Chapter 1

***

Sunset Shimmer had a problem. Really, she had more than one, which you could even say was her problem in an almost-but-not-really tautological way, but at the moment, one particular problem stood out.

You see, Sunset Shimmer hadn’t had a whole lot of expectations for what she would find on the other side of the mirror, but being spat out of the base of a statue into the path of some kind of mechanized carriage hadn’t been one of them.

Well, no, that was a lie. She’d had a lot of expectations for what she would find, the carriage thing just wasn’t one of them.

Back to the carriage thing, though—it was kind of a problem. Now, if she’d popped out of the mirror in immediate possession of the wings the mirror had shown her having, maybe that wouldn’t have been a problem. Maybe things would have gone okay. She didn’t though, so, again, problem. It was actually a rather big problem, too—bigger than it sounds, and being in the path of a carriage wasn’t really a small issue to begin with.

The thing was, regardless of her lack of wings, she didn’t actually come out of the statue at ground level. That might seem odd, but it was a direct result of the statue itself not being at ground level. The statue where the mirror portal was anchored was, in fact, in the back of another of these mechanized carriages which was itself moving down a vast black road at somewhat of a greater speed than Sunset Shimmer had ever seen a carriage go.

Unfortunately for Sunset Shimmer, it was also at somewhat of a greater speed than she was able to react, and while a timely teleport might have been able to save her or at least reduce her problems to the reduction of speed via friction with the ground—a nasty enough proposition to begin with—she instead had to contend with something rather more dire: the sudden and uneven distribution of kinetic energy in disparate parts of her body, which is to say, impact.

Of course, if Sunset Shimmer had actually been hit by an automated carriage going automated carriage highway speeds, her path to ascension would have been rather short. Whether it would have been successful or not, nopony could know, but given that she was, colloquially, kind of a bitch made it rather unlikely, though she wasn’t consciously aware of the fact. Regardless, Sunset Shimmer was subject to one particular lucky break that saved her life, if you could call an aspect of physics lucky.

The thing that saved Sunset Shimmer’s life was the rather necessary and non-negotiable fact that she exited the statue portal in the same frame of reference as the statue portal, and so the difference in velocity between her and the surrounding mechanized carriages was in fact rather small, initially. Of course, though it was against her will and something she intended to fix as soon as possible, Sunset Shimmer was a unicorn and therefore not overly familiar with wind resistance. The two became acquainted, though, and became fast friends on account of having so much in common—that being, mainly, that wind resistance was almost as much of a bitch as she was.

So, yes, Sunset Shimmer had a problem and it was a rather large one, but not, perhaps, as large as it could have been or large enough to preclude her from ever having problems to begin with. She was not the only one, however, though she wouldn’t particularly see it that way herself.

It was Neighton’s third law, though, that said that she was about to be as much of a problem to the people in the mechanized carriage as they were about to be to her. More than that, though, and entirely beyond her knowing, she was also about to be a problem to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures and several other departments of the British Ministry of Magic.

In the end, while she didn’t remember the actual impact, the problems involved would be felt far into the future.

Mostly by her.

***

Sunset Shimmer was in pain. Ponies were tough creatures—even unicorns—but there was still only so much abuse they could take and Sunset had gone rather far past that. She tried to move, but her body was offended at the very idea. She persevered, though, just enough to take stock of what had happened to her.

Just about the only bright side was the fact that her head was relatively clear, if you could call it a bright side. On one hoof, it meant that she was immediately aware of the situation that she was in, including the large crowd of towering whatever-they-weres that were surrounding her, but on the other hoof, it meant that she was immediately aware of all the different parts of her that were screaming out in pain.

Honestly, though, calling them different parts was kind of missing the point. Sure, the pain in her hooves was a special kind of burn that told her that she must have landed at least briefly on the pitch and gravel mixture that the road was made of and similar abrasions were scattered over her coat like leopard spots, but it was all tied together into one throbbing mess by the single all-encompassing bruise that made up her left side.

Oh, and her horn hurt. Everything else aside, that was a special spike of pain with a direct line to her brain—literally. It was like every annoying horn-flick from her childhood had all come back for a second round, so there was that.

All in all, Sunset was not enjoying her first moments in this new world, nor did she think she was going to enjoy the immediate future. The sounds coming from the crowd surrounding her were not happy sounds; that wasn't surprising. She had, after all, caused quite the commotion and likely some damage upon her arrival.

No, the concerning things were worried whispers like "What is it?" and "Where did it come from?"—the sounds of a crowd building up a head of paranoia and fear. Entirely aside from being referred to as a thing, these people had apparently never seen a pony before, which was not a position she liked being in given her state and how much larger they were than her.

Sunset did not like feeling vulnerable. She liked being vulnerable even less.

Naturally, things got worse from there. It started with several sharp cracks that sent fresh jolts of pain down her horn. It felt like teleportation magic of a sort, but not even the sloppiest teleport should have felt like that to her.

For all that the teleportation spell hurt, though, and maybe gave off the impression of someone careless with their magic, the next thing was a little more alarming: a heavy curtain of lassitude fell over the entire area, pushing the throbbing of her horn into a constant ache, which was worrying on multiple levels.

First, Sunset did not like having her emotions controlled. Of course, no one liked having their emotions controlled, and while she didn’t believe much in the rights of other people, it did reinforce the image of carelessness she’d already developed.

Second, though, was that this was the second spell that had felt unusually raw to her horn, and while it could have had something to do with the world or how these whatever-they-weres do magic, Sunset had just been rather traumatically injured and her mind immediately went to the part of her body that was most directly connected to it: her horn.

The idea that she might have injured her horn sent chills down her spine.

Horn injuries were… bad. They were bad for the average unicorn and they’d be even worse for somepony like her that lived and breathed magic. Horns grew slowly for the life of a unicorn, enough that filing and polishing were part of proper horncare, but deep cracks and damage were another matter entirely. Some injuries could be filled with certain magical metals, but an outright broken horn… there wasn’t much that could be done about that.

Sunset would never have admitted it, but she was getting scared. She’d come to this world through a magic mirror chasing after an ascension that her mentor and mother figure had denied her. Laying broken in the street surrounded by strange and imposing creatures was not how this was supposed to go.

Then, she felt the first memory spell being cast on the crowd and her vague creeping dread turned to bright searing terror. There was definitely something wrong with her horn, because she didn’t think that she was supposed to see the flashes of imagery showing the site of the crash, only instead of a beautiful and powerful unicorn with a red and gold mane, there was a goat.

Goat.

Sunset didn’t have time for indignation, though, because soon the memory spells were going off one after another, filling her head with the same images over and over—except for one time when instead of a goat, it was a fawn.

Sunset wasn’t sure if that was better.

And then the magic users reached Sunset.

“The hell is this?” one of them asked. “I thought this was supposed to be a unicorn sighting? That ain’t no unicorn.”

Oh Celestia, Sunset swore in her head. Was her horn so far gone that they couldn’t even tell she was a unicorn?”

“It’s got the horn,” another answered, much to her relief. “Sorta.”

Sort of? Sort of?! Curse it, that was not helpful.

“It’s a tiny, chubby yellow thing with a Gryffindor mane,” the first voice drawled. “Are we sure someone didn’t just animate a stuffed toy?”

Chubby? Chubby?! Sunset didn’t know what a ‘Gryffindor’ was, but the way it was sneered implied that it was an insult, too, which meant that these were idiots because her mane was perfect.

Also because they apparently didn’t know what a unicorn looked like, which was almost as strong of an argument.

Sunset wasn’t ready for the wash of static-y magic that set her teeth on edge.

“Nope,” said one of the magic users. “Not charmed or transfigured. Someone’s been violating the ban on experimental breeding. What do you think? They cross a unicorn with a puffskein?”

Excuse you?! Sunset wasn’t fond of the parents that had given her up as a foal, but they’d both been unicorns!

“Something like that” another one said, clearly not caring, though he continued after a distinct pause. “Red blood, so probably not all that magical.”

They did know that ‘blue bloods’ don’t actually have blue blood, right? And that they weren’t actually any better at magic than anypony else? Sunset added ‘classist’ to the list of reasons she wanted to be absolutely anywhere else but at the mercy of these creatures, but an attempt to get up only confirmed that it wasn’t going to happen.

“Listen to that wheezing,” another one of them said. “Think we should put it out of its misery?”

Sunset tried harder and managed to reassure herself that she still had a horn—mainly by managing to bang it on something metal behind her.

“Petrificus totalus,” someone intoned, briefly confusing Sunset until she felt the magic squeezing in on her, locking her in place. “Nah. DoM’ll want to see it first at least, and Macnair gets bitchy if you take his work away from him since there isn’t much call for an executioner with the dementors and all.”

Domme? Executioner? Yeah, no, Sunset wasn’t going to stick around for that. Heart hammering, she strained against the spell holding her in place, but it wasn’t just a physical binding—there was a paralysis aspect to it, too. She’d have to dispel it first.

Assuming she could.

Assuming her horn still worked.

The prospect of being trapped, mentally controlled, studied and eventually killed was a pretty good reason to find out, though. Still, it wouldn’t matter if she couldn’t actually get away. That was what magic was for, though. If she could cast a dispel, she might be able to cast a teleport, and self-levitation was theoretically an option, too—not an attractive option given her current condition, but, again, it was that or a string of horrible equine rights violations followed by death, so there really wasn’t any contest.

Sunset prepared herself, took a deep breath, then lit up her horn—

“Stupefy,” one of the magic users said, and everything went dark.

***

Sunset awoke in slightly less pain.

She was also in a cage, which wasn’t really a fair exchange in her opinion, that being the only one that mattered. Still, she was able to actually sit up, if gingerly, which was a vast improvement to being too hurt to move and was going to be important in the immediate future.

Not the most important thing, though. Carefully, Sunset brought a hoof up to feel her horn.

It felt solid at first, which was a relief, but that relief was short-lived. As she ran her hoof along the length, she felt the last thing any unicorn wanted to feel: something uneven. Further exploration revealed a bit-sized chip missing from the side of her horn, and the other side had been ground raw against the road, bringing the tip almost to a point.

Unicorns had long evolved past goring other creatures with their horns, but it was technically an option for Sunset now, and she was sorely tempted to see how well it worked on the people who had captured her, no matter how sensitive her horn was at the moment.

Regardless, her horn was in bad shape, but only in a scarring and possible nerve damage sense. It would affect her magic, possibly for the rest of her mortal life, but she wasn’t planning on spending too much more of her life mortal. One of the very few things that her mentor, the alicorn Princess Celestia had told Sunset about her ascension was that the transformation into alicorn had essentially given her a new body out of magic alone, so this was just one more reason she needed to reach ascension herself.

One of many.

Expanding her explorations beyond her horn and the cage she was in, Sunset found herself alone in a dark room housing several other cages and a desk with an inkwell and a smattering of papers on it. The cages were empty, and the desk was large enough that she might be able to put her hooves on it if she stood up on her back hooves and stretched.

As intimidating as the giant desk was, the empty cages were more ominous. Normally, Sunset wouldn’t think anything of them; it would have been unusual for the dungeons in the Canterlot palace to have not been empty, for instance. Normally, though, governments did not have a dedicated executioner on staff.

Fortunately for Sunset, though, the emptiness was the only thing noteworthy about the cages; they weren’t even magically reinforced, which was just embarrassing. These cages couldn’t hold a foal, and they wouldn’t hold Sunset.

Slowly, carefully, Sunset began to charge her horn up with magic. It was messy, producing the occasional arc across the damaged portions of her horn, but other than a bit of wasted energy, it seemed to be functional.

Pushing just a bit more, Sunset channeled the magic into a teleport spell, let it go and reappeared just outside of her cage with a sizzling pop and only a slight smell of ozone. Finally able to reassure herself that she wasn’t crippled, Sunset felt a knot in her heart relax.

Now she just had to find a way out of this place.

That would be easier if she had any idea where she was. With years of experience living in the Canterlot Palace, Sunset would have said she knew her large structures pretty well, and while it was possible that she was merely deep in the structure, the particular clamminess gave Sunset the impression that she was also underground.

That was going to make escape a little annoying, but it did give her an immediate goal: heading upwards. Before heading out, she checked the desk for anything interesting, but it seemed to be just a generic workstation with blank parchment and other stationery.

The door was her next stop, and it wasn’t even locked. Briefly, Sunset wished she’d learned an invisibility spell at some point, but her studies had always been about being seen. Sure, she’d occasionally done some underhoofed things to make other ponies look bad, but she hadn’t made a study of it.

That, clearly, had been a mistake.

Sunset listened at the door for any sort of sound, but no matter how long she waited, she didn’t hear a single thing. In Sunset’s experience, that would normally mean that they possessed a soundproofing spell that activated with the door closed, but after cracking the door open, nothing seemed to change.

In hindsight, if there had been a soundproofing spell, she probably would have felt it with her horn when she’d pressed her face against the door. After the completely unenchanted cage, she was really not impressed by these magic users. They were terrifying in the kinds of magic they did use—mental effects, paralysis, memory editing and the like—but as far as actual practical magic went… well, she’d yet to actually see any.

That gave her an idea, actually. As quietly as possible, she closed the door, stepped back, sat down and began to concentrate.

Normally, sensing magic didn’t have much of a range, especially in a place like Canterlot Palace where pretty much every door and wall was layered with enchantments but it wasn’t limited to unicorns and enchantments. Even earth ponies put magic into everything they interacted with, if in a less directed manner.

Here, though, and with her horn scraped so raw that it throbbed at the slightest twitch of magic? Sunset did what she could to calm her mind and open herself up to it.

She actually felt more than she’d expected to. As she’d guessed, the actual structure was only minimally enchanted, mostly with something like the magic that had been used to detain her. It wasn’t quite proper structural magic, but instead just seemed to be holding things in place, which was… a weird way to go about it.

Other than that, though, she actually did feel several sharp spikes of magic. Her horn didn’t give her a three-dimensional map or anything, but as she craned her neck this way and that, she could pick out a number of things quite nearby that were notable and one or two that were actually impressive.

What was almost as noteworthy was what she didn’t sense, because beyond the immediate structure there was… pretty much nothing. There might have been one slight glow from a distance away, but if not for that, she almost would have concluded that she was in some kind of pocket dimension. She wanted to say that her captors weren’t nearly advanced enough to have that kind of magic, but with the eclectic mix of war crimes she’d seen so far from them, she didn’t want to rule anything out.

Fortunately, the most useful thing her meditation provided was some idea of how the rest of the structure was laid out, which also gave her some idea of where to go. Unfortunately, since she believed herself to be either underground or, doubtfully, in a pocket dimension, then most likely she had to go to the center rather than the edge to find her way out.

Once again, Sunset approached the door and hesitated. The corridor outside was silent, which might mean it was night or it might just mean she was in a less used wing of the structure. Either way, the closer to the center she got, the more likely it was that she’d run into one or more of the creatures, be they workers or guards.

What was she going to do when she did?

Obviously, the best thing to do would be to sneak past them, but with the yellow red and gold of her coat and mane, a thestral she was not.

She could just run if she was spotted, but without knowing where her goal was beforehoof, that would be a mistake.

She… didn’t particularly want to kill, even if the world would almost certainly be better off without the kinds of magic these creatures used. No matter the disagreements that Sunset had with her over the matter of ascension, Princess Celestia had convinced her that morality aside, killing only caused more problems in the long run and Sunset had enough problems just then that she couldn’t really afford to plant any more.

That reduced her options by more than she’d like to admit. Again, her specialty was big, flashy magic—especially fire—and that didn’t really lend itself to “minimum necessary force.”

Briefly, Sunset remembered the spell that had been used to make her unconscious, but she hadn’t felt enough of it to be able to reproduce it and she didn’t actually know what it had done. What had the creature said? Stupefy? Saying words when casting a spell was a weird quirk, but that sounded like it worked by reducing the target’s mental capacity until they were incapable of doing anything. That… was about as disturbing as the rest of the magic she’d seen from them and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know how it would work.

That pretty much left Sunset with blunt force as an option. The creatures had looked pretty gangly from what she could recall, and most species needed their kneecaps for something. Searching the room for something she could use as a weapon, Sunset broke one leg off the chair and swung it with her magic a few times, thinking about just how much larger than her they were.

The teal glow of her magic was not subtle, but it would have to do.

***

Finding empty corridor after empty corridor of black stone and cold blue-flamed torches, Sunset was pretty sure that it was night, or whenever these creatures slept. That wasn’t any proof that no one was around, but it was reason enough to trade a little care for expediency to ensure she found her way out before any of them came back to do horrible things to her.

Mostly, this meant not stopping at every doorway to ensure that the coast was clear before entering a room since no matter how hurried, she was still conscious of the echoing clip-clop that hooves made on polished stone.

Still, it was difficult not stopping to look at things considering the sorts of things she came across. It should have been obvious since it was where she’d been brought, but this was apparently where the whatever-they-weres studied strange and unusual magics. The “DoM” that had been mentioned was apparently the Department of Mysteries, which, well, was better than what it sounded like at first, anyway, though her opinion on being one of the mysteries they were studying hadn’t changed.

She definitely made note of several things, though. The little glowing orbs felt interesting, and she wasn’t sure what the ache in her horn from the freestanding veiled doorway meant.

That said, the area wasn’t huge, so it wasn’t actually all that long until she found the small room that made up the central hub with twelve identical doors, which seemed none too helpful. Neither was it helpful when the floor thrummed with magic and began to spin until Sunset had lost track of the one she’d come out of like something out of Oubliettes and Ogres, only this was some place that people were actually expected to use every day to get to work. True, Sunset knew some ponies who would build such a thing, but this was a government building.

No, wait, Princess Celestia was absolutely one of those ponies. It was actually surprising that Castle Canterlot wasn’t full of secret passages.

Moving on, Sunset wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do here, exactly. There had to be some logic to it, but it wasn’t clear what that logic was, which she supposed was the point. Still, she wanted to hurry up and get out of here, not just because she wanted to stay alive, but because the room itself was… uncomfortable.

Wait, why was the room uncomfortable? It was just a room, slightly more magical than the last. Sunset took a breath to calm herself and tried to examine her feelings—not one of the skills and habits that Princess Celestia had successfully managed to teach her. It had something to do with magic, though, so Sunset eventually figured it out.

On the surface it looked like a vocal trigger, but deeper in there was something in the magic that was reading her intent, as if reading ponies’ minds was a perfectly normal and sane thing to do so long as you used it for a building directory.

Sunset really, really did not like these creatures or their magic.

“Exit?” she announced self consciously to the room, to which the room obliged, revealing a short corridor to a brass-caged elevator. Sunset wasted no time in rushing to it, only slowing enough as to not make too much noise rattling the mechanism.

As quick as she could, Sunset shut the door with her magic and propped herself up on her hind legs so she could see the controls.

According to the elevator, there were ten floors labeled zero through nine, going from "deep," "deeper" and "extraordinarily deep" down to "even deeper again" and finally just "bottom." Obviously someone had had fun labeling them, but Sunset wasn't really in the mood to appreciate it just then, considering she was on the deepest level.

Without hesitation, Sunset slammed the controls with her hoof, starting a cacophonous rattling as the cage began to ascend on its way to level zero.

She was therefore rather confused when a voice announced, "Level Eight: Ministry Atrium, Public Floo and Visitor's Entrance," as it passed by a large room with a large fountain and scores of gilded alcoves that looked almost like fireplaces.

What was the point of having your mysterious research lab on the bottom level of an underground complex if the public entrance was right next to it?

Annoyed at the questionable planning abilities of these creatures and not willing to waste any time searching the upper floors when she had an exit right there, Sunset slammed the controls again, but as expected, doing so failed to change the course of the elevator which was on its way to the top floor.

It was fortunate that the elevator was made of brass because the backlash of Sunset's teleport down to the atrium as it passed by was rather more hot and violent than it should have been, leaving it sizzling.

She appeared at a run down in the atrium, wasting no time jumping the security desk and making her way to the travel... they really looked like fireplaces for some reason.

That reason, her horn revealed to her, was that apparently these alcoves were designed to use some kind of magical fire to burn a hole between two points in space, almost like a wormhole, but without the actual wormhole. At first, Sunset thought this was absolutely insane as there wouldn't be anything to ensure that the traveler actually reached their destination in the space between spaces, but on second examination, there appeared to be a spell tied to a network that directed them to the right one.

It was still insane, of course, though for once in Sunset's experience with these creatures' magic not really immoral, probably. Burning holes in space didn't sound like that great an idea, but unicorns had been poking holes in space for ages and it was fine. Besides, if it did eventually let in horrors beyond comprehension from the space between, well, that sounded like a them-problem, or at minimum a later-problem.

Still, there were better ways to send things to other places with fire. Sunset herself was perfectly capable of unburning things and Princess Celestia could do it at a distance. Admittedly, that wasn't something you'd do to a person, but it was just what Sunset could think of off the top of her head.

Immolation transportation aside, what actually mattered was figuring out how to use one of these fireplaces to get out of this place. Well, triggering the magic seemed simple enough, as it greatly resembled the carousel room down in the Department of Mysteries. This one looked a lot more complex, though, since presumably there was an entire network of these things.

The result of that complexity was that the intent portion of the enchantment was extremely sensitive. So sensitive, that it almost ceased being intent-based at all. If someone misspoke the destination, they might be fine so long as they didn't actually realize it. If they realized that they'd misspoke, though, the enchantment would pick up on that and misfire, sending them somewhere else nearby the intended destination.

It was, essentially, the magical equivalent of saying, 'at this location, but not actually at this location.'

Unfortunately for Sunset, she didn't actually know of any locations, except, well...

First, she cast a magical fire into the alcove, then poked the enchantment in just the right place. Normally, there seemed to be some other component to trigger it, but injecting the right blend of spatial magic into it worked fine. The magical fire turned green and Sunset announced, "Exit," as she'd done down below in the Department of Mysteries.

The fire flared red and then slowly went back to orange. Presumably that was what happened when you gave it an invalid destination.

Well, shit.

Sunset spent more time that she liked just sitting there, body aching, anxiously examining the enchantment, but there wasn't actually much to it—the actual targeting of other locations on the network must have been done at some centralized location, leaving her little to examine. She could start saying random words into the fire, but even if she found one that worked, blindly showing up in some random place was a chance she didn't want to take if she could help it.

If only she had access to the directory where all the locations were defined.

Sunset blinked, then looked back behind her at what was clearly the security desk of a government building. The elevator had said this was the Ministry Atrium, right?

Already feeling like she'd spent too long in her escape, Sunset didn't waste any more of it facehoofing and ran back in the direction of the elevator. She did waste a few seconds looking at the statue in the center of the atrium, however. She couldn't help it—she hadn't really seen it properly on her way out, but on her way back in, she got the full effect and... wow.

Just 'wow'. The statue was a gleaming golden abomination showing one figure representing one of the creatures she'd seen so far surrounded by four other figures of other species who were all looking up at it with awe and reverence. Not even the worst of the Canterlot nobility would have dared to suggest such a thing, and here, they had it in the entranceway of their government.

Sunset did not like these creatures.

It took effort for Sunset to tear herself away from the Fountain of Magical Brethren as it was labeled, but she really was in a hurry. There were at least twenty elevators to choose from and several plaques in the area offering a directive of the floors. Immediately, Sunset's eyes went to 'Level 6: Department of Magical Transportation' under which in smaller letters it listed the 'Floo Network Authority,' 'Broom Regulatory Control,' 'Portkey Office' and 'Apparition Test Centre.'

'Floo Network Authority' had to be it, so she dashed into the closest elevator and hit the control for level six. "So, 'Floo' is what they call those things," she reflected as the elevator took her up two floors. "Like a chimney flue?" The similarity to fireplaces wasn't accidental, then, she guessed. Given Equestria's penchant for equine puns, it wasn't the worst thing she'd ever heard something called. Actually, it wasn't even the worst thing on the list.

If these creatures actually used brooms to fly like a Nightmare Night witch, she was going to go home and find her ascension in some other authoritarian nightmare world; this one was too literal.

Sunset pointedly did not think about the fact that she had no way back home—not for the two and a half years between portal activations, and not even then given that the statue where the portal was anchored to could be anywhere.

The elevator opened up into a short corridor with four doors and one thing she hadn't expected to see—a window at the end of the corridor that she immediately galloped to. She almost didn't mind being wrong about this place being underground if it meant that she could escape immediately without having to take a chance with the Floo Network.

She had at least been right about it being night, it seemed, though she wasn't entirely sure what to make of the sight she saw. It was dark outside, yes, but also absolutely pouring rain like she'd never seen before. It was like the entire Cloudsdale weather factory was pouring its entire output down over this one window, with a team of Pegasi letting off lightning bolts every ten seconds just for good measure.

The strangest part of all was that it was all completely silent, yet as she reached the wall and propped herself up on her hind legs to look through the window, she didn't feel anything like a silencing spell that would be necessary to keep the sounds of such a cacophonous storm out. What she did feel was—

Oh.

What she did feel was an illusion. Her heart sank and she dropped her front hooves back to the ground with a soft clop. She couldn't even appreciate the artistry that had gone into the illusion because she'd gotten her hopes up only for them to be immediately crushed, because of course it wasn't going to be that easy.

Sighing, Sunset turned and walked back to the door labeled as the Floo Network Authority, which she then realized was the one door in the hall that was lit from inside, because of course it was.

The emotional whiplash made it difficult to focus, but she forced herself to forget about her brief foolishness and did what she could to walk herself through the situation at hoof: Was whoever was in the Floo Network Authority working late, or was someone always monitoring the system? Ideally, it would be the former, since that would mean both that it was still relatively early in the night, and that whoever was still here might therefore leave. Sunset, therefore, had to assume it was the latter case.

Creeping closer to the door, Sunset did what she could to calm herself and felt for any magic as was becoming habit. Maybe once her horn healed, she would file it more often, because she was finding the extra sensitivity extremely valuable in this world where only the occasional thing contained magic, relatively speaking—though the office she was lurking outside of had more than she'd seen so far.

The office contained quite a few incidental things that were enchanted strewn across desks and the like, which raised her opinion of the creatures just a little bit. They couldn't possibly have come up with terrible, abusive magics to put on quills and parchment, could they?

More importantly than any of that, though, was the person she felt. It was only one, thankfully, but one was more than she wanted to have to deal with.

Muzzle nearly to the door, Sunset paused and found herself looking up into the air at her side, where her makeshift club wasn't. She must have been in too much of a hurry and forgotten it next to the floo down in the atrium.

Sunset cursed herself internally for making that kind of a mistake, but she wasn't used to needing to keep a weapon at her side constantly. She would just have to improvise with whatever was inside.

Carefully, Sunset used her magic to turn the doorknob. Again very conscious of the teal glow and light tinkling sound it made, she pulled the door just until the latch was free, then cut off her magic, using her hoof to open it further—just enough to slip through.

The main room of the Floo Network Authority looked like any other office with reception desk, six fireplaces—three to a wall—and a whatever-they-were sleeping in an alcove walled floor to ceiling with little cubby holes that seemed to fill with balls of green flame at random.

Just slightly, Sunset relaxed. If the creature on duty could sleep through the fires winking in and out, she figured they were probably a heavy sleeper. This assumption was only enhanced when, as Sunset crept closer, she began to hear a low murmuring from the fires in the alcove.

Privacy was apparently not a thing on the Floo Network. That tracked with everything else she'd seen of these creatures so far and she made sure to remember it. She also noted that she'd been right to assume it was someone monitoring the system, not someone working late. Of course, no actual monitoring seemed to be being done, but she wasn't going to complain about that.

The next thing that caught Sunset's attention was something incredibly important that she hadn't even thought of: a large map dominating the far wall next to the alcove. It was closer than she liked to the sleeping whatever-it-was, but she absolutely needed to get some idea of the lay of the land—literally.

It turned out not to be that difficult to approach the map while staying out of sight of the alcove with the typical office clutter of desks and chairs, and approaching from the opposite side of the room reduced her chances of being seen even further. The only real concern was the clopping of her hooves on the polished stone floor, but moving slowly and steadily, she made it to the map, which was informative.

The map consisted mainly of two islands split into several countries and the edge of a larger landmass to the southeast. She couldn't be sure what the scale of the map was, but there was an extremely extensive road system in place and several very large, very dense cities.

It was strange, then, that the tiny pins marking Floo locations were spread so thin, mostly scattered around the countryside except for a few areas where there were small concentrations—one up in the middle of the region labeled 'Scotland,' another two smaller ones in the city of 'London' and the last on an English peninsula south of Wales.

It seemed that the magic users in charge of all of this were a minority, much like unicorns, and given the memory spells they'd cast on all the witnesses to her arrival, they were apparently very secretive, which made sense when you were committing the kinds of equine rights violations that they were as a matter of course.

So where did she want to go? Stomping down a small part of her that said she wanted to go home, she reasoned it out. Briefly, she considered disappearing into the non-magical masses, but decided against it. For one, she couldn't actually blend in with them, and with the way she'd been received so far, any sighting of her was likely to draw the attention of the magic users as well.

The random pins out in the countryside didn't seem like a great idea either. She needed resources and she wouldn't find them out in the woods.

One of the concentrations of magic users, then, but on the outskirts where the density was lower and she could disappear into the countryside if necessary. Not the ones in London, then, and if the latitude lines were numbered the same way they were in Equestria, then being too far north would be an additional headache she didn't want to deal with. She'd be in no danger of freezing with the number of fire spells she knew, but that would be the least of the complications that heavy winter could cause.

Musing over the clusters of pins on the southwest peninsula, Sunset thought someplace in Devon would be about right, which was where the usefulness of the map ended.

Finding the directory of addresses didn't turn out to be too difficult, and in the process of going through the various books, ledgers and parchment she came across in her search, she learned a number of things: that the magic users called themselves witches and wizards as gendered terms, which was weird; that the magical government was called the Ministry of Magic and was in charge of enforcing a Statute of Secrecy from the 'muggles,' which was offensive; that the currency they used was separated into galleons, sickles and knuts using prime numbers, which was moronic; and that the Minister of Magic was breeding his own army of heliopaths in the Department of Mysteries, which was... an article from more than a week ago and couldn't have had anything to do with her.

If there were actual mystical flaming horse spirits down there, though, she hadn't sensed them, and with her horn in the state it was in, she absolutely would have.

Annoyingly, what she didn't find in her search through the desk clutter was what the whatever-they-weres actually were, other than witches and wizards, so she was going to have to keep calling them that.

As for the Floo Directory, it turned out to be a massive tome twice as large as any other book in the room, which were already rather large to her given her comparative size. The directory was so big, in fact, that Sunset had to use her magic to manipulate it with anything close to care. Fortunately, the teal light of her magic was essentially invisible in the intermittent green light coming from the alcove, though the sound of it didn't quite blend in with the murmuring of floo calls.

For Sunset's purposes, it would have been convenient if the directory was sorted by location, but that wasn't the case, nor had she really expected it to be. Still, it left her paging through at random looking for something in the right area. One of the reasons that the book was so large was because the entries seemed to go back at least a hundred years, with disconnected floos merely crossed out—and there were a lot that were crossed out.

The inefficiency of it all made it take longer than it should have and she had to go back to the map a few times to double check things because "Devon" was apparently not specific enough, but eventually she came across the entry of the home of Xenophilius Lovegood in Ottery St Catchpole, one of a small cluster of floo addresses not too far from the larger cluster that was Godric's Hollow.

Hopefully, if Sunset got caught coming out of the floo, Xenophilius Lovegood would live up to his name—but not too much.

According to the directory, the Lovegood home's floo address was "The Rookery," and while it would have been nice to have a few nearby addresses as a back up, it wasn't really practical and she really, really needed to get going.

Spending one last glance over the room to see if there was anything worth stealing, Sunset stepped up to one of the six large fireplaces in the room and started a magical fire in it as she had down in the atrium. The enchantments on this one seemed to be slightly different—a little more complex—but they were close enough for her poke-it-in-the-right place method of triggering them to work the same.

The fire turned green and, speaking the words, "The Rookery," Sunset disappeared into the flames.

***

It took Sunset a moment to recognize that she'd just walked out of the fireplace in what was clearly a living room. As in, it was just the regular fireplace that a regular living room would have, if maybe several times larger than she was used to.

This did not make sense to Sunset. She'd expected the floo to be outside, maybe out at the property line where you'd expect visitors to show up. She did not expect it to come out in someone's living room.

For Celestia's sake! Not even the most unbearably saccharine, friendship-obsessed pony would put a public portal gateway in their living room! She'd just walked here from a government building like it was the kitchen!

"What the buck is wrong with you people?!" she screamed, throwing her hooves into the air. Immediately, she regretted this and froze, listening for any sign that she was about to be chased out of the house, but there was only silence.

Just when Sunset was beginning to relax, the front door opened, revealing a small blonde child who gasped. Well, she was small in comparison to the doorway, anyway; Sunset still barely came up to her waist.

Immediately, the child's eyes went to Sunset's damaged horn, which only seemed to make her brighten up even more. "You were right, daddy!" the child shouted, amazed. "We did have crumple-horned snorkacks at home!"

"Crumple-horned what?" Sunset asked, offended.

"And it talks, too!" the child added, bounding forward and bending at the waist to get a closer look at Sunset. "I didn't know crumple-horned snorkacks could talk! I'm Luna!"

Sunset's eye twitched. "I'm not one of those whatever-you-just-saids," she said. "I'm a unicorn."

"Don't be silly," Luna laughed, leaning in even closer. "Unicorns can't talk."

"Of course they can ta—" Sunset began, then realized what she was doing. "Whatever," she grumbled. She had been gravely injured, captured and keyed up for an hour during her escape; she hadn't been prepared to deal with children.

Sunset's focus moved to the adult that was still standing in the door who greatly resembled Luna, including the long white hair. Gruffly, Sunset walked around the child and said, "Sorry for showing up in your floo—I'll be going now."

"Wait!" Luna cried, getting in Sunset's way. "You can't go! We've got to take pictures!"

Sunset was just about to teleport outside when a flash went off, blinding her. "Gah!" she shouted, blinking her eyes clear until she could see the adult Lovegood who may or may not have been Xenophilius holding the camera. "No photos!" she growled, yanking the camera out of its hands with her magic. Taking a moment to examine it, it looked like a typical spring-loaded design, so she popped it open and pulled out the last foot of film.

"In the last day I have been denied my destiny, stranded here, hit by a carriage, captured by mysterious and immoral wizards, imprisoned by the same, threatened with death and managed to escape!" she yelled, huffing with the exertion. "I am injured, tired and hungry and you are not going to tell anyone I was here or I will... I'll burn your house down!"

"Lemon?" Luna asked, holding what indeed appeared to be a lemon out.

"What?" Sunset said, automatically taking the lemon, her train of thought completely derailed. The child then produced another lemon and Sunset took that one too. She appeared to be retrieving a third one from the bag at her waist when Sunset interrupted. "Stop! Stop hoofing me lemons! What am I supposed to do with these?!"

"You said you were hungry," Luna said in a 'isn't that obvious' sort of way. "Don't crumple-horned snorkacks eat lemons?"

Sunset rolled her eyes. "I don't know, do they?" she asked sarcastically. "You should go find one and see."

Sarcasm, it seemed, was lost on the child as she immediately looked at the lemon in her hand, looked at Sunset and shoved the lemon into Sunset's mouth.

"Gak—gah!" she sputtered, spitting the lemon out. "Why in Celestia's name would you do that?!"

"To see if you liked lemons, of course," Luna said, once again giving Sunset that look questioning why she was being asked a question with such an obvious answer.

"Does it look like my name is Lemon Twist?!" she shouted, still spitting the taste of lemon out.

"Huh," Luna said, looking down at the lemons as if this was a revelation. Putting them away, she crossed her arms and began tapping her cheek with one finger, looking Sunset over. "No, you're more of a bacon horse, aren't you?"

"My name," Sunset growled, "is Sunset Shimmer, and—" Once again, Sunset realized she was talking when she should be leaving. "Forget it," said, shaking her head. Just as she was trying to stomp past the child again, her stomach disagreed and made itself known.

Luna considered that for a moment before moving on. "Well, tomorrow we were going to see if crumple-horned snorkacks like quiche; do you want some of that?"

"I am not a crumple-horned snorkack!" Sunset yelled, and so did her stomach. "...But, uh, maybe..."

***

Sunset was not happy with this situation, but her stomach was. The quiche was good, Luna was a girl, Xenophilius was a man and they were humans. Xenophilius published his own magazine known as The Quibbler, and Luna would be going to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in just over a year where she would learn to use a wand to cast spells.

They were, by all accounts, much nicer and kinder than Sunset had expected any of these humans to be, and all they wanted was to know about Sunset and the other crumple-horned snorkacks.

Sunset wanted to scream, but it wouldn't help anything. What did finally get them off her case was expressing her need to rest and recover. The abrasions scattered over her body had been scabbed over with a spell called 'episkey'—and it was still weird that wizards spoke the names of their spells out like comic book characters—but Sunset still ached all over and wanted to be done with... everything.

The Lovegood home—or 'The Rookery' as they called it—was a tower with crenelations at the top, named such due to its similarity in appearance to the rook piece in chess, which looked like a tower with crenelations at the top. Sunset thought this was a circular argument, like calling any odd pony a knight because the knight in chess is a pony, but frankly, she did not have the energy to argue, nor did she care. All she needed to know was that they'd made up a bed for her in the form of a pile of blankets in Luna's room, which was on the second floor of the tower, but they called it the first floor for some reason.

At first, Sunset had wanted to argue that sleeping on a couch down on the actual first floor would have been fine, but then she'd remembered how easy it was for someone to just walk right into the room from the ministry and decided that maybe the first-but-actually-the-second floor would be fine.

***

"Sunset, please..." Princess Celestia pleaded, looking pained. "Please."

"'Please' what, Princess?" Sunset said, stomping her hooves on the marble floor of the palace. "'Please' stop researching all the things you taught me to research? Or is it 'please' stop asking about that mirror? Or maybe just 'please' stop stealing your muffins at breakfast? I can't do what you want if you won't tell me what it is that you want."

"Sunset..." Princess Celestia uselessly repeated, receiving a frustrated, inarticulate scream from Sunset for her troubles.

"I can't believe this!" Sunset yelled, fuming at Princess Celestia. "Why won't you just talk to me?! That's what you've been trying to teach me to do for years, isn't it? To talk out my problems? Well, I'm trying! But every time I do anything now, you just clam up and give me that helpless look! Explain this to me, damn it!"

Princess Celestia continued to give Sunset that same conflicted look full of concern and hurt and shame and half a dozen other unidentifiable things. Eventually, she looked away. "Sunset... If you continue on this path, I will have no choice but to remove you from your position as my student."

Sunset grit her teeth at receiving yet another non-answer, but the threat hit even harder, and her head dropped. "If you won't even talk to me about what the problem is..." she said, tears falling. "Then I'm not really your student, am I?"

Princess Celestia hesitated, then turned away and began to leave. "Guards. Please escort Sunset Shimmer out of the palace."

Sunset was poleaxed. This just didn't make sense. "Why?" she yelled as the guards began to lead her out. "Why would you do this to me?! I've earned that much, haven't I? Tell me why!"

The princess didn't answer.

Chapter 2

View Online

***

Sunset woke up in more pain than she'd gone to sleep in, but she was pretty sure that was normal after the adrenaline of her escape, though in hindsight it had gone just about as well as it possibly could have. It made her wary of the Lovegoods, who also seemed too good to be true, which was saying a lot for somepony who had come from Equestria.

As much as she hated to admit it, though, Sunset needed help. She needed to learn about the magic of these human wizards and witches, even if just to defend herself against them, and since her very existence made her a target, she needed the Lovegoods for that.

Admittedly, the food and shelter helped, too, though if she was going to stay here, she was going to have an actual bed even if she had to make it herself. Throwing a bunch of blankets in a pile was something you did for a dog, not a person.

That could wait until she could get out of it, though.

Given how sore she was, Sunset estimated that she wouldn't want to be doing much for a few days at least, but that time came sooner than she thought.

"What is this?" Sunset said, holding the small bottle of liquid up to the light with her hoof.

"Fascinating!" Xenophilius said, as focused on examining Sunset's front leg as Sunset was on examining the bottle for some reason.

Sunset remained nonplussed. "What? You're the one who gave it to me."

"Hm?" Xenophilius said, turning to look at Sunset herself. "Oh, no, no. This is just a Wiggenweld Potion to help with the deeper bruising—but how are you holding onto it?"

"With my hoof?" Sunset said, thinking this was obvious, but apparently it wasn't. "Pony hooves are made of the same material as unicorn horns. They're not good enough to cast spells with, but they still channel natural magic."

"Wonderful!" Xenophilius beamed, pulling slightly on the bottle to test Sunset's grip, to which she played along while rolling her eyes. "You say you can cast spells with your horn, hmm? Yes, and the hair is keratin as well."

Sunset cocked her head to the side. "Pony hair has its own natural magics, yeah, but what's your point? I can't grab things with my tail, though I guess I've seen an earth pony do that."

Xenophilius nodded along and pulled out his wand. "Well, you see, the wands we use contain a core of a magical substance, and it just so happens that one of these substances is the mane or tail hair of a unicorn."

"Which I've been telling you I am," Sunset reminded him.

"You've also been referring to ponies," Xenophilius pointed out. "Does that make you a unicorn pony?"

"Yes?" Sunset answered, not sure where he was going with this.

"Well, there you go, then," Xenophilius said, leaning back and looking pleased. "The unicorns we're familiar with aren't ponies."

"What do you mean they're not ponies?" Sunset asked. "What else would they be?"

"Well, as far as we're concerned, ponies are a diminutive breed of horses and you are exceptionally diminutive as these things go—a typical horse is as tall as a man, and a unicorn isn't much smaller, just more slender and graceful."

Sunset looked up at the man, considering his height. "I guess you're as tall as some horses, yeah," she said. "I can't imagine a unicorn horse, though, and they really don't talk?"

"They're beasts rather than beings as far as the Ministry of Magic is concerned," Xenophilius informed her. "How intelligent they are, it's hard to say since they're very reclusive, but they definitely don't speak, no."

Sunset mulled that over for a moment. There was, of course, one pony with a horn that was nearly horse-sized that she knew of. "These unicorn horses... they don't have wings, do they?"

"Oh, no, not at all!" Xenophilius said cheerfully. "There are plenty of kinds of winged horses—the abraxans are quite incredible and capable of looking in a first floor window—but I can't say I've ever heard reports of winged unicorns; tell me more!"

Sunset was rather peeved at the man's pushiness, but she didn't see any harm in it, and if there were any similarities between the two worlds, she wanted to know, so she explained about the three main pony tribes—earth ponies, pegasus ponies and unicorn ponies—and how they all had their own unique magics, with Xenophilius commenting on feathers being keratin, too.

Sunset then went on to explain alicorns, who were originally ponies but went through an ascension of some sort and had the characteristics and magic of all three pony tribes.

Xenophilius, in turn, explained the various equine magical creatures that the wizards knew of, pulling out a copy if Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them for reference, though most of them were nothing special. Hearing about all the strange mystical qualities of the unicorn horses was bizarre to Sunset, who didn't think that cursed silver blood was a normal thing to have, nor did she think that it made any sense for the adults to universally dislike males.

Thestrals were another type of equine that Xenophilius mentioned, though Sunset's interest in them was purely practical, as being invisible to the majority of people seemed like a useful quality to have... though maybe not, as you'd never know if any given individual could see you or not. Maybe the thestrals could tell, though?

The subject of thestrals brought up stories of bat-winged pegasi from Equestria, and the conversation went on to cover the possibly extinct crystal ponies, seaponies and Kirin. Xenophilius in turn told Sunset of Kelpies, Nightmares, Heliopaths and other lesser-known creatures, some more verified than others. Sunset answered with stories of shadow ponies and windigos, briefly mentioning the story of Hearth's Warming Eve, after which she was all out of topics to cover.

By the end, Xenophilius had filled a scroll hanging down to his feet with all the information that Sunset had given him on the equines of Equestria, and he'd left Sunset with his copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

All in all, it was maybe not as useful a conversation as Sunset would have liked it to be, but considering she was pretty much bedridden, it wasn't a bad way to spend a morning.

That was when Sunset remembered the potion she'd been handed and fished it out of her bedding. "You said this was a... Wiggenweld Potion? What is it? What does it do? I've only ever heard of zebras making potions; I've never taken one myself."

"Out of all the typical medical potions, the Wiggenweld Potion is the most general and helps with everything from fatigue to injuries and even counteracts sleeping draughts," Xenophilius explained. "It's not as good as a specialized spell or potion, but it's the best I could make that would help with the deeper bruising."

Sunset looked at the bottle curiously, then uncorked it, took a whiff and gagged. "This is foul! What's in it?" she asked, scrunching up her nose.

"Hmm? Oh, well, let's see..." Xenophilius said, thinking. "This version uses salamander blood, lionfish spines, flobberworm mucus, honeywater and boom berry juice... I think that's it. It's simpler to make it with wiggentree bark, but no less disgusting, I assure you."

Sunset looked down at the bottle, feeling a little queasy. If it would get her on her hooves, though, she'd just have to try to stomach it.

Xenophilius was right. It was disgusting.

It did work, though.

***

Sunset was immediately restless the moment she was no longer preoccupied by the pain of her injuries. Xenophilius had told her to rest and let the potion do its job, but it wasn't five minutes before she was itching to do something. She tried closing her eyes, but that just left the sensations coming from her horn to focus on.

At first, from the feel of it, Sunset expected that the Wiggenweld potion hadn't affected her horn at all; she still had that oversensitive sharpness to her magic sense that she'd been dealing with since she'd come to this world. Further exploration revealed that the chip that was missing nearer the base of her horn was still missing, but had been smoothed over, no longer at risk of catching on things or having the exposed nerves poked, and now that she was aware of it, the buzzing static she'd been feeling with her horn was also nearly gone.

The tip where Sunset's horn had been scraped to a point was similar—still ground to an off-center point, but protected by a thin layer of... not growth, exactly, since horns didn't normally grow or heal like that, but it was the best word she had for the smooth new keratin that the potion had produced.

It was rather miraculous, actually, and it left her wondering if the potions of Zebra shamans back in Equestria were this effective. It seemed unlikely. Celestia would know, wouldn't she? And if they were and Celestia knew about it, then she wouldn't let ponies with damaged horns stay crippled for their entire lives if she knew how they could be helped... right?

It hurt that Sunset no longer felt like she knew the answer to that. What had happened to the open and honest Princess Celestia who always wanted to talk things out?

Ugh. This was the problem with having to sit still with only herself for company; she made for lousy company and was a worse conversationalist. She didn't want to think about Princess Celestia; she'd done enough of that. That was in the past, now—and yet, every time she tried to focus on her horn and feel out the nearby area, she couldn't focus. Her mind just kept coming back to the reason she was here in the first place.

It was then that she remembered the copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them that Xenophilius had left her. She'd really already had her fill of that sort of thing already, but maybe it would get her mind off the mare who had once been her idol, mentor and at times, the closest thing she'd ever had to a mother.

It went about as well as you'd expect.

***

Sunset lasted less than an afternoon before the urge to do something got to her. That should be enough for the potion to run it's course, right? Honestly, she hadn't felt anything since the first thirty seconds anyway, so she was probably fine.

Leaving Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them down on the pile of blankets that she had in place of a proper bed, Sunset stood, straightened all her legs and stretched. There was an ache deep inside her everywhere but only the ache of sitting still too long.

Come to think of it, Sunset realized she hadn't actually been outside since coming to this world. Well, outside and aware, anyway. She had the vague impression from the brief moment before her carriage impact of a blue sky and yellow sun, but it was all a blur. Not wanting to think about the sun, Sunset instead focused on the desire to get an idea of the area she'd found herself in.

If something happened, she needed to know what her options were.

Being a single-dwelling tower, it wasn't hard for Sunset to find her way down and out of The Rookery. Xenophilius was at a writing desk on the ground floor and for once didn't comment on her passing, if he even noticed her. That was a relief, to be honest. Sunset may have liked attention, but not the kind of attention that demanded her attention.

In spite of Sunset's attempts to ignore the sun, the sun didn't get the message and insisted on blinding her the moment she opened the door. The scene was practically idyllic; it was mid afternoon with blue skies, scattered clouds and rolling green hills split by a river running into a small forest nearby. In the distance she thought she spotted a chimney or two peeking over a hill, but she wasn't certain.

Lightly populated with a selection of natural resources, it was pretty much exactly what she'd been aiming for when she'd been picking out a random place to floo to. In theory, she knew that most of Equestria wasn't much different from this, but she didn't really feel it; she'd spent most of her life living in Canterlot, high up on the side of a mountain, so all this greenery and these wide open spaces failed to inspire any feelings of home.

Admittedly, though, the tower did rather resemble a chess rook, so there was that.

Nearby, the child, Luna, was playing in the river and Sunset had a thought. Closing her eyes, she focused on feeling the magic out. She'd done this already while she was inside, but there she'd been surrounded by all the various magical knickknacks of the household.

Out here, it was a different experience; there really was almost nothing magical in the area outside of a few hotspots. There was the rookery, of course, and she didn't seem to have imagined those chimneys over the hills. There was also a diffused feeling that was probably some kind of ward, and the thing she was actually looking for: Luna, isolated enough to really get a good feel for her.

Humans were not ponies, that much was clear. It wasn't that Luna was weak, exactly—at least, not for a foal, anyway—but she didn't radiate magic like a pony did. Her magic was at once more chaotic and more contained than that of any Equestrian. In a way, it was like Luna had magic rather than being magic, but maybe that made sense for a kind of creature where the capability for magic might or might not breed true.

Interestingly, though, there was something radiating magic nearby that almost did feel like an equestrian... or a slice of Equestria, maybe. That got Sunset's full attention and she immediately began to search it out.

The source of the feeling was oddly difficult to triangulate, which just made it more interesting in Sunset's eyes, and before she knew it, she was erratically making her way into the brush of the forest. She'd walk a few steps, stop, cock her head one way, then the other, take a step to the side and go off in a different direction.

"What'cha doing?" asked a voice from right behind her.

Sunset jumped in startlement, whipping her head around to see that Luna had snuck up on her, the hem of her yellow dress still wet from the river.

Sunset opened her mouth to express her displeasure, but snapped it shut a moment later, remembering the previous night. Better to just ignore her.

"Do Crumple-Horned Snorkacks live in forests?" the girl asked, following Sunset as she went back to trying to find the Equestria-esque magic she'd felt. "Do they eat pine cones?"

"If you try to shove a pine cone in my mouth, I will return the favor," Sunset warned distractedly as she took two steps back, rotated on the spot three times and headed not quite back the way she came.

Knowing foals, it began to worry Sunset when she was able to spend the next two minutes tracking down the magic entirely uninterrupted. Sighing, she craned her neck over her shoulder to check and... yep. The girl was looking cross-eyed at a pine cone in her mouth. False alarm.

Finally, in a gap between the trees too small to call a clearing, Sunset found what she was looking for. It didn't look like much to the naked eye—actually, the naked eye seemed to quite disagree with it, wanting to be just about anywhere else—but there did seem to be a ring of mushrooms to mark it.

Magically, though, it was much more interesting. Another world touched this one here. It definitely wasn't Equestria—that much had been obvious from a distance—but it was closer to Equestria than it was to this world, and it absolutely reeked with magic. In fact, she thought it might actually be more magical than Equestria.

Suddenly, it was all clear to her. The mirror hadn't lied; it was just that this world of sad, barely magical humans was only the first step on her journey towards ascension.

"Thmm-thtt?" the girl asked through the pine cone in her mouth.

Sunset, of course, ignored her. In her head, she was already on the other side of the portal, free of this nightmare of a world, and she stepped into the ring of mushrooms to make it a reality.

"Mm! Thtp! Thmm-thtt, thtp!"

***

On the surface, almost nothing seemed to change. She was still in a lush, temperate forest standing inside a ring of mushrooms, and if pressed she might even say that the immediate area was identical, at least insofar as she had an eye for any specific shrub or tree.

Magically, though, things couldn't be any different. Things had inverted; she was not standing in a small island of mediocrity in the middle of a world that was absolutely rich with magic. Everything from the smallest leaf to the grass and dirt under her hooves was practically magic in physical form, and she actually winced at the sheer flood of it, suddenly wishing Xenophilius' Wiggenweld potion had brought back a little more of her horn's thickness so it wouldn't be quite so overwhelming.

Sunset shook her head, but that just made her magical sense swim, giving her a headache. She tried wrapping the crook of her hoof around her horn to dampen it a little, but that barely helped and she figured she'd be better off using her hooves to get out of the forest where she wouldn't be quite so crowded by life on all sides.

It took a little stumbling, but the edge of the forest was nearby and it did help, a little; enough that she could actually focus on actually taking in the world around her.

At first, glancing over to where The Rookery had been in the other world, Sunset thought she saw a tower in the shape of a bishop piece instead. On second glance, though, it was nothing of the sort; just a thatch-roofed cottage surrounded by neatly plowed fields full of ripe vegetables and a giggle from behind her.

Feeling a bit of déjà vu, Sunset turned her head, expecting to see that human girl had followed her, but there was nothing there.

Frowning, but shrugging the matter off, Sunset turned back to the small cottage, only it had two stories and a tile roof, now. There was another giggle—this one from Sunset's side—and she turned again, catching sight of several small, doll-sized humanoid figures with thin, iridescent wings before they disappeared into the overgrown grass and dandelions.

Sunset trotted over and kicked the grass to scare whatever they were out into the open, but she found nothing. Sighing, she turned back to the cottage and there was no cottage, nor were there any fields. The whole area looked completely untended; not just abandoned, but entirely wild.

Sunset was starting to get a bit worried. Sunset had known that this was a magical world, but she'd never really thought about what that might mean. Were these illusions, cast by the little flying humans to mislead her?

Sunset looked left, right and then left again. On the whole, nothing jumped out to her as different, but actually paying attention, it was the complete opposite. From glance to glance, all the details were different. Over there, a rock—but if her attention wandered, just a bit, it was an entirely different rock.

Sunset made her way over to the rock and put her hoof on it, confirming: yep, it's a rock. Performing her test again, her hoof remained solidly on the rock, but it was once again a different rock in every respect except for the particular spot she was touching, which hadn't changed.

Sunset let out a slightly hysterical giggle, and something behind the rock giggled back. She did not look.

Suddenly, Sunset had a thought and remembered Princess Celestia's stories of Discord and the sorts of things he'd done, roaming the land living up to his name and title as a spirit of chaos. Streets turned to rivers, ponies and animals trading places—and of course his favorite trick of all, playing the sun and moon like billiards.

This... was much more subtle, but even more maddening for it, and she was beginning to doubt that the little tiny winged humans had anything to do with it. It was much too consistently inconsistent; much too encompassing and pervasive. It was the world itself; there was just so much magic here that there wasn't much room for any of the little things that worlds usually had, like strict laws of physics and causality.

The really worrying thing was how close to this that Equestria actually was. It was pretty much the first thing she'd thought, before she'd actually known what she was looking at—that one could be mistaken for the other.

Sunset blinked and everything/nothing changed. The grass was—if it was possible—even more vibrant than before, and that went for everything. Even the sky seemed just a bit bluer now; the wispy clouds looked a little more solid and the little winged humanoids that she could only spot in the corner of her eye or at a distance were now breezies. The tower was back, but in the horse-head shape of a knight piece. High up on the side of a needle-like mountain was a city of ivory towers—not quite Canterlot but they were cousins at most—and towering up over the now much more sinister-looking forest was its twin all in black and twice as menacing.

Sunset was torn. On the one hoof, nothing so far had indicated that she was in any way wrong that this was the sort of place she might find the answers she was looking for—but on the other hoof, she did have a sense of self preservation and her sense of self-preservation did not like this place. A lot more than Sunset's sense of self-preservation didn't like this place, actually. Sunset, as a whole, did not like this place.

That probably meant that it would be worth it, though.

Still, between the shining white city on the mountain and the sinister black castle in the spooky forest, Sunset knew which one she was going to pick.

***

Sunset didn't know what she had expected to find in I Can't Believe It's Not Canterlot, but colorful, iridescent bug-ponies wasn't it. The weird thing was, they didn't even resemble the breezies all that much. Sure, they both had members with diaphanous, insectile wings, but the breezies were otherwise nearly normal-looking ponies, with longer legs and antennae. Sunset would have expected the larger ones to be Flutterponies, in that case, which were essentially the same writ large, but without the antennae.

These creatures, on the other hoof, were ironically much more insect-like. Though their proportions were more that of a typical equine, they had hard carapaces in all sorts of different summer colors from blue to green to gold with the specific shades shifting along the gamut depending on the angle.

More interestingly, each and every one of them had a horn like a unicorn, though they were curved and many of them jagged along the inside curve. The scene was at once familiar and unfamiliar. The nobility back home would have celebrated the horns and bright colors and been confused by the lack of any actual white in the crowd.

Well, if they could get over the bug pony thing, which, admittedly, they wouldn't.

Also, none of this was real, probably—or didn't look like this, in any case, if it looked like anything, which was still up for debate if she had anypony to debate it with.

What confused Sunset was where the image for these not-ponies had actually come from. The breezies, certainly, she was familiar with and resembled the small winged humanoids she'd seen at first, but these? She'd never even heard of any such thing. Were they a real thing back in Equestria? How did that matter if Sunset had never heard of them? What in tartarus even was this place?

The insect ponies, for the most part, acted similar enough to the breezies, but without the actual hiding. Instead, they simply kept their distance, watched, gossiped and giggled. It would have been a little off-putting if Sunset had any intent to actually talk to them, but she knew where she was going.

The white palace was one of the more different things about the city. Like Celestia's palace, it was mostly white marble, but that was where the similarities ended. This place didn't have the gold and rounded corners, but was a lot more stark and austere, with tall arches and dagger-like towers stretching into the sky.

Sunset kind of liked it, actually.

When she got to the doors, the guards let her through, and the inside was similar—again resembling Celestia's palace, though the carpets were blue and green and the interiors much taller.

The throne room was a long hall lined with statues surrounding a fountain on each side. A blue and green rug ran down the center, stopping just before a series of steps that rose the throne up enough to make ponies look up.

On the throne sat the princess—or probably the queen—and Sunset wasn't sure if she should have expected it or not. Surrounded by servants and courtiers, the queen was, of course, of a height with Celestia, if not a little taller, and was just about everything that would be expected of combining the two ideas. What threw Sunset off, though, was the color: the queen's coloring was just as iridescent as her subjects, but it was more an opaline iridescence rather than insectile—mostly a milky white, with only a hint of the blues, greens and golds making themselves known when she moved.

It was very Princess Celestia, but a stark difference from those around her in a way that set her apart from them, and the smile she wore as Sunset approached couldn't have been less like Equestria's princess if she'd tried, and it wasn't because of the sharp teeth.

Well, it wasn't only because of the teeth, anyway.

Sunset came to a stop where the rug did, at the base of the stairs leading up to the throne, and the queen gestured to the servants at the side of the room. "Welcome, visitor," the queen said, smiling openly, but not precisely kindly. Two servants approached, supplicating themselves and presenting a variety of fruits and drinks. "Call me Titania, Seelie Queen of the Summer Court. Eat, drink," she prompted, an unreadable look in her eyes. "And give me your name."

"Sunset Shimmer," she absently answered, eyeing the food. Subtly, she lit her horn and cast an identification spell in the same motion as she took one of each with her levitation, as she'd been taught. To Queen Titania's credit, neither the food nor drink seemed to be poisoned, and she was suddenly very curious to know what food with so much magic would be like.

Besides, mangos had always been her favorite fruit, when she could get them. They hadn't exactly been common in Canterlot. With a flash of her magic, the skin peeled off and she took a bite.

Her eyes immediately went wide. Absently, she chewed and swallowed the bite, and while it was delicious and invigorating, that wasn't what shocked her. Staring at the mango, she took another bite, just to make sure, and confirmed it; there was no seed.

Seedless mangos. Brilliant.

Okay, maybe she was overreacting a bit, but it had come out of left field and she eagerly finished the mango off, savoring every bit of its excessively magical flesh.

No sooner had she done so, than there was a commotion back at the door. She casually turned to look behind her, sniffing the drink to see if it would surprise her just as much. Pear wine wasn't as shocking as the seedless mango, but it would definitely be to her taste.

What was slightly more shocking was the golden-haired child that came charging through the guards at the door and kicked the glass of pear wine away from her face just as she was about to take a sip.

Rude.

Also, wow. She had forgotten just how much bigger than ponies the humans were, and it was all the more jarring when surrounded by equines and architecture scaled to her own height.

Luna was bent over, hands on her knees, out of breath, and that was how she spotted the mango peel on the floor, her face draining of color. "No! You're not supposed to eat the food!" she shouted, overly distraught. "Now you can't come back!"

She blinked, looking up at the girl. "Okay?" she said, not sure how that worked but also not seeing the problem. "I wasn't planning on going back anyway; this world is a hundred times more magical. I'm more likely to figure out how to become an alicorn and how to get home from here—I'd bet it's even dimensionally closer to Equestria, too."

Luna puffed up her cheeks in a pout and put her hands on her hips. "It doesn't work like that!" she shouted, sounding like this was the end of the world to her.

Internally, she scoffed. Kids.

"You ate the food!" Luna reiterated. "You can't—"

Queen Titania politely cleared her throat, and though that was all it was, the entire throne room fell silent—even Luna.

Naturally, she turned to look up at Queen Titania, noticing the glass that was laying on its side just at the top of the stairs leading up to the throne, empty. The seelie queen's sheer silk dress was wet, plastered to the front of her carapace. She frowned. Was the seelie queen wearing a dress before?

Well, she was wearing a dress now, and it was ruined.

For some reason, though, Queen Titania didn't seem angry, she seemed amused. "An alicorn, is it?" she asked, leaning back in the throne and placing one hoof under her chin. After a moment of consideration, she made a wave of her hoof and a tiny pinprick of light came into being in front of her. "Something like this, then? But what will you give me?"

Her eyes widened, and she stepped forward involuntarily. She was about to agree, but then caught sight of another smaller light that was lying on the throne's armrest next to her. "What's that?" she asked.

Queen Titania looks at the speck of light as if she'd just noticed it. Casually, she reached down and picked it up in her hoof. "This? You really don't know? You haven't even noticed?"

~~Sunset~~ honestly had no idea what the seelie queen was even implying. Something she should have noticed? She looked up at Luna to see if she knew what the seelie queen was talking about, but the girl was just gaping up at the second light in growing despair. Soon, though, the turned to look down at ~~Sunset~~ in horror.

"That's your name—" it seemed like she was trying to say a word, but it wasn't coming out. "You gave them your name, you dummy!"

"What." ~~Sunset~~ had no idea what that was supposed to even mean.

Luna stomped her feet in frustration, unable to believe this was even happening and that she had to explain it. "They asked for your name and you gave it to them!"

"Yes," ~~Sunset~~ confirmed, thinking that sounded reasonable.

"So now it's over there and you don't have it any more!" Luna shouted.

~~Sunset~~ rolled her eyes and said, "Don't be ridiculous; that's not a thing that can happen," she insisted. "My name is..." her voice trailed off as the particular words failed to come to mind. "Something about the appearance of light from the sky? Starlight Sparkle? Twilight Glimmer?"

"See?" Luna said, pleading for ~~Sunset~~ to get the idea. "It's gone! Even if you guess it, you won't recognize it!"

"No," ~~Sunset~~ denied, going back over all the times that Princess Celestia had said her name, be it with fondness or frustration, but the specifics eluded her. "No, you just—you put me on the spot," she insisted, slightly hysterical. "I'll have it in a second..."

"You know, this is so sad, it almost isn't even fun," Queen Titania said, bringing the attention back onto herself. "But only almost," she said, breaking into her wickedly-fanged grin. "So, tell me little pony." She motioned at the light of magic that she had conjured, which would allow ~~Sunset~~ to become an alicorn. "What will you give me?"

~~Sunset~~ wasn't just speechless; her entire mind had just stopped, refusing to believe that something like this was even possible. Names were like cutie marks; they were an inviolable part of a pony. You couldn't just... give one away with a technical verbal agreement that didn't even have the intent.

It just wasn't how things worked... except apparently it was. It was how they worked here, and that was why she'd come here; because the magic ran deeper here than it did in Equestria—because things were possible here that she was denied in Equestria.

~~Sunset~~ stared up at the pinprick of light that she was being offered, and she thought she could see herself as an alicorn in it, the same as the mirror that Princess Celestia had shown her. It was right there, but she wasn't stupid enough to just accept it. Recent events begged to differ, but that had been different. She hadn't the slightest idea that such a thing was even possible... but how much of a defense was that when a ten-year-old child knew better? A ten-year-old child that had been only too happy to tell ~~Sunset~~ anything she asked.

That... wasn't important right now. What was important was the opportunity in front of her and not falling into another trap. "...We can talk about price in a moment, but can you also get me home?"

Queen Titania seemed briefly surprised. She then threw her head back and began cackling in laughter. ~~Sunset~~ backed up, confused as to what had set that off and flattening her ears at the noise. Quickly, all the servants and courtiers in the room had joined in, none of them kindly.

By the time the laughing had died down, Queen Titania was looking at ~~Sunset~~ with something between pity and astonishment. "Oh—you're serious!" she announced. "Little pony, weren't you listening when the girl-child said it? You ate our food—you're of the Faerie Lands now, and there's no leaving—this is your home."

~~Sunset~~ felt dread pool in her stomach. There was no denial, partly because she'd already been through it, but also because she could actually understand how that might work. She looked down at herself, as if she could see the difference, but she didn't have the time to properly examine herself with magic to see what the food might have done to her.

"You—you..." ~~Sunset~~ didn't have the words, but unlike the situation with her name, she had no difficulty contextualizing this situation in the least. Quickly, all of the greed, uncertainty and fear that were tugging her in different ways were redirected into one all-encompassing feeling of indignant fury and she didn't hesitate to express that fury in the most immediate way possible—with a beam of pure fire from her horn.

Queen Titania seemed unbothered, having bent just to the side while ~~Sunset~~'s spell toppled the top of the too-tall throne. "Now now, ~~Sunset~~," the seelie queen said, and when she spoke ~~Sunset~~'s name, it seemed to skip past everyone's ears and strike down into the deepest part of her. "That's enough," the seelie queen said, and, just like that, without thought or consideration, ~~Sunset~~ agreed. There was no struggling or fighting against it; it was just as if the seelie queen had pointed out something obvious. ~~Sunset~~ had expressed her displeasure and the matter was over. Anything more would be like a child throwing a tantrum.

The actual child in the room, on the other hoof, expressed her displeasure in a different way. No one had been paying attention to her at all until, moments after Queen Titania's command, as she was looming forward, a thin chain and two weights wrapped around her like a bolas.

The metal sizzled against the seelie queen's carapace and she began to scream. She threw herself back against the throne, and then down on the ground rolling over, but the chain—which on second look seemed to be fashioned from paperclips and two halves of a locket—seemed to behave to her as if it was made of the thickest steel.

Luna didn't waste any time. Before the seelie queen hit the ground, she was running up the steps to the throne and grabbing the mote of light that represented ~~Sunset~~'s name. Several heartbeats later, she was coming back down the steps and dragging ~~Sunset~~ along.

That is, until ~~Sunset~~ shook her off, still staring up at the seelie queen—not for any lingering command from her name, but for something else. She was hardly thinking, but she knew that there was no situation that would make her leave this room without that second mote of light.

The one that would make her an alicorn.

~~Sunset~~ thought she was decisive and quick. Just a little trip up the stairs and back and she would be right behind Luna. It was child's play in the most literal way; she'd just watched a child do it, and in that, at least, she succeeded. She snatched up the light off the ground next to the screaming seelie queen and was on her way back down the stairs when she saw it.

The girl—Luna—lying face down between the door guards, blood on the ground beneath her.

"No!" ~~Sunset~~ yelled, and though her immediate thought was that she needed Luna in order to make sense of this world, she did feel guilty about it. Briefly. As she ran back down the hall, ~~Sunset~~ blasted the seelie guards standing over Luna, who weathered the assault much less well than their queen.

When ~~Sunset~~ finally reached Luna, it became clear that she was alive and conscious, but curled up on the ground, crying, with her hand pressed over her eye because... because that's where the blood was coming from.

In the moment that ~~Sunset~~ let herself feel just a tiny bit bad about that, seelie guards from outside the throne room had blocked off their escape, and those from beside the throne had stopped trying to help their queen and decided to surround ~~Sunset~~ and Luna from the other side, but this was not the first time she had been in such a situation.

What did it say about her that this would be the third such place she would have to escape in as many days on as many worlds?

Fortunately for ~~Sunset~~, subtlety had gone out the window and ~~Sunset~~ was very good at not being subtle. The first thing she did was snap up a flaming shield around herself and Luna to ward off the seelie guards, then, she did what she could to get Luna on her feet, which she struggled to do. ~~Sunset~~ only came up to the child's waist, so carrying her on her back wasn't going to work.

"Get ready," she said and began to charge up her horn for as strong a teleport as the could manage. She wished she could also blast the throne room as they left, but it was much more important to get as far away as possible. Several moments later, she finally reached her peak and the two of them disappeared in a blinding flash, the flaming shield guttering out the moment they were gone.

~~Sunset~~ would like to say that the two of them hit the ground running when they appeared in the middle of not-Canterlot, but it took a few moments and some cajoling to get her bearings and get Luna moving. What Luna lacked in focus, though, she made up with in the length of her legs, and ~~Sunset~~ had to run flat out to keep up with her.

On spotting two outsiders fleeing the city, the city guards gave chase and ~~Sunset~~ soon gave them a reason to do so as she warded them off with blasts of fire. They clearly didn't yet know what had gone down in the throne room, or they likely would have been a little more determined. ~~Sunset~~ didn't know why exactly paperclips seemed to burn the seelie queen, but it had been a nasty thing to do.

Justified, yes, but far more than ~~Sunset~~ had expected from the young girl.

Whatever the cause for it, it didn't seem to matter now as Luna didn't seem to have any more paperclip chains or similar to fend off the Seelie, which, well, considering the bloody hand she still had over her eye, was fair.

That little worm of guilt squirmed to life inside of her once more, but she did what she could to not let it distract her.

As the two of them neared the edge of the city, the tall gates towered over them, very clearly closed. ~~Sunset~~ paid them no mind and charged up her horn once more, flashing the two of them out of the city with another blinding teleport, taking them into the countryside.

Finally, they were free.

***

As it turned out, they were not, in fact, free. ~~Sunset~~ and Luna only had a moment's reprieve to rest and catch their breath when squads of bug-ponies began to fly out of the city. It hadn't been obvious on the ground, but apparently every single one of them had the diaphanous wings that she'd noted before in addition to their horns.

That just wasn't fair. It was like a combination of what had happened with Cadance suddenly showing up as an alicorn, and also when a cockroach you're about to smash suddenly takes off and flies straight at you.

~~Sunset~~ and Luna did what they could to evade the search parties who, by their behavior, almost certainly knew what had been done to their queen, and though she could throw them off for a time with her teleports, gaining a few moments rest, nothing she could do seemed to shake them off completely.

~~Sunset~~ wasn't sure how long it took, but the running and the teleporting and the occasional blasting of any of the bugs that got close eventually started to take a toll on her, and even some of the injuries that she'd thought the Wiggenweld potion had cured were making themselves known again.

Who knew that doctors actually knew what they were talking about when they prescribed bed rest?

At some point, ~~Sunset~~ and Luna had gone from being chased through lush green mountains to lush green hills. ~~Sunset~~ was pretty sure that was impossible no matter how long they'd been running, but then, come to think of it, she also didn't quite remember spending very long going up the mountain either.

The sight of the black castle towering up out of the dark forest gave ~~Sunset~~ an idea, though. "What... do you think... the chances are... that these bugs... don't... get along with... whatever's... in... the forest?" she asked Luna during one of their brief moments of respite.

Luna had run out of tears and the blood and... other fluids from her eye had run dry, but she was still hunched over, one hand on her face and the other holding it there across her chest. She didn't give a verbal answer, but nodded, and the two of them took off again, heading into the dark forest.

***

In hindsight, it probably should have been obvious that there would be more to the forest with the evil castle in it than a population of ideologically contrary residents, but those residents were rather eye-catching all on their own, so ~~Sunset~~ and Luna could be forgiven for overlooking the more subtle dangers.

The plan did work, though. Almost as soon as they had entered the forest, the number of close encounters with the shiny bug-ponies dropped significantly. Unfortunately, it did so in inverse proportion to encounters with the forest's inhabitants, who—surprise surprise—were more bug-ponies, only with an evil makeover and then some and had the manners to match their appearance.

Now, ~~Sunset~~ may have been on the outs with Princess Celestia, but that didn't mean that she'd forgotten all of her lessons. ~~Sunset~~ wasn't one to call people 'evil' lightly. Just look at the humans; their entire government, with the floo surveillance, memory removal and salaried executioner really gave off that 'evil tyrant' vibe, but it didn't reflect on the species as a whole; just look at the Lovegoods. These creatures, though... well, evil makeover just about summed it up.

Like the seelie, these—let's call them, 'unseelie,' since they weren't kind enough to introduce themselves—these unseelie were also bug-ponies of the same general build, but instead of colorful, iridescent carapaces, they were all a uniform, smoky gray so dark it was nearly black, and what bits of color they had in their wings and eyes were a sickly greenish-yellow. Sickly was really the word for it, too. ~~Sunset~~ wasn't sure the first time, but after several close calls with the unseelie that let her get a better look at them, it was clear that as a whole, they weren't all there.

No, literally. They had holes in them. They weren't injuries—at least, she didn't think so—they just had holes in them; straight through, mostly in the legs like they were rotting or rusting, but some of them had them elsewhere.

~~Sunset~~ supposed that the holes could be the scars of grievous wounds healed over with magic like her horn, which they superficially resembled, but she wasn't sure if she liked that comparison—especially since the connection might be more literal than she was comfortable with.

It was easy to forget that what she was seeing wasn't the immutable truth, and metaphor might be an actual tripping hazard if she wasn't careful.

Suffice it to say, that she had a lot on her mind, and getting split up from Luna wasn't something she'd been expecting to have to worry about.

It was an easy enough mistake to make; it wasn't as if the two of them were joined at the hip. ~~Sunset~~ had done what she could to support Luna, but their heights and gaits didn't match up enough to make that easy. Luna was a blonde biped twice as tall as ~~Sunset~~, so naturally they'd taken slightly different routes up out of a ravine. Luna had gone to one side of a cluster of trees and ~~Sunset~~ had gone to the other.

She'd been about to suggest that they make their way back to the ring of mushrooms that had brought them to this world and see what they could work out, but when she'd looked up, Luna was gone.

At first, she had expected that the girl had finally collapsed. They hadn't been in the forest long, but they were both dead on their feet and Luna wasn't a magical pony; she was just a child. ~~Sunset~~ had gone looking for her, then, but the obvious trail out of the ravine just... stopped. ~~Sunset~~ was not a woodspony of any sort, but Luna was wounded, exhausted and dragging her feet.

She'd been taken.

That was... well... uhh... The Unseelie didn't have the same grudge against them as the Seelie, but they'd attacked the two at every opportunity anyway. Luna was probably dead, and there was no actual chance that ~~Sunset~~ could save her all alone.

~~Sunset~~ felt kind of bad for being a shitty person, but—no, wait. If she went back, she could tell Xenophilius. Xenophilius would actually know what to do, and if the Unseelie were weak to paperclips or thumbtacks or whatever, he would know what type of office supplies would burn them on contact.

Yeah. Yeah, that was the sensible thing to do.

It didn't work, of course.

~~Sunset~~ hadn't quite forgotten that she'd been told that she couldn't leave the Faerie Lands as Seelie Queen had called them, but she'd definitely sort of pushed it to the back of her mind and pretended everything was fine.

Everything was not fine.

Finding the mushroom circle again had been surprisingly easy. Where, from the other side, feeling it out with magic had been like trying to chase down a mirage, here, it was the opposite, and before she knew it, she was there.

Actually returning to Luna's world, though, was a problem. The portal, if you could call it that, was there; she could feel the other world on the other side, but trying to push through burned, like it was rejecting her.

She tried—she really did—but she couldn't do it, and once she calmed down, sat and concentrated on her magic, she could see why. She was still different from the rest of the creatures of the Faerie Lands, but not as different as she should have been.

To put a finer point on it, though she was mostly guessing, she was still physical in a way that things here weren't entirely, but magically, she had acclimated to the environment of the Fairy lands, proof of which was the headache she no longer had, even stretching her magical sense as much as she could push it.

Ironically, this actually gave her hope. It meant that she wasn't tied to the Faerie Lands as a concept, but an environment, and, well, it was called the Magical Land of Equestria for a reason.

She might get to go home an alicorn just yet.

~~Sunset~~ blinked, then panicked. She remembered taking the mote of light that was supposed to be her ascension in the throne room—it was how Luna had gotten hurt, after all—but then they'd been running and she wasn't sure what she'd done with it. One moment she'd been holding it in her hoof and—

~~Sunset~~ blinked again, looking down at her hoof, which was holding the mote of light. It wasn't like it had gotten stuck in the frog of her hoof or anything. She hadn't had it just a moment ago—or, she guesses she did, but not physically.

~~Sunset~~ really, really hated this place.

But now she had her ascension sitting in her hoof, and nothing else mattered. Maybe it would have been better to have used it while they were on the run, if she'd thought of it, but maybe it would have incapacitated her long enough for her to be captured. It didn't matter. It was here, now.

~~Sunset~~ swallowed to wet her suddenly dry throat. She made one cursory look around to make sure she wasn't being snuck up upon, then steeled herself. No questions, no delaying, no navel gazing. She picked it up from her hoof with her magic, held it in front of herself and then...

How exactly does one use a concept distilled into a magical pinprick of light?

Apparently exactly like that.

***

After an indeterminable amount of time not existing, ~~Sunset~~ burst back into being in a ball of flame, took a deep breath and opened her eyes.

That was...

She didn't know what that was.

Was that what ascension was supposed to be like? In hindsight, it had maybe been a bit foolish to assume that she could just be given—that she could just steal—an ascension and assume it was the real thing, and yet... and yet... it had felt real enough.

~~Sunset~~ stood, stretched and checked her flank like a tweenaged foal looking for a cutie mark. Sure enough, a little more forward on what was actually her flank, was a wing.

Huh. That was a thing, and yet... that was kind of it. She had wings, but otherwise just kind of felt normal. A check of her memory confirmed she was still missing her name, and a check of her magic revealed... actually, it was slightly different in some indiscernible way.

She might have been a tiny bit taller, but was this really it? Was she really an alicorn now, or was this just some mad queen's impression? Part of her wished she knew more about how this world worked, but the rest of her wasn't sure that she wanted to be able to understand the underlying logic, if there even was any.

Realizing that she was getting into the weeds of frustration with the Faerie Lands again with nothing to actually go on, ~~Sunset~~ went back to taking stock of her physical differences again. She would be glad to have a whole and undamaged horn again.

Her horn was undamaged, certainly, but as she ran her hoof up it she did not encounter the smooth, fluted cone she expected. There was a gap and a too-sharp point, as there had been since her impact with the mechanized carriage... only not exactly. The bit-sized chip had been out of the side of her horn, but now it was at the rear, smooth, round, uniform and symmetrical, like it had been put there intentionally.

As if it was supposed to be like that.

~~Sunset~~ took a deep breath, trying to control the voice inside her head that was screaming that this was wrong—wrong—wrong. She did not have time for a breakdown right now. This was... this was what she deserved, wasn't it? She would never be able to look at herself and not think of the unseelie, with holes scattered through their extremities.

Like they were rotting.

Was she rotten?

She remembered turning around and seeing a little girl lying on the ground, bleeding from her eye.

She might be.

***

With her newfound ascension—however valid—~~Sunset~~ took another crack at the mushroom circle leading back to the other world, but still couldn't do it. The burning was actually a bit more bearable, but that wasn't saying much. Clearly, merely being an alicorn or the approximation of one wasn't the solution, but at least it hadn't set her any further back, either.

That there was a solution, ~~Sunset~~ would continue to believe, but she was getting nowhere with this. Maybe... maybe if she tracked down Luna, she would have some idea... and the little worm of guilt nagging her about the girl would go away.

~~Sunset~~'s ascension to alicornhood turned out not to be terribly useful in tracking down Luna deeper in the forest, which was kind of an issue, given she'd decided not to do it in the first place on account of all the danger. She already had the personal hatred of one city of bug-creatures; she didn't want to make it two for two by making herself too obvious, even if she actually knew how to fly.

Mind, the evil ones had attacked on sight anyway, but they hadn't signaled an alarm or organized search parties, and she was pretty sure there was nowhere she could go if both sides were actively hunting for her head.

Especially if she actually was stuck here.

But no. She wouldn't believe that, and really, they'd already set themselves against her by (probably) taking Luna, so there wasn't any getting out of it.

She'd just have to be very, very careful. And quiet.

If ~~Sunset~~ was still alive at the end of the day, she was going to have to work out some actually subtle ways to use her magic. Sighing, she kept an eye out for a nice heavy stick on her way to the evil-looking castle at the center of the forest.

***

The strangest thing happened as ~~Sunset~~ got closer to the castle: things slowly became different. Now, admittedly, that was the general rule for the Faerie Lands as she'd discovered immediately upon her arrival here, but there was a difference in that kind of different and this kind of different. Normally, in ~~Sunset~~'s experience so far, the fine or even the not-so-fine details would change from moment to moment and glance to glance, but the overall impression would stay the same.

The shift that ~~Sunset~~ saw in the scenery as she neared the castle was almost like stepping into a story of a different genre or a painting by a different artist: the trees went from lush and temperate, bordering on swampy, to pines and firs with almost nothing in the way of foliage at ground level. So, too, did the environment itself change; the air acquired a chill, night fell and even the shadows seemed sharper.

What was even stranger was the creatures. The small winged humanoids that ~~Sunset~~ had seen in the first few minutes after arriving in the Faerie Lands, had become breezies, and their evil counterparts in the forest had been some kind of adorable, round, fuzzy things—but now, in this part of the forest, the tiny winged humans were back and what she'd expected to be an unseelie patrol had turned out to be something new entirely.

Okay, well, they were larger versions of the insect-winged humanoids, admittedly, but they differed from their smaller kin in having pale skin, pointed ears and intricate black armor or clothing.

This, she supposed, must be how the Faerie Lands arranged themselves around Luna, which was good, since it meant that Luna was nearby, and interesting because it meant that there was only a single way things could be at any one time, and the two of them weren't seeing different things.

Ironically, Luna's version was a boon in other ways, too. Luna's unseelie were all human-scale, and maybe on the taller scale even then. ~~Sunset~~'s coloring still stood out like a flame in the night, but being at a smaller scale than the people and architecture still made sneaking around significantly easier.

Of course, that didn't make it easy. The castle had a moat, for one, and while the chill of the area would be enough to dissuade her from swimming it, the fact that it was black as tar and hiding who-knows-what was a better reason not to risk it, and neither did she want to try flying for the first time in such a situation, even for such a short distance.

Fortunately, ~~Sunset~~'s color and magic actually worked out in her favor, for once. High up on the castle walls, each topping a tower, were several great, giant watch fires. Normally, ~~Sunset~~'s teleportation was like a flaming beacon that no one could miss, but teleporting next to an even greater source of fire, she was essentially invisible.

It was a good thing she knew how to make herself fireproof, though.

From her vantage point on one of the castle's watchtowers, ~~Sunset~~ learned two things; one, that the dark and evil castle was, against expectations, just as populated as its twin, and two, that it didn't matter, because Luna was being kept all alone in a crystal cage in the tallest tower.

To ~~Sunset~~, who was from Equestria, this seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do and it was literally the first place she looked.

The place where Luna was being kept wasn't so much a room as much as a bell tower, open on three sides, with Luna's cage as the bell, and when ~~Sunset~~ teleported in, she was hunched over, hugging her legs to herself. At the flash and brief warmth of ~~Sunset~~'s teleport, though, she looked up, and their eyes met.

At first, ~~Sunset~~ was relieved because it looked like Luna's injury wasn't as bad as it had looked, but then, she realized that the eyes she was looking at were different colors. One, on the left, was her natural pale silver; the other—the eye that she had lost—was a faintly glowing teal.

A very familiar teal.

This might have been slightly more alarming if ~~Sunset~~ wasn't very certain that she was still in possession of both of her eyes, so clearly, the color was a coincidence.

Oddly, though, Luna didn't seem surprised or excited to see her, though there was a faint bit of hope.

"Stand back," ~~Sunset~~ said, then realized that Luna was already at the far end of the cage. "Or, well, close your eyes or something," she added.

Luna remained looking at ~~Sunset~~ for a moment, then silently did as she was told, tucking her head behind her knees.

~~Sunset~~ tried subtlety at first, insofar as a flame like a welding torch is subtle, but the crystal seemed to just suck in the heat, and when she took a break to check her progress, it wasn't even warm to the touch. ~~Sunset~~ harrumphed, and decided to try something else, looking for the stick she'd brought.

...

She had brought the stick, right?

Actually, she had—sort of. Like with her ascension, the world just seemed to have forgotten about it until she remembered it. Sunset lifted the club-like stick in her magic and... reconsidered. "Uhh..."

Luna looked up in question.

"This isn't going to, you know, ring your cage like a bell or something, is it?" she asked. "Since this place is like a bell tower?"

Luna's gaze shifted to the stick and said, "Maybe," shortly followed by, "Don't bother. Only cold iron will work."

~~Sunset~~ cocked her head in confusion, then just flashed inside the cage with a teleport—only it didn't work. She flashed, then felt like she hit something and was knocked back with enough force to send her sliding nearly to the open edge of the tower.

"Ow," she remarked, slowly getting back on her hooves, then pretended that hadn't happened. "What the heck does 'cold' iron even mean?"

Luna blinked. "Well, horseshoes are traditional," she said, looking down at ~~Sunset~~'s hooves, which were unshod since she wasn't a labor-pony. "But the paperclips worked. Daddy said that it's about 'representing the dominion of man over nature'... but I'm a girl and it still worked for me, so I don't think that's it. Another time he also said something about the fae being mean to the spirit of iron, so iron is mean back to the fae? Fae hold grudges too, so I guess that's fair, but they shouldn't."

"...So, anything that isn't cast?" ~~Sunset~~ surmised, taking note that the creatures here were apparently 'fae.' "Not that it matters since I don't see any iron—which I guess you wouldn't, if it burned you..."

An awkward silence passed as Sunset tried to think of some way to get Luna free.

At length, Luna sniffled, and whispered. "I want my daddy."

~~Sunset~~ winced. "I... I tried to go get him," she said, weakly defending herself.

"I know," Luna said, sounding hopeless.

~~Sunset~~ blinked. "Wait, what?"

Luna raised her head and met ~~Sunset~~'s eyes again. She pointed at her teal eye, and said, "Did you forget? I have your name."

~~Sunset~~ opened her mouth, paused, and said, trying to yell and whisper at the same time, "How does that even work?!"

Luna sighed and took a deep breath. Then, she took another deep breath. And another. When she finally spoke, she seemed calmer, more serious and simultaneously not all there. "Fae aren't physical; they're half a dozen concepts in a trench coat if concepts could have memories, personalities, hold grudges, take everything literally and take everything, literally. If they ask for your name, or your attention, or your patience, and you allow them, they can take those concepts from you—but that also means that concepts are more real to them than anything else; they can't lie or break their word."

"...Well, that's useful information that I wish I had," ~~Sunset~~ politely admitted, "But what I wanted to know is how is my name your eye?!"

"Oh." Luna looked at ~~Sunset~~, looked down at herself, then back at ~~Sunset~~. "I don't know. I was missing an eye and I had your name?"

Just when ~~Sunset~~ thought she had gotten a hold on things... this. Not only this, but it made her feel shitty just asking, "...Can I have it back?"

Luna cocked her head, thinking. "I don't know, can you?"

~~Sunset~~ was about to yell and demand that Luna give her name back, but what was she going to do, tear out her eye?

Before she could figure out what she was going to say, Luna continued uninterrupted. "Your name is Sunset Shimmer."

"Yes?" Sunset said, slightly annoyed at the obvious statement when she realized that it wasn't obvious at all. "Wait, that actually worked?" she said, then belatedly looked at Luna's eye with some guilt. The eye was still there.

"No, I don't think it did," Luna said, lost in thought. "I still have your name."

"But my name is Sunset Shimmer, right?" she said, confused and feeling a little paranoid. "I—I mean... my name is actually Sunset Shimmer, isn't it? You didn't just make me think my name is Sunset Shimmer?"

"It is, but I think I've just given you permission to use it," Luna said, biting her thumb.

"Okay I guess that's apparently a thing you can do," Sunset said, still not quite over her momentary panic. "What... else can you do. To me. And come to think of it, how does having my name for an eye mean you knew I tried to go—I mean, get your dad?"

"Well, I can see through it, obviously," Luna said plainly.

"It wouldn't be much of an eye if you couldn't," Sunset sarcastically reasoned.

Luna nodded. "So I saw when you got lost and went to the faerie ring."

"Okay, first—you got lost and foalnapped, not me," Sunset insisted. "And what do you mean you saw? You weren't there!"

Luna just stared blankly at Sunset. "We just went over this. I can see through it."

Sunset was half expecting this to be another nonsensical thing out of nowhere when the obvious finally clicked for her. "You mean you can see what I see?"

"Yes," she confirmed, paused, then unclarified, "And no."

"Yes and no?" Sunset asked, running out of the will to even ask.

"Yes," she repeated, pointing at her teal eye. "And no," she said, pointing at her silver eye.

"Obviously," Sunset dryly responded, then sighed and prepared herself for what was coming next. "What else?"

"Hmm." Luna placed her finger on her cheek in thought. "A faerie having your name gives them power over you, but I'm not a faerie," she reasoned. "I think I could fake it, though."

"Great," Sunset groused, her mood dipping. "I'm maybe an alicorn, but I'm trapped here and I have to do everything you say."

"Yes, maybe, and no, only if I use your name like that," Luna summarized.

"How would you know if I'm really an alicorn or an approximation—and how am I maybe not trapped here?" Sunset asked, pacing back and forth in agitation.

Luna shook her head. "It's conceptual, and... it's conceptual. That was the concept of 'alicorn' that you stole, so it can't be an approximation—and I have conceptual power over you, so maybe I can make you able to go through the faerie ring. What's an alicorn?"

"An alicorn is the immortal combination of earth pony, pegasus pony and unicorn pony," Sunset explained, gesturing at her hooves, wings and horn, trying not to think of the latter's... deformity. "It's an ascension that only a few ponies have ever managed, and Princess Celestia—my mentor—my ex-mentor—was one of them.

"She was grooming me for the ascension, then just... stopped answering my questions—and—and then this 'Cadance' shows up a brand new alicorn from some podunk town on the coast and I guess... I guess all the time I spent learning from her meant nothing because she cast me out rather than answer one simple question: why?!" Sunset emphasized the last word with a stomp of her forehooves on the black stone floor, then made an effort to calm herself. "But I'm over that now, being an alicorn and all, even if I had to steal it."

"Oh," Luna said, visibly processing that. "Stealing it was the right answer, actually."

"Princess Celestia would—will—disagree," Sunset grumbled, insisting on pretending that she would get back to Equestria some day. "Especially if she knew that fae—faeries?—whatever you called them—honor agreements and can't even lie."

Luna blinked. "Oh, you misunderstood me," she said, suddenly realizing it. "No; they can't lie, but that doesn't mean you can trust them." The paused, thinking back. "Did you think that she was offering you what she wanted?"

"Yes?" Sunset asked, dubious. "She asked me what I would give her for it, after all."

"No," Luna corrected. "Twice, she asked you what you would give her, and that is it. The ascension was never on the table—not without you asking for it—and why would she? She already had your name. Don't even take a gift from a faerie, or say 'sorry' or 'thank you,' because it presumes a debt that they will make you fulfill."

Sunset stared, sat, and screamed. "I hate this place!"

Luna sniffled. "Yes," she agreed quietly. Tucking her head between her knees again, she whispered, "It's how we lost my mom."

Oh, well... if that didn't just make Sunset feel grand.

Sunset waited a while then carefully prompted the caged girl. "Do you really think you can get me through the faerie ring?" she asked.

At first, Luna didn't answer, and Sunset wasn't sure if she was ignoring her or thinking. "What does it feel like, when you try to go through?" she asked at length.

So Sunset explained the burning, and her assumption about having acclimated to the higher level of magic in the Faerie Lands.

Luna sat and thought, and Sunset realized she was relying on a child who hadn't even been to magic school to figure out how to get her out of this insanity.

"What's the difference between you and a real Fae?" Luna asked. "Because Fae can cross over."

That... Sunset hadn't known. She frowned. "Well, I'm still physical," she reasoned, and realized that it did make sense. Pure magic... or concepts or whatever the fae were, wouldn't have a physical biology to be out of balance with.

Luna stood, shaking, and looking absolutely pitiful. Her once-yellow dress was tattered and torn, stained with grass, dirt and blood, and there were scratches along both her arms and legs. It looked like she'd been dragged kicking and screaming through the forest, and she probably had been.

"Then..." she said, approaching the edge of the cage. "Can I have your physicality?"

Sunset grit her teeth at giving up a part of herself, but this whole thing was maybe... sort of... slightly her fault... and if it would allow her to get out of here, she would deal with the rest later.

"You can borrow it."

***

Luna closed her silver eye and watched through Sunset Shimmer's as she made her way out out of the Palace of the Winter Court, waiting until she was clear and into the forest before she stumbled forward and caught herself on the bars of her cage, collapsed under the additional weight of another piece of Sunset Shimmer's being—her 'physicality' as she'd called it. It was like suddenly becoming more real. Everything was just more. She could feel her metaphysical weight warp the Faerie Lands around her.

She was barely used to the sensation when she realized that Sunset was already to the faerie ring. Tentatively, the crumple-horned snorkack approached the way home and tested for the pain she had felt. There was some delay, some uncertainty, but soon enough she stepped through, much to Luna's relief.

Sunset would find daddy, daddy would come and everything would be okay.

The first sign that something had gone wrong was when the view out of Sunset's eye just... stayed there. It was a scene out of the forest near her house, but she seemed to be just... standing there. Why?

The answer came to her when she saw a bird, startled by Sunset's arrival, still standing on the ground.

Time... Time was always weird when it came to the Faerie Lands. There were stories of people taking a nap and returning home decades later, but also vice versa. She should know; she'd read everything she could on it after her mother had disappeared, hoping beyond hope that it would be the former and her mother would return to her one day, not realizing anything had happened.

Luna was not so lucky, and in the pit of her stomach, she could guess why. She'd barely even recovered from her first taste of it, after all—that heavy weight of influence that was radiating out from her.

Her heart nearly caught in her throat when the bird suddenly sped up and made half a wingbeat before slowing back down to even slower than before.

"Or, it could just be random," she said to no one with a huff.

It took over two hours for Sunset to blink, and when the last light of the outside world died away, she curled up and began to cry.

***

Luna wasn't just left alone in her cage high up in the tower. Eventually, she was dressed up and taken to meet Mab, Queen of the Winter Court, and managed to leave with her name intact, which she counted as a success. In a stroke of irony, she was celebrated, in a way, for doing what she did to the Queen of the Summer Court and getting away with it—not as an equal, mind, but as kind of a pet who'd peed on the lawn of a neighbor that no one liked. It didn't get her any real care and she refused everything she could, but she was brought out and shown off for events.

She ate the food, of course. The passing of time in the real world drifted up and down but mostly remained at the nearly literal snail's pace that it had been to start with, and it would do her no good to starve. If Sunset's 'physicality' was to blame for this torturously slow passing of time, then it was also Luna's only hope of being able to leave when it was over, since that 'physicality' was already adapted to the Faerie Lands.

Sometimes, in the dark of Sunset's blinks, Luna wondered if maybe she could find a way to split the difference, so Sunset wouldn't have to stay in the Faerie Lands.

The warmth she felt from seeing her father for the first time in months warmed her heart until the next blink, and to her delight, it was a short one, too, swallowed up by one of those vanishingly rare moments when she could almost see things move. She still held onto a faint hope that one day, any second now, the time difference would balance out, or even swing a little the other way, but she held it close to her chest and didn't feed it, lest it get too large.

She nearly had a heart attack when five entire seconds passed while her father was grabbing his adventuring pack from near the door, and she was absolutely crushed when it slowed down again afterwards. She thought she'd been out of tears.

Help was coming. She knew help was coming, but as it got closer, Luna wondered if it would be in time. The only thing she had to hold onto was the vision from Sunset's left eye, but the more she focused on it, the more often she seemed to have blind spots in her right. She knew she wasn't going blind, though, because shadows don't disappear just because something is in a blind spot.

No—the more she paid attention to the real world, the less her grip on the Faerie Lands seemed to slip, and she was starting to see past the surface, and... she... probably didn't want that?

They were so close now, though. They were in the forest, with Sunset pointing out the Faerie Ring... but she was also standing in a ballroom wearing a milky-white gown that she was borrowing—always borrowing—and there was a Faerie in front of her. She looked familiar when Luna could focus on her—when she existed—but Luna was looking right through her and... why was Queen Titania in the Winter Court?

Oh, they'd probably gotten tired of her. She couldn't blame them, she supposed. This was the first time they'd brought her out in a month, she thinks, though time was a bit funny for her. Time to pass her on while she still had some value.

Funny; now that she was giving all of her attention to her right eye, she seemed to be seeing even less and less of it while understanding more and more of what wasn't there.

One moment, a fair-skinned woman with a golden crown was dragging her out of the ballroom—then it was a opaline changeling—then it was just a writhing nimbus of power-strength-terror-glee—then, suddenly, everything snapped back together into a slightly different arrangement that she'd never seen before.

The sheer, tumultuous speed out of her left eye wreaked havoc on her balance, and she fell to her knees, forcing the Summer Queen to stop or drag her, but it didn't matter because Sunset and her father were there, in the Faery Lands, now.

It was over.

Author's Notes:

Well, that was a thing. To quote the post I originally made on Patreon:

What even is this? I wasn't honestly planning on writing more of this, but it's what came out, and I have no idea what I'm even doing with it. Things always seem less traumatizing when I write them in an outline, but hey, sure enough, this is what my brain came up with for "How do we build a Luna Lovegood out of spare parts?" Her personality, I mean. Not, like, literal spare parts. Ew. (She's only missing one part.)

Thanks go to my Patreon supporters, pomegranate horsie, Zervon Tora, Katharine Berry, Jan Sterba, senaxyva, Ersmiller, Canary In The Coal Mine, Kali, Nineite, Andrew Pam, Southpaw, Dusk Star, Andrew Denton, Trellmor, Kirishala, djthomp, SirHoli, IamUnknown, BlueGenome and CvBrony.

Chapter 3

View Online

***

Entering Faerie for the second time was difficult for Sunset, not just due to how things had gone previously, but also because it felt just a little like going home and she didn't want to ask herself if it was because of the place's magical similarity to Equestria, because she was of Faerie now or because Luna was here and she had Sunset's name for an eye, which itself was two insanities in a trench coat all on its own.

As much as she would have liked to stay behind and let Luna's father enter Faerie alone, though, it wasn't actually an option. Small measures of guilt aside—bundled up in the trench coat with the insanities, probably—Luna had Sunset's Faerie-tainted physicality, whatever that really meant, and without Sunset taking it back, the girl probably wouldn't be able to leave.

Wait—no. That wasn't why she was risking herself coming back. That would be stupid. She wanted her physicality back because it was hers. Sunset didn't want to be any more fae than she had to be, and remaining a magical being made of ideas and concepts was too much even if she didn't really know what that meant. She knew she didn't want it.

What she did want, of course, was to be able to leave this place behind again, and... well, there was a bit of a contradiction there. You might even call it a problem, because if Luna gave Sunset back her Faerie-tainted physicality, then Sunset wouldn't be able to leave, and that was a sacrifice she wasn't willing to make.

She was Sunset Shimmer. She didn't make sacrifices. Not for other people.

Even if she wouldn't even be able to say those words—that name—if not for Luna.

...

Damn it.

Maybe Luna's father would know what to do. He seemed to have an answer to everything they came across, all prepared in advance and packed up in a single large bag that he strapped around his arms and carried on his back. Most of it was practical equipment for hiking, effective enough that she had to rush to keep up with him and his long legs, even through the underbrush.

Still, now that Luna had sort-of-not-really explained the 'cold iron' thing to her, the number of bits, bobs and buckles on his outfit made of dull, gray metal with the occasional spot of rust took on a new meaning, to say nothing of the cleated boots and barbed hiking stick he used as a third leg to steady himself as he raced into the forest, forcing Sunset to augment her run by clumsily flapping her new wings, taking to the air in short hops and bursts in order to keep up.

For all that Xenophilius seemed ready to use his iron gear to stomp and stab his way to his captured daughter, though, he surprised Sunset by pulling something else out of his pack at the first sight of the tall, pointy-eared humanoids that faeries took the form of under the metaphysical influence of Luna and her father.

The thing that Xenophilius brought out wasn't any kind of weapon as she might have expected—at least, not a traditional one, anyway. It certainly did the job better than anything Sunset could have imagined, though. She wasn't sure what it was, at first, appearing to be nothing more than some kind of bell-shaped object on a handle. Reassuringly, this proved that Sunset's eyes did, in fact, work, because that's exactly what it was: a bell on a handle.

An iron bell.

It worked exactly as you'd think it wouldn't, which is to say, the moment he rang it, letting out a high, flat 'ting' that seemed to stretch out like the sound of a tuning fork, the faeries burned, clutching their ears and fleeing where possible.

Half a second after Sunset realized that that was a real thing that was actually happening, she flinched back at the thought that her current state wasn't entirely as different from them as she'd like, but fortunately, she was apparently still different enough, as all that happened was her standing there listening to the ring of the bell dying out and having to hurry even harder to catch up to Xenophilius, who was still striding confidently forward with more determination than Sunset had ever seen in a single person.

As Sunset followed, she spotted the form of one of the faeries that hadn't been able to get away lying on the ground, pale skin shriveled with burns, writhing in pain, and for the second time seeing it, Sunset was struck by the brutality with which the faeries' weakness was wielded.

Not that they didn't seem to deserve it.

Sunset only had to remember the iridescent, opaline seelie queen sitting on her throne, acting kind and magnanimous as she took advantage of Sunset's naïveté about the world she'd found herself in in order to have very little of her already limited pool of empathy to spare for them.

Very little wasn't none, though, and she couldn't help but wonder if the faerie left behind, curled up on itself in pain, was even in possession of its own name, or if it had ever had a choice in the matter.

Fortunately, there wasn't much time for Sunset to think too much on the issue as they raced through the dark forest to the unseelie city, and after the first example, the mere threat of the iron bell was enough to clear the way... mostly. Xenophilius only had to ring the bell once more, at the gate of the castle, to make his way inside.

Now that they were there, of course, Sunset realized that she didn't actually have any idea how to get up to the tower where they were keeping Luna by hoof—first, because she'd gotten there by teleportation before, and second, because they weren't keeping her in a tower at all, but dragging her out by the hair.

Sunset saw red. Actually, she saw white, and it was that particular iridescent, opaline white that didn't fit in with the rest of the décor that had her seeing red. She knew that seelie, even as a tall, blonde, voluptuous, pointy-eared humanoid. She would always remember the creature that had done everything in her power to own her, and though she was too far away to actually tell, she'd swear she could see the scars of a chain of paperclips around her neck.

Sunset didn't wait for Xenophilius; the instant she spotted Luna in the literal hands of Titania, she pulled the barbed iron walking stick from Xenophilius with her telekinesis and teleported between the two of them in a blast of fire. This time, rather than an easily predicted blast from her horn, Sunset was already in the process of swinging her appropriated weapon when she appeared, and the iron struck true with a sickening crack, forcing Titania's arm up and causing the hand fisted in Luna's hair to loosen from the pain.

Titania reeled back, hissing in a manner more appropriate for the bug-pony form that Sunset had first met her in. Undeterred, Sunset swung again, but the seelie queen had already been backing away from the moment the iron touched her skin and the second swing fell short.

"You!" Titania growled, clutching her injured arm to her chest. Apparently, even the force of the blow was exaggerated in the case of an iron weapon, because the limb was badly broken, crooked in a way that sent an uneasy of disquiet mixed with sick, guilty satisfaction to settle in her stomach.

Sunset wanted very much to press the attack, and pay the seelie queen back for tricking her into eating her food and giving her her name, but she wanted even more to get out of this cursed place, so she held back and instead focused on getting Luna to her feet.

Now, Sunset wasn't the most observant of ponies when it came to other people, but even with her hunched over and crying, Sunset could tell that there was something different about her from the girl she'd left behind half an hour ago, aside from the delicate black dress that she was wearing.

The delicate black dress that she was taking off in the middle of their escape.

Sunset gaped, utterly baffled at her rescuee having a sudden fashion emergency. "W—what are you doing?!" she shouted. "This isn't the time to be worrying about what you're wearing!"

Luna gave Sunset one of her confused looks that suggested that she was the weird one for asking the question. "I told you, didn't I?" she said, dropping her gaze to the floor and biting the joint of her finger. "I didn't hallucinate that, did I? I'm sure I mentioned it, but it's been so long..."

Sunset didn't get the chance to pry any more of an explanation out of the girl, because as soon as Titania had put a measure of distance between herself and any more implements of iron than she turned and summoned up a crashing wave of water that filled the entire corridor.

She had, however, not put enough distance between herself and any more implements of iron, because as the wave of water came crashing closer, so did Luna's father, bringing to bear the ringing of the iron bell for the third time.

If Sunset had been surprised by the effectiveness of the iron bell on its first use, it was nothing to seeing the tide of Titania's magic turned away by the wave of sound. There didn't seem to be any use that the bell couldn't be put to in opposition to the fae.

...Which is why it was unfortunate that an arrow the size of a spear came from down the hall behind Titania and struck the bell and, from the lack of ringing that followed, apparently fouling it.

The figure that followed after the arrow, having been the one to fire it, appeared as a tall pointy-eared humanoid, clearly male even to Sunset's eye, bare-chested and muscled beneath a cloak of emerald green leaves, but not wide. The man had an heir of dignity about him, with a well-trimmed, salt and pepper beard and matching hair in a fine weave of braids.

"Oberon," Luna whispered, shrinking back and wanting to be anywhere but there, to which Sunset was inclined to agree. Where Titania was tempestuous and wild, he had a more solid wisdom to him that told very little, like an old-oak forest that was mad at you for hurting his wife.

Without the iron bell to ward off the fae, the situation had suddenly become rather more immediately threatening and Sunset made the executive decision to get them all the hell out of there. It strained her to teleport not only Luna but also her much larger father, but a pissed off seelie king was good motivation and her recent ascension was an unexpectedly heavy thumb on the scales as well, and the fire of her teleport managed to whisk them away before any of that potential threat could be realized.

Things got very hectic just then, though the déjà vu of fleeing another faerie city with an army at their tails was broken up by Luna somehow managing to divest herself of her remaining clothes and undergarments and the fact that it isn't déjà vu if the previous experience actually happened.

The previous experience meaning the fleeing the city thing, not Luna's sudden aversion to haute couture. Sunset still had no idea why the child was now streaking out of the city naked and, frankly, she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know. It certainly wasn't important when they were only narrowly being missed by Oberon's arrows on their way out of another hostile city.

Fleeing into the wilderness was both easier and harder than fleeing down the mountain had been. On the one hoof, the foliage was excellent cover from sight and oversized arrows, but on the other, it was significantly more treacherous to traverse at speed, and Luna had to be carried by her father because, again, she'd chosen to do the chase scene naked—not that the dress she'd been wearing had come with footwear appropriate for a daring woodland escape regardless. The stilted shoes that had been left behind in the castle had probably been meant to hobble her.

Sunset was just realizing that they hadn't ran into any unseelie patrols for quite a while, nor had they seen the seelie diarchs since escaping the city, when the reason for said discrepancy became clear.

Why give chase when you could head someone off at their obvious destination?

Rather than a random spot the same as any other in an overgrown forest, the portal back to the human world was now at the center of a large, sun-dappled clearing, and between them and the portal stood Titania and Oberon, half again as tall as the thin, blonde, pale woman standing between them wearing a simple white summer dress and weighed down by heavy golden chains.

The family resemblance was clear.

The whispered "Momma," from Luna just confirmed what Sunset had already guessed. This was Pandora Lovegood; the mother whose loss Luna had cited for her dislike of the fae.

Xenophilius put down Luna and pulled a shotgun out of his pack.

Sunset blinked. She didn't realize that humans had shotguns, but she supposed that Xenophilius did have a printing press, so maybe it wasn't that odd. From the look of it, the Seelie didn't agree, and their tall stature made them easy targets, though she didn't expect he would actually fire with his lost wife right there.

She turned out to be wrong, twice over; first in assuming that he wouldn't fire, and second, that his wife was right there. The thunderous boom of the shotgun shook the clearing, scattering what became evident as an illusion like leaves in the wind.

The trio of two seelie diarchs and their captive appeared next at the edge of the clearing, and Xenophilius must have been seeing something that Sunset wasn't, because he once again fired again without hesitation, peppering the trees beyond with tiny, deadly pellets that Sunset could only assume would be as viciously effective against any fae as they were at tearing down their illusions.

Xenophilius let the arm aiming the shotgun slacken slightly as he scanned the tree line for the real seelie diarchs and his wife, but for whatever reason, there was no immediate sign and Sunset could see that he was tempted to go after them. He was clearly torn between his lost wife and the daughter that was dependent on him, and when his guilty glance shifted from Luna to Sunset as if he'd only just then remembered that she was there, Sunset knew what he was going to do.

No. Just no. Absolutely not.

Xenophilius set the shotgun on the ground and kneeled in front of Luna, one hand on her shoulder, the other under her chin. "Luna, honey—my little crabapple," he said, looking her in the eyes. "I want you to go home with Sunset, alright? Just go home and wait. Can you do that for me?"

Luna sniffled and nodded, answering in a voice raspy from disuse. "Okay, daddy."

Xenophilius stayed that way for a while, letting the moment stretch on as he drank in the sight of his daughter, committing her image to memory. "Merlin, sweet pea, when did you get so big?" he mused. "You're growing up so fast; you'll be fine—and I'll be fine—and I'll bring mommy back. I promise."

Sunset looked away as Xenophilius kissed his daughter on the forehead and gave her a crushing hug. Soon enough, though, he was picking the shotgun back up and doing something with his wand.

And then he was gone, the asshole.

Still, Sunset didn't want to be in this world any longer than necessary, so she wasted no time in using her telekinesis to drag Luna by the hand into the center of the clearing.

You know, come to think of it, maybe one of them should have explained to Luna's father the whole thing where Sunset had eaten food from this place and Luna had taken that onto herself to allow her to go get help, because that might have been relevant to his decision-making process.

"So, uhh... you got this?" Sunset awkwardly asked, tilting her head in the direction of the way home, marked as it was on the other side by a ring of mushrooms.

...

You know, come to think of it, Xenophilius kind of had a point even if he'd missed it entirely. Sunset didn't have much of an eye for humans, but Luna did look a hoof taller than she had an hour ago, and she wasn't even wearing those precariously stilted shoes that the faeries had dressed her in.

Well, it probably had something to do with having borrowed Sunset's physicality, which she was really, really hoping she'd be getting back soon. Sort of. Maybe. As long as it didn't stop her from going home—or just anywhere that wasn't this nightmare of a world.

Rather than answer, Luna focused on the portal as if she could see it. She had her left eye closed, which made sense, she thought at first, but on second thought... did it? That was the eye that Sunset's name had replaced and was allowing Luna to see what Sunset saw, and not wanting the distraction was understandable, but if the eye saw what Sunset saw, then did Luna closing it actually do anything?

Suddenly feeling self-conscious, Sunset closed her own left eye, just in case it actually mattered.

Luna reached her hand out and pushed it against the portal as Sunset had done before for her own tests, and she clearly felt a similar pain, as her hand tensed up and she pulled it away quickly, holding it against her chest and massaging it with her other hand to soothe it.

Sunset was getting a little worried about Luna, but then, of course she was, since the girl was her only hope of finding her way out of this place relatively intact, and that there was something about Luna to be concerned about went without saying.

In the little time that Sunset had known her, Luna had been... strange, but enthusiastic, at least in regards to anything other than the fae. Now she was still strange, but also more than a little dotty and distracted.

The concern was apparently unwarranted, though, or at least not an urgent issue, because after a short period of giving off the impression of a bird confused by a mirror, Luna nodded her head, turned to her and answered with a simple, "Yes," Luna confirmed with more of a casual certainty than Sunset would have expected, though it was certainly a bit of a relief. "There will be side effects," she added.

"Side effects?" Sunset parroted with some concern. "Look. At this point I don't care if you turn me into a—" She was going to say 'turn me into a human' as a matter of hyperbole, but given how a few words had already gotten her in trouble here, she suddenly felt that maybe she should just keep her mouth shut. "Just... Just give me back what you borrowed and get us out of here. I don't care how."

"Yes," Luna said, in no particular hurry. "I think you do. It is rather important, you see, that you see. It must be a trade. Half of what makes you physical for half of what makes me."

Curse her big mouth—but she hadn't even said anything! Sunset didn't want to dither, but she couldn't help it. "And what's that supposed to do? It's not going to turn me into some... human-pony hybrid, is it?" she asked with a great deal of concern and apprehension, because she really would still do it if it would get them out of here.

Luna gave Sunset a look and this time it really did seem like she was seriously wondering if she was really asking that. To Sunset's chagrin, it took her a moment to realize what she was missing—the fact that Luna had equal parts of their two physicalities already and she still looked perfectly human, if a little taller, and the opposite was true of Sunset, but without the height difference, which was weird, but whatever.

"Oh... right," Sunset said, looking away for a moment. "But—hold on—" she interjected. "How does that help anything, if you have half and half already and you can't do it?"

"But I don't have half and half," Luna corrected her. "I have two wholes."

That... maybe that did actually make sense, she supposed. If Sunset's tainted physicality was acclimated to the faerie lands' level of magic and needed that level of magic to survive, then Luna's own physicality wouldn't dilute that need, only raise it even higher.

Sunset shook her head. "Whatever. Fine, fine, just do it already!"

The answer was quite simple. "You have to take yours back before the trade can be made, if you want the pieces to fit."

It didn't come from Luna, though.

Sitting there, arms—one of them in a cast—around her knees in her iridescent white dress and watching the two of them with open curiosity, was Titania.

Sunset leapt to face the seelie queen, but Titania just sat there placidly as if she was interested in what Sunset was doing but not really worried about it.

There was an obvious reason for that of course; neither Sunset nor Luna had so much as a stitch of clothing between them, let alone anything made of iron. For a second, Sunset thought that she might still have Xenophilius' hiking stick in that weird way where things in this world could just be there when you remember you have them, but she seemed to be out of luck there. He must have taken it with him when he left to reclaim his wife.

Then again, that all explained why the seelie queen wasn't terribly concerned about them, but it didn't explain why she was just sitting there.

Still, Sunset was angry at herself for not being more on guard. She'd—rather ironically—been too preoccupied with hurrying Luna up to notice the very thing she was worried about sneaking up on them.

It was worrying, though.

"So," Sunset said, eyeing the seelie queen carefully so she wouldn't be caught by surprise again. She wasn't sure if saying Xenophilius' name would be a problem, but she wanted to know, "Is... he... still out there, or did you circle around while your husband lured him off?"

"Hm?" Titania said, cocking her head in question. "Oh—I never left," she said with an innocent-seeming smile. "Don't let me interrupt you, though. Go on—I want to see this."

Sunset risked taking her eyes off the seelie queen for a moment to glance uncertainly at Luna, hoping for some kind of direction, but the young girl looked to be almost as at ease as Titania. Instead, she just nodded. "Go on."

Sunset blinked. Go on? What—oh, right. Titania had told her that she had to take her physicality back first, which was a problem because she had no idea how. She hated being out of her depth, but ever since she first stepped through that portal, she'd barely been able to follow what was going on.

"So... how do I do that, then?" she finally gave in and asked.

Luna put a finger on her cheek, giving the matter some thought. "Well, ask for it back, first of all. You're more fae than I am, it should come naturally."

Sunset felt silly doing it, but she supposed that was how Luna had initiated the process of borrowing her physicality in the first place. "Alright, so... may I have my physicality back?"

"Of course," Luna agreed, and... it was kind of exactly like remembering she had the hiking stick in that it was just kind of there, and like with her ascension, in that once she had the intent to use it, it was gone again, once more a part of her.

Luna let out a sigh of relief and rubbing at a spot on her chest. Oddly, her advanced stature hadn't changed; she was still a hoof taller than she'd been before. "I... I'd forgotten how that feels," she said and proceeded to take a deep breath and let it out slowly. "It was... a weight on me, and a weight on the world."

"Hmm!" Titania agreed, making a pleased sound like someone stretching after sitting still for too long.

The chittering was new, though.

For some reason that Sunset couldn't intuit, the seelie queen was an iridescent, opaline bug pony again—and it wasn't just her. The whole area had gone back to Sunset's more vibrant version of the faerie lands, though it was subtle since both of them resembled the forest near the Lovegood home.

Sunset, for her part, had to hold herself back from attacking Titania outright as a new wave of anger rose up in her, freshly remembering that smug-looking face. As long as the seelie queen wasn't attacking them, asking for anything or offering up any deals, though, it was better to let her be and see how long her queerly mild temperament lasted.

"So," Titania chirped happily. "I'd like to propose a deal."

Sunset's hackles rose, and even Luna's mouth tightened in displeasure. "A deal?" Sunset asked very, very carefully.

"Of course!" Titania said. "That was adorable! I'm rather impressed, you know. It's not a lot of you mortals that can actually do what you just did, but you—" she pointed her hoof at Sunset, "—are naturally a lot more like a fae than a regular mortal and you—" she moved her hoof to point at Luna, "—are just a special little thing, aren't you?"

Sunset wasn't sure how to feel about being 'naturally fae-like,' but she guessed it just came with the magical quality of Equestria being similar to Faerie, which was something that she'd already been aware of.

"So!" Titania clapped her hooves together. "As long as you're trading around your—what did you call it?—your 'physicality'—why not skim a little off the top for me?" she said, following it up by singing in a teasing fashion, "I can certainly make it worth your while~!"

Sunset looked to Luna. "Any idea what that would actually do?" she asked.

"Aren't you the one who's been back home without it?" Luna asked, then nodded. "Yes. I am sure that it was you; daddy wouldn't have been so upset if I was there."

Well, that was true, though it had been for such a short time and she'd been in such a hurry that she hadn't really had the time to examine it.

"Oh, it won't do much," Titania dismissed, waving the matter away with her hoof. "It'll be quite beneficial for you, actually!"

Sunset spent a moment making sure she wasn't going to say something that would open her up to losing another part of her before she asked, "How is that?"

"Well, you'll be just a little fae-like, of course," Titania explained. "Just a little conceptual. It'd be a terrible waste if you just went back to being completely, solidly physical given how much of a natural you two are at being fae. It won't be much compared to here, of course—just a little wiggle room in your existence—but that just makes it more fun!"

Sunset chewed at her lip, considering. There... were benefits. Actually, there was another, even better reason to do it. "If we accept," she said, still keeping an eye on her phrasing as best she was able. "Then I want it to be only my physicality." Her Faerie-tainted physicality, she didn't say, though the seelie queen certainly knew that. They were already trying to minimize the amount of it that either of them had to take, taking some more of it off the top could only be to their benefit in that regard.

"Hm?" Titania queried, cocking her head to the side. "Well, yes! I only want yours! That's the entire point!"

"...What's so special about mine?" Sunset asked.

Titania gestured at herself with her hooves. "Why, this, of course! Faerie has no physicality of its own, so when beings who have their own 'physicality' pass through here, theirs bends the world around them with their perspective!"

Sunset blinked at the seelie queen's explanation, forgetting entirely about checking her words beforehoof. "You... want to be a pony?" she asked, making sure that she got that right.

"Why wouldn't I?" she asked, holding her opaline hoof in front of her and appreciating it. "It's fresh! It's new! It's something I've never seen before! Why, Mab has been crowing for ages about having gotten her hands—hooves?—gotten her hooves on that one—" she gestured at Luna "—holding parties every month, just happy to have any perspective at all, not even realizing that she'd let the real prize get away!"

Sunset paused, but not to consider her words. "Wait—what do you mean, 'every month'?" She looked at Luna again and, yeah, she was still taller than she had been earlier, and maybe she was a little less chubby in the face, but it was hard to tell; she'd only just met the girl the night before and she wasn't an expert on humans. Luna had said that faeries couldn't lie, though, and the idea of time differences wasn't entirely alien to a pony who had spent most of her life investigating all the biggest, most impressive kinds of magics. "How long has it been?"

Luna tapped her lips with one finger, thinking. "It has been hard to tell, but... a year? Yes, just about a year, I think."

That... For some reason that set a feeling in Sunset's chest that she did not like, so she opted to ignore it.

That did shine a new light on the fact that Luna was Sunset's responsibility until her father returned... though maybe not so much.

"Right," Sunset said, acknowledging it and moving on. She glanced briefly at Titania, then back to Luna. "Well... I'm tempted to agree?"

Luna took a similar glance at the seelie queen. "I don't believe it's dangerous, but..." She addressed Titania directly, "We shall need details, and—and something in return." She paused briefly, visibly straightened and said, "My mother."

Titania rolled her eyes, disregarding her. "That's nice, dear, but you don't have what I want."

Luna made a show of pulling her eyelid down, showing off the turquoise eye that was somehow Sunset's name.

Right. Luna kind of owned her, in a way.

The seelie queen was taken aback. Quick as a snake, she grabbed Luna's chin in her hoof and moved her head so she could see it closer. "That—what did you do?!—how did you even—that doesn't belong there!"

Sunset couldn't believe it, but it was apparently up to her to play mediator, so she gently separated Luna and Titania. "Okay, look—um—Luna—maybe I should do the negotiations," she said. "And Titania; Luna doesn't really know what she did, just that my name is now playing the part of her eye, and she can see through it."

"Well, of course she can see through it," Titania said backing off in a huff. "It's an eye."

You know what? Sunset wasn't sure if Titania understood or not, but she wasn't going to explain it. For multiple reasons. "Yes, exactly," she said nonspecifically.

"Now—Luna does have a point," she continued, channeling Princess Celestia as hard as she could. "I'm open to negotiation, but we'll need to hash out some specifics and, as much as you've talked up the benefits of losing something, I'm still losing something and it's only natural that I actually get something in return..."

***

A t-shirt saying, 'I tried to bargain with the faerie queen and all I got was this lousy t-shirt' was not the prize that Sunset had been hoping for. Admittedly, she hadn't been very hopeful about actually getting Luna's mother back, but this was a new low, even if Luna did need something to cover up. Why, exactly, Luna had disrobed if she needed to be covered up was something that Sunset still wasn't privy to, but the shirt was long enough to be a dress on her, so at least there was some use for it.

Sunset couldn't help but think, as Luna pulled the shirt over her head, that it would be very unfortunate if Mab, the other faerie queen, ever saw the thing.

"Okay, great. Deal's made, everyone's got what they're owed, it's been nice, but we've gotta get going," Sunset said, trying to hurry things along. Titania was still sitting there, still giving a sweet smile, pleased as punch, but Sunset was very aware that the seelie queen had little reason to stay that way now that she'd gotten what she'd wanted.

Not waiting for a reply, Sunset physically turned Luna around with her hooves and began pushing Luna towards the portal, keeping an eye on the seelie queen over her shoulder, who was doing a cute little wave with the hoof that was sticking out of her cast as she watched them leave. It was only, at the last moment, when Sunset checked to make sure she was pushing in the right direction that she realized there was text on the back of the t-shirt as well, finishing the sentence with '...and stabbed in the back,' followed by a picture of a knife stabbed into the shirt with blood around the wound.

A very realistic picture of a knife.

The blood was spreading.

It was not a picture.

Luna grunted in pain as she fell through the portal.

Sunset swore.

The next few minutes were frantic. Sunset came out of the portal to find Luna collapsed on the forest floor, a now very clearly three dimensional gold-inlaid opal hilt sticking out of her back, and absolutely did not panic. At all. Definitely. She one-hundred percent calmly and collectedly—and quickly!—picked the child up in her magic and made haste towards the Lovegood home by way of the river, which was in entirely the wrong direction.

Having remembered to follow the magic as she had last time, it was a relief when Sunset finally spotted the chess rook styled building and not the knight piece that had briefly existed back on Faerie. Yes, she'd already been back once in just as much of a hurry, but she wouldn't have put it past the seelie queen to have somehow tricked them into going someplace else or nowhere at all.

In Sunset's state of hurried complete and total calm and with her magic occupied, door latches were not something that she felt like dealing with just then, so, with the wounded Luna following behind her in the teal glow of her magic, Sunset raced up the walkway, planted her front hooves, did a pivot on the front step and bucked the front door; it wasn't magically reinforced, so she foresaw no reason it shouldn't work.

It wasn't magically reinforced, but it was solidly built.

And, as front doors do, it opened outwards, which was not the direction that she was trying to buck it in.

"...Ow," she whimpered, standing on her front hooves, her back hooves sunk slightly into the otherwise entirely intact door. Given that Sunset had spent most of her life studying and practicing magic, It was probably only thanks to her recent ascension into an alicorn that she didn't break an ankle.

A groan from Luna shook her out of her stupor, reminding her that the young girl was far more hurt and she was wasting time. Sunset awkwardly walked her rear legs down the door, walked her front legs up to the latch, which was barely in reach and set to fiddling with it, flapping her wings to get just a little more height.

The latch clicked open, and Sunset whisked Luna inside setting her on a couch in front of the fireplace—face down, of course, which became a problem when Luna struggled to get a word out with her mouth pressed against the cushion while Sunset ransacked the tower looking for any more of the batch of Wiggenweld potion that Xenophilius had brewed for her. He'd said it would be good for deep injuries, and you didn't get much deeper than a knife in the back.

Fortunately, Sunset's instinct to check his potions lab turned out to be right on the money. Unfortunately, it took her a great deal of searching to find the potions lab, which was in the basement.

Apparently there was a basement. Who knew?

By the time Sunset returned with three vials of what she was pretty sure was the Wiggenweld potion, Luna had managed to prop herself up on her elbows.

"Here," Sunset said, taking the cork off one of the vials with a pop. "Drink this: it's a healing potion your father made for me—I think."

Luna shook her head, her face scrunched up in a grimace. "Don't bother. Floo. Saint Mungo's. Hospital."

Sunset hesitated, but only briefly. She didn't exactly want to charge into a public place in the middle of the day considering she'd escaped from what passed as the lawful wizarding authorities in the lifetime ago that was yesterday, but she had to admit that having an ornate knife of faerie origin in your back probably wasn't the kind of thing that you take a potion and sleep off.

After recorking the potion, Sunset picked Luna up in her magic again, doing what she could not to jostle her, and turned to the floo. It was a good thing that she'd already figured out the floo system, because Luna was in no condition to show her how it worked. The way that Sunset had come up with to activate the floo in the Ministry of Magic building worked just fine, and she spoke clearly.

"St. Mungo's Hospital."

That name seemed to be enough, as she felt the floo connect without problems and she... stopped right in front of the fireplace. After a short while, the green flames went back to their natural orange.

...Wait.

Was she really going to reveal herself to whoever might be at the hospital just to get help for this girl? That wasn't like her. She'd gotten all caught up in the urgency of it but she could just... not. Sure, this was just a little all her fault and the girl had chased her down in a nightmare world that had taken her mother from her in order to save her from mind controlled slavery only to end up losing an eye, spending an entire year imprisoned in a cage and losing her father when he came to rescue her, putting his trust in Sunset to keep her safe, but...

Okay, so yes, Sunset guessed she owed it to her a tiny bit.

Oh, and she didn't want to find out what would happen if Luna died while she still had Sunset's name for an eye, so there was that, too.

Faith in her enlightened self interest restored, Sunset triggered the floo again, said the name of the hospital and stepped through, levitating Luna alongside her.

***

Being used to her teleportation spell, Sunset had barely given the chaotic spinning of the floo much thought on her trip from the Ministry of Magic to the Lovegood home, but being whirled about and jostled did not agree with Luna in her condition—or maybe it was just her condition that didn't agree with Luna—either way, the wait for the floo to take them where they needed to go seemed much longer than the matter of seconds it was in reality.

Evidently, Sunset and Luna didn't quite agree with the floo, either. Maybe it was having two passengers at once, or maybe it was Sunset's active telekinesis, but when she finally stepped out the other end of the floo in the entryway-slash-waiting-room of St. Mungo's, she was grateful to be a quadruped, as she came out with a bit more oomph than she had entered it with—not much, but like she was being tossed out for being rude.

The clattering and clopping of Sunset's hooves on the polished stone floor as she did her best to stay upright drew some attention, but not as nearly as much as one might have expected of sounds that surely must have been associated with having some kind of unexpected animal indoors with them.

As it turned out, though, Sunset was not the only person in the room with hooves, as there was a scruffy-looking man in a worn brown coat who looked like he'd gotten on the wrong end of a goat in both senses of the word. He wasn't the strangest one in the room, either, but Sunset didn't have time to crowd watch.

After only a brief pause, the clip-clopping of Sunset's hooves on the stone floor picked back up as she galloped the short distance to the front desk and the receptionist, the former of which was, like the Lovegood's front door, not designed with ponies in mind, so, halfway there, she leapt up and flapped her wings, landing fairly well with a softer clip-clop on the wooden countertop.

The receptionist was an older-looking woman with her gray hair done up in a messy bun and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses on her dour face, giving the impression of someone who had seen everything and was no longer capable of excitement. Sure enough, she took one look at Sunset and pointed a feather quill at a floor directory that was mounted on the desk.

"Third Floor: Potions and Plant Poisonings," the receptionist informed her in a dreary, lifeless tone.

Sunset blinked, looked down at herself and said, "No, no—" but she was interrupted before she could explain.

"Fourth Floor: Jinxes, Hexes, Curses and Incorrectly-Applied Charms," the receptionist intoned with just as little emotion as before.

"Ugh, no!" Sunset insisted. "It's—"

"Second Floor: Magical Ailments and Diseases."

Sunset slammed her front hooves on the desk, jostling an inkwell, among other things, and rattling the drawers. "I can read!" she shouted, then continued on, not letting the woman interrupt her again. "I'm not here for me! I'm here for her!" She pointed a hoof at Luna, who was floating a short ways back, surrounded by the teal glow of Sunset's magic, hanging in the air with her head and arms hanging in front of her like a kitten being held by the scruff of her neck."

The receptionist tilted in her seat to get a better look at Luna, but didn't seem to have an immediate answer. "What seems to be the problem?" she asked without any urgency.

Sunset was about to yell at her again, but stopped and forced herself not to. Taking a breath, she levitated Luna forward and pointed a hoof at the shirt with the words, 'I tried to bargain with the faerie queen and all I got was this lousy t-shirt' on it. She then turned Luna around in her magic and pointed at the words, '...and stabbed in the back,' with the knife below it, the bottom half of the shirt now covered in blood.

That finally got things moving, and though the woman was clearly old and lacking in empathy she did apparently know how to get things done quickly. Very soon, several healers in lime-green robes showed up levitating a full-sized mattress between them which was somehow made up with perfectly tucked-in sheets and staying that way while they got Luna situated, allowing Sunset to let go of her levitation spell.

Once Luna was all set, the healers, already casting spells to keep her alive, began to take her away and Sunset made to follow them, but they stopped her. "Hold up," a middle-aged healer said, blocking Sunset's way with his hand. "We're taking her to Artifact Accidents—you need to head up to the forth floor."

"No, I don't need to go to the fourth floor," Sunset said, rolling her eyes. "I just look like this, okay?"

The healer rolled his eyes back at her and gave the other healers a 'can you believe this?' sort of look. "Look, I'm sure you think that, but that's not unusual when it comes to the fair folk."

On the one hoof, it was better for them to think that than for them to realize the truth, but on the other, she didn't want them to 'cure' her, nor did she want to let Luna out of her sight. She hadn't forgotten all the things she'd found out about the humans' Wizarding World at the Ministry of Magic or from Xenophilius afterwards, and frankly, she trusted these people about as much as she did the seelie queen.

"No, you look," Sunset said, leaping up onto the floating mattress with the help of her wings, managing not to make a fool of herself. "That girl's parents are lost in bucking fairy land, I have no idea when or if they'll ever make it back and they left her in my care. I am the closest Celestia-damned thing she has to a guardian right now and I'm not letting her out of my sight—you got that?"

"...Guardian?" the healer repeated in question, thinking about the word. "Do you mean you're her familiar?"

No, she meant like a parent. "Yes, exactly...ish," she answered instead. Eh, it was close enough, and though she didn't know exactly what that meant here, magically or legally, Luna did still have Sunset's name and probably wasn't going to be able to return it, if Titania's reaction was any sign. That probably made the claim more accurate than she'd like to think about.

The healer gave her a dubious look, but they had an injured little girl bleeding out on the bed next to them, which was very effective at hurrying decisions along. Besides which, with Sunset now sitting on the emergency medical mattress, they'd have to get physical to separate them and that was just more trouble and delay than it was worth.

"Ugh, fine," the healer groused and motioned the ones levitating the bed on. "It's not my job to question magical talking unicorn ponies."

"Excuse you," Sunset said with huff, sitting up straight and spreading her wings to show them off with pride. "I am an alicorn, thank you very much!"

"You're a pain in the neck is what you are," the healer shot back. "Just stay quiet while we save this girl's life."

***

Sunset did what she could to pay attention to the spells that the healers were using, but by the time she was no longer being distracted with establishing her right to remain with Luna, the initial burst of casting had died down and for the next short while it was just the odd diagnostic charm or two. Once she decided that they weren't doing anything too heinous, she eventually lost interest and just... existed in a state that wasn't panic, worry or fear.

It had been a hell of a day for Sunset—and a hell of a year for Luna, apparently; she was still coming to terms with that. She was still coming to terms with all of it. Just... damn. She felt... she didn't know exactly what she felt, but she could admit that the Lovegoods would have been better off if she'd picked someone else's floo at random.

Of course, someone else might not have been so incredulously accommodating, but maybe that would have been better. Sunset was not a nice pony and she'd never felt bad about hurting others to get the upper hoof. If she'd come out of someone's floo and they'd tried to attack her or capture her, she'd have had no problem destroying their lives and taking whatever she wanted. Hell, if she'd come out of someone's floo and found an empty house, she'd have helped herself to whatever she could carry and thought that it served them right for having an unsecured fire travel node in their homes.

That wasn't what had happened, though. She hadn't intended it and there'd been no benefit to what had happened.

Well...

Okay, so becoming an alicorn wasn't exactly 'no benefit,' nor was having her life saved, and she hadn't asked for them to risk life and limb and worse for her sake. There was a part of her that wanted to say that they'd brought it on themselves, and yet...

...And yet, the alternative was too horrifying to consider. She'd really just barely escaped lifelong slavery, and no matter the flexibility of her morals. She couldn't just call saving her from that a foolish action deserving derision.

So, instead of reveling in her new alicornhood, Sunset felt... bad. She felt bad and... guilty and... tired. Very, very tired, and not in a sleepy sort of way, though she was that, too. She drifted off to sleep feeling even more lost than the night before.

***

Sunset dreamt of flying, and she dreamt of Equestria. She dreamt of Canterlot and she dreamt of Princess Celestia. She dreamt of showing off her new wings and she dreamt of how proud her mentor was that she'd figured out the thing that the princess couldn't tell her—because telling her would have poisoned the well with greed.

She dreamt of confusion, of explanations, of arguments. She dreamt of disappointment, rebuke, shame and the loss of something that could have been.

***

Sunset woke to the sound of wings shuffling, bringing to mind Princess Celestia and setting her heart in her throat. When she opened her eyes expecting the warm, white feathers of her ex-mentor, though, what she actually found was a fluffy, puffed-up brown owl perched on the footboard of the bed preening its wings and keeping an eye on her with beady, black eyes.

Just as she was processing the presence of a large predatory bird that was almost as big as she was, the owl seemed to finish what it was doing, shift itself from side to side, then burst into a furious flapping of wings, that exited the room via an open window, which closed after it.

Cursing, Sunset had covered her face with one of her forelegs to protect her eyes, only slowly lowering them again once commotion had died down and she was sure that the owl was gone. In the owl's wake, a thick, slightly yellowed envelope floated down onto the sleeping Luna's chest.

Well, it was probably cheaper than pegasus mail, and delivered by something marginally more intelligent, she thought with some level of sarcasm, though she winced when she did. Princess Celestia would not have appreciated that comment... not that she had any reason to care what Princess Celestia thought any more.

For some reason, that felt a little more raw this morning than it had yesterday.

Regardless, it was in bad taste, and she was pretty much part pegasus herself now, depending on how you looked at it. She'd certainly idolized the idea of wings enough for it to be hypocritical—not that she'd ever let hypocrisy stop her.

Sunset stood up on the bed, stretched, and thought nothing of opening Luna's mail, though she stopped to take measure of the girl herself first.

To the healers' credit, Luna looked peaceful and serene laying there—and most importantly, still breathing. Asleep, she was missing the tenseness of yesterday, a lock of her long, blonde hair stuck in her mouth, fluttering in her easy, even breaths.

Reassured and pretending she wasn't, Sunset reached for the envelope on Luna's chest, only for a small, fair hand to slap on top of it, blocking her hoof.

Luna sat up, grunting adorably in the process, and scooted herself back against the headboard of the bed, slowly opening her eyes to see what she had in her hand; a classy-looking envelope with a hand-written address in green ink.

Luna Lovegood
Room 6
Ground Floor
St. Mungo's
London

Luna's sleepy eyes widened, and she quickly flipped the envelope over, revealing a large wax seal in four colors, each quadrant of the shield having its own animal imprinted on it. Sunset couldn't tell what the animals were, or read the ribbon below it, but Luna seemed to instantly recognize it; she clutched the envelope to her chest and started to sob.

Well, this was awkward. Was the letter a notification of some sort? Maybe the doctors had reported what Sunset had said about Luna's parents being gone and executed Xenophilius' will?

Gingerly, Sunset approached the crying girl and sort of... patted her on the head with her hoof. She tried to get a better look at the letter as she did so, but Luna still had it pressed tightly to herself, hugging it like it was something precious.

Sunset let Luna cry for a bit, and when she finally seemed to be tapering off, she risked asking, "So... what is it?"

Luna spent a moment composing herself, then took another good long look at the envelope, holding it out in front of herself. "It's..." she began to say, but stopped short of answering, opening the envelope to make sure. She scanned the letter quickly with wet, teary eyes.

"It's my Hogwarts letter."

"Hogwarts?" Sunset asked, thinking back, because she was pretty sure that it had been mentioned. Last night seemed like months ago, but it did come to her. "That's that magic school that you're going to next year, right."

Luna nodded, though she corrected Sunset, "Not next year. This year."

Oh. Right. Because last night had been a year ago for Luna.

"So that's... good, right?" Sunset probed. Learning magic was pretty much what she'd founded her entire life on, so the idea that someone might not be chomping at the bit to go to magic school was completely alien to her.

Luna, though, nodded. "It's just... I just realized..." she explained. "It's really over."

Ah. Right. The trauma. Sunset had no idea how to handle that, so, for once in her life, she decided not to say anything, and since standing there next to Luna not saying anything was awkward, she sat down and continued to appreciate not being in a dimension made of nightmares.

At some point, Luna started absently petting her and Sunset... continued to do nothing. If doing nothing helped, she'd do nothing all damn day.

***

Later in the day, after the healers had been through to check on Luna and take care of some of the paperwork, Sunset idly decided to take a look at Luna's Hogwarts letter.

Her first impression was... it was sparse. Other than the headmaster's list of titles—which was actually truncated to make it as short as possible and nothing compared to some of the official correspondence she'd seen cross Princess Celestia's desk—the entirety of the letter was, essentially, a single sentence saying, 'You've been accepted' followed by another sentence with expected response and arrival dates. She'd seen longer dinner notices.

Along with the letter, there was another page with a short list of equipment, which was of more interest to Sunset. The clothes actually didn't surprise her since she'd heard of school uniforms, though Celestia's School For Gifted Unicorns hadn't.

Regarding the book list, though, she wasn't sure what to think. Some of the names of the authors looked almost Equestrian, and she didn't know enough about how they categorized spells to comment on the coverage there, but they did seem to be missing books for a number of classes that she would have thought were normal.

Maybe they weren't though? Come to think of it, her sociology class had been pretty small, and philosophy of magic had just been her and Princess Celestia.

Moving on, the actual equipment page was also on the minimalist side, though in this case, it was clearly only what was absolutely required and no more, but that was interesting all on its own. CSGU had included recommended amounts of stationery, notebooks, saddle bags and so on. Hopefully, no one showed up with only what was on the list. Especially the—what were they called, again? Oh, right—the muggleborns.

Sunset didn't think that 'muggleborn' sounded all that nice, but then, she came from a society where a third of the population was essentially referred to as 'dirt ponies,' so maybe she shouldn't throw stones.

"Hey, Luna?" Sunset asked, looking over at the young girl and getting her attention. "This 'Hogwarts'—it's a boarding school?" She wasn't sure, but she thought it might be with the uniforms requiring name tags and all, unless they were like Luna and apt to disrobe and random times, like for exercize.

"Mmhmm!" Luna confirmed, squinting at something on the other side of the room with her left eye closed.

"Okay, actually," Sunset said, having decided she wanted an answer to that. "I'll get back to that, but first—you never got to answer me. What was with throwing off all your clothes when we were running from the fae?"

"Oh." Luna looked a little troubled, and Sunset wondered if she shouldn't have mentioned it, but the moment passed. "Yes, I'm sure of it now; I told you back at the start, that it wasn't good to take gifts from the fae."

Sunset blinked, suddenly recontextualizing things in her head. "Huh," she remarked. "So you did."

Luna nodded in satisfaction, and Sunset went back to her original subject.

"Anyway," she continued. "This letter says you can bring 'an owl or a cat or a toad—are those familiars?"

Luna gave it some thought. "Yes... but actually no," she answered vaguely answered, then, with a slight hesitation, she explained. "Daddy... daddy said that it's so children with real familiars don't seem to get too much special treatment, so everyone is allowed one."

That did seem sensible, except... "Luna?" she prompted again.

Luna gave Sunset her full attention, tilting her head in question.

"Everyone here thinks I'm your familiar," Sunset mentioned.

"Yep!" Luna agreed.

"And I'm going to Hogwarts with you—at the very least because they have a proper library."

"And because daddy said you'd take care of me," Luna added.

"He actually didn't, exactly, but fine, yes," Sunset said, moving on. "Luna—I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not an owl or a cat or a toad."

This, of course, seemed entirely sensible to Luna, as it was the truth. "Of course," she agreed. "You're a crumple-horned snorkack."

Sunset rolled her eyes. "I'm an alicorn," she reminded Luna, spreading her wings for emphasis—and it was a reminder, since it'd been a year for her since it had last been mentioned.

"Nope!" Luna said, looking almost smug. "Legally, you're a crumple-horned snorkack and my familiar."

"What."

"Those were some of the papers I signed earlier."

"..."

"And of course I mentioned you in my letter to the headmistress."

"Luna!" Sunset shouted in exasperation.

"Should I not have?"

***

The next day, Hogwarts' Deputy Headmistress, Minerva McGonagall, stood in a hall on the ground floor of St. Mungo's in the Artifact Accidents wing, preparing herself for what she was sure was going to be a trying meeting. In her hand, she held a notarized copy of Ms. Lovegood's familiar registration that she'd just picked up from the Ministry of Magic that morning. It read:

Owner: Luna Lovegood
Name: Sunset Shimmer
Species: Crumple-Horned Snorkack

Minerva pinched the bridge of her nose, expecting a headache.

This, she suspected, was going to be a long year.

Chapter 4

View Online

After a day and a half in the hospital, Sunset was getting restless. She was still appreciative of the plain and simple concept of not being in Faery any longer, but the only book they had on hoof was an old, tattered, hand-scribed copy of filly-stories—though apparently the humans called them fairy tales, which was a terrifying statement about how early in life children needed to be aware of the dangers of their dimensional neighbors.

As interesting as a read as the book was as an insight into the dangers of both fairy and wizard kind, though, it was still only one book and Sunset was nothing if not a voracious consumer of knowledge.

"I don't get it," Sunset said, flipping idly through the book for the third time, turning the pages with the sparkling teal glow of her magic. "I mean, I don't get a lot of the things in this book, but it's the book in general I don't get."

Luna, who was in the process of doing a pencil drawing of Sunset which was coming out quite well, looked up from her work in silent question.

"I mean," Sunset continued, not really needing further input to have a conversation on her own. "You have a printing press, right? In color, even?"

Again, Luna didn't need to answer; it was rhetorical. The Quibbler had been one of the ongoing topics in the Lovegood home, even in the short time since she'd been there.

"So where are all the printed books?" she asked, gesturing at the levitating book expressively with both of her hooves. "Hospitals and doctor's offices aren't known for their quality literature, but they are known for having literature—or at least they are back home. "This thing was copied with a quill, which makes no sense even if you do it by magic."

Luna finally had a reason to interject herself in Sunset's solo conversation. "How many books do you need that it's worth setting up the plates for the press?" she asked.

Sunset stopped mid-rant, not having been prepared to answer that kind of question. "...Well, I don't know how many books a book run is; thousands? Tens of thousands?"

"Wow!" Luna exclaimed in naked awe. "I saw a delivery come in at Flourish & Blotts once and I don't think it was more than twenty books!"

"Well, sure," Sunset said, dismissing it as not too unusual for a small bookstore. "But that's just one bookstore."

Luna gave Sunset a blank look over the top of her sketchbook, then her eyes widened in joyous realization. "That's right! There must also be a book store in Hogsmeade!"

Now it was Sunset's turn to stare blankly as she processed that. "You mean... there are only two bookstores?"

"Well," Luna said, thinking hard. "There must be more on the continent, I suppose—and elsewhere in the world too—but that's it for here, I think."

Sunset scrunched up her face, thinking back to the short while she spent in the Floo office back at the ministry. It had been difficult to get a real idea of the magic-using population since so many of the floo addresses had been crossed out, but in hindsight, it had still only been one book, even if it had been a big one. The pins of floo locations on the map had told a clearer story and she'd thought they seemed sparse at the time, but she hadn't really thought about the scale of it when the two communities didn't interact at all.

Sunset shook her head, trying to wrap her head around the idea. "So that means there's less of you on this entire island than there are ponies in Canterlot alone?" That didn't seem so crazy, except for the fact that Sunset had seen the non-wizarding parts of the maps, and they'd given her the impression of densely-packed industrialization on the level of Manehattan back home.

That was... quite the disparity.

"Wait," Sunset said, having made a connection that explained an incongruity that had surprised her. "The printing press—and that shotgun—were those 'muggle' inventions?"

"Yep!" Luna briefly beamed with pride, though it was short-lived as the exact nature of the subject matter dragged down the conversation. "Daddy spent a lot of time in the muggle world after we lost mommy because they're so much better at making things with iron. He promised that it'd all be worth it if anything like that happened again..."

Sunset winced at having brought that up. Without prompting, she sighed, got up and walked over to Luna's side, where she set herself down, hoping to avoid another of the sudden bouts of crying that had been coming and going for the past day. It didn't really get in the way of her thinking, so she didn't mind overmuch.

'The muggle world,' huh? It wasn't the first time the phrase had been used around her, but she hadn't realized just how true it was. Sunset's initial thought had been that the secretive minority of magic-users were like the nobility back home, setting themselves above the rest because they were better, but the truth seemed to be a bit more benign, at least on the surface.

Oh, it certainly was anything but equitable, but the two really did seem to be as separate as two worlds could be while occupying the same space, if only the eccentric actually took advantage of the muggles' industriousness and did so without actually taking advantage of them. No doubt, if you went digging, the crimes of those with access to memory spells would hardly be called harmless, but compared to some of the stand-outs in equestrian history like Sombra, not being a tyrannical dystopian empire was more than she had come to expect.

That did beg the question, though: was there anything in the muggle world that she could take advantage of? She wasn't too keen on those mechanical carriages—and not just because she'd been hit by one. She had wings, after all, and she could teleport, which pretty much covered all the methods of transportation that she needed.

On the other hoof—and still not related to being hit by a metal death machine—it might not be a terrible idea to stock up on iron weapons just in case the fair folk came calling, since they did seem to be capable of surviving in this world for a time, according to the stories. Sure, Queen Titania had pretty much let them go with her blessing, if you could call a knife in the back a blessing, but if there was anything she'd learned throughout the whole ordeal, it was not to trust their mood from one moment to the next. Really, not trusting them at all was a fine option.

Oh, and Xenophilius could be coming home any day now with his wife and a fae army on his heels, so there was that possibility too.

There was probably more than that that the muggle world had to offer, but she didn't have much to go on but that it was industrialized without the use of magic. With only herself and Luna in the household, it may be that the muggle world would have better access to some of the comforts and necessities that they would need to get by, but other than that, it wasn't as if a place without magic would help at all at getting her home.

...Except, that wasn't true, was it? The statue where the portal had been anchored had been on one of those mechanized carriages, meaning that it, in particular, was in the muggle world, and at the moment it was her only surefire way home—if she could find it.

...

It was then that Sunset realized that she really did not want to go into the muggle world just then, and she didn't know if she wanted to blame being hit by a carriage, the uneasy way the magicless population had reacted to her being hit by a carriage or her most recent bad experience with going to other worlds where she didn't know what the rules were.

Perhaps it was all three.

That didn't matter, though. She'd have to get over it. There were just too many potential resources in the muggle world to ignore it completely. She just... didn't need to do it right away. Not without research and preparation. Not again.

She'd learned that lesson.

Sunset Shimmer was good at learning lessons.

***

The knock that came a short while later was somehow different from the knocks that Sunset and Luna had gotten used to announcing the visits of healers and apprentices. It was, if such a description could be ascribed to a knock, crisp and deliberate, and unlike some of the healers, actually waited for a response before coming barging in.

Judging Luna to still be a bit melancholy, Sunset took the initiative to invite the knocker in with a casual, "Come in."

The woman who entered was tall for a human female, Sunset thought, though maybe it was simply that she stood straighter than the rest and had about her an air of dignity and propriety, with rectangular eyeglasses perched upon her nose and her silver-gray hair tied in a tight bun under something like a stereotypical pointed wizard's hat in black, though the bells had been left off which Sunset thought was an improvement. Her robe, on the other hoof, was a slightly muted forest green with a subtle pattern to it, which would have come off quite stately and refined, Sunset thought, if it didn't remind her quite so much of Oberon, the king of the summer court, who had a very similar look about him.

"Miss Lovegood, I presume?" the woman asked not unkindly, though with a bit of an accent that Sunset hadn't heard from the humans before, like something from the Sheepland Isles.

Luna, for her part, seemed to have perked up, but only warily. "Yes, ma'am," she responded. "Are you...?"

"Minerva McGonagall," the woman introduced herself with a small inclination of her head, though a brief shadow of confusion passed over her face for the barest of moments and her eyes subtly scanned the room, though they glossed right over Sunset. "Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

At this, Luna came fully alive, hope and wonderment sparkling in her eyes, though it was shortly tempered by concern. "There isn't anything wrong with my application, is there?"

"No, Miss Lovegood," she assured Luna, setting her at ease. "Your name showed up in the book of admissions the same as all the others, and it has never been wrong. It is a bit of a surprise, I admit, since I do believe that until a few days ago you weren't due for Hogwarts until next year.

"There is, however, the matter of your... Crumple-horned Snorkack, which you have registered as your familiar." She did her best to say the phrase with dignity, but it was clearly a challenge. "As Crumple-horned Snorcacks are not something that anyone on staff at Hogwarts has any experience with, I felt it would be prudent to perform a visit and ascertain whether or not any particular accommodations needed to be made."

Luna considered this for a moment. "Well, we know they're not fond of lemons, I remember that," she offered, lost in thought as it had been an entire year for her since the two of them had met. "Oh—but they do like mangoes, no matter how much they shouldn't have them."

Sunset was torn between exasperation and indignance. "Okay, for one," she said enumerating her objections. "I told you I like lemons in food just fine; I just don't like having whole, raw lemons shoved in my mouth! And second, that totally wasn't my fault! Mangos, in any sensible, rightways world do not normally enslave you for all eternity! And besides—it was a seedless mango! The damn things are, like, half seed normally!"

"The mango did not enslave you," Luna informed her quite simply. "That was you giving up your name. The mango just trapped you there."

Sunset rolled her eyes. "Yes, I know, I was there," she insisted. "But that's not the point. The point is that I can eat normal mangoes just fine—though you still shouldn't shove the whole fruit in my mouth. I'm pretty sure that if you did that with a mango, I'd die."

The back-and-forth between Sunset and Luna was interrupted when Sunset was hit by something not unlike a failsafe spell which had, of course, come from the only person in the room that wasn't arguing about the appropriate consumption of fruit.

Both Sunset and Luna turned to look at the deputy headmistress in sync.

"Okay, for one, that was rude," Sunset informed the adult. "And two—I am not enchanted, transformed, potioned, or otherwise under the effect of any magic, malign or otherwise. This is just how I look, thank you very much."

"What do you call gaining wings, then?" Luna questioned, throwing off the certainty of Sunset's declaration with her curiosity.

"I ascended!" Sunset hotly insisted, her wings ruffing, full as they were of indignation.

"So you metamorphosed?" Luna suggested.

Well... "...Something like that," Sunset begrudgingly allowed.

Luna hmmed. "Well, with the wings and all, this form must be the Crumple-horned Snorkack's imago, then. I take it that before that, you were a pupa?" She started to get excited. "Oh! Oh! Did the horn come in when you grew out of your larval stage?"

Sunset resented being compared to an insect, not the least because she didn't want to foster any kind of comparison to the faeries as interpreted by her physicality, but she was interrupted once more in her objection by the deputy headmistress clearing her throat. "Am I to understand that the two of you have been to Faery?" she asked, cocking one eyebrow.

Sunset lit her horn with her teal magic and retrieved the shirt that they'd won from Titania, with the words 'I tried to bargain with the faerie queen and all I got was this lousy t-shirt' on the front, followed by '...and stabbed in the back' on the back. The shirt was once more a pristine white thanks to one of the healer's apprentices and the knife had gone back to being a simple image, thanks to fae bullshit.

The shirt was, if nothing else, very useful in that it was entirely self-explanatory and served to summarize the situation quite well all on its own.

There was a sharp intake of breath from the deputy headmistress, and her eyes widened a bit before looking back to Luna with concern. Sunset couldn't help but compare the woman to Princess Celestia at that moment, though the princess was much better at schooling her features than even the aged witch, which could be put down to their relative ages and levels of experience, considering the princess was thousands of years old and a politician to boot.

McGonagall's actual response, though, was not what either Sunset or Luna had been expecting.

"Och," she cursed, her accent coming through in that moment. "I dinnae ken what it means that Mab knows muggle jokes, but I canny expect it's anything good."

Both Sunset and Luna cringed visibly at the misattribution and Sunset in particular checked the room to make sure that the seelie queen wasn't inexplicably present as had happened while they were debating solutions at the Faery-side portal site. Luna seemed comparatively unperturbed in her stillness until one remembered that she had sight out of one of Sunset's eyes and having the both of them spinning their heads in different directions like meerkats probably wouldn't do her any favors.

Fortunately, the seelie queen was not, in fact, present, but that didn't mean that Sunset was happy about the scare and decided to express it in the only way she knew how: acerbically. "If you're going to tempt fate, you could at least use the right name," she rebuked rather snappishly. "I got the impression that the two of them aren't exactly on friendly terms."

To McGonagall's credit, she seemed properly contrite and apologized, and this time when Luna ran her fingers through Sunset's mane, she got the impression that it wasn't for the girl's benefit.

Well... okay then. Good. Sunset calmed herself, mollified, and decided to change the subject, to an extent. Using her magic, she retrieved the t-shirt from the floor where she'd dropped it in her panic. "You're saying this is a muggle joke, then?" she prompted.

McGonagall took the change of subject gracefully and nodded, returning to her more precise diction and look of slight bemusement, as if there was something that she was trying to puzzle out. "Oh, yes. That is a distinctly muggle style of shirt, and the printing is something that they do, as is the phrase."

Sunset hmmed, taking that in as she folded the shirt and put it away. She was having the beginning of a thought, but McGonagall had paused for only half a breath before asking, "Pardon, but if you do not recognize it one way or the other, and you insist that you are not transformed, then are you fae?"

"Oh, hay no," Sunset said with a complex mix of abhorrence, disdain and incredulity. Fortunately, she had the presence of mind to smoothly declare, "I'm a completely norma—I mean, a completely exceptional Crumple-horned Snorkack, and any bits or aspects that one or both of us may have traded to the seelie queen constitutes privileged, private, protected personal medical information."

McGonagall looked quite unconvinced at the claim. "And you purport to be Miss Lovegood's familiar?" she asked.

"That's what the paperwork says," Sunset confidently declared, quite aware that she wasn't being entirely convincing, but also relatively certain that the deputy headmistress favored the proper way of doing things and that the letter of the law would support her leaning on it.

"Quite," McGonagall neutrally agreed, though as it turned out, she wasn't to be entirely dissuaded. "And may I ask, simply as a matter of clarification, of course, what form your familiar bond takes?" she asked, one brow raised in curiosity.

Sunset hmmed appreciatively. That was a good question, since it was quite likely that a young child and a talking animal would be entirely ignorant about what actually constituted a familiar bond—especially since that was, in fact, the case. Nonetheless, Sunset did have a strategy that she was rather confident in.

Strangely enough, that strategy was to tell the truth.

"Well, I'm pretty sure some part of me is inside her and she can see through my eyes," Sunset offered, and received a light chiding from Luna for it.

"Don't lie," Luna primly instructed her.

Sunset rolled her eyes, which she was acutely aware Luna could see her doing, given the subject matter. "At least I can lie," she groused good naturedly, then looked back up at McGonagall. "Sorry, she can see through one of my eyes," she clarified, with Luna nodding along.

Ironically, she hadn't actually been being cagey with her answer, just generalizing. It might seem odd that she would be so free with what could have been an advantage if it were kept secret, but that would, of course, require the eleven-year-old Luna to keep it a secret, which pretty much said it all. Sunset was fairly sure she'd already written it down on her registration form anyway, and securing her legal identity and status as a familiar was a practical enough way to spend the information.

McGonagall made note of that—literally, she wrote it down on the scroll she was carrying, which was a feat since there didn't seem to be any magic involved—and left it at that, not feeling the need to press for a demonstration.

"Yes, well... while it won't be the first time a child has come to Hogwarts with a pet that they can talk to, I must say it has been a while since we have had one that could talk back quite so plainly," the deputy headmistress informed them. "And while the rules do state that familiars are an exception to the list of species that we accept at Hogwarts, an exception can be made for that exception, as had been done for particularly ornery Jarvey in the past."

Both Sunset and Luna nodded dutifully in response, and didn't think that they were meant to hear the muttered, "...Which is all of them," that followed, but she made a mental note to look up Jarvey when she had the chance.

Mentions of interesting species aside, Sunset was quite glad to take the opportunity to steer the conversation away from her status as a familiar for the moment, and she knew just the direction she wanted to steer it in. "Miss McGonagall—" she prompted, though she was quickly corrected.

"It's missus, actually, though you should refer to me as 'professor McGonagall," she instructed.

Sunset nodded, filing that information away, and took a moment to ask, "Are you also a teacher, then?"

Professor McGonagall nodded in return. "Yes, in addition to being the Deputy Headmistress, I am also the sole Transfiguration professor, and also the head of house for Gryffindor."

Sunset blinked. She wanted to ask what 'Gryffindor' was since she was sure that she'd heard the word before but couldn't remember where. It wasn't in her discussions with the Lovegoods about Hogwarts, she didn't think. Nevertheless, she didn't want to get distracted.

"That sounds like a lot of work," she commented, failing completely at not getting distracted.

"It is," Professor McGonagall agreed, seeming both proud and burdened by the fact. "And yet, somehow, the Headmaster has managed to find himself with even more on his plate—but that's not a subject I should be talking to students about. You had a question?"

Sunset didn't miss that she'd been indirectly referred to as a student, but as reassuring as that was, in a way, she had complicated feelings about the appellation, and she really did have a question.

"Yes, sorry, I was just wondering, since you mentioned the t-shirts—do you have a lot of experience with the muggle world?" Her intentions on bringing up the matter were quite vague, but so long as she was taking steps to understand the world where her portal home was located, it would quiet a little of the background worry she had over her situation.

"Not as much as some, but more than most," Professor McGonagall answered quite openly. "I don't have much personal cause to go there, but I am the one who visits the families of muggleborns over the summer in order to explain and introduce them to the magical world, so I necessarily get a reasonable amount of exposure to their lifestyle and have reason to investigate a few things here and there on my own. In fact, I have an appointment for one such introduction this afternoon, after which I'll be taking the girl and her parents to Diagon Alley to get their supplies for the upcoming year."

Sunset hadn't been particularly melancholy up till then, but she brightened up considerably at the news nonetheless. It was a bit faster than she was comfortable with, but she never let that stop her. "You're doing one today?" she asked, quite eager, hardly able to believe her luck. "I don't suppose Luna and I could tag along?" she asked, making a show of looking to Luna with concern—and it wasn't even entirely feigned. Sunset certainly had little to go on aside from saying 'Diagon Alley' and jumping in a fireplace, and a girl being alone with her unique and uniquely colorful familiar probably wasn't the safest situation to be in. Sunset hadn't even wanted to come to the hospital when Luna was bleeding out.

Professor McGonagall, of course, had none of this information, so she was quite confused. "That... would be quite difficult," she said, looking Sunset up and down, which, admittedly, required very little movement of her head, given Sunset's stature. "And quite irregular. May I ask why? I can't imagine that Xenophilius is any less enthusiastic to take his daughter to get her first wand than any other parent. In fact, I'd wager that he'd be more than most."

Luna didn't react overly much to the subject of her father, but she still buried her fingers anew in Sunset's mane, searching for reassurance.

"He's not in the picture," Sunset informed the deputy headmistress as bluntly as she could manage out of a small amount of vindictiveness for bringing the subject up, no matter how necessary. "Let's just say he was more enthusiastic about chasing after Oberon and his wife." Sunset paused, hearing what she'd just said as she'd said it. "Sorry. His wife. Xenophilius' wife. Not Oberon's wife, though she was there too. Look, I'll just call them Pandora and She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named—"

"Do not," Professor McGonagall insisted with an unexpectedly stern glare that stopped Sunset cold. Once she was sure that Sunset had gotten the message, whatever that was, she took a long, hissing breath in through her nose, and relaxed.

Slightly.

"Are you saying that Xenophilius went to Faery and has not returned?" she asked, distinctly uneasy at the idea and looking to Luna with kind concern.

Sunset opened her mouth to answer flippantly, then reconsidered and went with a simple, "Yes." Technically, they hadn't been back to the house since their return, but given that Luna had bled all over the couch, she sure hoped that the first thing Xenophilius would have done would be to check in at the hospital if he had come home.

Of course, there was always the possibility that Xenophilius and Pandora had required hospitalization of their own after returning and they were on another floor, or even just in the room next door without them knowing it, but Sunset had the miraculous sense not to mention the idea with Luna still on the knife's edge of breaking down.

After maybe too long of a pause, Sunset decided to lay it on a bit thicker. "It's really quite difficult for us to be in this situation," she said, letting some of her honest helplessness with the situation through. "I hope Xenophilius returns with his wife—I do—but it's left us both all on our own. Luna's just escaped after spending a year locked up by the winter court, and I don't really know my way around either of your worlds. I can make a grilled cheese sandwich, but that's about it and I don't even know where you go to buy bread around here. Now we have this whole school thing and while it'll be a relief to have a place to go when the time comes, we still have more than a month until then and we'll be all alone in that house—I hope I can get the blood out of the couch... and the rug... and the floorboards—it just seems like the perfect chance to get her out a bit and meet another girl her age—her new age, I mean."

Professor McGonagall listened to Sunset's strung-on, meandering plea with the stony face of the strict disciplinarian she was, but though she had no doubt listened to similar excessively doleful entreaties from students on subjects ranging from confiscated contraband to their most recent report card, there was enough truth in what Sunset was saying to soften her eyes a bit.

"Oh, very well," Professor McGonagall conceded. "It would not be the first time I've taken more than one family to Diagon, and I suppose you're as good an example of magic for the Grangers as any, though I've already put the permit through regardless."

"Permit?" Sunset asked. She didn't like the sound of that, if it involved proving that magic existed.

Professor McGonagall nodded and casually confirmed Sunset's fears. "Yes; given the statute of secrecy which went into effect in the 17ᵗʰ century, we have also had the Degree for Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery since the late 19ᵗʰ century which prohibits those under the age of seventeen from casting any spells unless they are in a registered exclusion zone, such as Hogwarts.

That was... well, exactly the sort of thing that she would have expected from the government behind the things that she'd seen in the ministry of magic. Having been pleasantly surprised about their hoofs-off approach to muggles, it was about time she found out about another equine-rights violation—but that wasn't the only thing that came to mind.

"...How does that work, though?" she asked, thinking out loud as she worked through the problem as she might have while sitting at Princess Celestia's side. "I suppose the relative dearth of magic in most places here might allow some sort of monitoring network—but that isn't the case everywhere. I doubt you'd get any sort of sign of any normal amount of magic going on from outside the Rookery, and that's ignoring the logistical problems. You said you have to have a permit, and if that's not just bureaucratic red tape, then it means that it's not just a spell on the individual children to detect when they do magic—but parents have to be able to use magic in their own homes, so... this only applies to muggleborns, doesn't it?"

Professor McGonagall was momentarily taken aback at the quick and accurate breakdown of the situation, but she wasn't one to deny the truth when it came out. "Yes, I'm afraid that that is the end result of the laws as they have been implemented," she admitted.

Continuing, she made her stance clear. "I will, of course, not confirm any of the details surrounding the trace, save to say that while Miss Lovegood may be able to get around it once she gets her wand, I would still recommend in the strongest of terms that she not do so. As unfortunate as the unequal enforcement of the Degree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery can be, it does in most cases loop around to being, as the name suggests, reasonable, as it is vital for children practicing magic to be supervised by adults capable of dealing with any accidents—or non-accidents—that arise. Failing that, access to a floo by which one can seek aid and treatment is just as important."

That... did make sense, actually, Sunset begrudgingly admitted, and if her opinion of the matter was influenced by the fact that the law wouldn't actually be applied to her, well, she was only equine. "We're fine, then."

Professor McGonagall tilted her head down to look at Sunset with dire seriousness over the top of her eyeglasses. "I must emphasize, young girl, that access to a medical facility is in no way a replacement for proper instruction—especially before one has even stepped foot inside a classroom."

"Well, no. Obviously not," Sunset agreed automatically without delay or any particular level of honesty, though it took a moment for her to actually realize what the deputy headmistress was implying. "Oh! No, see, I didn't just mean the floo. I mean, a parent I am not, but I absolutely can handle anything a small child can do with her magic—not that I really intended on teaching her anything." She stopped to think. "Could be interesting, actually, now that you mention it."

Professor McGonagall was, of course, highly skeptical and not at all convinced and she let it show in her expression without reservation. "Miss Shimmer; I have seen that you do have a natural talent of levitation, but—"

Sunset flashed her horn and disappeared in a wisp of flame, reappearing at the foot of Luna's bed, looking balefully up at the professor. "Excuse you! 'A natural talent of levitation?'" she parroted mockingly. "I am a god-damned natural at everything and have spent the last ten years studying magic as the personal student of Princess Celestia before ascending into an alicorn, so I'll thank you not to act like I'm some foal who never even got her cutie mark and might as well be a skinny earth pony with telekinesis."

McGonagall, unfortunately, was the type who responded to truculency with obstinance and she was quite unamused at Sunset's little egotistical diatribe. Worse, she was actually smart and tended to catch onto things, especially when they were yelled up at her face from a small, colorful equine.

Professor McGonagall arched one eyebrow, an expression she seemed well practiced in and got much use out of. "And who, may I ask, is Princess Celestia, and what is 'an' alicorn, since I don't get the impression that you're talking about the material a unicorn's horn is made of?"

Sunset, on realizing that she had said a bit too much, said the first thing that came to mind. "Princess Celestia is the immortal alicorn snorkack ruler from the magical land of... Snorkackia."

Of all the times to actually tell the truth.

Actually, on second thought, the only real danger here was in getting her familiarhood revoked, wasn't it? From Xenophilius's brief primer on the wizarding world's classification of beasts and beings, that seemed unlikely.

Oh, and there was also the possibility of word getting back to the wrong person in the ministry, because her fuzzy memories from just after she'd come through the portal from Equestria did contain some mention of having her put down. Right.

Still, she was pretty sure that the implication that she thought she was some kind of illegal crossbreed between a unicorn and a... cream puff, was it? Biology had never been her best subject, but she was absolutely certain that that wasn't how it worked. Regardless, if that was the case, it would actually be a good thing to get something like the truth out since the truth was significantly less insulting and significantly less dangerous to her continued wellbeing.

"Alicorns are... snorkacks... with the magical qualities of the three tribes of snorkacks, the unification of which makes a greater whole than the sum of its parts. Princess Celestia has ruled Snorkackia for over a thousand years, and has used her magic to raise and lower the sun on schedule every morning and night without fail for that entire time, and being her student was a great honor." A great honor that the princess spat upon when she closed herself off from Sunset and stopped answering her questions. "I would appreciate it if you didn't marginalize the time and effort I have spent on mastering magic."

Professor McGonagall took in Sunset's explanation with an unreadable, stony expression, her lips pressed together into a tight line. "So, since you mentioned 'earth ponies' in your little rant, I take it I am to replace every instance of 'snorkack' in that story with 'pony' in order to arrive at something resembling the truth?" she asked, both unamused and not just a little dubious. "Though how much truth is up for debate, unless you truly expect me to believe that this princess of yours actually raises the sun."

Sunset didn't let the professor's doubt bother her, no matter how inconvenient it was. Instead, she looked Professor McGonagall in the eye quite seriously and said, "Have you ever been to Faery, professor?"

Professor McGonagall seemed almost insulted. "I am not so foolish as that, no."

"Then let me explain," Sunset insisted, demanding the old witch's attention. "In the stories I've read since we came back, Faery is often likened to a mad dream where nothing is real and anything can happen—but to call it a dream or dismiss it as something unreal is a gross misrepresentation that misses the point. Faery is real. Everything there is real. It's not a harmless illusion, or something that you wake up from. It changes from one moment to the next—from one person to the next—but the ground underneath your hooves, the air in your lungs and the sun in the sky, they're all terrifyingly real... at least, for as long as they exist. For as long as you're there to pay attention to them, they're real.

"Can you imagine, from one moment to the next, the sun—those two-nonilion tons of hydrogen and helium—just... winking out because they're not needed? Then, they come back, but that's not the word for it, is it? It's not the same hydrogen and helium; it didn't go away and return. It just... stopped existing, and a new mass of hydrogen and helium took its place, which maybe is a bit smaller or bigger. Maybe it's a binary system now, or maybe it somehow has a smiley-face on it—but that smiley-face isn't just a picture; it's a real pattern of sunspots a million kilometers across.

"Snorkackia isn't like that, thank Celestia... but it's closer than most. Is it that hard to believe that, there, an immortal alicorn has been needed to raise and lower the sun ever since a spirit of chaos broke it? Really?"

Professor McGonagall was, for some reason, not entirely reassured. "...You paint a vivid picture," she eventually stated noncommittally. After taking a moment to process it, she admitted, "No, I suppose not... and I suppose that I have all the answers that I need for the moment."

Sunset thought that there was an implied 'or ever,' in there, but it might have been just her.

"I believe, then, that we should address the more mundane issues," she said, changing the subject and addressing Luna. "If you're to accompany me to Diagon, we shall need to run it past the healers and, your health permitting, get you checked out..."

***

Getting Luna checked out did not go how Sunset had expected—not because there was anything still wrong with Luna but for how quickly the process went. There wasn't really much paperwork involved and the healer's final assessment of her health came down to a couple of questions before shooing them off.

She was surprised, too, when gold changed hands at the front desk on their way out. In hindsight, no part of the wizarding world gave her the impression that things like medical insurance existed, but at least the cost was subsidized by donations from wealthy philanthropists—not that the young woman at the front desk seemed to think very highly of the fact.

The fact that McGonagall was the one who paid, on the other hoof, was reassuring about her character, and also in the fact that Sunset had no idea what the state of the Lovegood's finances were or how to access them. Luna certainly hadn't brought anything to the hospital but the shirt on her back, and she wasn't even wearing it out for obvious reasons.

Strangely, no one seemed concerned with the fact that a child was walking out of the hospital with a shirt that stabs you in the back, but Professor McGonagall had, at least, conjured a plain black robe for her to wear on the way out, which they would immediately be replacing with a real one if the professor had anything to say about it; something about pranksters casting finite at random strangers, the idea of which was simple enough to understand just from the context.

The conjuration itself was more interesting than the humans' ongoing obsession with fashion, though, and an interesting trick. 'Conjuring' implied pulling something either out of nothing or from somewhere else, but the feeling of magic that washed over her likely permanently-sharpened horn was definitely one of transformation, which fit in with Professor McGonagall teaching what she'd called transfiguration.

As for what, exactly, was being transfigured, Sunset couldn't say. Her first assumption was that it was the air being turned into the object being transfigured, but that likely would have involved a great rush of air to make up the difference in mass. Probably. Perhaps. Maybe.

Magic could be weird when it came to conservation of mass.

The important thing was that she wasn't stealing the dreams of innocents, leaving them dull, monotonous shells of who they once were in order to produce items in the physical world, or something like that. Sunset was beginning to feel that the Ministry of Magic and its Department of Mysteries had not been the best, most representative introduction she could have had to the world of humans, which, following from Equestria and Faery, she would refer to as 'Human' until such time as she had a chance to ask what variation on the term they actually used.

Such a time as right now, just as they were about to go through the floo to the Lovegood home.

Sunset got her answer, realized what that answer was, then followed the professor through the floo in a distracted daze.

"Earth?" Sunset asked incredulously as she stepped out of the floo. "You named your world after dirt?" Here she had thought that calling one of the tribes 'earth ponies' was kind of insulting, but they at least worked the land so it was actually relevant.

Professor McGonagall, however, was not in the mood to elucidate as she stood there, ashen-faced, staring at the mess that was the Lovegood home's ground floor. End tables had been overturned, items were strewn on the floor, and the blood... There was a lot of blood, crusty and dry on the couch, rusty red hoofprints scrambling this way and that and a long smear that...

No matter how much Sunset shimmer insisted that she was a mature mare who would do anything for her own not-so-enlightened self-interest, the sight of it all was enough to turn her stomach. She blanched and looked away, not wanting to admit the effect it had on her. She knew, logically, that it couldn't be that much blood since Luna was standing next to her just fine, but—

Sunset blinked.

Luna was standing next to her just fine, seemingly not bothered at all by the ground floor of her house looking like the crime scene of a murder mystery, or maybe the first act of a horror film.

Then, after only a short pause to take the scene in, the young girl walked forward and started righting the end tables, stacking things back up on them and frowning at the dark spots and stains on one of the books.

There was something very wrong with that girl, Sunset thought... though maybe that should be expected after a year of imprisonment and off-and-on isolation.

It was Professor McGonagall who recovered from the shock first. "Ah, Miss Lovegood?"

"Yes, professor?" the young girl asked, looking up from where she was draped over the back of the vividly stained couch, reaching for something on the floor behind it.

Rather than state any of the myriad problems that any sensible person would have with the situation, the professor simply held up her wand, giving the girl an expectant look.

"Oh! Right!" Luna exclaimed in full cheer. Standing up on the stained upholstery, she hopped off the couch, landing carelessly on one leg and using the momentum to hop back over to where Sunset and Professor McGonagall stood. "Magic away!"

Nonplussed, McGonagall nonetheless did as she was prompted and waved her wand, stating, "Sanguis Evanesco."

Like the conjuring, the incantation of the spell didn't quite match up with the effect, which was much the same as conjuration, but in reverse, feeling much like another transformation—or transfiguration to use the local terminology.

Regardless, the spell certainly made a good show of looking like a proper blood vanishing spell, and the stains on the floor were cleanly wiped out of existence, shrinking from the outside in like a puddle going dry.

It was a bit childish of her, but seeing the mess disappear as if it had never existed did do a little to calm Sunset's stomach. The professor wasn't done, though, and with a second, wordless wave of her wand, all the spilled bric-a-brac leapt up like they were being spilled in reverse, setting the entire room back to rights.

That... she was begrudgingly impressed by, begrudging not just because it was human magic, but because in all of its impressiveness of having to have some way to find out how the things had been arranged in the first place—and she didn't believe there was any time magic involved, certainly—it was, in the end pretty much just a housekeeping spell; exactly the sort of thing that she would have scoffed at while she was busy learning another big, flashy spell to show off.

Well, those big, flashy spells weren't helping her much now, and she'd be damned if a spell like that wouldn't have been really nice to have at the end of the day when she was levitating everything back where it belonged by horn, one-by-one.

Sunset took a moment to take in the neat and tidy chaos of the restored room, trying to fix in her mind its current state rather than how it had been moments before, when Professor McGonagall spoke. "Miss Shimmer."

Sunset turned her head to look at the professor and realized then that the two of them were nominally alone, Luna having been sent upstairs to change into some real clothes. "You don't have to call me that. We don't really have set-in-stone family names like that; it does happen that you get families with names all on a theme, but it's almost as common to share the first word in a name rather than the second, or to have just a single word in a name."

For her part, Professor McGonagall did seem interested in Sunset's explanation, but said, "Even so, if it's not incorrect, I'd prefer not to give others the impression that I'm being too familiar with a student—or, well, too familiar with a familiar, I suppose; pun not intended." The way in which she stated that last part said just how convinced she was that Sunset was 'just' a familiar.

"It's fine," Sunset informed her, unconcerned. Ponies called others 'missus' and 'mister' too, sometimes, but it was less regimented than humans, or even some of the other races of Equestria. Really it was just that the way Professor McGonagall said it reminded her of some of the castle staff back in Canterlot, which was not something that Sunset wanted to think about right now.

"Miss Shimmer," McGonagall repeated, starting over. "I will ask Miss Lovegood regardless of your answer, but after that... behavior... I am concerned about her."

"You weren't concerned when you found out she'd been stabbed in the back or imprisoned in Faery for a year?" Sunset asked, doing her best at the raised eyebrow that the professor was so good at.

Professor McGonagall took the chastisement without offense. "I was, but she seemed only a bit quiet and withdrawn. It is something else to see a real example of how it has affected her; I don't even understand the reaction—or lack thereof. I have seen children pretend that nothing is amiss, and I don't think that's what that was."

"Well, you're not wrong," Sunset said, at a loss of what she was supposed to say. "You said you had a question."

"Yes," Professor McGonagall said, seeming glad to have the conversation back on track. "I do believe that the Weasley family lives not too far from here and the two families are acquainted; the youngest, Ginevra, was Miss Lovegood's age before all this. I thought I might inform them of the situation so that they might make themselves available for support."

That... wasn't the kind of thing Sunset had any clue about and she said so. "Look... I don't say this often, but I have no idea. She hasn't mentioned them to me, and maybe that says it all—or not. I never had friends, no matter how much my teachers thought I did and insisted on grouping me up with a certain clique of fillies I despised. I studied magic, not people."

Professor McGonagall hmmed, mulling over Sunset's response. "A pity, given your coloring is the red and gold of Gryffindor, I'd suppose that you're more suited to Ravenclaw or Slytherin."

"Gryffindor?" Sunset asked, recalling that she'd heard it mentioned a couple of times now. The other two were completely new, though. "Ravenclaw? Slytherin?"

"Students at Hogwarts are sorted into one of four houses based on the values which each of those houses espouse. Each house has their own communal areas, dormitories and schedules. Those houses are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Gryffindor for the brave and the bold, Hufflepuff for the loyal and hardworking, Ravenclaw for the clever and studious and Slytherin for the Cunning and Ambitious. Red and Gold are the colors of Gryffindor."

Sunset considered that for a moment. "I don't think that Princess Celestia would have gone for that," she mused, thinking aloud. "On one hoof, it seems like it would be nice to be able to separate problem students from one another, but they usually do that anyway without painting such a blatant target on a quarter of the school."

Professor McGonagall gave Sunset a look of appraisal, and she got the idea that she had impressed her a bit. "What target is that?" she asked, though she clearly had an idea.

"Well," Sunset said, thinking of how to put it. Then she remembered she didn't really care and said what she was thinking. "Having an entire house like that that's just a catch-all for those who aren't good enough for the other houses—I can't imagine that works very well in practice. It's rather blatant."

Professor McGonagall looked... rather disappointed with Sunset's answer, but she was just stating the obvious. She'd no doubt seen it in her own classes and didn't like being reminded of the ugly side of the system.

"I mean, really," Sunset continued. "You've got the smart house, the clever house and the hard working house, which are all normal things that are applicable in a school environment," she said, listing the houses that made sense to her. "And then there's the 'brave' house? What's with that? It's a school, not the filly scouts! Bravery isn't going to help you write an essay! Boldness isn't going to teach you to cast a spell! I mean, willpower helps you cast a spell, obviously, but that's a stretch. If one of the houses is going to be 'Bravery,' then the others should be things like, 'Honor,' 'Leadership' and 'Empathy'—or, you know, not that since I just thought of it off the top of my head, but still; it just doesn't fit."

At some point, Professor McGonagall had gone from disappointed to bemused. "That is... an interesting take on the matter, Miss Shimmer," she said. "Though you may be taking the short one-or-two word descriptions a little too seriously. People, as I'm sure you're aware, are more nuanced than that, and the houses are each modeled after one of the four founders of Hogwarts from which they take their names; Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw and Salazar Slytherin, who would each select students to give additional instruction, somewhat between an apprenticeship and the classrooms of today. I am certain that, should you wish, you could come up with a more rigorous set of descriptions for the houses."

Well... Okay, so maybe she had assumed a bit much based on just a few words. "I guess you have a point," she admitted. "If you actually had an entire house where you put all of the loud, rowdy, boisterous kids with no drive, ability or desire to study, then I'd feel sorry for whoever was in charge of that lot."

There was a moment of awkward silence, within which Sunset remembered something. "Oh! Right! That's where I last heard the name 'Gryffindor.' I mean, I heard it before sometime that I still can't recall, but when you introduced yourself, you said you were the head of house?"

"I am."

"So then—"

"Yes."

"...My condolences."

***

Being the prideful mare she was, Sunset wasn't beyond spending a significant amount of time primping and preening in front of the mirror in the morning, but even so, Luna seemed to have been upstairs for quite a long time when all she was supposed to be doing was changing her clothes, so Sunset figured she'd go see what was taking her so long. Professor McGonagall, too, was impatient, but her sense of propriety insisted that she leave the matter to Sunset so as to avoid intruding on her private space.

Sunset, of course, had no sense of 'private space' and barged right in to find Luna sitting on her bed half-dressed and staring off into space.

To Sunset's credit, her first reaction was some level of concern, which she'd gotten in the habit of over the past few days. The particular glazed look in her eyes rather spoiled it, because she recognized that look, and it wasn't melancholy, despondence or any of the other numerous things that were worth worrying about.

With a huff, Sunset lifted the white summer dress that was sitting on Luna's lap with her magic and threw it at her face. "If you're done eavesdropping, we'd like to get going," she said, making an effort to roll her eyes in an exaggerated way that would be clear to the other person looking through it.

Luna hmmed, thoughtful. "Is it still eavesdropping if I can't hear anything?" she asked, her voice muffled by the dress hanging off of her. Belatedly, she removed the garment from her face and looked at it, turning it in her hands to orient it properly. Without prompting, she announced, "I should learn to read lips."

Shaking her head, Sunset left Luna to her own devices and went back down the stairs. Professor McGonagall pretended that she hadn't overheard the conversation, but she nonetheless had a slightly amused air about her. Her disciplinarian act was very good, but Sunset had been interpreting Princess Celestia's muted reactions for the better part of her life and the two were not dissimilar at times, even across the species divide. The fact that the woman did have a sense of humor, no matter how well hidden it was, did make her seem more like a person than some of the instructors she'd had in the past. Even if Sunset maybe resented just a little bit every time something reminded her of Princess Celestia, given how her mentor had turned away from her, it was still familiar ground.

"What time is your visit with the muggles, if it's that precise?" Sunset asked, thinking. "And for that matter, how do you tell time? I haven't seen a clock since I got here."

"The appointment is for one o'clock," Professor McGonagall informed her. "And the spell that we use is—" She waved her wand in front of herself. "Tempus."

A puff of white smoke came from the tip of her wand, taking the shape of a typical wall clock with both hands near to the top with an impressive level of clarity for something not at all solid. After a moment of churning inside that space, the magic holding the smoke together faded, and the smoke dissipated into an indistinct wisp which was shortly gone.

"Nearly noon," the professor announced. "We have an hour, which should be enough time for lunch, assuming Miss Lovegood ever manages to dress herself.

Sunset, who was quite familiar with only needing to leave moments before she arrived thanks to teleportation, dismissed the time as not an immediate issue. She did, however, step closer, head cocked to the side, and say, "Do that again."

Professor McGonagall didn't seem to quite understand what the fascination was, but as a teacher she was quite used to repeating spells for the sake of instruction. Not outwardly questioning it, she waved her wand with almost mechanical precision and repeated the incantation, producing another smoke effigy of a clock.

"Okay, I can feel how the smoke bit works—of course I do, since fire is kind of my thing—but I'm not getting how it actually gets the time since it's not something the caster knows. Can you explain..."

***

It wasn't too long before Sunset was able to produce a proper tempus of her own, though her first success came out just at the tip of her horn and no further, leaving her hacking and coughing at the result. She would have to work on that, but it was only a matter of visualization and therefore practice—harder than one might think, having seen and studied Professor McGonagall's casting of it closely enough that the expectation of the result was already firmly in her mind, but not something that putting in a bit of time and effort wouldn't overcome.

What was more interesting was what she had learned about how it was done—which she didn't have time to mull over as Luna finally came down the stairs wearing an airy white dress that went down to her ankles. What was odd was the rubber eraser hanging from her neck. Admittedly, it was a cute yellow one in a fat and rounded star shape, but one of the legs of the star had been used for its intended purpose and was shorter than the rest, sporting a smudge of graphite.

On closer inspection, though, Sunset realized that she'd been distracted by the eraser when the real takeaway was that the necklace itself was made of paperclips like her old one.

The one she'd wielded against the Seelie Queen with such frightening effectiveness, stealing back Sunset's name and giving her the opportunity to make off with her ascension.

You know what? Sunset was going to pretend that was the finest damn necklace that money could buy and no one was going to stop her.

Professor McGonagall, of course, didn't understand the significance, but she'd mastered the art of keeping her opinions about children entirely to herself, so said nothing. Indeed, her nod seemed satisfied that the child had managed to dress herself at all, which, given the time it had taken and the state that she had been in when Sunset had gone to check on her, wasn't entirely unreasonable.

Professor McGonagall made her way to the floo, then paused. Turning, she looked Sunset over once more and warned her, "We will be heading to the Leaky Cauldron for lunch; a rather noisy establishment, but as something of a meeting place for Diagon Alley, your appearance there should not cause too much commotion."

Sunset frowned, eyeing the floo with unease and imagining the scene that would greet her on the other side. She still wasn't comfortable with exposing herself to the public, no matter how blasé the hospital staff had been about her appearance. Professor McGonagall didn't know that Sunset had escaped from a cage in the Department of Mysteries, after all, and she wanted to keep it that way. Come to think of it, neither did Luna, for that matter.

Still, it wasn't actually a bad idea. She'd seen for herself the effect that simply showing up at a donut shop on the regular could have on a reputation, and though she'd resented it at the time, right now she wanted to be—well, not approachable since she didn't want to be approached, but she'd settle for benign.

Either way, she wasn't going to let that stop her.

...

But that didn't make her a Gryffindor, damn it.

Sunset Shimmer: Crumple-Horned Snorkack

by Cast-Iron Caryatid

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4