> Dark Aura
>  by NavelColt
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> 1. Silence of the Everfree
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------




Part I




“Alright, Miss Honey Cake. I need you to go through this one more time for me. What exactly is it that you saw?”

Honey Cake tapped her hoof against the ground. It grew faster with the pace of her heart. Beyond the investigator—a beige mare with sternly-set eyes—the still and silent forest continued to call out to her. An expanse of dark green canopies had become a barren waste of skeletal branches, gnarled and ghastly.

She could see so much farther past the dead vegetation, now. She could see so much farther, but still so precious little. There was no forest left to see for those trees, no matter how far she peered. It stared back at her—that vast, terrible emptiness.

“Please,” she rasped, “I was just about to go pick up my daughter from school. I’m not special in any way.”

“Reports place you closer to the forest edge than other witness accounts thus far, miss,” the beige mare countered. “I know you’re frightened. I am too. I just need to verify your story for our investigation.”

“But I told you everything that I saw!” Honey Cake cried. “You can see the hole there for yourself, can’t you? You can see what happened to all of the plant life! Surely you can draw your own conclusions, your own pictures!”

“Miss, please, I just need you to—”

“It was horrid, okay!? I screamed like a filly! It was huge, black, and red with the-these wings that were claws!” Honey Cake bit her lip. Her eyes, wet with fear and anxiety, shook vehemently. “It’s the middle of the day, but when I saw its eyes, I-...I felt like I was looking at it in the dark.”

Drawn there by the shaken mare’s gaze, the agent cast an eye to the forest behind her. The pale trees sat beneath an anomaly of time and space—a swirling vortex of shifting color that stained an otherwise immaculate sky. Its edges distorted the air around it, and lightning angrily cracked and sparked in spasmodic patterns from its core.

The agent returned her attention to the startled pony.

"I have just one more question for you, miss. Did you happen to see where it went?"

Honey Cake said nothing. She peeked past the agent to stare at the forest as if to check it. It was trepidation, and it was obvious to spot. She was waiting for something to emerge from those trees.

“I think I understand. Thank you for your cooperation, miss. Please be on your way home, now.”

“B-but my daughter—”

“Has already been escorted somewhere safe along with the rest of her class,” the agent interrupted, her tone cold and calculating. How many times had she repeated this script? How many frantic mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts, or uncles had she reassured today?

For certain, far too many.

“Return home, miss. Somepony will bring your daughter home within the hour, I guarantee it,” she continued. “As soon as you and your daughter are reunited, wait for further instructions. Somepony will be in touch with you.”

Released from her obligations, Honey Cake fled at once, galloping back to the relative safety of Ponyville.

Naturally, it was not the route to her home she appeared to take, but that of the Ponyville Schoolhouse.

The agent barely had opportunity to sigh before her stolid guard escorts framed her peripheral. Together, they watched the bizarre portal hovering in the sky.

“Well? What do you think?”

The mare looked to the forest, then to the grass beneath her hooves. The decay of plant-life had somehow spread outwards, only stopping hundreds of yards from town. Stretches of disintegration and ash reached like hellish fingers towards Ponyville, and something about it made her scowl. She flicked a hoof against a patch of dried grass by the affected area's border and it crumbled to dust before her eyes.

“I think your buddies earlier were right—this is above any of our pay grades,” she said flatly. “This is princess-level stuff. And honestly? I think we’re about to find out they knew that all along. We didn’t get called on to solve the problem or even to find answers. We’re here for damage control and public appearance.”

She turned on a brisk hoof and began to make headway back to Ponyville’s heart. Her escorts turned in a moment of surprise before spreading their wings to catch up.

“Special Agent Sweetie Drops—”

“Drop the formal name, officer. I haven’t gone by that name in years. Getting pulled out of retirement and tasked with a top-level emergency summons doesn’t change that.”

“My apologies. Do you really think it’s all a show?"

Bon Bon clenched her teeth.

“Isn’t it always? We aren’t the ones equipped to handle things of this magnitude. We never were. I have no idea what this thing is but it’s more destructive than an entire flock of cockatrices. Equestria only has one response to situations like this, and it’s found in places like that.”

Passing the shoulder of the village, Bon Bon gestured her hoof. With their eyes, the guards followed her lead and found the newly-crowned palace of Ponyville, shining in the afternoon sun.

“You think we should give an update to Princess Twilight, then?” a guard offered.

“I somehow doubt she’s even home,” Bon Bon replied. She dismissed the castle with a head turn and continued towards the village center. “Likely already been summoned to Canterlot with the other Elements of Harmony, at this rate.”

“So what should we do?”

Bon Bon rolled her eyes. She stopped in her tracks.

“You guys are about as effective as a cardboard box in a thunderstorm. You know that?”

Her pegasi escorts blinked in response. She smacked a hoof to her face.

“We’ll do what we do every time there’s a national crisis,” she said plainly. “Secure the premises, contain the panic, and protect the populace the best we can. I'm sure the princesses can handle the rest. Now, I’m not well-versed in evacuation procedures, but I have a feeling that’s what we’re about to receive an order for. Please tell me you two know something about that.”

Exchanging glances, the guard pegasi nodded in unison. They took the lead and flew off towards the village square. Bon Bon allowed herself a chuckle before sighing in relief.

“Thank Celestia for that at least,” she mumbled, taking her time in trotting along after them.



“Princess Celestia, we came as fast as we could!”

Keeping an eye on Twilight from overhead, Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. “Don’t we say that, like, every time we come here?”

“Thank you, Twilight. Thank you, all,” came the urgent tones of Celestia. Dash frowned.

“Seriously, am I the only one getting deja vu here?”

Coming to a stop on the throne room’s lavish carpet, Twilight and her friends offered their audience to Celestia. Already risen from her throne, the alicorn paced her stage in a display of distress. Quietly accompanying her were her sister, who acknowledged the group with a nod, and to everyone's shock, Discord. The draconequus fiddled with his claws and paws and held a strange, sheepish little smile. For most it was goofy or obnoxious at best, but for a certain yellow pegasus it was an omen like no other.

“I'm sure I don't need to tell you that something is gravely wrong,” Celestia began, her composure rigid. "Something has happened to the Everfree Forest."

"Seems like somethin' always is," Applejack mumbled.

"The entire forest has been petrified," Luna added, stepping forward. "It is like nothing we have ever seen, and initial reports from Ponyville do not look good."

"Whatever do you mean?" inquired Rarity.

"It is a form of petrification far different from what we've come to know in Equestria," Celestia picked up. She cast a nervous glance to the far windows. "It appears to affect anything organic, including plant life. This is a feat even the gaze of the cockatrice cannot achieve."

"Ooh, does this have something to do with that huge swirly thing in the sky?" came Pinkie Pie's ever-curious voice. She bounced into view from behind Rarity and Applejack.

"It does," said Luna, readying a glare. With a shift of her mane, she regarded the Spirit of Chaos, now meekly waving to her. "The portal is something we're a bit more familiar with. It is what has come out of the portal that eludes us."

"I have already dispatched teams from various organizations to launch a full-scale response," said Celestia, shutting Discord's wave down with the pressure of a second glare. "They have been tasked with forming a perimeter around the forest and keeping the population of its nearby towns safe. I imagine you've all noticed some of this already. They are doing all they can to learn about the anomaly and locate anypony who might have witnessed the creature responsible. However, I have forbidden them from stepping hoof inside the forest."

"So something came through the portal over the Everfree Forest, petrified everything in sight, and then just vanished?" Twilight thoughtfully rubbed her chin with her hoof. "And we don't know anything at all about where this creature came from? If it's even a creature at all? Princess Luna, you mentioned you know something about the portal, right? What is it?"

The room befell an awkward quiet. The lunar and solar princesses turned their heads in perfect unison, and like a set of spotlights, directed all attention to Discord.

"I believe Discord can explain from here," Luna said with obvious venom.

Celestia said nothing. Her disapproving look spoke volumes more than words ever could.

Little more than a nigh-omnipotent foal reprimanded by the adults in the room, Discord shuffled forward. When he reached the head of the stage, he offered his first glance to Fluttershy.

"Fluttershy," he began, his silky smooth tone shakier than usual. "Do you remember the other week when I brought you all those delightful little critters for your birthday?"

The room's attention shifted again. Fluttershy, who had remained out of mind from within the fold of her friends, nodded and stepped forward.

"Of course I do," she replied sweetly. "They are just the most adorable little things. Oh, I didn't get the chance to tell you yet, Discord—did you know they can change their form? I was brushing Everly's tail this morning when she suddenly began glowing! She became the most beautiful creature I've ever seen! She's pink and white now, and she has the softest ribbons that she uses to hold onto me when we leave the house."

"Oh, you don't say," Discord muttered, sweat billowing down his brow. While Fluttershy's testimony delighted her friends, drawing cooes and chuckling, they only seemed to sharpen the looks burrowing into him from either side. "Yes, I do remember learning they could sometimes do such things. The thing is, Fluttershy, I fear I was not wholly truthful with you about where I found your new friends."

Fluttershy's smile, overflowing with glee over thoughts of dear Everly, began to fade. Discord's ears fell with it.

"You only told me that you'd gotten them from far, far away. I assumed you just meant from somewhere outside Equestria." Fluttershy furrowed her brow. Discord's earlier timidity had been something to worry about, hadn't it? "Discord, where did you find these creatures?"

Discord tapped his mismatched appendages from a few inches off the ground.

"I may have recently taken a stroll through this lovely dimension I stumbled upon, and, once there, I may have acquired some of the spritely woodland creatures I found there as a gift for you. I thought to myself, 'Fluttershy already has a relationship with nearly every creature in our dimension. Wouldn't she be excited to meet some new critters and form some relationships with them.'"

More silence. From a sea of gasps, Applejack dared to cock her brow.

"Beggin' your pardon?" she deadpanned.

"B-but where are they from?" asked Twilight, toppling over her own words in her thirst for answers. "And how is that connected to what's happening with the Everfree Forest? Discord, are you saying you opened that portal?"

"Equestria's sake, no," Discord defended, frantically waving his claw. "Yours Truly visits other dimensions all the time, Twilight. I always close my portals when I'm done with them. What sort of vagabond do you take me for?"

"The kind that excels in making oversights!" thundered Celestia, turning on the spirit with a motion of her wings. The outburst molded every posture in the hall to become perfectly straight. "You brought creatures back with you, Discord, and here they have stayed for days on end. You expressed to me that this is something you have never done before, did you not?"

His pool noodle body bending over in a display of cowering, Discord returned to sheepish smiling. He nodded.

"As usual, Discord's heart was in the right place, but his results are, well, chaotic," said Luna, addressing the crowd again. "Before your arrival, we briefly met with our leading experts on foreign and ancient magic. Our current theory is that by bringing these creatures back to our reality from another, Discord has unintentionally twisted the spatial fabric of both."

"It's unstable," Twilight summarized. Her eyes were sparks. "Discord's tampering must have weakened the wall between realities, to a point where a portal opened even without his help." 

She got a nod and a subtle smile from Luna.

"Correct, Twilight Sparkle," she replied. "And the bad news does not end there. This portal may not be the only one to have opened because of Discord's recklessness. For all we know, dozens of them could be springing into existence all over Equestria, granting further unknown creatures access to our realm. While some, such as Fluttershy's friends might be relatively harmless, the Everfree Forest is a testament to the danger we're dealing with."

"As I mentioned earlier, dark powers like this are very worrying," Celestia continued. "It is too dangerous to send anyone inside the forest who is not expertly versed in magic. This is why I have summoned the greatest wielders of magic I know. I believe only they may be able to journey into the figurative unknown and return safely."

“Thank you, princess," Twilight said, bowing. "We’d be honored to assist. I’ll be sure to report back anything we find, immediately.”

An unexpected silence shook the petite alicorn’s confidence. She looked up again to find her fellow princesses regarding her with smiles before looking somewhere beyond her.

It only took a few syllables from a familiar voice to catch her up to speed.

“Something tells me she didn’t mean the usual order of good friends this time, Twilight.”

Twilight turned, and she found her own smile to offer. Standing only yards behind her was her newly-reformed colleague and student, Starlight Glimmer. Behind her, a lopsided hat signaled Starswirl's presence before he was even visible, but his voice was the most unmistakable of all, filling the room with an air of authority.

“I suppose to live is to see troubling times, no matter what era you live in,” he mused. “I’ve yet to even scratch the surface of the realm’s modern reaches since my return, and already, there is new darkness on our doorstep.”

“Thank you for coming so quickly, Starswirl,” said Luna. She nodded to Starlight. “You as well, Starlight Glimmer.”

“Starlight, when did you get here?" Twilight pondered aloud. She turned around to offer the unicorn a hug in greeting. "I thought you were on a trip with Trixie. Don’t tell me you had to cancel.”

Starlight giggled, readily returning the hug. “First of all, we got here just after you did. Starswirl and I figured we shouldn't interrupt the mission briefing. Secondly, don't worry about it. Trixie and I can spend more time together anytime. It’s not every day another threat to all of Equestria shows up, right?”

“Well,” said Applejack.

“Actually,” added Dash.

“Now that you mention it,” mumbled Fluttershy.

“Bad things do tend to happen rather consistently in a manner that is...” trailed Rarity.

“Totally uncharacteristic of a land full of super friendly ponies and woodland creatures!” shouted Pinkie, cartwheeling across the carpet.

Starlight humored a shake of her head. From the stage ahead of all of them, Celestia politely cleared her throat.

“Starlight Glimmer is correct,” the sun monarch began, sitting upon her haunches and addressing her audience with her eyes. “Until we know more about these strange events, I will not needlessly risk anyone’s safety. I believe the smaller our reconnaissance efforts, the safer we will be. Twilight, Starlight, Starswirl—I would request that the three of you meet with our stationed intel operatives in Ponyville. Learn what you can from them, and prepare an expedition into the forest when, and only when you feel ready.”

“We must discover the source of this decay,” Luna summarized. “More aptly, we must find a means to reverse it and ensure it does not spread further in the meantime.”

“Well, what about us?” Rainbow Dash exclaimed, zipping higher into the air to draw the princesses’ attention. “Why did you ask us to come here if this is a magic-nerds-only mission?”

Starlight and Twilight shared a souring stare. Starswirl stroked his beard and chuckled.

"Also," Dash went on, flopping a hoof towards Discord. "Why can't you just get him to go in there?"

"I'm with Dash there," Applejack piled on. "Why can't ya just have Discord go in there n' wrangle up whatever critter is causing all this? Whatever it is, I'll bet it's not strong enough to beat him. Only the Elements can turn him to stone."

From his metaphorical doghouse, Discord smugly crossed his arms and smirked. He was ignored.

"I'm afraid Discord will be far too busy scouting Equestria for portals that may have popped up elsewhere," Celestia said coldly. "Discord possesses the ability to detect abnormal fluctuations in magic and is the only one who can close these portals. He will close the portal above the Everfree remotely, but any excursion into the forest beyond that will take time. For now, whatever has caused the Everfree's state appears to be self-contained. I would rather have Discord search Equestria for potentially less stable threats while we take our time in investigating what we're dealing with here."

“As for the rest of you, we asked you here because you all will be undergoing a mission of your own as well,” Luna spoke again.

Attention expectantly befell the sisters. Celestia sighed with apparent effort, and it bred unease in the room.

“I'm afraid these are not the only concerning events taking place. While Twilight, Starlight, and Starswirl investigate the mysterious events surrounding the Everfree Forest, Discord will be tracking down portals elsewhere in Equestria. I would ask the rest of you to meet with the other Pillars while these things are done. Even as we speak, they are on an investigation of their own, tracking a creature we believe to have recently escaped from Tartarus. I will leave it to Starswirl and the other Pillars to provide you with details, for I fear time is of the essence."

“Alright, that’s more like it!” Dash exclaimed with a crack in her voice. She somersaulted in place. “Twilight can check out the forest. Meanwhile, we’ve got a villain to track down. Just call me Rainbow 'Warden' Dash.”

“Hoo, nelly, Equestria’s havin’ a real tough go of it this week,” Applejack remarked. Again she adjusted the curve of her hat, turning to her friends with a wink. “Nothin’ we can’t handle though, I wager.”

“Indeed,” said Rarity, flipping her mane from her eyes. “I have a slew of orders I’d promised to help Sassy Saddles with this evening, but I suppose it can’t be helped. Duty calls, as they say.”

“You will find the other Pillars near the Hayseed Swamps,” Luna noted. “Several ponies there reported their magic was stolen from them by a mysterious figure. Suspicions drew our attention to Tartarus, where a check revealed that one cell, in particular, was now vacant.”

“These circumstances have potentially dire implications,” Celestia urged, rising from her flank. “I would pray that these events are isolated, but it cannot be ruled out that they are somehow connected. It could be that this enemy is only moving now in light of the current state of unrest and confusion. Go now, everyone. Report anything you might find, and above all, be careful. I believe the Pillars’ expertise will prove to be truly invaluable here.”

Celestia nodded to her former teacher. With a bow, Starswirl took the stage and looked first to his twin successors. He regarded them with a waning smile.

“I cannot think of any two ponies I would rather have accompany me on a quest such as this. You, who have dedicated your lives to magic, as I have. You, who expanded upon my work in ways I never could, and showed me the true power in friendship. It is an honor, Starlight, Twilight.”

Starswirl offered his hoof, and Twilight met it with hers. Her eyes twinkled.

“The honor is all mine, Starswirl!” she gushed.

“Likewise,” Starlight added, resting her own leg atop the pile. In light of Twilight’s fawning, she forced a broader smile, herself. “Between the three of us, I’m sure we’ll get this figured out in no time.”

“And I’m sure we’ll have this escapee tracked down just as quickly." 

Dash's boasting bounced off the high ceiling as she fly around it. Unimpressed eyebrows sprouted like weeds below her.

Amidst the excitement, a yellow hoof found Discord's paw. The spirit blinked, his attention settling on bright blue eyes.

"Discord," Fluttershy began, sighing. She paused. "We need to talk about your bad habit of telling white lies, but that's not really important right now. I love Everly and the other creatures so much, and I don't want you to think that I don't love your gift just because it's caused some problems. It was very thoughtful. But I suppose Everly and the others will need to return home?"

The pegasus held her composure bravely, but it was hollow, and Discord could see it. He smiled, and his massive tooth gleamed.

"Dearest Fluttershy, I vow on my cloven hoof that even if Everly and her ilk must return home to help clean up my mess, we shall visit them in their dimension whenever you like. I shall build them the fanciest hideaway home any otherworldly critter has ever laid their eyes on, and only we shall know of it."

Fluttershy's smile returned, and the two embraced.

"Come, everyone," came Starswirl, his tone urgent. He trotted from the throne room with purpose and inspired the rest to follow. "I will detail the enemy my companions are searching for while we depart. Our paths needn't split until we've left Canterlot."

Their harrowing tasks set upon them, the group made for the doorway. 

Celestia watched them disappear with a somber look. A blue hoof sought her side.

"Do not tread fields of worry so readily, sister," Luna whispered. "You are the pony who taught me to always hold on to faith. None are more equipped for these tasks."

Celestia rose from her haunches. The grizzly state of the forest drew her to the stained glass windows. There, she beheld the crumbling skeleton of their old castle, laid naked and visible with the loss of tree canopies to hide it away. If anything, it fit in with the Everfree more than ever, now. Decrepit, withered, and dead.

"I have faith, Luna. I always have, and I always will. But never before have I felt such unease. That faith will be tested, and I fear to what lengths. I believe we would do well to remain cautious."



Soundless in the afternoon breeze, a black cloak swept along a nameless hilltop. As the wind picked up, spitting up flurries of leaves, a quartet of hooves was revealed beneath tattered cloth. Sharp yellow eyes peered out from a fraying hood, and a crooked sneer emerged.

Laid at the hill's feet was the Everfree’s expanse, so vast that the towns and cities of pony-kind could not be seen from this side. Those yellow eyes took in the grim state of the forest with an unsettling delight.

"You never know what sort of peculiar things you might stumble upon when out on a stroll," the creature uttered. His voice was frail but smooth. He licked his lips and wrung his hands together before making his way down into the valley cradling the forest's edge.

The forest was petrified, but the untapped reserves of magic within still beckoned him. Moreover, they were faint, flickering scents. Nothing living could give off such a restrained smell. But then, nothing dead could, either.

He chuckled in a low, sinister tone. It could only mean the forest’s creatures, too, had been petrified. He drank in the aroma surrounding him, tilting back his head as he did.

Oh, yes, this was exotic magic indeed—rare and delectable. It was the fateful gaze of a cockatrice, the ghoulish green mist that molded wolves from bark, and the multiplicative nature of parasprites. Perhaps not terribly powerful magic, but more than enough for him to shed this feeble form.

He chanced a glance down the treeline and froze, quickly retreating from view behind a lone elm. Several pegasi and earth ponies loitered around the forest’s edge, though they had yet to take notice of him.

“Curious ponies,” the centaur seethed, tapping his spindly fingers against the tree’s trunk. “Heaven forbid a single thing be found out of place in your world.”

The wind picked up and began to howl. It pushed and pulled the rigid trees until they creaked, all at once drawing the attention of his potential witnesses away. 

The cloaked figure took his chance. He darted across the last of the clearing and quickly disappeared within the thickets of bleached wood. As the equines fell out of sight, he knew he had, as well, and his sneer returned. 

“Fear not, my little ponies,” he whispered. He gripped the underside of his hood, and with one motion, pulled it from his form before releasing it into the wind. “Lord Tirek is here, and before he retakes all that is rightfully his, he would be more than happy to locate the source of your plight and take its magic for himself.”
> 2. The Things Impressions Tell Us
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Bon Bon?"

The pony in question nodded. She mouthed something but gave up halfway through.

"You're a part of Celestia's response team?"

"Yes," muttered Bon Bon. "It's nice to see you again, too, Princess Twilight."

Twilight grimaced. "I'm sorry, that was rude of me. It's good to see you again, too! I'm just surprised to see you here. I always thought you were a—"

She paused, and that mistake derailed her train of thought entirely. Come to think of it, what did she always assume Bon Bon did for a living? Was she a gardener? She was always buying vegetables. No, a decorations expert, like at Cranky's wedding? A relationship counselor? A bench tester? A pie-eating competition champion?

Twilight bit her lip. Her pupils shrank. Oh, Celestia, did she know anything about Bon Bon at all? Were they even friends?

"Anyway," interrupted Starlight, resetting her mentor with a light jab to the flank. "What was it you were saying, Bon Bon?"

Bon Bon cleared her throat. Her vacant look snapped back to something more serious. "Right. I've been conducting interviews with Ponyville residents who saw the creature, first-hoof. Usually, public testimony can vary wildly, but this has been pretty consistent. I think I can give you a loose-fitting description."

"That's fantastic news," Starlight said with a chuckle. She garnished nods from her company. "I was afraid we'd be looking for a needle in the haystack with this one."

"What did your testimonials sound like?" Twilight followed up. Her existential friendship crisis would need rescheduling. There was science to be conducted here.

"From what I gathered, we're dealing with something large and avian," Bon Bon explained, looking towards the Everfree. Gone was the portal sparking and hissing far overhead, thanks to Discord's magic, but the sporadic creaks and cracks of petrified wood still had her on edge. "All eye-witness accounts thus far have described a large flying creature with rake-like wings, piercing blue eyes, and coloring that is entirely black and red."

"Rake-like wings," Starswirl mumbled. His hoof methodically ran through his beard. 

"That sounds utterly terrifying," Starlight said flatly. She offered a brow to Twilight. "Are we certain the dimension that Discord visited for Fluttershy is the same one this portal linked to?"

"Discord said the energy signatures were identical," Twilight replied. Her horn blinked with magenta magic. A scroll and quill attended to her. "As Princess Celestia mentioned, he can detect changes in power. If he felt no difference, they must be the same."

Starlight surveyed the forest. It was her turn to grimace. "It's hard to believe something this nightmarish could come from the same place as Fluttershy's friends. I guess I can't pretend to know what other dimensions are like, though, seeing as I've only traveled through time."

Twilight snorted.

"My last eye-witness reported feeling a sense of dread when she looked at its eyes," Bon Bon went on. "She said it was as if its eyes were all she could see."

Starswirl glanced up from his pondering. "A magical display of intimidation, perhaps." He took a few steps closer to the forest, just close enough to examine the streaks of ashen grass fleeing from it. "If we are to assume it is a creature born of nature, then it must have some sense of self-preservation. Even in a hypothetical dimension far detached from the laws of our own, survival is a reality for all life that would one day perish."

"Do you think it could be sentient?"

Starswirl acknowledged Twilight with a nod as she knelt to his side.

"I do not know yet, but my instincts tell me no. If none have seen the creature since its appearance, and the forest remains the only area affected by its powers, then within the forest is likely where it resides. Perhaps it lashed out in this strange, new environment before retreating somewhere safe and unseen."

"A distressed animal sounds a lot less frightening than evil incarnate," Starlight said. "But then again, a frightened animal that can petrify living things and break down plant life to a molecular level sounds bad regardless."

"All too right you are, Starlight," Starswirl sighed, getting to his hooves. "A cornered beast is at its most dangerous because it has nothing to lose. Regardless our strategy, we would be fools to enter that forest without extreme caution."

"Starswirl, I'm impressed," Twilight praised. The alicorn sought his gaze. "And trust me, for somepony who has researched all of your accomplishments, studies, and publishings in chronological order numerous times, that's saying something. I had no idea you were so knowledgeable about fauna."

Starswirl dismissively huffed in reply but shadowed a smile all the same.

"Thank you, Twilight, but in my day, not knowing how to read the beasts of the land was to forfeit one's life preemptively. In times that saw brittle, scattered villages and a minimal understanding of the greater world, survival instincts were a pony's greatest asset. Even greater than magic."

Without another word, Starswirl advanced further towards the forest. Twilight ogled after him, little more than a filly biting her lip in adoration of her favorite teacher.

"Miss Bon Bon," the sorcerer spoke again, sweeping a display of light along the dead grass. "How quickly did this decay fester after eye-witness reports? Was that witnessed, as well?"

"No," the beige mare admitted. "If it was, I couldn't find anypony who could give me a clear answer. But it must have been quick. Half the ponies in town heard the thing screech, even if they didn't see it. When I heard it, I was over here within minutes, and by then, the forest already looked like this."

Starswirl stood tall in the afternoon sun. His white magic dissipated.

"Twilight, Starlight, I have a hypothesis. But it must first be tested. We must find out more, and for that, we must brave the forest."

"Are we ready for this?" Starlight put out, trotting to his side. "You don't think we should check the forest's perimeter, first? What if somepony else outside Ponyville saw something?"

"What I must learn now cannot be gleaned from investigations outside the forest," Starswirl replied. His hooves began to move, but to his companion's surprise, not in the direction of the forest. "That said, we currently face the Everfree Forest from the north. The creature has seen the inhabitants here and thus may be expecting entry from this side. I believe it may be safer to begin our exploration from another angle."

"Fair enough," Starlight said uncertainly. She noted Twilight's fangirlish grin from her peripheral. "Shouldn't we save time and teleport, then?"

Joined by the mares in stride once more, Starswirl loosed his first smile since arriving.

"And rob you of your thoughtful suggestion? I'd never dream of it."

"But, you said—"

"That what I must learn cannot be gleaned from outside the forest," Starswirl finished. "But seeing as we must enter from elsewhere anyway, I see no reason why we cannot exercise your suggestion. You are, after all, correct, Starlight. We just may learn something on the way. I've long since learned my lesson on not heeding your advice."

Starlight beamed, and for once, outdid even Twilight in doing so.

"Thank you for your help, Bon Bon!" Twilight called, waving to the beige mare now shrinking into the distance.

"Of course. Stay safe in there, please!" Bon Bon called back. "We just finished evacuation procedures, so don't worry about collateral if it gets to that."

"What?"

"Nothing!" she called louder. She wore her smile until the trio fell out of sight. Only then did Agent Sweetie Drops sigh and plant a hoof over her eyes. The sound of fluttering pegasus wings swiftly joined her from all sides.

"Agent, we've finished assuring the safe relocation of Ponyville's civilians."

Bon Bon's stone face rose over the curve of her hoof.

"Good," she said. She eyed her troops with apparent exhaustion. "Let's do one more sweep to ensure we didn’t miss anypony, then report to the princess in Canterlot. I've had about all I can take of this today, and I haven't even seen this thing. Almost starting to feel sorry for it now, though."

"Why is that?"

Together the group departed down a winding dirt path that framed the outermost crop of townhouses and gardens. Bon Bon chuckled.

"Because they didn't just send a princess to deal with it, they sent the entire armada. This thing has Equestria's most powerful magic users—save the draconequus—coming for its otherworldly hide. We better get out of here before the fireworks start."



"Aha, the noble Valkyries themselves have arrived to aid us! How are you lasses doin'?"

Rockhoof's voice, as strong as his muscles, echoed even where there were no walls. He was the first to break rank from his companions, greeting five colorful mares as they peaked the hilltop’s crown.

"Doin' just fine there, Rockhoof," Applejack replied, kindly bowing her hat. "We caught up with y'all sooner than I expected we would. We haven't even reached the Hayseed Swamps yet."

"Pardon our intrusion," came Rarity, placing a hoof to her chest. "Princess Celestia has tasked us with helping you all track down our villain of the day, as it were."

Again Rockhoof's voice thundered through the clearing, this time as an overly-exuberant "I knew it!" Meadowbrook was the second to break rank, meeting her tall compatriot and tapping a hoof to his side, as if signaling him to take a deep breath.

"It's wonderful to see all of you again so soon," Meadowbrook expressed. Her smile was solemn. "Though I hate to admit it, we sure could use the assistance right about now."

"What's wrong?" asked Fluttershy, joining her counterpart in a few short steps. There, she held the mage's other hoof. "Have you not found Tirek yet?"

"Aye, the villain escaped us from right under our noses," Rockhoof snorted.

"We came to these swamps early this morning, hoping to catch the enemy off-guard," Somnambula explained, effortlessly garnishing ten pairs of eyes. "We planned to ambush him before he awoke and left the area, but it seems he was one step ahead of us and traveled during the night."

"Does this guy not sleep?" Dash retorted with rhetoric.

"If he doesn't, it just means we must be that much more vigilant." Flash Magnus winked, and Dash nodded at once, her complaining abandoned. "With all of us working together, I dare any creature to try and evade capture."

"I expected to find Princess Twilight among you," said Mistmane, curiously beseeching Rarity. "The dear hasn't been held up by something, has she?"

"In a way," Rarity replied, rocking her head. "Princess Celestia has sent Twilight, Starlight, and Starswirl on a mission of their own."

"Something awful has happened to the Everfree Forest," Fluttershy continued, adopting her counterpart's earlier gloom. "Discord found these adorable little creatures for my birthday, but he opened a portal to another world to find them. More portals are popping up because of that, and now somecreature has come through and petrified the entire forest."

A collective gasp came as expected.

"So that's why Starswirl was summoned away," Rockhoof pondered. "Has he had any luck yet? Do they need our assistance as well?"

"Afraid we've been operatin' on faith so far," Applejack replied. "Not to say we don't have barrels of it already, though. If those three aren't up for a magical challenge, nopony is."

"For the time being, I agree with the princess. We can offer the most help here, helping you all track down this villain." Rarity closed the gap to her counterpart, offering Mistmane a light cross of her horn. "Let us deal with him, and let Twilight and the others handle the Everfree Forest. We're no strangers to the concept of divide and conquer."

"Excellently put," Flash Magnus lauded, pounding his front hooves together. "Then it is our turn to fill you all in. Did Princess Celestia or Starswirl relay any information to you about our foe?"

"Starswirl filled us in the best he could, but we had to split off pretty quickly. He told us that Tirek is a centaur and that a long time ago he came to Equestria with his brother to try and steal magic," Fluttershy recited. "He was put in Tartarus for his crimes but somehow escaped when Cerberus left his post."

Flash nodded. "That's right. There is something else to mention when discussing Tirek's ability to steal magic, though. He's—"

"Hey, you guys, I found some holes in the wet grass over here! They're perfectly cupcake-sized—what's up with that? I sure hope nopony lost their cupcakes. Confectionery treats could get lost out here all by themselves!"

The group exchanged blinks as they tuned in to the nonsensical outburst some few dozen yards to their left. It was only then that Applejack smacked a hoof to her face and suffered a sudden realization.

Pinkie hadn't been with them this entire time.

The groups converged and followed the sound of babbling and bouncing. Upon spotting Pinkie, they found the stars of her outlandish tale—perfectly circular imprints in the grass, bordered with mud. They trailed off into the tall grass of the surrounding forest.

"Hoofprints," whispered Meadowbrook.

"And only one suspect who could have left them," Flash added. “Far too large for a typical pony.”

"Looks like y'all weren't quite so far behind Tirek, after all," Applejack offered. "At this rate, you'd have found those hoofprints in no time if we hadn't come along and distracted ya'."

"You jest, lass, but I say you're good luck," Rockhoof deflected. He turned to Pinkie. Somehow, she'd produced a dozen cupcakes from the depths of her mane and now gleefully offered them among the group. Rockhoof accepted one and bit into it as he pointed towards the horizon with his shovel’s tip.

"Lesh mack hashte, ladsh and laddish!" he exclaimed, crumbs soaring with conviction from his beard. "The beast heads northwest. We'll cut him off before he reaches Rambling Rock Ridge!"

Off like a shot did the group take off, piercing the forest's edge and continuing their pursuit through a maze of checkered light and brush. Leading the pack, Flash and Dash were signaled by their charge down below.

"Flash, you were about to say something about Tirek's magic, weren't you?"

Flash nodded. He spun about midair and flew along backwards, dodging tree branches with mindful glances.

"Right you are, Fluttershy. Before we catch up with our foe, you must be made aware of the extent of his powers. Although Starswirl and the royal sisters are the only ones to have met him face to face, we've all done our fair share of research. We did so in case he should ever escape and again become a threat. It looks like we were right to do so."

The shady canopies gave way to a babbling brook, bisecting two sprawling valleys. Just northwest were the rocky faces of Rambling Rock Ridge, along with the southernmost expanse of its infamous neighbor, the Everfree Forest.

"Tirek has the uncanny ability to steal magic from all living things," Flash went on. "Each time he absorbs magic, he grows stronger, both physically and magically. He can steal magical abilities from unicorns or the passive magic of pegasi or earth ponies. But his skill extends even beyond that."

"Beyond that?" Fluttershy repeated. Flash turned to her, and his stare was cold.



Tirek can even steal the very magic that makes magical creatures what they are.

A hushed, hellish sound echoed through the forest. A single stream of teal magic freely leaped from the stone bodies of a chicken and snake, adorned on the forest floor as macabre ornaments. As it soared, the magic grew pale and dark, shading to orange before descending into an awaiting, elongated jaw.

Tirek chortled to himself, wiping a forearm across his mouth. He smirked.

"I wish I could tell you it's worth it, that your generous contribution will see me to greatness, but you're barely a snack." The centaur circled the statues a moment, then kicked over the chicken. "Not to worry though, there are many more of you in this forest. By the time I'm finished, I should be just strong enough to take back all the delicious magic those proud, pompous ponies flaunt so wastefully. But then, your kind never really saw eye to eye with ponies anyway, did you?"

He laughed a cold, self-serving laugh.

"And let's not forget about our mysterious host," he continued, casting an eye around the motionless trees. "I'll have to thank them for providing me with such an abundance of snacks. Such service is so hard to find these days."

More silence. This time, the frivolity did not recover. Tirek scowled. He drank in the faint aromas all around him once more, letting them tug his attention in every direction. One scent in particular pulled the hardest, and was awfully close by. It was the scent of a manticore, and it was fully grown.

The centaur rubbed his hands together feverishly.

"So much power, so little time."
> 3. The Cold Nature of Stone
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Starlight winced. Every step she took brought the loud snap of a dried twig with it. To shift her weight was to draw attention to herself. To reposition was to break concentration. To make matters worse, the black soot of decayed foliage clung to her hooves, adding a gritty feeling to her every step.

She gave an aggravated sigh. Looking in at this chaos from someplace warm and bright was a privilege she very much missed, and their detour around the forest had gone by far too quickly.

One thing was for certain—no oversized cockatrice was worth all of this.

"A shame we didn’t find anything useful outside, after all. Do we at least have an idea of where we are, or where this thing might be?"

Humming a tune, Twilight seemed to detach herself from the sprawling death all around them. A faded map hovered in magenta magic in front of her face, though it didn't seem to impair her ability to dodge roots.

"Not exactly, but I know where we can begin,” the purple alicorn began. “Only one pony has ever attempted to map the entirety of the Everfree Forest—his name was Surefire Voyage. Although he was never able to complete his work, his findings were recovered over a millennia later by daredevil explorers. Since then, we've been able to expand upon his map a lot. A map that just so happens to live in my library, these days."

"Alright, that sounds promising. How much of the forest has been mapped?"

"Roughly forty-five percent," Twilight replied with pep. "Though a good twenty-five percent of that was already explored and known about due to the Castle of the Two Sisters, which hollows out a lot of the forest's volume by having no trees around it. Then, we added around fifteen percent onto Surefire's findings over the centuries."

"...so what you're telling me is that Surefire Voyage only successfully mapped around 5% of the forest."

"Yes."

"Also, that more than half of the total forest remains uncharted."

"Also yes."

"And that, in short, we're basically just wandering around, hoping to pick up the trail of something."

Twilight paused before responding, processing her friend’s irate tone.

"Uh, technically yes? You have to remember that the Everfree Forest wasn't nearly as big, back in Surfire's Day. I’m hoping to identify landmarks from the map so we can have an idea of which forest quadrant we’re in. I can cross off quadrants as we explore them."

"Surefire was a good pony," Starswirl said out of nowhere. "A bit slow on the uptake, perhaps, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a pony braver than him, save our very own Flash Magnus. Surefire believed his work would benefit all of Equestria, and keep our towns safer.”

“I sure hope it can keep us safer,” Starlight muttered. “Feels like we’ve been out here for hours, already. Even when colorless and quiet, this forest gives me the chills.”

Moments became minutes. The slow, careful clopping of hooves and snapping of branches became the only sound to hear, and for Starlight, what began as an anxiety trigger quickly became a lulling rhythm. She found her eyelids growing steadily heavier.

It didn’t help matters any that her company was mute. Twilight’s usual, talkative self had been subdued by her attempts to identify landmarks, and Starswirl, hardly one for starting conversations anyway, trudged along quite comfortably in the silence.

For a moment, Starlight’s eyes closed, and she relished the relief that came with it.

But then someone shrieked, and just like that, Starlight was awake again.

“Oh my gosh, I'm sorry,” Twilight gasped. "It's just a cragadile—I didn't see it. Get a hold of yourself, Twilight."

Starlight turned with Starswirl. Tucked behind a sagging willow tree was the ominous form of a cragadile, frozen mid-stride. The thick scales of green and brown rock had been dulled to gray. If not for its cold, stone eyes, one might assume it'd simply been of old age, pretending to be a statue to lure in gullible, curious ponies like themselves to their doom.

"It was just...walking."

Starlight couldn't find further words. Starswirl approached it, and with a hoof, examined it from each side. One of its short, stumpy legs had yet to touch the ground.

"The speed at which this occurred is startling," the sorcerer began, stroking his beard. He swept the forest with troubled eyes. "But it is perhaps not unexpected. We may not require Surefire's map fragments after all, Twilight."

Twilight, who'd long forgotten about identifying landmarks, longingly looked towards the map.

"Why do you say that?"

Starswirl's voice fell. "When we were at the very edge of the forest, at the edge of this phenomenon, Miss Bon Bon reported that the petrification had occurred no later than three minutes after the creature's appearance. With no eye-witnesses, we couldn't be certain it wasn't instantaneous, but let's assume that by the forest's edge it wasn't."

The mares drew closer to the Pillar as he went on. For the first time in what felt like hours, a breeze strong enough to penetrate the forest's depths climbed their spines. 

"What happened right here was instantaneous, taking place in a matter of seconds. I cannot prove it, but this might be a sign that we are nearing the anomaly's epicenter, that we are nearing the creature responsible. From here on out, be prepared for anything."

The Element of Magic whisked her map away, and Starlight advanced ahead of her, her eyes like daggers guiding a horn already lit with a teal blaze.

"I don't expect you to know anything about this creature, Starswirl," Starlight began, closely watching every new tree that entered her vision. "But you did say you have a hypothesis. Care to explain what it is, or if you've made more headway on it?"

Starswirl looked back to the stone cragadile.

"I will have an answer for you very soon," he said. Closing his eyes, his horn lit with snow-white magic. It spiraled around the sharp conductor a moment before shining down across the statue's back. There, it scanned to and fro several times.

When the magic ceased, Starswirl's look grew morbid.

"...just as I suspected."

"What is it?"

Starswirl wheeled around. "Twilight, how does a cockatrice turn living beings to stone? What is the process?"

Put on the spot without context, Twilight briefly stammered. "I-I uh, the cockatrice uses its eyes as a conduit for magic, like how unicorns use their horns. It casts a stone sleep spell on creatures it feels threatened by, or that invade its territory."

"And what happens to the creature trapped in stone?"

"What do you mean?"

From the sideline, Starlight watched the two converse. An unnerved look crept up her face.

"Think of Discord, Twilight," Starswirl led. "He could still hear, still think while trapped in stone. Granted, this was anomalous and unique to him because he is not tethered to our mortal plane, but the fundamentals are the same for all creatures of our world. How is it he could experience consciousness?"

Twilight racked her brain. The artificial tension was building, though she wasn't quite sure what for. At least not yet.

"Because the stone sleep spell, whether done by a unicorn or a cockatrice, doesn't actually destroy tissue by transforming it into rock. It's more of a limbo imprisonment, a time lock that can be reversed."

"Correct. One can normally expect to find the life force within any petrified victim, regardless of how long they've been imprisoned. They need only the correct spell to check for a 'pulse.'"

"‘Normally’?"

Starswirl paused, and at last Twilight found her protege's grim face. Her blood ran cold. With a weak voice, she reached out, her gaze fixed on the statue.

"Starswirl, you didn't feel a pulse in that cragadile, did you?"

"No, Twilight," Starswirl replied. "I didn't."



“How curious,” Tirek drolled. As a half-dozen timberwolves continued to lunge at him in turns, biting down on his biceps in fits of snarling, he pondered just what kind of magic he was dealing with.

“Why are you not also statues?” he asked aloud. He grew amused when green lights turned in response to his voice. Again the wolves lunged. This time, the firm back of Tirek’s fist readily knocked them away. Dog-like whimpers cried out as the mangled forms of branches and leaves skidded along the ground.

It was then that Tirek's crooked smile succumbed to shock.

As the wolves rebuilt themselves from surrounding foliage, the scarcity of the forest began to take its toll. Petrified branches were levitated in gases of green magic and affixed into missing joints and limbs, but when the wolves charged again, their albino body parts creaked and snapped instantly. The wolves tumbled over themselves, flopping in a heap at the centaur’s hooves.

Tirek smirked as they struggled to merely stand.

“You may have escaped petrification, but with no trees to fuel your regeneration, you’re still doomed, it seems.” A terrible spectacle of black and orange energy formed at the focal point of his horns. “What a pity. Even the forest’s mighty guardians have fallen in the face of this localized extinction. Allow me to offer you salvation.”

Tirek’s jaw opened wide, like that of a pelican eel. At once, the green light granting artificial life to the wolves wafted from their bodies as an evaporating smoke, leaving their forms to fall limp, collapsing into piles of twigs. Circling the air as if caught in a drain, the green energy condensed into a long, thin strand before vanishing behind a clenched pair of teeth.

“Ahh,” the centaur expressed, ritualistically wiping his mouth again. “Rather earthy for my taste, but it’s rude to waste food when it is offered to you.”

Tirek flexed his arms and pecked the greatest muscle. He was already starting to resemble his old self. Certainly, he was already a wave ready to crash down on the nearest town of ponies. But then, why not first become a tsunami?

A rare opportunity sat before him. Ponies were worrisome little creatures—most didn’t tread near the Everfree on general principle, let alone while bizarre magic held the entire woodland in its clutch of death. Why shouldn’t he gain as much power as he could, while here? No one would come to stop him, and it was doubtful any creature even knew he was here.

The centaur turned and began to advance ever deeper into the forest. His hooves were weights upon the ground, crushing the remains of timberwolves like toothpicks.

“Whatever is responsible for this must be around here somewhere,” he murmured. “Absorbing every last creature would take days, but finding just one while picking snacks up along the way should be no trouble.”

Lesser trees and brittle brambles bowed and snapped before him as he walked. Those that didn’t were aggressively uprooted and tossed over his shoulder. When he emerged through a veil of naked, snaking vines, another timberwolf leaped for him, baring its wooden fangs. Without so much as a glance or pause in his pace, Tirek snatched the wolf from the air by its neck. In one flex, he crushed it and absorbed its ghostly light.

After some time, the trees seemed to grow thinner, and so Tirek’s disengaged stare was shaken. Through the broader gaps between trunks came what appeared to be a cottage, or perhaps a treehouse. Raising a brow, the centaur’s lip curled.

“What have we here, I wonder. Goodness me, are all my beliefs about ponies about to be challenged? No one could possibly live all the way out here.”

But this was no forgotten foalhood treehouse. As the centaur broke past the outlying trees, he examined the structure more shrewdly. It was an aged willow, long ago converted into a homestead. Colored bottles hung from the lowest branches, and an oak door sat the tree’s base, wide open. Tribal masks further decorated the large roots branching out in all directions, and something about them was oddly familiar.

Curiosity extinguishing any further wit or retort, Tirek advanced on the doorway.

“Like a good neighbor, Lord Tirek is here!”

Two hands brutally pried the lower tree apart into a shower of splintered shrapnel, and Tirek stepped through his makeshift doorway. Inside, a cauldron still fresh with some deep green, bubbling liquid sat unattended. Staring silently at him from all around the walls were more tribal masks, which now picked at the centaur’s brain like an irritable itch.

Where had he seen masks like these before?

He thought to call out, to taunt any possible hideaways, but there was no need. There was no magic in the air here, and there did not appear to be any other rooms or tucked away areas to hide away in.

No one was here, not anymore.

Tirek grunted and placed the crux of his knuckle to his chin. That open doorway only raised further questions, though. Questions like who was it that lived here, and had they fled their home before or since the forest’s untimely demise? Were they still in the forest, or had they somehow managed to foresee these events and escape?

Another grunt, with a higher tone of satisfaction, this time. He had, at last, scratched that itch. Strange trinkets, a plethora of potions, and tribal masks all around the walls—this was a den of hoodoo if he’d ever seen one. No pony lived here, after all.

“What’s a zebra doing in this dismal part of Equestria?” Tirek vocalized, examining a shelf of potions. He clawed one in particular and sniffed it. He promptly tossed it over his shoulder and scowled. What a repugnant smell.

This was a waste of time.

The centaur blew a hole in the opposite side of the willow and exited through a cloud of smoke and debris. Emerging on the other side, the smoke released its grip on his shoulders, and he sniffed the air.

Something sharp assailed his nostrils. His eyes widened.

“Oh,” he growled, a wicked grin forming. “What in Equestria is that?”

It wasn’t magic, or at least, it was like no magic he’d ever encountered. It was foreboding and dark, something creeping and wretched, whispering to him through time and space. The more he focused, attempting to pinpoint its location, the colder the chill up his spine became.

Tirek cracked his neck. A thousand thoughts flooded his mind. Was it Grogar, of old? What else in all of Equestria’s history could be so twisted and ripe with power? Was it some beast as ancient and capable as Discord? Had Discord, himself somehow escaped from his eternal prison in stone?

It mattered not—he was not prepared to confront such power, yet. To seek it out would be madness.

But the centaur smiled. He had time on his side, as well as the element of surprise. He would learn of the entity from the shadows, analyze the situation, as well as his next move. To triumph was to use brains as well as brawn. 

“How does the old saying go? Out of the pot and into the fire?” An audience of one, Tirek chuckled to himself. “Let’s see what fresh Tartarus awaits me, this time.”



“Keep yer eyes sharp and your wits peeled, lads and lasses.”

Rockhoof embedded his shovel into the earth with gusto. An interjecting hoof from Rarity attempted to correct his phrasing, but the attempt was shot down by Flash. The pegasus knowingly shook his head.

“The treacherous beast could be anywhere,” Rockhoof continued. Standing tall, he offered himself to the open air of Rambling Rock Ridge’s cliffs. A cascade of rocks and a weather-worn cliff face awaited him below, waiting for even the tiniest slip of the hooves. Beyond it, a respite of rolling fields and rivers held a familiar albino network of trees at bay.

“But why would Tirek come here,” Applejack asked, stepping forward to grab her counterpart’s attention. “This whole ridge is as quiet as a bucked orchard on a Sunday night. Don’t think I’ve seen a single critter here, let alone a pony or any other sorta folk.”

“Applejack’s right,” Fluttershy stepped in, both figuratively and literally as she joined her friend’s side. “Tirek's hoof prints stopped a little while back, so he may have gone around the ridge completely. If he wants to absorbs magic, he’ll want to go someplace populated, won’t he? Someplace like Ponyville?”

“Or Dodge City, perhaps,” Mistmane offered. “It is closer to the Hayseed Swamps than your home, which lies on the other side of the Everfree.”

“If his goal is magic, then I’m afraid Dodge City wont attract Tirek real well,” Applejack replied. "That place has become real desolate, these days. Suppose you could say their gold rush went out with a whisper instead of a ring. Most ponies moved away a long time ago, and those left have started migratin’ to Appleloosa, further southwest.”

Mistmane smacked her aged lips. She thanked the farmer pony with a warm look. “I suppose I won’t ever stop learning new things about this era. Unfortunately, that would mean Ponyville is likely Tirek’s first target.”

A flapping of wings signaled them all to look up, where Somnambula touched down with grace. 

“There is no sign of our foe from the air,” she said. “The ridge is empty, aside from us.”

From his proud stance atop the mountain, Rockhoof snorted.

“That may be so, but this vantage point offers us important insight to our next move.”

“The only question remaining is if Tirek has gone through the forest, or around it,” Meadowbrook added. “I'll wager a guess that I know more about that forest than anypony here. The swamps of my home are not as fabled as the Everfree, but they share much of the dangerous flora and fauna, and both are mighty tricky to navigate. Even if the forest has been petrified, would Tirek risk getting lost in it while he’s still so weak?”

“An excellent point,” Flash mediated. “Getting lost within the forest while attempting to hide from eyes who would see him going around it might be even more detrimental to him.”

“Unless he ventured into the Everfree on purpose.” Again Somnambula commanded the floor. She watched the forest with trepidation. “If the forest has been petrified, then so too have its many dangerous creatures. Ponies will still be reluctant to explore the forest while this grim magic is in the air. Getting held up within the woods is likely the last of Tirek’s concerns.”

“Can Tirek absorb magic from statues?”

The thought fell on the group as a cold, hard weight from the most unlikely source. Hovering in the air, Rainbow Dash held a lazy expression until a wave of eyes sought her out.

“...what?”

Meadowbrook desperately turned to Flash. “Flash, do you think that he could? Oh, my stars. If he can absorb the magic of petrified beings as easily as living ones, then—”

“Then the entire forest will have become one large meal to him, with no threat of retaliation,” Somnambula finished.

“Starswirl, Twilight, and Starlight are in there, too,” Fluttershy added, her voice teetering on the edge of a panic attack. “And they wouldn’t know to look out for him! They’re focused on trying to find whatever creature caused all of this!”

“It looks like Princess Celestia might have been right to worry,” said Rarity, refraining from biting the edge of her hoof as it hid beneath her chin. “Whether Tirek had anything to do with this creature’s arrival or not, he may very well benefit from it.”

Resolute, Flash spread his wings.

“Prepare to enter the forest, everyone. Our friends need our help.”
> 4. What Lurks in the Woods
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Twilight bit her lip. The crunching of branches beneath her hooves now bothered her immensely. How had she ever manage to tune it out before?

"Starswirl, you've never seen petrification like this before?"

Silence. Starswirl seemed to acknowledge the question with a movement of his head, but it could have been a trick of the eye.

"I sure haven't," Starlight offered. She gave her mentor a strained smile. "And I've studied magic just about as long as Twilight has."

"It is a puzzling thing," Starswirl said. The tail of his cloak had become dirtied and sullen by the black soot covering the forest floor. Small holes had torn in the fabric as battle scars from sharp twigs and roots. Even still, he pressed on, leading the studious mares ever deeper into the bowels of the woods.

"It is as you said, Twilight—whether cast by a pony or a cockatrice, all petrification in Equestria follows the same laws of magic. It is magical imprisonment, designed to hold a creature in a sustained state of limbo. To see no signs of life from these statues is to see something that goes against all that we know."

"Leave it to Discord," Starlight sighed. "Petrification must work differently in whatever dimension this thing came from. That much is clear. My question is, why isn't it being forced to follow our dimension's rules of magic now that it's here?"

Starswirl's horn ignited and toppled a fallen tree from their path.

"Our minds are as one, Starlight. I am pondering the very same thing," he said with a nod. "In most circumstances, you would likely be correct. A creature's powers should be impacted upon entering another dimension. When my companions and I banished the sirens from our realm, we did so with this in mind. We hoped they would become powerless in their new home, which we believed had no magic."

"Twilight never did give me the finer details of that fight," Starlight replied. "How did you select the dimension you did? Did you know from the start that it wouldn’t have magic?"

Starswirl audibly hummed in thought. His horn began removing even slightly precarious branches from their path, now.

"The timing was rather impeccable. When Stygian found me, I had already been researching what little information there was regarding other dimensions and realms of reality. Back then, this consisted largely of theorems and hypotheses—no tangible spells or detailed records for bridging worlds in a controlled environment had ever been conceived. Clover the Clever once utilized a portal to pursue a foe, but because the portal could never be found, this was anecdotal information at best. Naturally, I only saw this as a challenge."

A foalish squeak of glee came from Twilight. Starlight restrained her giggle.

"I developed a spell and faced the sirens with my companions," Starswirl went on. "I knew my spell would work, but I wasn't sure it would lead to a world without magic. I hoped, but I did not know."

"How likely did you think it was?" asked Twilight. "And, if you don't mind me asking, how did you come to that conclusion?"

They entered a thinner patch of trees. The sun baked the desecrated ground, though there were no longer any plants to drink the ray's nutrients.

"Thereafter, I began experiments to deduce how common magic was in other realms. With no focal point with which to anchor my spell, it opened to various dimensions with every casting, providing a convenient testing ground. I must have opened hundreds of portals—peered into hundreds of different worlds, using a vortex as a window."

Twilight bit her lip again. To think, her idol, flawlessly executing the scientific method.

"What was the ratio you found?" she asked again. 

Starswirl grunted. "In regards to the sirens, I grew more confident in the gamble I took. But in regards to the greater possibilities of otherworldly travel, my excitement was crushed. Across hundreds of realities I saw no evidence of magic. Magic appeared—rather, appears—to be exceedingly rare in the grand scheme of the multiverse."

The sound of decayed, crunching twigs dominated the conversation again for a time.

"Returning to the matter at hoof," the sorcerer eventually picked up, "this world, the one Discord has so exhaustively connected us with appears to be the exception to my findings. It does have magic, and that is why all my previous observations are useless to us. I do not know how two separate worlds of magic will interact with each other because it has never happened before."

"Sound like it's time to take notes then," said Starlight. "These portals came from Discord transporting magical creatures over from another realm, right?"

"That is our current hypothesis," Starswirl replied.

"When Sunset Shimmer and I spent time in the world the sirens were banished to, no rogue portals appeared there or in Equestria," Twilight reasoned aloud. "If your hypothesis is correct, Starswirl, then it stands to reason that when two worlds are connected but one of them has no native magic, there's no risk of unexpected phenomena happening in either."

Starswirl nodded. "A thoughtful deduction, Twilight. Magic is a powerful and often unstable thing. Perhaps when it is introduced to the foreign magic of another dimension, chaos ensues—with or without Discord's tampering."

"Okay, let's tie this all back to what I was saying before about this creature," said Starlight. "Because it traveled to another dimension with magic, it got to keep its powers. But what about the petrification? That still differs between our worlds. Shouldn't our world's laws override the one it came from or something?"

"I cannot proclaim to know for sure," Starswirl admitted. "However, I do know there appear to be exceptions to the rules. Take Discord. Because his magic is intertwined with the bending of reality, itself, he can travel between dimensions and retain his magic regardless of where he ends up."

"Sort of like a self-contained reality that surrounds only Discord at all times," mumbled Twilight. Not a moment passed before Starswirl spun about.

"A brilliant thought, Twilight. Please keep track of that. We must return to it when the realm is no longer in peril."

Twilight squealed again.

"So this thing must have some unknown trait that’s overriding our override," Starlight pieced together. She pined for the wizard's gaze. "That’s about where I’m at so far, but I’m still confused. I’m assuming you have another hypothesis—about this creature’s trait, specifically?"

Starswirl chuckled. He paused to do so, daring to express merriment uncharacteristic of both himself and his surroundings. "I have not had this much fun debating the nature of magic and the mysteries of our universe for a very long time. Truly, I stand before my successors. You are correct, Starlight. I believe there may be a variety of factors that can determine a creature's magic when in other worlds. Most notably, how important a creature's magic is to its survival."

"'To its survival'?" Starlight repeated.

Starswirl nodded. Before his lips could part again, something happened that had not happened since they'd set hoof in these woods. A sound shouted to them in the distance. It was a crash, as if something large, somewhere, had just fallen. Three heads whipped about in response, and Starlight's horn lit on reflex.

"I fear we may need to continue these discussions later," Starswirl said quietly.

Twilight joined her protegee in flexing her horn's light, and the convoy continued their weary trek. Focus on the way ahead resumed as Starswirl continued to blaze a path for them. Again something loud reached out from the depths, an ominous crashing that echoed through the trees.

"We grow closer," murmured Starswirl. "Ready yourselves. We have no idea what this entity is capable of."

"I've seen enough," Starlight replied darkly. Sparks danced off her horn tip. "We'll cover you from behind. You ready, Twilight?"

"Mhmm." Twilight flexed her wings, ready to take flight at a moment's notice. Her precision in an obstacle course of trees had yet to be tested, but she'd learn today if she had to.

The trio came before another small clearing, shrouded in shade. The ancient willows here held such girth, boasted branches that twisted and curled so much that even strands of sunlight struggled to break through them. But it wasn't the trees or the darkness that begged for attention. Past a short set of sprawling roots and the broken skeletons of shrubbery was a figure, lone and still.

Starswirl regarded it with caution, but to Twilight, it was a sight to cause despair.

"Oh, no. Zecora."

Against her company's urgings, Twilight quickly trotted to her friend's side. A contortion of shock and fright gripped the zebra in both body and face as she stared off into the forest canopies. Her once vibrant stripes had melded to gray, matching her coat. 

When Twilight opened her mouth, she found herself at a loss for words. She slumped to her haunches, and shortly thereafter her protege's comforting hoof pressed against her back.

"Do not despair yet, Twilight," Starswirl followed up. "It is grim, but the lack of a magical signature does not inherently imply this curse cannot be reversed."

Sniffing, Twilight nodded through a film of tears. Her learned mind knew he was right, but her heart couldn't get past the tragedy in front of her. She bravely faced her idol, who offered a hoof to pull her up. 

"We must find the source of this power," Starswirl urged. "We must learn from it so that we can fashion a means to dispel it. In you, I know this is possible. You have done what I thought was impossible more than once before."

Twilight smiled. She briefly hugged the aged stallion, and he returned it, but the tender moment would prove to be short-lived.

"...I don't think we need to look any further for this thing," came Starlight. A shake plagued her tone. "Look at what Zecora was looking at."

Starswirl and Twilight followed the path of the statue's morbid stare and gasped.

Cradled in the dead canopies of the forest was a peculiar, egg-shaped object. Coal-black in color, a pattern of diamonds crested it in three sets of three, stretching vertically along its casing. It was colossal, easily the size of a small house, and appeared to have already caused a serious strain on the trees holding it up. Shattered wood laid beneath it, crumbs from the bending, breaking nest of branches.

Starswirl stepped forward, and he silently signaled the mares to follow him. With absolute care they circled the object, observing it from all sides before meeting back where they started. Unsure glances were exchanged.

"What is it, an egg?" Starlight asked. "Bon Bon described some kind of flying beast. I wasn't hearing things, right?"

Starswirl said nothing. His horn lit up, and a familiar scan of magic bathed the tree and the object. From behind his cloak, Twilight winced and held her breath, as if expecting something to happen.

"My magic cannot penetrate it, but I am sensing something powerful," Starswirl said. His racing heart became apparent in his widened eyes. "Egg or no, that is indeed the entity we're looking for. I am certain of it."

"Maybe it's sleeping?" Starlight put out. "Could it be curled up in there?"

"Maybe petrifying the forest took a lot out of it," Twilight suggested. She looked to Starlight, who nodded. "You said it might have acted like a frightened animal, Starswirl. If it lashed out in an unfamiliar environment after coming to our world, it would likely retreat somewhere safe to rest afterward."

"Of course," Starswirl replied. "The fact that it did not immediately return through the portal it came through is evidence of animalistic intelligence. At any rate, this is an optimal situation for us. We should report back to the princess, set up a teleportation key to this point. I must study this creature more closely, and from here, we can better keep an eye on it until—"

"Why thank you for those insights, Starswirl. You always did enjoy being the voice of exposition."

A deep, mocking tone came from seemingly all directions. While the twin mares aimed their horns around the clearing, Starswirl found himself rekindling long-forgotten anger. From out of the shaded forest stepped a tall, muscular centaur, cracking his neck as he pushed aside the treeline. His beady yellow eyes fell to the sorcerer at once.

"Tirek," Starswirl growled. "I should have expected to find you here, skulking about where there is great magic. What happened? Were the hospitalities of Tartarus not to your liking?"

Flexing his bulging biceps, Tirek sneered. "Couldn't stomach the food—not enough protein for a growing creature like myself. I'm shocked you still walk among us, Starswirl. What's it been, a millennium and a half since you and your kind brainwashed my weak-minded brother? Feels like it was yesterday."

Without warning, a great bolt of white magic shot at Tirek's face. With reflexes like lightning, the centaur captured the attempt from the air and held it in his palm. He smirked as he consumed it.

"To think we've allowed you to acquire this much strength already," the stallion spat. "Where have you obtained this much power in so little time?"

Tirek laughed a sardonic laugh. Outstretching his arms, he stepped around in a circle, motioning to the forest all around them.

"Where else but the untapped reserves of the Everfree?" the centaur sang, his smirk curling to reveal rows of teeth. "I don't know what this creature above us is, or where it came from, but I don't care. It's given me a bonafide buffet of raw magic, and so I must thank my host from the bottom of my cold heart."

The centaur bowed dramatically.

"Are you saying you've been absorbing magic from the creatures here?" Starlight asked, baffled.

"Slow on the uptake, are you?" Tirek mocked, raising a brow. "That's alright, with this fossil as a teacher I'm not surprised."

Starlight's bafflement sharpened to anger, but she held her tongue.

"I can absorb the magic of any living thing," Tirek explained, misplaced pride dripping from his voice. He clenched a fist towards his audience. "I can even absorb the very essence of magical creatures. Cockatrices, manticores, hydras—they are all of them chimeras in their own right, held together by magic. Locked within the warded walls of Tartarus, I could not steal the magic of my fellow inmates, but out here? The buffet is delicious."

"You must have no problem absorbing magic from statues, either."

Stepping forward into clearer view, Twilight stretched her wings. It was then that Tirek's smile fell from his face, and his attention sharpened to a point.

"...an alicorn?" he mumbled. "There is a fourth princess in Equestria?"

It was Twilight's turn to smirk.

"I don't know how long you've been lurking in the shadows, Tirek, but you've got some catching up to do."

An imposing wave of teal magic struck the centaur in the chest, taking him by surprise and knocking him back. His heavy hooves scraped through the dirt and soot, leaving elongated skid marks.

"And even those of us without wings are no pushovers," Starlight said spitefully, her horn already primed for another shot.

"With or without the aide of the Everfree's creatures, you cannot take on all of us in this form," Starswirl declared, priming his own horn. "Your brief reprieve from imprisonment ends here, Tirek."

Tirek scowled. Twisted orange magic enveloped his horns, and he turned his head towards the large, peculiar object. With an invisible hand, he reached into that slick, black exterior, fishing for the source of its power, but nothing emerged. The power to quash an entire woodland sat before him, asleep and ripe for draining, but try as he might, it would not yield.

A pair of lights fired upon him, knocking him further back and away from the creature. He composed himself with a long exhale, sweeping a glance through the ponies closing in on him.

"How unfortunate," he uttered. "I suppose there's no helping it, then."

The sinister orange magic appeared between his horns again, and Tirek clenched his fists. But as he did, the clearing fell into a clamor of noise and motion. More ponies emerged from the trees, perfectly in sync with each other's movements. Like a storm they descended upon him, knocking the wind from him and dissolving his concentration and spell with a sharp series of strikes.

"Rockhoof, secure him!"

"Aye, I'm on it like a helmet on a Viking, Flash!"

"Applejack, close his mouth!"

"Like grapplin' a cragadile fresh outta the pond. Yee-haw!"

In a matter of moments, the centaur was knocked from his hooves, bowled over by the lumbering form of Rockhoof. As he was promptly pinned to the earth, Applejack leaped atop his back, using her lasso to restrain his jaw.

"Cannot drain what you cannot consume, eh, laddie?" Rockhoof taunted, pushing into the centaur's back as a warning. "And if you so much as think about blastin' any of these fine folk, I'm gonna have a real grand time rearrangin' your spine."

Planted in the dirt, Tirek merely scoffed through rope and rolled his eyes.

As the tension in the air began to lax, Starswirl offered a smile to his companions. At once, Mage Meadowbrook and Somnambula embraced him, quickly followed by Mistmane and Flash Magnus.

"How in Equestria did you all know where to find us?" Starswirl asked, bewildered.

"Well, I suppose you could say it was a team effort," Meadowbrook giggled, casting an eye to Pinkie Pie, then Flash. "We were investigating the swamps when we happened upon tracks leading away, back towards the forest. We headed to Rambling Rock Ridge to see what we could make of the situation, and once we knew he was heading here, I was able to navigate us pretty well."

Something sparked in Twilight. With an impulsive jump, she joined Meadowbrook at her side.

"You know how to navigate the Everfree Forest?"

Meadowbrook modestly tilted her head. "Well, a fair bit. The forest and the swamps of my home share a lot of the same properties, bein' independent of weather and such. We also had the occasional hoofprint of Tirek to go by. Why do you ask?"

Twilight grinned. A map popped into existence by her face, floating in a magenta aura.

"I might have an old map that I'd love your help with finishing, sometime."

Meadowbrook giggled again. She took the map and began to look it over with Twilight.

"Starswirl," came Somnambula, beseeching the wizard with eyes still frightened. "We believe Tirek has the power to steal magic even from petrified creatures. He had no other reason to enter the forest."

"Thank you, Somnambula," Starswirl sighed. "We only came to this conclusion, ourselves after hearing as much from him."

He eyed Twilight, lost in a fit of girlish glee. He eyed the statue of her zebra friend, alone a few dozen yards back from the group.

"I suspect Twilight will take solace in this. If Tirek's powers could reach into this creature's victims and pull out their magic, even when my own magic could not detect it, then this petrification should be reversible. We need only find out how."

"And I take it, that is the creature there?"

Starswirl turned to Flash, who gazed up at the imposing, egg-shaped object overseeing them all. Voices among the group paused as ponies shifted their attention to do the same.

"It's huge!" shouted Pinkie, bouncing in place.

"It's kinda cool," Dash admitted, hovering closer before a disapproving Twilight reigned her back in with magic.

"It's rather tacky."

Eyes fell on Rarity. She smiled sheepishly.

"What? Oh, you can hardly see its lovely diamond pattern with all these greys and blacks. What am I supposed to say?"

Starswirl surveyed his company. Twilight's other friends had gathered around the petrified zebra, only now noticing her in the aftermath of their entrance. His own companions took to the mysterious object, circling it from underneath like curious dogs hunting a squirrel.

But the sorcerer's gaze fell elsewhere. It fell on the centaur still subdued by the strongest ponies in their group.

"We must return Tirek to Tartarus," Starswirl said decisively. His horn blew a hole through the very fabric of space to his left, revealing the dark corners of the hellish pit. He eyed the centaur with obvious disdain. "From there we can move on and study this creature. With any luck, we'll find a means to counteract its powers before having Discord send it back from whence it came."

Tirek's eyes lit with righteous fury, but Starswirl had already turned away.

"What were your words, 'how unfortunate'? An apt description of your attempts, Tirek. Not even this creature would entertain your gluttony. Perhaps if you'd considered your younger brother's pleas so long ago you'd not be where you are today."

A low, sinister chuckling challenged that unflinching bravado. By the time Starswirl turned again, a yell signaled an orange body crashing into him. A sharp pain filled his nose as he toppled backward under Applejack. The mare had been tossed from her mount by an arm broken free under Rockhoof's grip.

Enraged, Rockhoof slammed down into Tirek's back with all his might. A loud crack set off a howl to wake the clearing.

Starswirl got to his hooves in time to see the lasso torn from Tirek's snout. The centaur's teeth and the ghoulish smile framing them held strong even through insurmountable pain.

"Unfortunate for me," he rasped, his breaths short and ragged, "but no more fortunate for you, Starswirl."

Starswirl was joined by rushing hooves and horns primed to finish what Rockhoof had begun, but it was too late. An orange beam of light soared from the centaur's horns, streaking past a dozen shocked faces. It collided with the object overhead, spreading along its surface as a wave of electricity.

To Starswirl's horror, the object began to flex and glow, like a cocoon ready to split open.

"I didn't reveal myself to absorb it, you fool. I revealed myself to fool all of you," Tirek chortled, propping himself up on one arm from under Rockhoof's weight. "As soon as I heard you all approaching, babbling on about creatures from other worlds, I realized I may be unable to absorb its powers. So I thought of a new plan. I'll lure you in with some noise and give you a false sense of security."

Starswirl found himself tripping over his robes, Tirek's voice a mere afterthought. A sickly light beckoned from the abyss beyond the cocoon's exterior, bathing the crowd of onlookers in red. From the depths, two piercing eyes of violet emerged, paralyzing all who saw them with dread.

As wings and tail unfolded, a bird-like head extended eagerly into the waking world. It beheld Starswirl and his companions a moment before crowing indignantly, its voice shifting into tones barely hearable by pony ears.

With a wingbeat like a hurricane, the creature left its nest of dead trees. Clawed wings like crashing thunder gripped the earth as it landed, dwarfing the insects before it. It raised its head to herald an ethereal cry, and the forest shook in fear.

"Lads! Lassies!"

As Rockhoof abandoned Tirek in a moment of desperation, the centaur laughed again, cruel and delighted.

"Now comes the part where I unleash this supposed nightmare upon you and watch your hopes crumble."
> 5. And Now for Something Completely Different
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"And so then I turned to myself and said, 'Discord, why not have the telegrams dance a jig and perform chamber orchestra in mezzo-soprano? Fluttershy deserves the best for her birthday!'"

"Sudo!"

"That's what I said! 'Why didn't I think of that?' I'm always coming up with grandiose ideas, but do I ever give myself credit for them? No sir."

Strolling along the ethereal stitching of reality, Discord stepped through the mouth of yet another tear in the fabric. He regarded the landscape of rolling fields and lush forests awaiting him with a weary eye.

This routine was growing dull. He was already getting diminishing returns on that fuzzy feeling in his chest from helping less capable lifeforms.

"Woodo!"

Discord raised a brow. His talkative companion, some vaguely tree-shaped rock spirit, excitedly darted off towards the forest.

"Well, at least you're excited to be here."

His eagle claw snapped, and with a twist, Discord adjusted a feather curling from his jester hat. His smoke pipe spun masterfully between his fingers, and he wore an enthusiastic smile for his followers—a line of strange and varied creatures stretching far and back into the bowels of his swirling portal. Ears flexed curiously all throughout the line.

"Come now, everycreature," he said merrily, skipping on air to guide his pack into the sunny afternoon. "Back home with all of you, lest Tia tan my scaley hide."

Pair by pair, creatures exited the portal, emptying out into an otherwise vacant meadow. Lazily lying down in the air, Discord floated above them, tapping his cheek with his claw as he watched them. Every so often, a straggler would become discombobulated, lost amidst the steady pace of moving legs. But their struggle was always short-lived. Once enough legs had been bumped into, larger critters took notice of them. The small fries would be whisked from the depths by paws, curled wings, or bizarre vine appendages and pulled into the sun. The lucky ones were even offered rides.

Discord chuckled. Long ago, he'd have paid such trivial things no mind. Now, they reminded him of Fluttershy's endearing face, and how she'd treat such things as the peak of her day.

But his smile became a frown. The intricacies of dimensional integrity just had to throw a hissy fit, hadn't they? And after he'd stumbled upon the perfect gift for Fluttershy. They were entirely too entitled. It wasn't their birthday to ruin.

"Perhaps danger-proofing exotic critters is the way to go," the draconequus mused to himself, laying his head in his paw. "A manticore the size of a kitten? Small things do seem to equate to cuteness for her. Maybe give it those big, ugly eyes."

The final critter stepped down from the rip in space, and Discord, satisfied, brushed his claw and paw together.

"Welcome home again, everyone," he said jovially, floating upright until he found his footing on thin air. He straightened a trim blue shirt and tie. "You are now free to move about the continent, etcetera, etcetera. And remember what Uncle Discord told you: plausible deniability. If anyone asks where you've been, tell them you haven't the foggiest idea. A good friend of mine always says honesty is the best policy."

Discord slapped the knee of his lizard foot, now outfitted with a mid-western getup, and a sea of eyes blinked. Discord sighed.

“Nevermind—off with you, shoo, shoo,” he ushered, hovering down and waving the back of his paw at them. When they finally began to scatter, dispersing into the vast, open world before them, Discord landed upon the grass and crossed his arms.

“Third batch down,” he said, his tone saturated with tedium. He slumped over, little more than an inexplicably handsome noodle. He puckered his lip and raised his pitch to the very pinnacle of mockery. “But will I get a thank you from anypony but Fluttershy upon finishing all this? ‘It was your fault, Discord, how dare you try to do something nice for your friend. You should have known the space-time continuum would become temperamental. You should have—”

Who are you?

The blatant immaturity arrested when Discord stood up straight. With mismatched eyes, he glanced around the meadow, searching for a body to place to the voice. Not a single creature one of his creatures had lingered nearby—in fact, the only form he could still see was that of the large flower toad, grazing hundreds of yards away.

The flicker of seriousness in his face quickly faded. Discord smirked.

“Could it be?” he asked aloud, flaring his eyebrows dramatically. He placed his paw and claw against his waist. “Intelligent life that doesn’t know about me? Why I thought I’d burnt out any holdouts long ago. Dimension hopping has a reputation for emboldening your reputation.”

There was no response. Regardless, Discord’s ego would not be deterred.

“I am the Spirit of Chaos, formerly the Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony, Discord,” the draconequus embellished, snapping his claw. A grand white pedestal sprouted beneath him like the beanstalk of fables, raising him to touch the clouds. At the base of the pillar, a golden plaque read ‘Discord C.(haos) Draconequus’. A second version of himself, timid and wearing a grungy janitorial uniform, wiped down the plaque with a rag covered in potting soil.

“Denison of Dimensions, Sultan of Spontaneity, and Gift-Giver Extraordinaire!”

Thousands of confetti flakes lit to unseen spotlights, falling like red and gold snow throughout the entire meadow. A symphony orchestra with a hundred different Discords blared a tumultuous tune while in physical disarray, flopping over each other's instruments as they played. 

"A fair and noble creature, visiting your cozy reality to return some lost critters.”

Discord snapped his paw. The entirety of the meadow’s chaos contorted into ribbons of matter, swirling together before vanishing into the portal behind him. As the meadow fell to silence once more, he cleared his throat and gave a bow, tipping his newly-acquired top hat.

“No need to thank me, by the way.”

He held the bow, waiting for applause that didn't come.

Where has it gone?

Discord stood up again, his attire blinking from existence. The voice did not appear to come from any one direction.

“Where has what gone?” he asked, crossing his arms. “The coaster? This morning’s mail? My efforts deserving the benefit of the doubt once in a while? The answer to all of the above, my dear voice, is ‘I wish I knew.’”

More silence. Discord pawed his face. There it was again, that unbearable tedium. He could have found and relocated his next batch of space-time anomaly displacement victims by now, but where was he? Talking to disembodied voices, instead.

“I was not prepared to have a mental breakdown just yet, today,” Discord muttered, promptly turning on the heel of his claw and kicking off into the air. He crossed his arms and floated petulantly towards the space rift. A scroll pinged into existence by his miniature eye as he did so, and with a chortle, he pressed a claw tip into it.

“Yes, see, there it is, already scheduled for this evening—‘mental breakdown coaching with Twilight’. Even in chaos schedules have their merits. Why in Equestria am I starting this so early?”

Discord phased through the portal, and with its weaver out of bounds, the space-time rip closed with a flash. A gentle flurry of leaves danced on the wind as if nothing had ever happened, but a bright pair of eyes through the far trees knew better.

...it must be found, or balance will be unattainable forevermore.
> 6. The Reaper Cometh on Clawed Wings
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Everyone to me!” Starswirl screamed. The creature reared up on a pair of talons, and so Starswirl, at last, got a good look at it.

It was the size of a roc, boasting a wingspan to boggle the mind. Instead of feathers, claws protruded from each wing like spears, rigid and sharp. A third appendage sprouted from its backside and thrashed about as a restless tail, felling trees and erupting clouds of ash. A bald, spear-like head resembling a carrion bird was adorned with forward-facing horns, and from its neck rose a dark grey mane that flowed even in the absence of wind.

Ponies called out in alarm when it flared out its wings and shook the forest with a shrill cry. It was then that Starswirl's horn erupted white light, and a dome of magic enwrapped the group.

“By the ancient magics, what a beast,” Flash Magnus said in awe. He took a step forward within Starswirl’s bubble, watching those monstrous wings curl and flex. “I cannot begin to imagine the world it hails from.”

“It came from the same one Everly came from,” Fluttershy replied. She watched it as well, but with far more sullen eyes. “I assumed that all of the creatures in her world were magical, but I didn't think there was anything this big, or intimidating."

“Starswirl,” Meadowbrook started, marked concern in her face and voice. “You saw what happened. I know you did. Tirek attacked it—he’s trying to get it to think we’re the ones who did it. We cannot strike back. As soon as we do, all that anger will be justified.”

Falling to its wings, the creature used them to crawl along the ground in a horrific display, puncturing great pits in the earth. Upon reaching the Equestrians, it stretched out its head, pausing a moment to examine their protective field of magic.

Starswirl glanced to the clearing off to their right, now empty.

“He's already slipped away," the sorcerer growled. "The conniving snake."

“Durable too,” Rockhoof spat, shouldering his shovel. “He should be feelin’ that extra firm back massage for a while yet, but he still managed to get away when we weren’t lookin’. Commendable.”

“I think we have bigger concerns right now!” Rainbow Dash shouted, gesturing to a massive claw hurtling towards them.

A bang shook the forest as the claw came down with enough force to level a building. Though the group could still draw breath, a sickening crack began to run along thier shield. Starswirl turned to Twilight.

“Go, Twilight,” he urged. “What we need now is two-fold. First, we must locate Tirek before he gains any more power. He’ll soon be too powerful for any of us to handle with normal magic.”

An angry cry heralded another claw. Starswirl’s horn flashed again, and a reinforced layer of energy rose beneath the first. Not a moment later, the outer layer shattered, its shards spraying in all directions before dispelling into bits of light.

“Second, we must send someone to alert the princesses.” Starswirl looked to Dash and Flash. “The situation here has escalated, and so we must recall Discord however we can. Only he can relocate this entity now.”

Sickly red energy pulsed beneath the creature's skin as its cries grew more erratic. Starlight's frazzled voice bellowed over them.

"But you once banished the sirens with your portal spell! Can't you do the same thing here?!"

"What I did was hold a portal half the size of this beast open for mere seconds!" Starswirl thundered, wheeling around. "I do not possess the power necessary to create something of this scale!"

Another pitiless claw slammed into them, shattering the barrier and toppling ponies like rag dolls. They skidded along the ashen ground and slammed into trees, rocks, and each other.

Groaning in pain, Starswirl attempted to stand but was stopped when a burst of wind rushed his face. He watched the creature take flight, raking the air with lethal claws to stay aloft. 

Its attention fell on Mistmane, who had fallen closest to it.

"Mistmane!" Starswirl shouted, standing at last but too winded to focus. He scanned the area. Twilight and the others had yet to even get to their hooves, suffering much greater trauma from the impact of roots and trees.

But there was no time to assess. A ghastly orb of light now shone down from above, gathered at a focal point between three claws.

"Mistmane!"

The forest tinted a horrid red. A sonic boom shook the trees as a column of light fell like lightning. But just before it could hit the ground, a flash of orange and silver dashed forward, drawing the eyes of everyone. When Mistmane lifted herself up at last, she looked up and gasped. Certain oblivion was being held back only inches above her head.

"Move her!" Flash Magnus shouted, sandwiched between his companion and his own trusted shield. "Quickly!"

Freshly conscious, Twilight stood and took in the chaos with shaking eyes. It took her only a moment to cast a spark of magenta magic and appear at Mistmane's side, and another to ferry her away. Another pop signaled her return just behind Starswirl, but the sorcerer was still eyeing his trapped friend.

"Flash, get out of there!" cried Rockhoof. "Princess Twilight, please, get him as well!"

"No!" yelled Flash, his hooves buckling. The back of his shield pressed into his helmet, his shakes causing metal to scrape. "I am all that stands between this beast and the ground! If anyone tries to move me, we will both be hit before the teleportation can finish!"

"Then I think it's about time to clear the air," Starlight declared, stomping a hoof to anchor herself. She lit her horn with deadly resolve and took aim for the forest's crown, and the dark silhouette situated there.

"Starlight, no!"

Starlight knew her response before the  protest even finished. "Why are you protecting that thing, Meadowbrook?!"

"Because it wrongly believes we're the enemy! If we attack it, it will cement that thought into its mind, and things will only get worse! There has to be another way!"

Hiding in plain sight, Fluttershy smiled, but the sentiment was dashed by a cold, retorting tone.

"There isn't another way! If we don't stop that thing right now your friend will be turned to stone!" Starlight motioned a hoof. "It's already attacking us! Let's maybe worry about avoiding conflict when somepony isn't in danger!"

Meadowbrook opened her mouth, but the words, the will was no longer there. She bit her lip and stepped back, where comforting hooves from Rockhoof and Somnambula awaited her. She did not try to stop Starlight's next attempt.

The lilac mare grit her teeth as a potent teal aura collected just in front of her horn tip. Blues began to push back against reds along the shadowed ground.

"You're not the only one who can shoot lasers, you oversized vulture."

A second coming of splendid magic lit the forest. Retribution in motion, the cyclone washed over the creature and obscured it from view, ending the attack pinning down Flash Magnus.

"I've got him!" shouted Rainbow Dash, and she surely did. In the blink of an eye, a trailing rainbow rescued the stallion and returned him to the relative safety of the group. There, he was readily embraced by Starswirl, Somnambula, and Meadowbrook, the last of whom hugged him the most tightly of all.

Attention inevitably returned to Starlight. The mare's mane flailed in the wind created from her spell. Adrenaline gripped her—power poured forth like water from a burst dam, unrestrained and devastating. What few trees were unlucky enough to have fallen within range saw their upper halves disintegrated.

But out from the edge of that tunneled vortex came familiar claws. The group gasped as the creature emerged, seemingly unscathed. Pulling itself free from the stream, it hovered in the air, watching its retaliators without further movement.

With a focused thought, Starlight turned off the stream. She was joined by Twilight.

"...that didn't even phase it," Starlight muttered, her disbelief wrestling with her confusion. "How is that possible?"

Twilight turned to Starswirl. With his companions safe for now, he rejoined the group, sufficiently reforming their coven.

"Is being immune to magic a possible byproduct of being from another dimension?" Twilight pondered aloud. Starswirl grunted.

"Or an innate power it's always had," he replied. "Either way, this situation is spiraling out of control. Even now, we regroup only because it allows us to."

"Well we can't just retreat. It'll chase us or go terrorize someone else," Starlight reasoned, looking at the group of ponies behind her. Several of the other Pillars, not to mention her friends had already been thrashed around once, and the damage showed. Bruises and light scrapes dotted nearly everyone—herself, included.

They were lucky that was all they had, so far.

"Starlight's right, we are all that's keeping this thing here," said Twilight, bridging the tensions between her idol and pupil. "We cannot let it leave. It could repeat this nightmare somewhere more populated. On top of that, if we split up, and send ponies to find Tirek or Discord, our chances of success fall across the board. We have to assume Tirek will already be powerful enough to take us on the next time we see him, and we may need everyone to help with things here, too."

"Divided we fall, so together we must stand, completing both our objectives as a group," Starswirl finished. He sighed before nodding. "I see your point, Twilight. I continue to be impressed with your leveled head under pressure, today. What do you recommend?"

For a time, Twilight watched the dark creature. Each beat of its wings pushed air along the ground, flurrying soot and dust.

"Your spell," she said at last. "The one you used to banish the sirens—could you make it bigger if you had more magic to feed it?"

Starswirl's hoof found his beard. His eyebrows raised. "Theoretically. So you wish to overcome the size limitation by funneling your power to me?"

"It's the only option we have, save Discord popping in to save the day," Twilight replied. She paused a second, half hoping the name drop might see a miraculous appearance from the draconequus.

It didn't.

"I agree, and I'll help too," said Starlight. "If magic won't work directly, then a portal is the only way we're getting this thing out of here. Like Twilight said, we don't have the luxury of hunting for Discord right now, not with this thing awake."

Starswirl let out a more contemplative sigh. "Part of me hoped we'd never need to resort to this strategy ever again."

Starswirl turned to his companions, and to the other Elements. He summoned them with a nod.

"If we are to create a portal large enough to push this creature through, it will take precision of timing and strategy that even our fight with the sirens did not reach. With Twilight and Starlight helping me, we may be able to meet the size requirement, but our portal will still not hold for long. Furthermore, we must avoid the creature's attention so that the spell can be cast."

"You need a distraction," Dash summarized, pounding her hooves together.

"He needs bait," Somnambula corrected. "A role that I, myself played in our struggle against the sirens. Though I fear this time a single pony will not do."

"Lucky for y'all then that you've got ponies to spare," Applejack replied. "Let's wrangle this thing and send it on its way."

Discussions came to an abrupt end when the rhythmic wingbeats behind them grew erratic.

"It's moving again, prepare yourselves!" shouted Starswirl, wheeling about. Sure enough, the entity rose higher into the sky, surveying them all from beyond the forest canopies.

"We cannot let it fire its magic again!"

"We will be your bait, Starswirl!" Rockhoof declared, wielding his shovel in his mouth. Along his sides, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Flash Magnus joined him. Together they reached the center of the clearing, far away from the rest of the group, and began to holler and pollute the forest with noise. While Rockhoof drummed Flash's shield with his shovel like a gong, Rainbow Dash soared skywards to catch the beast's eye, a fly before a mighty falcon. 

"C'mon, you freak! Let's see how fast you really are!" she challenged, zipping around its head and body in a series of eye-catching rainbows. Tying the display off like a ribbon, she plummeted back down towards the ground.

She grimaced when a shrill cry pierced the air behind her and steadily grew louder.

"I don't think this is such a good idea," Fluttershy expressed from the ground, watching the chase while chewing a hoof. "Do we really need to put everypony in danger for all of this to work? Isn't there some other way we can safely relocate the animal?"

Meadowbrook soothed the pegasus with a hoof to her back. She nodded to Starswirl and his coven. Together they stood around a large magic circle, a purple diagram etched into the forest floor. As it glowed, so too did manes wave in a display of low gravity. Sparks of electricity in shades of blue, white, and pink danced around them and seemed to grow stronger by the second.

"It isn't ideal, but this animal appears to be beyond any of our help," Meadowbrook said, smiling to Rarity and Mistmane too as they approached. "If we're to save our land from the fate this forest saw, then we must send it elsewhere, whatever the cost."

Fluttershy returned her attention to the conflict. She felt her breath seize in her chest.

'Beyond any of their help'? She refused to believe that.

With a crash, the beast landed, its talon cleaving earth where Rainbow Dash had been just moments before. A wave of wind swept the clearing in its wake, tossing manes and squinting eyes.

"He's all yours, Rockhoof!"

The azure pegasus flew past him, and so Rockhoof stepped forward, intercepting the creature's gaze.

"Ay, lass. Thank you for retrieving him. Now maybe we can get down to business, here on the ground."

A half-dozen stones bombarded the entity's beak. When violet lights fixated on Rockhoof he proudly held his shovel high.

"I've wrestled with monsters much bigger and nastier than you, ya wee shadow warbler," he declared, sizing the creature up with an unimpressed brow. "Let's you and me toss up some dirt, shall we? My friends got a surprise for you, if you'd stay a while. I'd hate to disappoint them."

Fearless and resolute, Rockhoof charged. He took the avatars of bravery, loyalty, and honesty with him.

From the far tamer edge of the field, Rarity watched the scuffle with sympathetic eyes. She turned to Mistmane, whose eternal smile was ready and waiting for her.

"Is there nothing our magic can do to help, as well?" the unicorn asked. "I cannot just stand here. We must help them if we can."

Mistmane cast a thoughtful eye to the fight. Her smile brightened.

"Perhaps there is something we can do," she whispered. "But I'll need you to follow my directions to the letter, Rarity. I believe we'd be wise to take along a bit of laughter, as well."

Rarity blinked. Before she could inquire what that meant, Pinkie had appeared at Mistmane's side from seemingly nowhere, grinning wildly.

"Let's do it to it, sister!"

"Lure it this way, Flash! I'll have Dash drop that ailing tree branch on its head!"

"You sly dog, using the environment to your advantage. I like it. You heard my comrade, sky terror! Come and get it!"

Across the field, the scuffle continued to the tune of enthusiastic taunts and furious, otherworldly cries. As the entity grew angrier, its attacks grew quicker—slamming wings grew more accurate, and with every narrow escape from its prey, the beast seemed to track them with calculating eyes.

"Branches away!" Dash yelled from on high, dislodging a lopsided branch. Down it fell, crashing upon the beast's head and causing it to fidget midair.

Victorious voices echoed through the trees, but a sudden yelp of pain muted them.

"Rainbow Dash!"

Dash felt the air extracted from her lungs, propelled from her by the merciless ground. Hundreds of yards had she been swatted in an instant, her adrenaline and attitude arrested just as quickly.

The beast landed before her with a deafening crash, its eerie shadow engulfing her. There was no convenient pause, this time—a wing raised, and a claw fell in the same motion, eager to smite.

But just as Dash clenched her eyes, the creature howled again in anger, spinning its attention elsewhere. Its claw came down and heaved up earth not yards from Dash's body.

"You will keep your filthy wing claws away from my friends! I take back what I said about your diamond patterns—not only are they tacky, they are beastly, just like your manners!"

Two elongated dragons spun from magic had wound around the beast's tail, yanking it just enough to be noticed. Across the field they had traveled, puppeteered by the eb and flow of Rarity and Mistmane's movements. In stark contrast, Pinkie Pie bounced erratically nearby. With an offensively large pair of binoculars she observed their efforts, her various appendages twitching periodically.

"To the left! Oh no, to the right! Oh, make that his right! You girls better do a Reverse Lunar Cycle Quantum Knot stat, because that tail is about to twitch-a twitch!"

Guided by the miracle of Pinkie Sense, the dragons predicted their foe's movements, further tangling themselves along the creature's grisly form. It slammed and shook itself against rock and tree alike to no effect.

"Haha, yes!" Rockhoof bellowed, pulling Dash free from her imprint in the ground. "Never have I been happier to see such finesse in a fight! Show em' what for, lassies!"

"That laser appears to be linked to his ability to fly. If we can keep him grounded, he might not be able to use it!" Flash Magnus strategized aloud, joining his counterpart and checking her once over. "Keep it up, everyone! From the looks of it, the portal spell is about ready!"

Not so far away, Twilight bit her lip in a display of anxiety. Even as magic enwrapped her in light, levitated her inches off the ground, her attention scattered around the field.

“Dash was almost-”

“Focus, Twilight,” Starswirl directed, his eyes closed and his brows taught. “Have faith in our companions to look after each other while we ready our path to victory. What they do, they do for us.”

Twilight swallowed. Closing her eyes as well, she returned her focus to the diagram.

“Imagine the void between realms. Traverse it with your mind. Allow our thoughts to connect through the diagram, and for the energy transfer to begin. Find that location, that shared thought. Seize it tightly and do not let go.”

What began as a whisper soon grew to a harmonious humming. When Twilight next opened her eyes, they glowed as pupiless windows of white magic.

An orb of swirling, fluid light rose from between the three mages, born from the diagram, itself. From out of its depths came the image of a lush jungle, framed by a horizon filled with large planets.

For those that wrestled against the beast, it was a sight of wonder to behold. But one pegasus was watching the avian creature, instead. She saw it cry out in response to the portal, growing further agitated still. She saw it thrash and kick up storms of soot and dust, scattering her friends in the process. When those dragons of blue light tugged again at its tail, she saw its claws dig into the surrounding earth, as if to anchor itself.

Through it all, she couldn't shake the sight of an animal desperate to escape.

"This isn't right," Fluttershy muttered to herself. She saw Starswirl nod to his successors, guiding their horns towards the creature. When the portal began to expand and move, Fluttershy found her strength.

"This isn't right!" she yelled this time, beseeching Twilight with concern in her voice. "Look at him, he's terrified!"

Twilight looked to the beast and her pupils reappeared. Fluttershy could see it in her friend's eyes—for a moment, she, too, looked past the frightening visage and saw a struggling animal.

Unfortunately, her voice was not the one to retort.

"How it feels is no concern of ours!" Starswirl bellowed. "It is dangerous to everything in our world and must not be allowed to stay here! We cannot back down now after coming this far!"

Fluttershy glanced to Starlight. She too looked taken aback by the pegasus's firm rejection, stunned and distracted from her work. The portal they'd all conjured had come to a dead stop.

Fluttershy gave Starswirl her most reserved expression, one of fiery passion.

"Do you really think sending him to another place he doesn't belong is right?"

"This is the only means we have available to us. If I had the ability to pinpoint the dimension it came from, myself, I would. If we had the tools ready to freeze it in limbo where we might return to it at our behest, we would. As Meadowbrook said, this is no ideal situation." 

"So being sorry that you can't do better makes it okay? The ends justify the means? Excuse me, but that's not what saved your relationship with Stygian."

Twilight and Starlight shared a grimace. Starswirl's temper flared to the comparison.

"Your love for all life is misplaced here, Fluttershy!" the sage seethed. "This creature is responsible for the possible death of an entire ecosystem, and it does not belong in this reality! This is not a matter of resolving a misunderstanding between friends, of reforming a villain's ways, this is the very nature of a wild animal! Its very existence is toxic to the environment!"

"Even if that's true, banishing him to someplace else just to get rid of him can't be the solution!" Fluttershy thundered back, stamping a hoof and taking even the sorcerer by surprise. "Blaming poor preparation is no excuse to do it anyway, and saying Discord can retrieve him later doesn't make it less cruel! All he's done is lash out in frustration!"

"Then what do you suppose we do!?"

"Oh, I'll tell you what you ought to do, Starswirl." 

From between the trees came an orange blast of magic. Blinks could scarcely be cast before Starswirl was violently launched from his diagram, slamming into a far tree trunk and slumping to its base. At once, the aura of magic around Twilight and Starlight vanished, as did the portal.

"You ought to stop punishing creatures just because they don't abide by your rules."

Garnishing the attention of the entire clearing, Tirek emerged from the shade of the woods. With an exaggerated breath he drank in the looks of shock and disgust, and with his palms, firmly pressed against the base of his back. 

"Quite the uncanny strength that one has," the centaur said, regarding Rockhoof with a patronizing look. "But unfortunately for him—and all of you equines, really—my species is as rugged as they come. In our prime, we can shrug off the greatest of physical injuries within minutes. Imagine all the intriguing things I learned in that time, resting up just through the trees."

The centaur's head sharply turned. Another blast of magic sailed through the air, obliterating the foothold Rarity and Mistmane stood upon. As they fell, their dragon bindings evaporated, granting free mobility to vulture once again. It curiously turned to the centaur, and there, their eyes met.

"Fluttershy is right," Tirek began, an insincere sweetness to his tone. He outstretched his arms, as if welcoming a guest he'd long expected. "How could you try and banish a creature as magnificent as this? Could you not see it was in distress? And here I thought morality and being righteous were all the rage in Equestria."

Stepping before their fallen partner, Twilight and Starlight ignited their horns.

"The bird might be immune to magic, but you surely aren't," Starlight said venomously.

"You shouldn't have stayed, Tirek," Twilight warned. "You're only supporting blind destruction by stopping us. What is your goal, here? Is ruling over a lifeless world really what you want?"

Tirek smirked. It proved to be too much for Starlight.

A spark became a typhoon of teal energy in a second. It barreled for Tirek, parting ground like water as it did so, but all at once, it was stopped. A massive black wing slammed down as a wall and cut off the unicorn's target, dispelling the magic effortlessly. In tandem, the beast let out a shriek towards the spell's castors, its violet eyes shining that much brighter.

When the wing lifted, dripping crumbs of soot and dust, an even craftier smirk awaited from the other side.

"Right now, all I could ever want is what you've so generously given to me, Princess Twilight," Tirek cooed. His beady eyes glinted. "A fellow creature who understands what it's like to be pelted with haughty unicorn magic at every opportunity. A fellow creature scorned by the righteous hubris of Equestrians, who would have us imprisoned or banished for simply doing what is in our nature."

A sense of great dread fell upon the clearing as the vulture took to the sky again, its body a lantern of flowing red light.

"It's readying its attack!" Somnambula called, hovering to draw the attention of her comrades. "Everyone, we must regroup, it is too dangerous to fight when airbo-augh!"

The pegasus was struck, knocked from the air by Tirek's magic. Sent tumbling along the ground, she came to rest against an emerging root with a jolt. She opened her eyes through a pounding headache to see a dark red sun in the sky, crackling with menace and lightning.

"It's rather unwise to draw attention to yourself," Tirek remarked, his cruel sneer blooming in shades of red. "You're the objects of my new friend's fury, and far be it for me to deprive him of his vengeance. After all, friends help each other in their endeavours. Isn't that right, Starswirl?"

"Somnambula!"

The words fell before an impending blaze of magic. From within a curtain of red light, Somnambula's body grew rigid, frozen in a perpetual state of panic. Only a statue emerged from the attack, barely distinguishable by the telling outline of chiseled clothing.

Ponies cried out in response, but something else drew Starswirl's eye. Venturing to stand from his second thrashing, he witnessed the creature's body glow in an anomalous veil of light. It stretched itself out in the air as if breathing deeply, before its colors, and its posture, returned to normal.

It was as if it'd consumed something, gained energy through its heinous act. Something in the pit of Starswirl's stomach churned. The eradication of flora all around him suddenly made too much sense.

"It preys on life energy," he murmured, his ire fusing with fascination. "Surrounded by death—you are a true vulture, aren't you? Do you petrify with intent, or is petrification simply all that remains?"

In the face of Somnambula's fate, hesitation and caution laid forgotten. Blasts of magic and rushing hooves quickly descended on Tirek from every direction, forcing him to abandon his carefree stance. Galloping in a wide arc, the centaur took aim and shot at the advancing calvary while developing a maddening grin.

"Did I strike a nerve with that one?" he taunted, projecting his voice so that all could hear. "Not so fun to be on the receiving end of cheap tricks and sneak attacks, is it?"

The centaur's smugness drained away as he stumbled, his footing compromised by beams of magic liquifying the ground. Before he could right himself, a strong body collided with him, tackling him to the earth.

It was Rockhoof, and hot tears fled his face.

"You mangy, pompous, conniving serpent!" the stallion bellowed. A backdrop of ponies contending with the ethereal vulture framed his face. "That was your doing, just as waking this thing up was your doing!"

"What's a centaur to do, outnumbered and out-magic'd," Tirek replied, recovering his snark within moments. He glared up at the stallion from his back, a sparkle coming to his eyes. "Now, how does that saying go? 'Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice…'"

Rockhoof cried out in pain, his underbelly jabbed with a set of hooves. As he fell back, a strong arm seized him by the throat and held him fast. Like clockwork, Tirek's jaw unhinged in the same motion, coaxing forth a stream of blue magic.

Just as Rockhoof began to shrink, an orange blur slammed into the centaur from his blindspot, releasing the trapped Pillar of Strength.

"You will not make a meal of my comrades today, Tirek!" Flash Magnus proclaimed, pressing the edge of his shield against the centaur's throat while standing atop his chest. "The only future for you lies in the earth beneath us, as Tartarus's most vile inmate."

Choking for a moment, Tirek clenched his eyes, but it didn't stop his returning smirk. A great cry shook the clearing, and from behind Flash, red light now illuminated his back at an alarming rate.

Tirek cackled, pressing his head back into the dirt.

"Inspiring bravado, but I believe my ally disagrees."

Flash turned, but it was far too late to reposition his shield. A wave of horizontal light overcame him in an instant, narrowly missing the centaur laid beneath. 

When the danger subsided, Tirek yelped to the additional weight now pressing into his abdomen. He promptly pushed the grey ornament from his body and stood up, brushing himself of soot. 

Agony gripped the forest in wails once again.

"Now then, where was I?" Tirek sighed, returning to Rockhoof. The stallion had knelt before his friend's statue, too mortified to move, even as Tirek's hooves stepped before him.

The centaur's mouth opened, but only to express pain. Magenta magic sniped him from across the field, propelling him to its desolate outskirts.

"Twilight, we need to do something now!"

Twilight relished in her small victory only a moment. As her horn hissed to silence, a small stream of smoke trailing up and outwards from it, she turned to her pupil. Starlight watched her with inconsolable eyes, haggard and out of breath. She'd just emerged from the ongoing fight.

"We cannot fight this thing as we are," the unicorn went on, motioning to the black and red vulture. Starswirl, in his rage, had rejoined the fray, leading the charge against the beast. "I've tried everything just to be sure. It's immune to most forms of magic, and going after Tirek first is too dangerous! We should retreat for now!"

Twilight sought counsel from the ground—rather, she used it to organize her racing thoughts. Her efforts to restimulate the portal had failed, and soon, Starswirl would be too exhausted to attempt a reopening anyway. Raw magic had no effect on the creature—Mistmane's dragons, which utilized physical manifestation magic seemed capable of at least touching it, but it was far too large, and they had far too few magic users to restrain it properly.

The alicorn nervously looked up. Tirek had already recovered, rising from a pile of broken trees. His tongue insatiably licked around his mouth.

"We need the Elements," Twilight said at last. "With their power, the girls and I can summon Discord from wherever he might be. He can solve this whole mess in one fell swoop by returning the creature home and reimprisoning Tirek."

"You're sure that'll work?" Starlight followed up quickly, casting glances over her shoulder with every shout or cry. "He's sealing portals and returning critters home, isn't he? What if he's in the other world when you try? What if it doesn't work?"

"Then we'll have to look to limbo," Twilight said gravely. "We didn't need to sacrifice the Elements when we rescued Stygian, but if things get bad enough, we may not have a choice this time."

"It won't come to that, Twilight. Discord will come when he's called—I have faith in him."

Twilight and Starlight turned to find Fluttershy. The meek pegasus had been attending Rarity and Mistmane after their abrupt fall. Now, she faced her friends with a rare resolve.

"Go get the Elements, Twilight," she encouraged, eyeing the creature. "In the meantime, I need to try something."

Horror lit Twilight's face.

"What? No, Fluttershy, don't tell me-"

"Starlight, I need you and the others to hold off Tirek for a minute," Fluttershy interrupted, shifting to the lilac mare. "They're dangerous together because Tirek is using him, but if we can separate them, I think we might have a chance. We might be able to calm him."

"Fluttershy, you can't!" Twilight yelled, gripping her friend with desperate hooves. "That thing has petrified three of our friends, already! It's far too late to just calm it down!"

In the face of Twilight's panic, Fluttershy smiled. She hugged her friend tightly, ending the stream of words, but triggering a tear instead.

"It's never too late," Fluttershy replied softly. "And I have to try, Twilight. It's who I am. He might be a big, terrifying cockatrice-like creature from another dimension, but he is still an animal—an animal that is just confused and frustrated. I don't have strength, or speed, or magic to help all of you, so please let me help in the way I know how."

Twilight shut down. She could only stare as the pegasus turned towards the ongoing struggle and nodded towards Starlight. Starlight nodded back.

"Starswirl!" Starlight bellowed, galloping in the direction of Tirek, who was nearly upon their petrified friends once more. "Help me deal with Tirek! Twilight has a plan, and Fluttershy's going to distract the bird, but we need to keep them apart!"

Starswirl's head pivoted sharply to his pinged name. He scrutinized the yellow pegasus a moment from afar before turning to his comrades.

"You heard the sorceress! Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rockhoof, to me! The rest of you, form a line between our enemies! Do not let them reach each other!"

The battlefield twisted in a matter of seconds as the consolidated efforts of the Equestrians shifted gears. Tirek's hearty gallops screeched to a stop as magic again assailed him, forcing him from his sought meals. By contrast, the dark entity hovered alone in the air, seemingly confused by the sudden abandonment.

When a tiny pony dared to fly before its face, it bathed her in purple light. Squinting before the ocular spotlights, Fluttershy merely wore a smile.

"It's just you and me now, mister. I know you must be very upset, and miss your home terribly, but my friend thinks she has a way to help you. While we wait for her, I need you to take a deep breath and calm down a little. Can you do that for me?"
> 7. Abandon Hope, For That is Its Power
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Will you come down to the ground with me?”

Fluttershy swallowed. Even her bravest face brought her little strength. Each of the creature’s eyes was twice as big as she was, and they stared at her, unblinking. She could see her own reflection in those deep purple lenses. She could see her smile falter in them.

“I won’t try and apologize for the actions of my friends, nor will I condone yours. I believe this whole mess was avoidable, and that’s why I want to try and cool things down, now. Will you at least land with me so we can relax our wings?”

A thunderous wingbeat was her only answer. Her gaze was tugged towards its wings, to the chilling sight of talons long enough to pierce a building so casually raking the air, but she did not dare look away from those haunting eyes. 

She felt her nerves fray. There was no safety to be found in those eyes, and the longer she stared, the less they appeared to belong to a creature at all. She was on the very precipice of darkness in broad daylight, and all the imagined danger that came with it. She stood precariously on the edge of an abyss, foolishly gazing inside to see what might emerge.

Nausea twisted her stomach into knots. Never had she encountered an animal so genuinely terrifying.

The pegasus found that her hoof betrayed her. She meant to raise it, to place it on the creature's beak and assure it that she meant no harm, but her leg wouldn't budge. 

Existential dread had risen from that abyss and filled her, paralyzed her. She bit her lip just to try and control her racing thoughts. She thought of its jaws suddenly springing open and overtaking her. She thought of a red glow bathing her, and her vision going dark. She thought of it abandoning her, sowing destruction among her friends, and planting a garden of statues.

Each thought crippled her emotional state further until eventually, the pegasus began to cry.

"Just what are these powers you have," Fluttershy breathed, tears of manufactured fright dripping down her cheek.



Tirek crossed his arms. Starlight's horn sparked with menace, but he merely laughed.

"Have the timid one talk to it?" he mocked. "That was your plan?"

"You don't know Fluttershy," Starlight replied.

"And she doesn't know what she's dealing with," Tirek countered. There was a smugness to his stare, which he reasserted on the vulture. "But I suppose I shouldn't discourage my enemy from making a mistake. By all means, try and befriend it. It'll be another statue on the pile, and I don't even have to break a sweat. What a mockery it is that spineless creatures such as yourselves hold power over this world."

Starlight visibly jolted, but a leg held her back. Meadowbrook's stare like daggers did the job for her.

"You're manipulating that animal to your own twisted ends," the mage shot. "It'd still be asleep if not for you and your insufferable greed."

"I'm just taking advantage of an opportunity," Tirek retorted, shrugging his shoulders. Though he entertained the spat, his attention remained on the tense meeting in the sky. "An opportunity to regain what was always rightfully mine. Magic is wasted on weak and entitled equines. You shelter yourselves in your little controlled world, incapable of handling any of the harsh realities beyond."

The centaur unfurled his arms. With an erected finger he addressed the vulture.

"And I do mean 'realities' quite literally," he added with a chuckle. "This creature is a testament to my point. It is a horror from beyond your world of scheduled weather and absurd merriment, and you are all ill-prepared to deal with it."

"And you are?" Starswirl challenged, stepping beside Starlight. "All you've done is lay blame on the first thing you could point at. Where is your power, then, your aptitude for handling this beast?"

"You never did grasp the concept of 'work smarter, not harder', Starswirl," Tirek said quietly, regarding the sorcerer briefly. "Do not worry, I will have the power to influence it in time, once I'm through with all of you. Until then, I am only too happy to guide the arrow to where it might benefit me the most."

Starswirl grit his teeth, but forever the group mediator, Meadowbrook's other hoof found him.

"Not unless he does something first," she whispered, drawing her companion's eye. "We cannot risk another battle while Fluttershy is trying to calm this critter. More conflict might rile it up."

Starswirl scoffed. Tirek couldn't hear them, but his smug grin sprouted further regardless. He could read the situation as well as any of them. He seemed to be playing along for now, perhaps out of curiosity, but it surely wouldn't last.

The sorcerer glanced at Starlight. The mare's attention was in the sky, watching her friend confront their plight with a quivering lip. Still they hovered in an apparent standoff, too far away for Fluttershy's words to be audible.

Starswirl looked to the far trees, and to the abandoned diagram. Twilight was gone. She must have left to see to her plan, whatever it might be.

He returned his attention to where it most belonged—scrutinizing the arrogant centaur before him. All they could do now was hold out for as long as they could. All they could do was have faith in Twilight, and pray that Fluttershy could weather this ominous force.



Her every muscle fought to back away, to get some distance and arrest these thoughts, but Fluttershy knew doing so would be dangerous. Hasty retreat could challenge it, or trigger its predatory instincts.

And so the Element of Kindness bravely faced the depths of the abyss, took a deep breath, and leapt. 

With a hoof she gently touched the tip of the vulture's beak, straining watery eyes to not blink as she did so. When the uncertain moment dragged on with no response, her smile returned, albeit weak and peeling.

"...you're not such a bad bird, are you," she said softly. She stroked its beak. It was hard and smooth, like a chitinous shell. The creature seemed unphased by the gesture, but through it, Fluttershy found her confidence. Her smile came back.

"You must be so frustrated, getting lost in someone else's dimension," she said, effortlessly transitioning to her iconic, coddling tone. She opted to hug the beak tip with the whole width of her hooves. "I can only imagine what that's like. Don't you worry, though—we'll get my good friend Discord to send you right back."

The creature's steady wingbeats seemed to slow, and Fluttershy beamed.

"Are you starting to calm down, now?" she asked rhetorically. "Stress can do terrible things to all of us if we let it get out of control. I'd offer to help relieve some muscle tension, but I don't think my hooves are quite big enough for that."

The creature's head moved slightly. Fluttershy's joy rose like steam. In that moment of reclaimed familiarity, the pegasus turned her own head, pining for her friends.

But as words of encouragement began to tumble forth, she took in the varied looks of panic below. She heard shouting, but couldn't quite make out words. She saw running, but couldn't figure out what for. Tirek appeared to be standing still—what in Equestria had them all so worried? 

It was only then that Fluttershy noticed movement out of her peripheral vision. It was only then that she realized the thunderous wingbeats had stopped completely.

Three sets of razor-like claws held themselves in the air above and below her, and like conduits, red energy began to form between them. Fluttershy scarcely had time to spin about, beholding those purple eyes with a look of shock before she disappeared in an orb of concentrated light.

"Fluttershy, no!"

The entity let out a mighty cry as its latest victim plummeted to the earth below, rigid and gray.

A flurry of events transpired. Starlight galloped forth, her horn lighting in preparation of catching her friend, but an aura of magenta beat her to it. She turned to the dismayed voice she'd heard and found Twilight, freshly returned with a box of artifacts too late. The alicorn rushed past her on frantic wings, but not quickly enough to hide away her tears.

Starlight blinked, and her shock festered to anger. A cruel, howling laugh came from behind her, inciting her to shed tears of her own. But these tears were of a different kind. They burned with resentment, and in gritting her teeth, Starlight could taste them.

"Celestia help me, they'll have to scrape your sorry remains off the floor when they haul you back to Tartarus, centaur!" she seethed, her horn enshrouding in magic. The light pink had gone, replaced by a ghoulish red nearly as dark as the creature far above their heads.

From his fit of laughter, Tirek simply wiped an eye. He chortled at the threat.

"Well that doesn't sound very friendly," he mused, curling his lip. "Are you sure you don't want to try and become friends, too?"

A blast signaled a duel of dark magic. Beams of red and orange energy singed the earth in their wake, and all those nearby were forced away by hot winds and storms of excavated dust.

Amidst the chaos, Starswirl found Twilight. Knelt by yet another friend's statue, the princess's composure had crumbled.

"I was too late, again," she sobbed. Her head heavy, she dripped droplets of water along Fluttershy's chiseled mane. In a moment of frustration, she jettisoned the decorative case by her side away with a spark of magic, spilling the Elements all along the ground. "This is all out of control. I don't know what we can do, now."

Starswirl laid a hoof upon her back. His gaze, stern and serious, shifted from the spectacle of magic just beyond them to the monster above. No longer content to merely hover, it now swam through the sky high above the trees, circling them.

"We must regroup," the sorcerer said coolly. "Even if it means allowing them a moment's reprieve, even if it means they should escape for the moment, we must regroup."

"But that's certain doom for whatever place they go next!" Meadowbrook expressed, putting her whole body into comforting Twilight in a kneeling embrace. 

With Tirek preoccupied entirely by Starlight, the remaining members of the group surrounded Starswirl.

"Retrieving Discord ourselves, or banishment to limbo are now our only options," Starswirl said solemnly. "Should it be the latter, I will require my full strength in order to cast the spell. If we stay here any longer as we are, we will attack this wall to no avail until we all tire and fall. Should that happen, the entire realm is doomed."

"We'd need to sacrifice the Elements for certain, this time."

Eyes looked to Rarity. The unicorn approached Fluttershy's still, gray form. Six golden artifacts had been retrieved by her blue aura and now floated along her side. She knelt readily in the layers of dust and soot to be by her friend, any grievances about messiness upon her coat long forgotten.

"We must fix this," she said quietly, addressing Starswirl. Her trembling lip gave away the fit of crying being bottled up. "We must save our friends, and we must save our home—dare I say it, we must save even this dreadful forest. It is what Fluttershy would want. I believe I speak for everyone when I say that we will do whatever it takes."

Starswirl nodded. He looked to the group and found the gesture mirrored. He looked to Twilight, and through her silence, understood her stance.

"Very well, then," he murmured, conclusively planting his hooves in place. As he faced the sky, trickles of white magic raced down his horn and face, eventually disappearing around his collar. "Twilight, I understand you are wrought with grief, but I need you to listen to me right now."

Pulled from the prison of her mind, Twilight looked up. She gasped. Starswirl's face sat above a blinding light.

"Starswirl, are you-"

"Cast an inverse bubble of silence around everyone but me, now," Starswirl ordered. Soon his eyes glowed like stars, too. "This will be my final spell. Magic may not directly affect this creature, but if manifested tendrils can physically touch it, and portals in space can transport it, then it is not immune to magic affecting the environment. Perhaps I can buy us a little time. Perhaps I can coax it into hiding once again."

The vulture, seemingly aware of the sudden surge in power, shrieked in the distance. At once it entered a dive, growing in perceived size as it fell.

"Do it now!" Starswirl bellowed. Twilight jumped in place and lit her horn.

Two magenta bubbles sprung into being. The largest encompassed their entire group, save Starswirl. The second, Starlight, who immediately lost concentration towards her vengeful duel. Tirek too was alerted to the goings on, and curiously looked from the dive-bombing beast to Starswirl.

For a moment, even he showed panic.

"You may wish to cover your ears anyway," Starswirl said aloud, his own ears wrapping in light. The beast came upon him with claws bared like swords, its beak opening in anticipation of impact with the ground.

Starswirl opened his mouth and the entire world shook. A shout like a thousand thunderclaps visibly distorted the air and rippled outwards, bathing the vulture and drawing immediate shrieks of distress. Curling its wings in pain, its trajectory altered, and it brushed the crowd with a passing wind before slamming into the ground a ways away.

Quick and precise, Starswirl turned his head, and the ripples moved with it.

Its eyes flaring in rage, the creature writhed as it got to its feet. It briskly took off again, making efforts to close in on its prey, but every time it was stopped by the onslaught of noise. It went to focus its nightmarish laser, but it winced through the auditory pain, and its wings and tail fell out of formation.

A furious caw led to huge talons planting themselves in the dirt. Bowing its head so that only its horns were visible, the vulture began to pull itself along the ground, one implanted wing at a time.

Sweat poured from Starswirl's brow. His efforts weren't enough.

As it came within a few hundred yards, the beast's eyes lifted expectantly. Its tail lifted with them, swaying with flexing claws like a depraved scorpion stinger. As Starswirl watched it, a creeping dread filled him as a vision. They were mere moments from that heavy claw swinging around, and he hadn't the reserves of power left to counter it.

Oblivion came calling as the vulture lowered itself, its wings bending in preparation of a strike. For a moment, Starswirl connected with those eyes, and he could only marvel how Fluttershy could ever have done so, so bravely. Intelligent life did not stare back at him, nor did the mad anger of a distressed animal.

All that stared back was darkness—pure and absolute.

Starswirl was alerted to another cry. Suddenly, the creature buckled in place, collapsing in a disgruntled heap.

The sorcerer widened his eyes. Starlight had rallied to his side, throwing forth the very same spell. The ripples of her voice overlapped with his own, amplifying the attack and obscuring the creature in a haze of distorted air.

The awaited breaking point came at last. Desperate to escape the noise pinning it down, the vulture ripped its talons from the earth and took off, leaving the battlefield, and its prey, behind. As it climbed above the treeline and vanished, the sound waves finally slowed to silence, and an altogether eerie calm befell the forest.

"...thank you, Starlight," Starswirl rasped, coughing. He checked over his companions, who emerged from Twilight's receding bubble no worse for wear. "If not for you, I fear things would have gone far differently. But I must ask...how in Equestria did you come to learn that spell?"

Starlight cleared her throat, her youth brushing off the side effects of the spell far more easily. "When I analyzed your time travel spell to get revenge on Twilight, I found a footnote about a sound-based spell you had begun working on at the time. It didn't say much, except that it was based on the sound magic the sirens used in your battle with them. I guess I thought I could find a use for it. I've just been dabbling with it here and there ever since."

Starswirl shook his head. He managed a chuckle.

"Find a use for it? That spell wasn't even formulated yet," he mused. "You took a barebones idea and came to create the same spell I did. I have no words, Starlight Glimmer."

Starlight smiled.

"Where's Tirek?"

Dash's voice promoted swift head turns. The centaur was gone once again, disappeared into the depths of the woods.

"He saw his opportunity to flee for certain this time, no doubt," said Meadowbrook. The mage, having embraced her maternal role, made rounds in comforting the others. She gave out hugs to whoever would take them. "It must have been when Starlight stepped away to assist us with the creature. He can't take us all on by himself yet, and he knows it."

"He could barely hold his own against me, let alone all of us," Starlight pointed out. "Apparently a forest full of creatures doesn't quite equate to a learned unicorn."

"The magic of beasts is a weak, if specialized thing," Starswirl thought aloud. "It delivered Tirek from his disheveled state, but I imagine that is all it did. He will be on the hunt for more power immediately, which is why time remains of the essence."

"I wager he couldn't handle the song of our brilliant mages, the coward," Rockhoof proclaimed, tapping Starswirl on the back. "Even with magic, the brute couldn't manifest his magic as anythin' but lasers if he tried."

"Y'all will have to forgive me if I don't quite feel up to continuin' our strategy just yet."

Applejack was the first to leave the tight form of bodies left in the wake of Twilight's spell. It was not to kneel by Fluttershy, but to venture to the fallen form of Flash Magnus. She lifted his statue and saddled it over her back, using his outstretched hooves as an anchor. She looked to the others with dry, somber eyes. Within moments, Dash and Rockhoof arrived to assist her. Inspired, Pinkie, Mistmane, Rarity, and Starlight went to fetch Somnambula and Zecora.

Starswirl stood and suffered the sight of his companions depicted in stone. He looked to the black soot and shattered foliage at his hooves and thought to destroy them. He thought to lay waste to this entire clearing and rid himself of this frustration.

If eyes looking to him for strength weren't present, he would have.

"Applejack is right. This was no victory, and we'd do well to reflect on it," he said coldly. His tone was, for once, despondent. "In just managing to survive we've seen great loss. I believe our friends may still be saved, but have no delusions—the threat we face may prove to be insurmountable if we cannot stop it, and quickly. I fear that things will only get worse from here."

"...so what do we do now?" asked Rainbow Dash. Her brash, confident voice had withered—the only one strong enough to reach out at all.

"We must return to Canterlot immediately," Starswirl replied. "There, our friends will remain safe, and we can relay what we’ve encountered to the princesses. From there, we can formulate our next move."

He paused. Despair crept upon every face with the clawing shadows of branches overhead. In every expression, he saw the creature's influence, its aura of dread that arrested any trace of hope.

Starswirl lowered his head. He’d felt that aura for himself, and it terrified even him. But out of that fear bloomed a fiery resolve—a resolve to see the creature’s actions reversed. A resolve to see it cast out of their realm, and for Tirek’s plans to crumble away.

"Our fight was not entirely in vain," he opened, drawing looks for such a bold point of optimism. "I believe I have learned of what this creature is, and how its magic may work. Let us make haste to Canterlot. I will explain more there."

Starswirl turned without another word. He held out a hoof to the open air and grew still, awaiting the touch of those unable to teleport, themselves.

Quiet and defeated, the Equestrians shambled over to him in pairs. Those who’d lost their counterpart joined others in groups of three, assisting in the carrying of the fallen.

"Applejack, lass, please allow me the honor of carrying Flash. I thank you kindly for fetching him."

Applejack blinked, surfaced from the depths of thought. The soft crunching of hoofsteps clued her to move, herself, and she looked up to find Rockhoof. He smiled, but it was a hollow gesture.

"Of course," she said reflexively. The robust stallion mounted the pegasus atop his back, and with a few short strides, made it to Starswirl’s side. Joining him in a connection of hooves, Meadowbrook and Mistmane sealed a closed circle, sharing the weight of Somnambula between the two of them. Giving a parting nod, the group vanished in white light.

Applejack heard sobbing. She sniffed. It was a contagious thing, crying. She hated to cry, but she supposed there were instances where it was inevitable. There were times where even her strength was not enough.

The sound of Rarity falling apart over their friend was such an instance. Her strength, too, had not lasted.

“What a ghastly thing,” the unicorn sobbed. She stroked the grooves of Fluttershy’s mane with a hoof. “All she was trying to do was help. She didn’t take part in the fight even once. It doesn't deserve her love.”

Sympathetic legs of pink and purple wrapped about her, helping her to her hooves. She expressed her thanks with a nod, and with a summoned handkerchief, blew her troubles away.

“After seeing that our magic had no effect, I wanted to believe she could make all the difference,” said Starlight, glancing at her mentor’s equally troubled face. “I think we all did.”

“It won’t get away with this,” came Dash. She hovered above her friends, her face contorted somewhere between grief and anger. “I’ll beat that sorry bird’s rear-end all the way back to wherever it came from! Fluttershy didn’t deserve this—nopony did!”

“Fluttershy believed violence wasn’t the answer,” Twilight said softly. As Dash’s venting went on, she lifted Fluttershy from the ground in her grasp of magic. When she did, Pinkie appeared to hug them both. Thankful for the strange smell of berries, Twilight nuzzled the party pony’s mane. She closed her eyes and felt additional hooves wrap around her, bringing a surge of warmth and comfort. She was content to stay in it for a while.

“Come on, girls,” the alicorn said at last, sniffing away the last of her tears. She addressed her friends with a sterner look. “We won’t save Fluttershy or the fallen Pillars from here.”

“To Canterlot,” Applejack offered, putting forward a hoof.

“To Canterlot!” Dash mirrored, doing the same.

“To Canterlot,” Rarity mewed, dabbing her face using magic as to offer her own hoof.

“To Canterlot, where we’ll get the biggest bird cage bits can buy and get Fluttershy back!” exclaimed Pinkie, her mane twisting on its own to act as a hoof.

“To Canterlot,” Starlight finished. She offered the group a more confident smile. “We will definitely bring Fluttershy back. An old centaur and some supercharged vulture won’t stop us.”

Smiles budded all around, and nods signaled Twilight that everyone was ready. But as the alicorn focused a thought on the streets of Canterlot, a sudden sound broke her concentration. She looked to the clearing’s edge, where dozens of guard ponies now spilled forth. Securing the area, the pegasi surrounded them, facing outwards for any potential threat.

“...Princess Twilight, there you are! Are you all okay? We saw red lights from within the woods and came as fast as we could. Where is the anomalous creature? I assume you found it?”

Bon Bon broke through the ranks of her assigned troops with a commanding presence. Her eyes darted from item to item, scanning the graveyard of shattered trees and sweeping patches of scorched earth. It wasn’t until she found Fluttershy’s still, gray form that she gasped, and an all-too sincere sorrow overcame her.

“...Luna have mercy, we're too late, aren't we?”
> 8. Communions of Darkness and Light
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dark and pronounced against the swirling storms of dust, Tirek sheltered his eyes beneath his bicep. He could see the end of this tiresome weather now, just over the valley's towering walls. A rich green canopy beckoned to him through a film of sand, promising reprieve.

The Forbidden Jungle, in all its glory, appeared to still be alive.

The centaur trudged forward, unbothered by the shifting dunes and scorching bedrock beneath his hooves. Like a bloodhound following a trail, he closed in on this sinister magic with every step he took. It was a scent of power and decay like no other, and it had consumed his thoughts. It was the power to wipe away life like a stain from fabric, and he had to have it. Whether through direct control or influence, he would have it.

The thought brought him a smirk.

Bending his legs, the centaur stretched out his arms as if to balance himself. With a mighty thrust, he leaped from the desert storm and broke through its ceiling, landing again on the overseeing cliffs above. Turning to face his progress, he brushed his body of clinging particles.

The pompous city of Canterlot was a mere speck, an abnormal growth on the side of Mount Equus from these desolate outskirts. The Everfree, once so vast and pale up close was now obscured from view entirely by the girth of the Macintosh Hills. Even his trek through the Badlands seemed so long ago, hidden beneath the blanket of twisting wind and debris below.

Tirek surveyed the forest. He rolled his shoulders until they cracked, and he drank in the smell of damp earth. It masked a far greater scent, one which wafted faintly from above the trees.

His target had retreated to the depths of the jungle, far from pony civilization.

Tirek chortled to himself as he disappeared behind a curtain of foliage. He sympathized with this creature more and more with every passing minute.



"So I see. In the end, my fears were not baseless. Never have I wished to be more wrong."

"Sister, do not blame yourself," urged Luna. "No one could have predicted this chain of events. Tirek is cunning—it is not so easy to predict his movements."

"Your sister is right," Starswirl added. "We were all caught off guard by Tirek's appearance, and it did not occur to me that his powers could extend to even petrified beings until it was too late. All we can do now is move forward with what we know. What we know is that Tirek can influence these statues, and so I have every confidence that the process is reversible."

"Even so, I feel responsible. I will personally look after Fluttershy and the others until this situation is resolved."

"Please, tell us of what happened, Starswirl," Luna probed. "What is this creature, and what have you all learned of it?"

Starswirl nodded. "It is more similar to Tirek than I expected, which only grows my concern. It seems to absorb the life force of living things through its innate magic. This magic, this parasitic absorption, is likely how it feeds. This would explain how the entity has retained a means of petrification never before seen in our world. The ability is directly linked to its survival, so it remains unchanged, even across dimensions."

The sorcerer nodded to Twilight and her pupil. The three of them shared a moment of unspoken understanding.

"Anything afflicted by this magic is left petrified, save green plant life, which is disintegrated entirely," Starswirl went on. "I do not yet know the limits of its powers, but considering it rendered the Everfree sterile in mere minutes upon arrival in our dimension, the scale is frightening regardless of how you look at it."

"What does it look like?" Luna followed up.

"It looks a bit like a vulture, but it's the size of a roc," Starlight offered. "It has two wings and a tail, but they're indistinguishable from each other and all end in massive claws."

"When we found it, it was in a cocoon," Twilight picked up. "Not one of silk or chitin, but formed by its wings and tail folding over itself. It looked far too specialized to be a random event. I think it might be a natural part of its behavior."

"And you said upon being attacked by Tirek, the beast emerged from this cocoon," Luna led. "Tirek framed you and then fled?"

"Yes, but he did not flee very far," replied Meadowbrook. "He was hiding in the trees. He let us take the brunt of the animal's aggression, then made himself out to be some kind of sympathetic party when he freed it from our efforts. He made the thing think he was its ally through being a mutual enemy of us."

"Tirek is opportunistic before anything else," Mistmane said gravely. "He is more powerful when he manipulates others than he could ever be, alone. He was two steps ahead of us the entire battle."

"The power to drain magic and the power to drain away life," Celestia uttered. "We cannot let Tirek take control of this creature. If we do, all of Equestria will be in peril."



Parting leaves and vines, Tirek emerged from the jungle to the sight of a brilliant temple shimmering in gold. The scent of destruction in the air was intoxicating now, and he could see streaks of decayed grass marking the entire area. 

Curiosity getting the better of him, the centaur knelt on four hooves to run a palm through the dust. Like an hourglass, he let it run through a hole between his fingers.

He grinned. There was a struggle here, and where there was a struggle, there was his next meal lying in wait.

He explored the perimeter of the pyramid-esque temple once before approaching the entrance. It was an archway covered in an ancient tongue, composed of massive golden bricks. Tirek passed through it and ran his palm along the walls, marveling at the architecture. How not a single brick had been taken by thieves and pilferers over the centuries was even more fascinating.

Of course, he was about to discover why.

He stepped on a brick and it depressed, and so a flurry of arrows sprung forth from the walls. They shattered to splinters against his form. In striking an arrogant pose, his elbow depressed a second brick along the wall and an imposing saw blade fell from the ceiling. His eyes flaring, Tirek grasped the trap by its sides and stopped it fast. He chuckled, amused, before breaking the saw from its mount and dropping it to the floor with a clang.

Booby traps. How quaint. Certainly enough to keep away the lesser bugs, at least.

Advancing through the temple's bowels, he came upon a hallway lined with sphinx. The statues, born from clay and earth, were no victims of the creature, but something about them was off. Of sixteen pedestals, only eight housed a statue.

Tirek curiously looked down the hall. A figure appeared to be standing at the end. As the centaur moved closer, his horns crackling in preemptive response to further traps, he came to see the figure for what it was. His insatiable grin returned.

Posed in a moment of cowardice, a tall ape-like creature stood petrified in the center of the room. A single ray of sunlight came through the decrepit temple's ceiling and highlighted his fate. His tail, ending in a monkey's paw, curled pathetically around his legs. He covered his elongated head with his thick arms, which Tirek vainly compared to his own with a few flexes.

This must have been the temple guardian. He'd heard tales of a strange creature overseeing the ruins of the Forbidden Jungle, but never thought much of it. 

The centaur opened his mouth, and the statue's soul of magic fell forth. Chuckling, he wiped his jaw. Evidently, their visitor from another world didn't think much of it, either.

Tirek turned to find a gaping hole in the side of the room, likely where a doorway had once been. Even as he watched it, he saw pebbles and larger chunks of wall dislodge themselves and tumble to the floor—a telling sign of fresh destruction.

Drawn towards that beckoning aura of power, Tirek left the light of the sun and embraced the void beyond the doorway.



"What of Flash Magnus's shield?" Luna asked. "You mentioned his bravery in saving Mistmane, but neglected to go farther. Can it truly block more than flames?"

"When wielded by one who possesses a pure and courageous heart, the shield can block anything," Starswirl explained. "It was merely renowned for its prowess against fire during the Great Dragon Wars."

"That sure sounds useful," said Starlight. "He held off a blast by himself for half a minute, at least."

"A testament to his strength," Rockhoof commended. "Flash is second only to me in raw power. The shield can block anything, but if its wielder can barely pull a wagon, they'll be overwhelmed right away."

"I'll hang onto it for him," Dash offered. "You know, until we can bring him back from being stone. I'm strong and courageous, just like him!"

"Y'all don't need a shield, Dash," Applejack refuted. "Your head's so hard it'll stop that bird's attack cold by itself."

"What was that, farm pony?"

"Considering Rainbow Dash is Flash's counterpart, I think her hanging on to the shield does make sense," said Twilight. "We have a bigger problem here, though. Princess Celestia, with Fluttershy petrified, the Elements won't work. We have no way to summon Discord without them, and he's our best option to return this creature home, and possibly to restore our friends. Do you have another way to summon him, or get his attention?"

Celestia sighed. "I do, but I'm afraid it's been ineffective since this catastrophe began."

"What do you mean?"

"As we've mentioned before, Discord has the ability to sense great disturbances in magical power," Luna picked up. "Through taking turns transferring our magic to one another temporarily, my sister and I can effectively alert Discord and get his attention from wherever he may be. We have told him that when he feels this, we need to speak with him."

"...that's pretty clever," Starlight muttered. "And probably something that's only possible with princesses."

"Perhaps, but it has not worked today, and we have tried several times," Luna replied.

"Could it be because he's in the other dimension, returning creatures?" Starlight put out. "I was worried about something like that happening with the Elements. Obviously, we didn't get the chance to see."

"It was our first thought," said Celestia. "But after several attempts at different times of day, it looks less and less likely."

"Well, what would the alternative be?" asked Twilight.

"Discord may have the ability to selectively ignore certain fluctuations in magic," Celestia explained. "This is just a guess, but I would not put it past Discord to tune out Luna and I on purpose."

"We were rather hard on him over this fiasco, even before things began to escalate," Luna added. "Talking to us is likely the last thing he wants to do."

"But he still should have sensed this thing when it emerged from its cocoon, right?" Twilight spoon-fed. "Or when Tirek started absorbing magic? Even if dimensional travel interferes with his senses, there's no way he could have missed all of that."

"I wish I had the answers, Twilight, but right now, everything is uncertain," Celestia said apologetically. "For now, we do not know where Discord is, and so we must assume that he is unaware of what has happened within the Everfree Forest. Until a time where he voluntarily returns to update us on his progress, we must act on these events ourselves."

"...which means it is time to look to limbo for our solution once again," came Starswirl. "This time, with no hesitation."



Tirek's hooves crunched on broken stone as he walked, but as he looked around, he began to realize it was not debris from the fallen wall. Meticulously painted eyes and face paint littered chunks of hard clay, scattered about the floor. Fiendish claw marks larger than himself had scraped and torn the floor and walls in wild patterns, slicing through these statues—and everything around them—like hot butter.

Tirek dawned a wicked smile. So this is where the remaining sphinx had gone. It'd been a while since he'd seen an animation spell—or the fallout of one, anyway.

Stepping over the remains of the temple's true guardians, Tirek came to hear a familiar, echoing cry from the hallways beyond. His heart rate quickened. His tongue insatiably danced around his lips. He was close, and he could quite literally taste it.

His pace slowed and his movements grew more precise as he went on. He peered around corners carefully, watching for the familiar glow of red. More than once, his search brought him to quiet, empty rooms and dead ends, and he was forced to backtrack. The beast's cries bounced off the walls and seemed to come from everywhere.

But then Tirek stopped dead in his tracks. Rounding a bend, he saw a flicker of movement from the far end of the hall. Too shrouded in black, he could not make out the shape of it, but he didn't need to. Its dark aura enveloped him, clawed at his mind to insight dread and fear even from this far away, but the centaur had none to show. He braved the corridor even as the grim reaper beckoned from the other side.

A piercing howl shook the temple, but still, Tirek walked. Indistinguishable forms twisted and writhed just ahead, but the centaur's pace did not falter. Two menacing eyes emerged from the darkness to watch him, and he met them with calm resolve.



"We have run out of options."

"I know, it's just that, Fluttershy tried so hard to send this animal home without agitating it further. I know having concerns for its well-being might seem trivial in light of everything, but...isn't it the right thing to do? Isn't doing the right thing what we're supposed to do?"

Meadowbrook beseeched the table with her words and her eyes. She garnished sympathetic looks, but no further voices would speak out.

Truly, the only pony who would do so now sat in the corner of the room, cold and still.

"Do not let Tirek's mind games get to you," Starswirl advised. "We cannot save or protect everyone and everything from every angle or consideration. What we do, we do for the greater good."

"I thought that too, or at least acted like I did. But when I saw Fluttershy risk everything for what she believed in, it stirred something in me. I can't explain it, but I feel this deeply, Starswirl—if we could just manage to calm it, I think we could avoid banishment altogether. We may even be able to reverse Tirek's onset relationship with it."

Again Meadowbrook looked around the table. Uncertainty grew within several faces.

"What proof do we have that it isn't docile when not provoked?" she continued. "You said it yourself, Starswirl. This doesn't appear to be some scheming villain. It's a wild animal with animalistic intelligence. Fluttershy approached it at the wrong time. I hate to say it, but it's true. It had just been fighting all of us, and her neutrality in that matter did not stop it from seein' her as a threat. If it acts upon instincts, we should be able to interact with it peacefully once we know the patterns."

"I do not know why this is such a point of contention after our friends have been petrified," Starswirl grumbled, motioning a hoof to the corner of the room. "You know as well as I do that limbo is a place of nothing, storage space between realms. Agitating it? It will not be able to think within limbo, let alone feel slighted. We can displace it, and return to it at our leisure—once Discord has returned, and we've discovered an effective counter-spell for its magic."

"Is destroying the Elements such an easy toll to pay?" Meadowbrook countered. "The magic that allows our seed to govern the Everfree Forest? Brush off my concerns for morality if you must, but please don't stake our only loss in it."

"The Elements can be recreated if need be, and there is a newer generation to see to it, if we cannot," Starswirl dismissed. He looked at Twilight. The alicorn smiled weakly, and the rest of the table mirrored her.

Starswirl sighed. "This situation has grown fiercely difficult in the span of a single day. I do not mean to come across so curt, Meadowbrook. You and Fluttershy harbor a love for nature so often overlooked, and I recognize that."

Meadowbrook smiled, and so did Twilight, far more genuinely. Learned lessons now unfolded before all of their eyes.

"But if our goal is to protect Equestria, to protect its citizens from the same fate the Everfree saw, then we must first regain control of the situation. Against an animal this toxic to the environment, we cannot continue to risk the lives of ponies on the premise that it can be made docile through strategic interaction, as scientific an approach as that is."

"I'm afraid I must agree with Starswirl," Celestia said, breaking the argument with a sorrowful look. "It may seem morally cruel to lock away this creature, and it may prove to be a burden on the Tree of Harmony to sacrifice the Elements, but these are short-term problems when compared to the destruction this creature is capable of. Emergency situations never grow easier, even after millennia of experiencing them."

Celestia cast a look at her sister. Luna nodded, and with a reassuring hoof, patted her side. 

Meadowbrook sat back in her chair. "I understand. I agree—the safety of our citizens has to be our priority. I'm just so torn up. This whole mess could have been avoided if not for Tirek's meddling. That creature is a victim in its own way, just as our friends have become victims of its rage."

"Which leads us to the crux of the matter," Starswirl replied, standing from his seat. "While I work to prepare my spell for limbo, we must track down these threats and contain them, keep them busy. Chasing them across Equestria will be to our disadvantage, for time passed equates to power grown. We must find them immediately and stall them however we can until our spell is finished."

Grim nods acknowledged the stallion's words, but fear lingered still in every face. It was Rarity who spoke up first, clearing her throat and steadying her voice.

"...do you really think Tirek will be able to rally the beast to his side?"

The room fell quiet. Starswirl alone left the table, walking to the tall windows overseeing the Canterlot Gardens. He scrutinized the gathering of storm clouds beyond the Macintosh Hills—a desolate region far beyond the reach of pony magic.

"I believe Tirek will do whatever he can to use it to his advantage," he replied. "I fear he may have already learned something vital through our first encounter."



Tirek stepped into the room. What he had perceived as walls began to shift and flex as massive wings. A spear-tipped beak grew from the darkness to examine him, giving restrained caws. Soon the creature unfolded itself entirely, placing its claws along each side of the chamber. 

"You remember me, don't you?" Tirek asked softly, sitting upon the aged stone floor. "You remember how you saved me from those equines? I remember. I had to come and thank you."

The creature maintained its stance, neither relaxed nor threatening. It stared at the centaur as if waiting for something. It stretched its limbs, and its talons scraped along the floor, leaving gashes as wide as small tree trunks. It cawed again, more loudly this time, and Tirek scrunched a curious brow.

All through this, those eyes did not stop watching him, eerie and patient like a predator in the brush. Tirek smiled.

"That pegasus truly didn't understand you, did she?" he began. He crossed his arms, shrinking his posture in the process. "She got right in your face, expecting calm tones and physical contact to soothe you. But you're a clever beast, aren't you? You identify your prey with something far more subtle than sight."

Tirek expelled a haggard breath. Vivid thoughts of his untimely end raced through his head, but he ignored every one. 

"You can sense fear, can't you?" he cooed, that familiar twinkle of confidence coming to his eyes. "You dig for it, and when you see it, you pounce. You saw it in that pegasus, and as soon as she turned away, you made your move. I'm right, aren't I?"

The beast's wings raised from the floor and dug into the ceiling. Dust rained down on them in streams. Tirek chuckled. Nothing could deter his smug smile or his gaze.

"It's a commendable technique. I believe we're more alike than you know. Magic tastes the best when it's taken from ponies putting up a fight."

Worn down by impatience, the vulture reigned in its wings and again huddled itself up within the dark. When those violet eyes grew distracted and looked away, the thoughts besieging Tirek's mind finally ceased, and he gave a light sigh.

Stratagem or no, he could not rule out luck entirely. He'd already won the beast's favor on the battlefield, and so it likely didn't see him as a threat. No amount of mental preparation, he suspected, would save him as an unknown intruder in its nest.

"What a cozy hideaway you've found," he said, examining the stone walls. "Stylish, too. Though I'm disappointed the gold only coats the exterior."

The vulture regarded him absently, attracted by his voice. It lifted the fold of one wing and began to dig its snout into it. Tirek chuckled.

Was it preening? It had no visible plumage. Perhaps it was an itch. Perhaps even reapers were plagued by grievances of the mortal plane.

"I hope you weren't planning on going back to sleep again," Tirek began, slowly getting to his hooves and drawing the vulture's full attention. "Not when your vengeance remains unfulfilled. Wouldn't you like to get out there and stretch those wings? Wouldn't you like to go out there with me and get something to eat?"

His words meant nothing, but his interaction had meaning. He knew it did.

The vulture abandoned its preening. With rekindled interest, it crawled from the shadows in two motions of its claws, its beak coming mere yards before Tirek's face. Even in his semi-empowered state, the centaur barely matched the beast's head in size. He cautiously raised a hand on instinct, to catch the snout before it reached his face. There, he held it aloft a moment, watching the creature closely.

With trepidation, Tirek outstretched his hand, the cool temple air suddenly thick and weighted. When he felt a cool, smooth surface break the sweat of his palm, his smile blossomed to a wicked grin. Chuckling, he rubbed along that deep black shell and admired his reflection within it.

"...yes, you are a gorgeous beast, aren't you?" he whispered.



End of Part I