilight and threw her off of herself. It was a little mean, but she was getting fed up, here.
She needn’t have worried. Twilight… just kind of landed on her hooves without even a stumble.
Rainbow Dash gawked. “What the hay, Twilight? You were asleep a second ago!”
“I was conserving my strength,” Twilight insisted primly just as Rarity entered the showroom from the back.
“Twilight! Rainbow Dash!” Rarity exclaimed in happy greeting. “What ever is going on in here? All this shouting is liable to scare away my customers!”
Rainbow Dash gave the empty room a once-over and raised an eyebrow at Rarity.
“Yes, well,” she minced. “There is always the potential, dear. Now do tell me what has you making all that racket?”
Rainbow Dash was all set to point her hoof at Twilight and explain, but a look at the… completely normal Twilight standing there just took it all out of her. “Forget about it. It’s not worth it.”
“Anyway,” Twilight interjected. “Dash and I have been investigating all of these disappearances, but we really haven’t been getting anywhere.”
Rarity let out a theatrical sigh. “Ah, yes. The reason that my store is as bereft of customers as Rainbow Dash is of patience.” Twilight proceeded to nod in silent agreement as Rarity spoke. “Why, I’ve even sent Sweetie Belle off to finish her grounding on the Apple Farm entirely out of concern for her safety! And also because it’s a grounding. My motivations are multi-layered.”
Rainbow Dash just rolled her eyes, having come to expect things like this.
“Anyway, we really haven’t had much luck, so we’re pretty much on our last straw scraping the bottom of the barrel…” Twilight frowned. “Does straw come in barrels?”
Ah, there was the sleep deprived Twilight again. That must be her tenth wind. They were getting shorter and shorter.
“Do drinking straws come in barrels?” Twilight continued to murmur to herself. “Do people draw drinking straws when they’re supposed to be drawing straw straws because they don’t understand the idiom, and if so, is the mistake more common in cities like Canterlot?”
“Twilight!” Rainbow Dash shouted, clopping her hoof on the floor to get her attention. “Focus!”
Twilight jumped at the sound and looked around the room, taking stock of where she was. “Ah, right. Sorry,” she apologized. Producing the silver, fish-shaped brooch from somewhere, she continued explaining, “Anyway, we really, really don’t have anything better to go on and Rainbow Dash found this brooch by the side of the road attached to some kind of garment that could have been anything from a burlap sack to—”
A gasp of shock from Rarity interrupted Twilight. “That broach!”
Twilight’s eyes widened in surprise. “You recognize it?”
“Of course I do!” Rarity declared. “It’s mine!”
“Oh.”
“Why, I was wearing it just the other day with my cornflower blue frock when I was visiting Fluttershy,” she recalled. “The poor dear was looking for one of her chickens that had wandered off and I, being the gallant and noble friend that I am, volunteered to help her look for it. Of course, I couldn’t do so without risking my frock, so I had pinned it up on the clothesline. Unfortunately, by the time I had returned, my poor frock had blown away! It disheartens me to hear that it ended up with such an ignoble fate as to be mistaken for a burlap sack, but thank you ever so much for returning my broach!”
Twilight and Rainbow Dash shared a commiserating look, both feeling the same thing for the first time that day. They both searched hopelessly for something to say, and it was Twilight who eventually came up with something.
“Why a fish?”
Rarity just huffed in offended indignation. “Darling, if you must ask ‘why a fish,’ then you know nothing about fashion.”
Rainbow Dash opened her mouth to comment, but immediately thought better of it.
“I must ask, though,” Rarity said, guiding the subject back on track. “What made you think that my brooch had anything to do with the disappearances? Did you chart the locations of where each missing pony lived and your best guess as to where they disappeared? Have you cross referenced tracked the purchases of soporific chemicals with that of an exquisitely monogrammed hoofkerchief, or,” Rarity gasped. “Has the culprit been spotted?
“No,” Twilight calmly explained. “Rainbow Dash just found it by the side of the road and declared it to be a clue.”
Now it was Rarity’s turn to blink and stare, though she probably would have preferred the term nonplussed.
“I mean,” Rainbow Dash interjected, feeling like she had to defend herself under Rarity’s look of incredulity. “Yeah, I think I saw the bat pony monster thing, but that was over on pine street.”
Now Twilight was giving her that same look. “Why didn’t you tell me where you saw the bat-winged pony in the first place?”
“You… never asked?”
⁂
Pine street was a regular, nondescript road that crossed main street between Rarity’s boutique and the library. Just about the only thing of note about it was that the Ponyville guard station was one street over on oak.
“Well, this is the place,” Rainbow Dash said, indicating a stretch of road much like any other. “I was flying home after setting up that storm the night before last, so it was gloomy and I was tired. I didn’t even realize what I’d seen until it was gone.”
“This… is just a street, Dash,” Twilight said, leaning up against a tree by the side of the road. “It’s a public place. Dozens of ponies come by here every day, and you said yourself it’s stormed since then.”
“Well, duh,” Rainbow Dash said. “I’m not an idiot, Twilight. I came here and looked as soon as I saw what I saw and didn’t find anything.”
Twilight slumped down onto her haunches and cradled her head in her hooves. “I can’t do this, Dash. I want this to be over as much as you do, but this isn’t helping. You have nothing. All we’re doing is wandering around the city playing in the mud and I just… just… can’t keep going.”
Rainbow Dash couldn’t believe it. “You’re just giving up?”
“No, Dash. I am not ‘just’ giving up,” Twilight said, looking up at Rainbow Dash plaintively. “I gave it my best shot. I let you drag me all over the place following the slightest hint of a sighting and I gave it… a percentage of my best, at least when it mattered… but I just can’t go on. I’m sorry. I am, but what more do you want from me? I’m only equine.”
Rainbow Dash couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But… but…”
“Be reasonable, Dash,” Twilight pleaded. “Is there even anywhere else for us to go? If there is, you haven’t told me about it. If all you want to do is wander around randomly hoping to run into something, then leave it to the guard. Tell them what you saw and let me rest.”
Rainbow Dash clenched her jaw. Maybe she didn’t have all the answers or even any clue what to do or where to start, but that was what Twilight was supposed to be for! When she actually looked at Twilight, though, she didn’t see her peppy, bookish friend.
No, the Twilight she saw sitting in the dirt before her was haggard and worn. She had bags under her eyes, and she looked not just tired, but weary and spent. She really was on her last legs, and the desperate look in her eyes as she begged for understanding was all wrong for the typically confident and dedicated mare.
Rainbow Dash folded. “…Yeah. Yeah, fine. Go home and get some sleep, Twilight. I’m sorry.”
Twilight slowly teetered to her hooves and started off in the direction of the library. After a few steps, she paused, hesitating.
“I’m sorry, too.”
⁂
Rainbow Dash puttered around on the street for a little while longer after Twilight had left, but there really was nothing to be found—or if there was, she had no idea what it was. Aimless and dejected, she decided to just head home.
Setting down in front of her cloud house, she checked the mailbox, but it was empty. Right. The mailmare had been one of the first ponies to disappear. Her and her whole family, as if they’d just picked up and walked off.
She shut the mailbox and went inside. She’d pick her mail up at the post office tomorrow.
Out of habit, she went to the kitchen, opened the icebox and stood there for a while, but there was nothing she wanted right now and she’d eaten not too long ago at Zecora’s. Idly, she recalled Twilight’s endorsement of Zecora’s fudge and wished she had some. If nothing else, curling up in bed with a Daring Do book and something unhealthy would be a good distraction from her string of failures today.
She tried anyway, but ended up just sitting on the edge of her bed staring at the cover of Daring Do and the Courageous Cougar. She just couldn’t make herself relax. She couldn’t make herself forget about the dozens of ponies who were just… gone.
Plagued with a growing unease, her bedroom felt stuffy and confining, so instead she went out and set herself down on her cloud lawn, overlooking the city.
Something was bothering Rainbow Dash. Ponyville was… quiet. Too quiet. Not only that, but it had been all day. If this were a Daring Do novel, there would have been clues all over the place. All sorts of minor characters would have been woven into the story dropping hints and motivations, but that wasn’t how it had gone. Really, the only ponies she’d interacted with the entire time had been Fluttershy, Zecora and Rarity. Well, and Twilight. Actually, Twilight had technically done all the talking in each of those situations, so the only pony that Rainbow Dash had interacted with was Twilight.
…It was a good thing that life didn’t work like a Daring Do novel, then.
Rainbow Dash looked down over the city and its empty streets, eerily silent for the end of the day. There was just… something in the air that bothered her. A feeling of tension that told her something wasn’t right, even beyond the missing ponies.
Something she was missing.
Something she should be doing.
It was probably nothing. She felt bad about the missing ponies, that was all. She didn’t even actually know anypony who had been taken, personally, yet she still had this itch that seemed to insist that this was a problem that she needed to solve.
She should go check on Twilight. To make sure she was safe while she slept. In the state that Twilight had been in, Rainbow Dash wouldn’t have been surprised if the bookish mare had left the door open on her way to bed, and that just wasn’t safe when they had someone or something going around taking ponies.
⁂
The door wasn’t open.
There was nothing sinister about that or the ‘CLOSED’ sign that was hanging on the doorknob. It was fine. Everything was fine. The door was even locked. Like it should be.
The logical side of Rainbow Dash’s brain told her to leave it at that, go home and get some rest. Unfortunately, she’d never really exercised her logical side, and if it were to be removed and examined, it might be mistaken for half a walnut.
She found her way in at the window. Ponyville wasn’t really the kind of town where people bothered to lock their windows. It hadn’t been, anyway, before this current rash of disappearances.
The library looked… exactly as it had that morning. On closer inspection, it was dirtier than she was used to seeing it, and, of course, there were the two books that Twilight had discarded onto the floor when she’d been done with them.
Holding her breath, Rainbow Dash listened for any sign of Twilight, but the library was completely silent.
She wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but it was a good enough reason to pick up Scales, Nails and Tails: Pony Oddities Throughout History and check to see if there was anything that Twilight had missed. It was, she admitted, entirely unlike her, but it was something to focus on.
The uneasiness she’d been feeling crawled up her spine and made a permanent home on her shoulder.
There was nothing in the book about bog nags or rare artifacts. The pony in the picture was a simple bookseller and bibliophile named Rare Print, the only notable thing about which anypony knew, was that he was known to have adopted a small, baby dragon.
To see if she could go two for two for disturbing pieces of evidence that didn’t match the script, she next picked up Bog Weeds: A Reference Guide, which… was singularly unhelpful. All it really said about bergamot was how to identify it and that it could be used to reduce flatulence, to relieve pain, as a stimulant or to make a relaxing tea.
Well, one out of two disturbing pieces of evidence was still one too many.
There was still no sign that Twilight was anything but asleep, so rather than go upstairs, Rainbow Dash decided to explore further, flapping her wings with each step to stay light on her hooves, just like Daring Do did in Daring Do and the Felonious Feline.
She scoured the entire ground floors for clues of… she wasn’t sure exactly what, and she found nothing out of place on the ground floor except for the charred remains of Twilight’s breakfast indelibly bonded to the frying pan.
Maybe she was overreacting. Snooping around her friend’s house when she was asleep was so not cool. There could be all sorts of explanations for why the book didn’t say what Twilight had said that it said. Maybe this bat pony from hundreds of years ago, was a time traveler and he’d gone back and changed history sometime between that morning and now, like in Daring Do and the Temporal Tornado.
But… probably not.
Given the choice between going upstairs where Twilight would be sleeping or the basement, which was a hundred times more likely to have more answers about what was going on with Twilight, Rainbow Dash took the obvious choice.
The door to the basement was not only unlocked, but also ajar.
Rainbow Dash crept down the stairs to Twilight’s lab in silence, the hair on the back of her neck raising with each step. The walls of the stairwell were covered in overlapping papers full of calculations and charts, family trees and timetables. By chance, just as she was about to enter the main lab area, her own name jumped out at her.
It was a record of her napping schedule for an entire month, and the last entry was… tomorrow. Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened.
It had been crossed out.
Backing away from the paper, just one of hundreds—thousands—she bumped into something and froze. The clacking of claws on stone echoed in the small space as whatever it was stumbled a step and righted itself with the soft rustle of scales against scales. A moment past, and there was a scritching of quill on parchment.
All at once, she flung herself around to find…
“Twilight!”
“Shh!” Twilight hissed without looking. Her horn gave a sudden flash, and Rainbow Dash was surrounded by a pink bubble. “Dear Princess Celestia,” she continued with a quiet mumble, dictating to herself under her breath and ignoring Rainbow Dash.
Rainbow Dash couldn’t quite hear everything, but she heard enough. “Hiatus…” Twilight mumbled. “…one hundred years…” Eventually, she raised her voice as she finished up with “…I look forward to continuing my studies. Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.”
What Rainbow Dash could see of her friend wasn’t right. She was taller and thinner, almost skeletal with bony ridges running down her back all the way to a thick, hairless tail. There were gnarly, twisted claws in place of her hooves, and it looked like she’d had mange.
Oh, and there were the bat wings. That creeping intuition had been right. “You… you’re the bat pony?!”
“Dragon pony,” Twilight corrected.
As much as she’d been slowly coming to expect this, Rainbow Dash was still dumbfounded. She threw her hooves against the pink bubble surrounding her. She wanted answers. “What happened to you?”
Twilight let out a heavy sigh and levitated the spherical barrier out into the open area of her lab. “Do you remember the part of my cutie-mark story where I hatched Spike?”
“Well, duh,” Rainbow Dash remarked, as if that should be obvious. “You’ve only told the story, like, a million times.” That was true of most ponies, to be honest.
“Yes, well, as it turns out, dragons make pretty lousy parents,” Twilight explained, falling into lecture mode. “They tend to sleep through the incubation period, so what happens is the eggs lay dormant until they’re exposed to magic strong enough for the dormant dragon embryo to imprint on the parent. Usually that means a dragon that’s awake and actively caring for the egg, but curiously powerful unicorn ponies are apparently fair game too.”
“So?” Rainbow Dash said, not seeing the connection, other than ‘dragon.’
“So,” Twilight continued. “As well as being magical, the imprinting process is mutual. Maybe it’s intended to ensure the imprintee lives long enough to take care of the baby, or maybe it’s just magical backflow due to the drop in magical output after imprinting. Either way, there’s a consistent mechanism that causes magical contamination in ponies. It’s not the first time this has happened.”
“Rare Print, not Rare Find,” Rainbow Dash recalled, and Twilight’s face instantly brightened.
“You read the book!” Twilight beamed with outright glee. “Oh Rainbow, you have no idea how happy that makes me.”
“Happy?” Rainbow Dash shouted at her insane friend. “I found you out! I foiled your plan!”
Twilight cocked her head and gave a pointed look at the bubble of magic surrounding Rainbow Dash, who wilted at the situation.
“Yeah, well, I found you out, anyway,” she grumbled, bucking the bubble in frustration. “We’ll see about the other part when I—nng—get out of here.”
Twilight sighed and shook her head. “This isn’t Daring Do and the Menacing Magician, Rainbow—though I suppose I am doing the exposition thing, aren’t I?”
Rainbow Dash looked away uneasily. “I wasn’t gonna say, but…”
“No, no. It’s fine,” she said, cheery and affable. “I’m a fan too, you know? That’s why it makes me so happy. You read the book. You found the clue! Um—one of them, anyway.”
Rainbow Dash balked at the implications. Just how far off the deep end had Twilight gone? “One of them? Clues?”
“Oh, Dash, don’t feel bad,” Twilight chided, shrugging casually. “That’s just how it is. Nopony really listens to anything I say. You know, half the time I just make things up instead of explain what’s really going on, and nopony notices!”
“You… what?” Rainbow Dash asked, shocked. “How long has this been going on?”
“Oh come on, it’s nothing sinister,” she insisted. “I just spice things up from time to time, like all that hogwash about nags when all I really wanted to do was go pick up some bergamot from Zecora’s.”
“But that—!” Rainbow Dash shouted, incredulous.
“Ironically, it was the bergamot that actually was a clue. I needed the bergamot for my work here. It’s normally pretty weak, but it makes a great soporific with the right preparation. That’s why nopony in town had any; I’d already cleared them out. It could have led you right to the ponynapper, if only you had a degree in herbology, or at least read—”
“Bog weed, a reference guide,” Rainbow Dash groaned. “You are one chicken shy of a coop, you know that, right?”
“Oh, no, that would be Fluttershy, but it wasn’t a chicken,” she explained, turning to root around in a crate and pulling out a small, feathered animal. “Meet Mister Beakany.’”
Rainbow Dash couldn’t help herself. “Mister Beakany?” she asked, somewhat dubious as she struggled to make out what it was that Twilight was retrieving if it wasn’t a chicken. She quickly regretted it.
“Fluttershy insists that his comb is very masculine,” Twilight recounted, adding in a whisper, “The lack of wattles is kind of a sensitive issue with him.”
“…Yeah, you know, I don’t even care,” Rainbow Dash shouted as she scrambled back to the far side of her tiny pink bubble. “Let’s just skip over its gender to the part where that is a freaking cockatrice you’re pointing at me!”
As Rainbow Dash was scrambling to get away from the cockatrice, something happened that managed to top all of the shocks she’d had so far.
The bubble popped, and it was so unexpected that not only did she fail to take advantage of it, she pretty much threw herself into the restraints behind her, cold metal shackles snapping shut around her cannons.
“Do you know how old I am, Rainbow Dash?” Twilight asked out of the blue with no rhyme or reason.
“Uhh, twenty-something?” Rainbow Dash guessed distractedly as she tested her shackles in anger, but they were attached to a thick, steel table mounted on an incline and refused to budge. “Or is this the part where you take the cockatrice away from my face and tell me you’re really an ancient dragon who—”
“Exactly five hours, thirty-two minutes and fourteen seconds younger than I should be,” Twilight interrupted. “You see, I’ve been turned to stone before, and let me tell you: it’s terrifying.”
Rainbow Dash, who was doing her level best not to look at the cockatrice while she struggled against her restraints, was not impressed at the conclusion. “You don’t say,” her rough voice squeaked.
“Not how you’d expect, though,” Twilight continued, paying Rainbow Dash’s struggles no mind. “It’s not the cold stone creeping up your legs or the shiver that runs down your spine as you realize you can’t move or the sudden spontaneous itch that you get just because you can’t scratch it. What’s really scary… the thing that keeps me up at night just thinking about it, is the part where nothing happens.”
Rainbow Dash blinked and almost looked at Twilight and the cockatrice out of reflex. “Come again?”
Twilight took a step back. “Five hours, thirty-two minutes and sixteen—”
“You said fourteen, before,” Rainbow Dash interrupted.
“Five hours, thirty-two minutes and sixteen seconds,” she repeated, one eye twitching. “Gone, just like that. No darkness, no sleep, no dreaming. Just, one second the stone is closing in around you, solidifying your brain, the next it’s gone and you have a snail on your face.”
“What, you have some kind of grudge against snails now?” Rainbow Dash snarked.
“Well, I didn’t until then,” Twilight snarled in the first sign of anger she’d shown throughout the whole ordeal. “Snail. On your face. Gastropod mucus in your eyes. Think about it at night when you’re trying to sleep. I do.”
Rainbow Dash was looking a little green at the description. “I’d rather not,” she admitted. “I’d also rather you put the cockatrice away, if you’re done with it.”
Twilight looked down at the cockatrice as if she’d forgotten it was there. “Oh. Right. I can see how Mister Beakany might be distressing,” said the mare who’d just been ranting about the horrors said animal could inflict. “Sure. Anything you want, just give me a second.”
Rainbow Dash blinked at the easy capitulation. “Anything? Um, if you could also let me go and—”
“No,” Twilight instantly responded.
Rainbow Dash slumped in her restraints.
“Okay so… you’re a dragon pony,” Rainbow Dash observed once Twilight had returned without the cockatrice. Whatever. That doesn’t explain… this! Why? You were supposed to be our friend! What changed?”
Twilight looked insulted. “Nothing changed, Rainbow. You five are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. That’s just it. That’s why I had to do this.”
“Huh?”
“You want to know what changed?” Twilight asked and followed it up with a haggard sigh. “What changed is that I ran out of time.
“I’m tired, Dash. So very tired. Spike started his first hundred year hibernation a week ago, and I… I need to join him. Not a decade from now. Not a year from now. Not even a month from now. I needed to join him last week, and it’s taken everything I have in me to stay up as long as I have to get things ready for it. After everything we’ve been through together, my life with you and the girls, our friendship… would have been over.
“I would have woken up like it was tomorrow—just another beautiful day in Ponyville—except for that little nagging fact that every last friend I had in the world had died overnight. All of you gone in the blink of an eye. I’d have had my last Pinkie Pie party, worn my last dress from Rarity… I couldn’t stand that, so I wracked my brain trying to fix it, trying to solve it, and that’s when I had an epiphany.
“Ever since that day with the cockatrice, I’d been trying to find a way to cure petrification with unicorn magic. I studied everything that happens, tried to methodically reverse each and every individual process, but I had it all wrong. The process was already reversible, all I really had to do was reverse engineer the cockatrice! And now I’ve done it! Not only can I bring back anypony who’s ever been lost to petrification—a little improvement I made—but I can reverse the process. Un-reverse the… whatever. The point is, I can turn ponies into stone!”
“What?” Rainbow Dash balked, looking at her friend like she’d well and truly lost her mind. “Twilight! You just got finished telling me how horrible that is! Why on Equestria would you—”
“Don’t you get it, Rainbow?” Twilight asked, a mad gleam in her eye. Her horn flashed, and lights came on, illuminating the basement. All around Rainbow Dash, familiar faces were revealed in stone. Applejack, Pinkie Pie… even Fluttershy and Rarity, who she’d seen just hours earlier. “Now I can sleep and you can sleep with me!” Twilight shouted in triumph.
Rainbow Dash felt the color drain from her face. Now that all the pieces were in place, it all made some sick sort of sense, and that scared her more than anything. “L-listen to yourself! What about the rest of us? You’ll turn us to stone? You’ll do to us what was done to you, and take us away from our friends and our families? How is that fair? I thought you were smart, Twilight!”
“You’re angry,” Twilight stated in disappointment. “No, no, it’s okay. Sorry, I just got too carried away playing the villain. You’re right, that would be a horrible thing to do.”
“So… you’ll let us go?” Rainbow Dash asked, only daring to hope because her friend—if the term even still applied—seemed to have completely lost the plot.
“Oh, no. No.” Twilight gave a little laugh. “That won’t be necessary.”
With a grand gesture, Twilight turned Rainbow Dash around, to reveal an awe-inspiring sight. The basement under the library had been carved out into a massive cavern. Everywhere she looked, she saw ponies she recognized represented in stone. It wasn’t just the ponies that Rainbow Dash knew had been missing. There were hundreds of them, not just stacked in tiers, but grouped and posed as if they were going about their daily lives walking, talking, eating and playing. “This… this is all of Ponyville!”
“A little of column A, a little of column B. You’d be surprised how far abroad ponies have friends and family. Manehattan, Fillydelphia… Cloudsdale.”
Rainbow Dash whimpered as she spotted a particular pair of cropped manestyles. “…Mom? Dad?”
“I hope Applejack will forgive me for going a little light on the Apple Family. Equestria needs farmers, and I don’t think they were all really that close. I mean, I know they weren’t. I did the math. Babs is down here somewhere, though, I couldn’t very well split up the Cutie-Mark Crusaders, could I?”
It was too much. “You… you’re a monster, Twilight Sparkle. You know what this is? This is a dragon hoard! A dragon hoard of—of friendship! You’re crazy! You’ve completely lost it!”
Twilight frowned, but wasn’t otherwise affected. “Maybe a little,” she allowed. “You know, I never had anypony but my brother until you girls came along two years ago. Is that enough friendship to last a lifetime? Two years, and now I’m going to go to sleep and wake up a dragon. Dragons don’t have friends, Rainbow. Can you blame me for wanting more? What would you have done?”
That… was not a question that she’d been prepared to answer. “I… I don’t know.”
“It’s okay,” Twilight said, her warped, partially scaled face relaxing into a gentle smile. “I couldn’t come up with anything either. Just this. That’s how I know that this is it—this is the only answer! So don’t worry, it’ll be okay. It’ll all be over soon—like sleeping! You won’t even dream.”
“You said earlier that it’s not—”
“Shh, it’s okay,” Twilight cooed, stroking Rainbow Dash’s mane as her eyes, already slit like a reptile’s, turned red. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Rainbow Dash gave her once-friend one last, plaintive look as she felt the stone creeping in from her extremities. “Stop this, Twilight. Please.”
“Good night, Rainbow Dash; or should I say, good—”
“—morning, Rainbow Dash,” came a suddenly much deeper voice. “It’s been a long time. How have you been?”