Ghosts of Whitetail Wood

by Biochi

First published 27th of December, 2012

Applebloom continues to seek out her special talent and finds more than she has bargained for.

Old wounds crack open and bleed as the world changes following the events of Titanomachy. A child with a rare but unwanted talent becomes a witness to evils committed eons ago. Can the ultimate sin be forgiven with enough time? If so, should it?

This story takes place sometime between "Too Many Pinky Pies" and "Keep Calm and Flutter On."

Cicadas

The midsummer sun hung high in the sky; pouring bright, thick ropes of light down onto a sea of green grass. Half hidden by the prairie’s height was a filly with a yellow coat and bright red hair pulled back by a ribbon. The young pony panted as she strained against both the thatch-like thickness of the wild grassland and the hot, humid air. Except for the occasional grunt as Apple Bloom pushed her way forward, the normal sounds of the prairie were absent. The birds were hiding underneath the grass canopy, listlessly panting in the heat instead of singing. The scurrying of mammals was absent too, as they also were hiding in their burrows in an attempt to sleep through the worst of the heat.

To Apple Bloom, the hot, humid air seemed to be held in place by the tall, thin stalks surrounding her, weaving a thick blanket out of the stagnant air. Every breath she took was redolent of moist, black soil, rotting vegetation, and her own sweat. Her short stature meant that her eyes did not crest above the level of the grass, bringing her eye to compound eye with countless grasshoppers singing from their grass pulpits. Apple Bloom kept her head down as she walked, carefully assessing her path for hidden divots which threatened the possibility of a broken ankle. Her posture made her mane an attractive landing site for the swarms of leafhoppers she disturbed with her passage and soon she was covered with a crawling menagerie.

She wasn’t using her eyes to guide her path, all she could have seen from her vantage was green stalks. Instead, she navigated by trusting her rapidly swiveling ears as they tracked the thrumming of cicadas. She was seeking the swarm that had emerged a few days ago and were now blanketing the trees of the forest she sought, the Whitetail Wood. This swarm was something unique in her experience, as different from the normal cicadas she saw every summer in her family’s orchard as a forest fire differed from a campfire. She could hear the great swarm all the way from the farm, their alien call pulsing and throbbing from miles away.

Unlike her usual adventures with the Crusaders she hadn’t invited Sweetie Bell to come along. Apple Bloom felt a flash of guilt at the thought but then she tried to imagine the unicorn filly pushing her way through the bug infested grassland to see a swarm of cicadas and just simply couldn’t. Scootaloo she had invited and was disappointed that the orange pegasus scoffed at her idea. Apple Bloom had tried to explain to her that the great cicada swarm only emerged once every seventeen years and was huge, consisting of millions of cicadas. She had maintained her refusal, however, explaining to Apple Bloom as if she were slow: “Bugs aren’t cool. Therefore, a whole lot of bugs isn’t cool either.”

She believed that Scootaloo's logic was flawed in some fundamental way. The scale of the event was what made it different from every summer in her memory and therefore irresistible. While she loved her two best friends dearly she felt that they lacked a proper level of appreciation for natural wonders of this sort. "Maybe its ‘cause they are from Ponyville town instead of from a farm?" she wondered to herself. It was immediately followed by the less charitable thought, "Maybe it's 'cause they aren't Earth Ponies?"

Distracted as she was by her own thoughts, the filly stumbled when she broke through the margin of the dense grassland. Stepping into the forest was like falling into a pond. The shade of the trees abruptly cut off the sun’s assault and the suddenly cooler air came as both a shock and a relief. Without the thick wall of grass stems separating her from the swarm, the droning buzz crescendoed, obliterating all other sounds. Her mouth and eyes agape with wonder, she recovered her balance and reverently entered the quickly thickening forest.

All around her the trunks and limbs squirmed with life. Black bodies, adorned with flashing red eyes and prismatic wings, pushed and jostled each other for space on the bark of the engulfed trees. The losers of this shoving match rained down around her; drunkenly arcing as they beat their wings in a vain attempt to avoid the ground. At the base of each tree, a puddle of squirming chitin fought with itself in a race to rejoin the bizarre scrum. The swarm's song was so strong at this point that Apple Bloom could feel each and every one of her hairs vibrate in sympathy. The odd sensation made the skin on her back and haunches jump and twitch in response.

After several minutes of pure wonder, the filly broke free of the swarm's spell, smiled, and set off deeper into the forest. While the Whitetail Wood was far more tame and open than the dreaded Everfree Forest, the ground was covered with disoriented insects each only slightly smaller than one of her hooves. After the first squelching pop of insect murder to reach her ears, Apple Bloom froze with a grimace on her face. She wiped the remains from her hoof with a degree of fastidiousness that would have made Rarity proud. Restarting, she adopted a shuffling gait that pushed the insects out of the way of her hooves as she continued her journey deeper into the wood.

The forest grew darker as she continued onwards and the dim, green light scintillated off of the millions of wings around her. Apple Bloom’s head began to feel light and fuzzy as the buzzing built past the threshold of sound and became a pattern of vibration that caused her entire body to oscillate. She felt the first twinge of fear as the solid surety of the world began to dissolve around her. Trees began to shift position and swim through her vision and her breath began to speed up again. She searched for the sun; for anything that could give her a point to orient with. Instead she only found muted and dappled light playing across the strange living blanket of cicadas. She wanted to bolt but restrained herself, unable to squish so many bugs at one time.

Her teeth bared in suppressed panic, she shuffled as fast as she could but knew that she was lost and wandering. In the back of her mind, where rationality still held sway, she knew that the forest was huge. The Running of the Leaves took all day to complete and that was at a running pace along a known path. Shuffling as she was and unable to see any landmarks, the rational part of her mind decided that panic was a totally reasonable response to this situation. The filly began to whimper as she entered the strange mental space of panicking without being able to run.

In the depths of her distress, she suddenly caught a glimpse of hope. A flash of white flank disappearing behind one of the larger trunks. "Hay! You there! Hello! Can you help me?" She shouted to the fleeting figure while shuffling towards it as fast as she could. She didn't see anypony for several heart-stopping seconds but then she saw another flash of white, bounding away from her.

"No! Please! Come back! I'm lost!" she screamed, tears brimming. "Help," she whispered in defeat when whoever it was didn't turn around or answer her. Forcing her tears to stop, Apple Bloom exhaled once to summon her courage and then turned around in hopes to follow her own tracks out of the forest. "Ahhhhh!" she screamed as she turned and saw a strange, white face only a few centimeters from her own. The creature looked almost like a pony but to the filly’s eyes it seemed subtly wrong in every way. Its face was longer and more narrow than a pony's should be and its ears were long and tall like a donkey's. It had a pair of horns like a goat but they branched like trees reaching into the sky. The most disturbing thing was its eyes. They were solid black and bottomless. She had no idea how anypony could see with eyes like that.

The creature turned from her as if it was going to bolt but it didn't run. Instead it paused, as if waiting for her. Apple Bloom's heart gave a flutter of hope and she shuffled towards the white being as quickly as she could while whispering "Thank you," in a shaking voice. Once she got within a meter of it, the creature leaped like a giant rabbit. Unlike a pony, the creature didn’t walk or run but bounded, covering meters with each bounce. It paused again at the limit of Apple Bloom’s vision as the filly took several minutes to awkwardly shuffle across the forest floor. The pair of them kept up this dance for what felt like an age, until eventually golden sunlight peeked out from between closely spaced trunks. Apple Bloom let loose a breath she didn’t know she was holding as the forest’s edge and her salvation came into view.

The white creature stopped it’s bouncing pace and took a few normal steps to meet Apple Bloom scant meters within the edge of the forest. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" the filly gushed in relief and gratitude while closing the distance between her and her silent saviour, intending to deliver a rib-cracking hug to the being. As she approached she suddenly noticed something which didn’t make any sense. The strange, bifurcated hooves the creature walked on weren’t crunching or squishing any of the cicadas covering the ground. She stopped dead in her tracks as she watched the being’s hooves pass through the layer of insects without causing any harm.

Apple Bloom’s eyes bulged as she looked back up at the creature's body. In the gloom of the deep forest it had appeared as solid and real as anything; but here, in Celestia’s light, she could look through its translucent body and see the grass of the prairie swaying gently in a subtle breeze. The filly’s mouth worked noiselessly as her mind struggled to comprehend what she was seeing. Involuntarily, she blinked and when her eyes reopened the creature was gone as if it had never been there. Apple Bloom screamed as she galloped off into the tall grass.

----------------------------------------

Twilight believed that she might be dreaming. The first reason was that she had wings, again. Ever since she and Luna had started dating, whenever she closed her eyes the feathery appendages would make their unsolicited appearance. It wasn’t that dreaming that one was an alicorn was all that uncommon but, to Twilight, having her subconscious create wings for her every single time she slept without them being part of any nocturnal narrative seemed criminally inefficient. The second reason was that there was a head of cabbage with a blue, ethereal mane looking up at her from her kitchen table. It was quite the feat for something without eyes.

She returned the imploring look with a glare. “I told you that I'd write when I was ready to talk.”

“It has been over a week. Ms. Rarity assures me that such prolonged silence is a breach of etiquette, therefore I am justified in seeking you out.” The Brassica had spoken with Luna’s voice.

"Has she.” Twilight answered in a tone that boded ill for her unicorn friend. “Well, I'm certainly not going to talk to you like...like this,” the purple mare said while gesturing to the table. “You look utterly ridiculous"

“I don’t care! You’ve thrown up so many walls around your dreaming I could only get inside by latching onto another symbol. I did not have any other way to get in touch with you.”

“Have you heard about this new invention we’ve developed in the last thousand years? Its called the postal service,” Twilight’s verbal sparring with Luna was without humor and dripping with bitter sarcasm.

“I’ve already written you a dozen times!” the cabbage’s voice was beginning to rise with anger of her own.

“And the fact that I haven’t answered you should have told you that I wasn’t in the mood to talk yet!” Twilight bit the cabbage where the middle of its forehead would have been, opened the oven on her stove, and tossed the offending vegetable inside. She slammed the door shut and, after a moment’s thought, cranked the appliance’s temperature to its highest setting.

Twilight smiled in satisfaction and turned away from the stove as soon as smoke began to drift out of the oven. She trotted out the open doorway to the main reading room and, as she passed through the poral, she blinked and found herself standing inside Sugarcube Corner, hock-deep in blueberry jam. All around her, thousands of minuscule Pinkie Pies cavorted, danced, sang and swarm in the fruity condiment. She sighed, remembering the Mirror Pool fiasco, “Well, at least I know where this dream came from," she said to herself.

"Is someone frowny-wrouny?"one of the Pinkies asked.

“Yes Pinkie, I am frowny-” she cut herself off as she noticed that the miniature horse that spoke to her was midnight blue. She reached out with her aura and lifted a very tiny Luna from the writhing sea of pink hyperactivity. “-wrouny.”

“Why won’t you talk to me?” The miniature goddess asked in a wounded voice.

“You threw a restaurant at somepony,” Twilight said with anger evident in her voice. “In particular, you chose to pick up and throw the one we were having our dinner in.”

"He called you a rude name," the miniature Luna sniffed and managed to look indignant despite her size. "And I paid for both the medical bills and the damages."

"I don't care!" Twilight shouted at her. "There are going to be jerks anywhere we go. You can't just chuck twenty tons of masonry at a pony for being an ignorant bigot!"

"In the days before my banishment, anyone who spoke to one of my concubines in such a manner would have been gelded."

"...Con...cu...bine?" Fire glimmered in the depths of Twilight Sparkle's eyes.

"Oh bugger” said the princess of the night as she realized her mistake.

Twilight tossed the miniature version of Luna back towards the kitchen, used her magic to tear the gas line from the wall, and then ignited the flammable vapor with a spark from her horn. Fire quickly spread through the bakery, partly due to being spread by the swarm of burning miniature pink ponies running to and fro. She could feel the heat but knew it had no power to harm her so she stepped through the flames and began climbing the stairs that would normally lead to the apartments above the shop.

Once Twilight had discovered Luna’s ability to dreamwalk, she had dedicated herself to mastering the art of lucid dreaming. She could not tolerate the thought of somepony else traipsing around inside her subconscious without having any say in the matter. The purple mare bit her tongue and pulled on her training, closing her eyes while focusing on the pain. Opening her eyes, she smiled as she saw the pale and cratered landscape she had ordered her dreaming mind to produce. Twilight looked up into the airless sky and saw her homeworld floating above her, bright and blue.

"This is playing dirty, Twilight,." Luna said, sadness clear in her voice. The princess was waiting for her, of course she was, Luna was the Queen of Dreams. Twilight knew that she didn’t have the power or control yet to simply expel Luna from her sleeping mind but she knew how to make the persistent mare pay for violating her privacy.

Luna's form stretched and darkened until Nightmare Moon stood before her. "This is who I was when I was last here. Is this who you want to talk to?" Twilight's heart beat faster at the sight of the illusion, despite knowing it for what it was.

"Is this the mare who nearly crushed a pony to death for nothing more than words?" Twilight's gaze locked with the dragon-slitted eyes confronting her, until Luna's filled with tears and broke contact.

"No, it wasn't. I can't blame her for that." She shrunk as she spoke, resuming her previous form. The alicorn's tears boiled away while falling through the airless void surrounding them, never reaching the lunar dust. "I'm sorry, Twilight. I'm so sorry."

Twilight's heart hurt seeing Luna like this and she fought with all of her will not to run to Luna's embrace and tell her it was all better. Shaking with the effort, she maintained her distance and spoke. "I know you are. I also know you don't mean anything by it when you misspeak. Sometimes, I wish you did."

Genuinely confused, Luna simply said "What?"

"If you had any malice or did these things because you were selfish, or insensitive, or mean, or...anything; I could then just be angry with you and that would be it. Instead, it's mistake after innocent mistake and it makes me want to scream. I'm so sick of forgiving you again and again but you don't do any of it on purpose. If I treated you like you were, then I'd be the bad person." She sighed and frustration colored her words. "There's so much I love about you but you are driving me crazy. That's why I wanted to take this break. I just need to calm down and go a week or two without some sort of horrible disaster upending my life."

"Why didn't you just tell me all this? You left me with barely a word and then nothing for a whole week." Luna asked.

"Because its stupid. I sound stupid saying it and I hate sounding stupid." Twilight's eyes were watering now.

"Its not, but I can't promise not to make any more mistakes. I'm still learning so much."

Twilight closed her eyes and bit back a sarcastic "Are you?" but she wasn't sure if that did any good here. "Yet more things to deal with when dating an alicorn." she thought to herself, hoping it actually was to herself. Upon opening her eyes, she saw Luna's stricken face and had her answer about the privacy of her thoughts within dreams. "Luna, I'm sorry. I'm just so frustrated...between our schedules, the paparazzi, the security details...I don't know if I can do this any more." She sighed, "Maybe we should just-"

"No!" Luna's use of the Canterlot voice was predictable but effective and Twilight stopped talking. "We still have options we haven't tried yet. I'm begging you to just give us one more chance. In the name of everything we've been through together, I beg of you. Just once more."

"How will it be different this time, Luna?" Twilight asked with dread and hope mixed in equal measure within her heart.

"For a start," Luna pronounced, "We shall come to you, in Ponyville."

"You have the Night Court, meetings with your staff, Celestia, and-."

"Let them all hang," Luna declared.

Twilight's mouth dropped open.

"That is a figure of speech."

"Oh...You can't just do that," Twilight recovered.

"Who exactly is going to stop me?" she smiled.

"Duty." Twilight replied without a pause. "Celesta hasn't been... right since the whole Chrysalis and Grogar thing." Fear creased the unicorn's features as she remembered something unpleasant. "Are you really OK with leaving the kingdom in her hooves, alone?"

"She ruled for ten centuries without me, she won't destroy Equestria if I take a long weekend."

"A...long weekend?" Twilight asked, hope finally leaking into her voice. "How long?"

"I'm thinking I'll fly out Friday, tomorrow morning, and leave Monday night. We can have a nice, quiet weekend in Ponyville. We don't need to do anything special or exciting. Just time for us to be together. No disasters."

Twilight's voice shook from the ping-ponging of her emotions, "Th-that would be nice."

Luna approached Twilight and craned her neck over and around the smaller mare's in a hug. "Please, let me try."

"OK." Twilight agreed while sniffing back tears.

"So, did we make up?" Luna asked the purple unicorn.

"Yeah...for now." Twilight returned the embrace.

Luna squeezed tighter. "Dearest, I read several books about relationships this last week."

"That means a lot, Luna. I appreciate that you are putting effort into this."

"Several of them referred to traditional activities usually taken after making up from an argument." Luna gave Twilight her special smile.

"Lu-na!" Twilight scolded with a giggle. After thinking about it for a second, Twilight grinned to herself and shifted her head around to allow them to begin their making up in earnest.

"Twilight!"

The unicorn faintly heard her name called in the distance.

"Luna? Did you hear that?" She asked.

"Twilight!" A country twang flattened the "i's" in her name to "a's."

"No, I heard nothing." The alicorn leaned into Twilight, angling so as to kiss her. "Ignore it or else you might-"

"-Wake up," Twilight finished as she opened her eyes. Above her was her ceiling and she was laying on her couch, where she had gone to nap. Sitting up and rubbing her eyes she started a curse to express her acute frustration, "Bugg-" It was then she opened her eyes and noticed Apple Bloom standing directly in front of her. She was covered head to fetlocks in burrs, thistles, and various insects and was very obviously distressed. "-gs." she finished in an attempt to preserve innocent ears.

Author's Notes:

As usual, nothing here belongs to me and this is a work of fan fiction. This story picks up several weeks to a few months after the events of Titanomachy. In case you live somewhere that doesn't get cicadas, or you want to have some ambiance, here's a link to the amazing sound they make: http://youtu.be/oqys8lKsu4s

Technical Difficulties

"What?" Apple Bloom replied.

"Um...you have a lot of bugs...on you." Twilight smiled in a broad and unnatural manner trying to sell the fiction to the yellow filly.

The effort was totally wasted as Apple Bloom had her mind on other things. "Miss Twilight, that don't matter none! I saw a ghost! Or a monster! Or the ghost of a monster!"

The unicorn's smile fell at hearing this. "A ghost-monster," she repeated flatly.

"That's right, I saw a ghost-monster thing!" she confirmed.

"Like that time we went into the Everfree together, when you saw those 'blank' ponies."

"Yeah! Or...not really." Apple Bloom paused to think of how to proceed in her description. "Not a bunch of ghost ponies, this was just one ghost of... something else."

Twilight sat up, having given up on the hope of resuming her nap. She rubbed her aching head as she looked over the agitated filly. Worry lines appeared around her eyes as she contemplated her friend's young sister. "Come with me, let's get you cleaned up."

"But...but what about the ghost-monster?" She asked, confused at the sudden turn in the conversation.

"We can talk while I get you cleaned up. You've got...stuff all over you." Twilight stood and headed up the stairs to her living quarters. She turned her head back when she was halfway up the flight to make sure the filly followed. Prompted by her glance Apple Bloom huffed in frustration but followed the purple mare up the stairs and on to the bathroom. Once there, Twilight guided the young earth pony into her tub and grabbed a heavy bristled brush with her aura.

"But we don't got time for this. We gotta look this thing up in your books and get a net or something."

Twilight gently shushed the girl and started pulling the bush through the tangled mats of hair. Twigs, dirt, and a representative collection of the insect fauna common to the Ponyville area began raining down onto the floor of Twilight's tub. After a couple minutes of this treatment, she spoke in a quiet voice full of concern and understanding. "Apple Bloom, it everything alright at home? Are there any problems you want to talk about? I promise I won't be mad or tell anyone if you don't want me to."

Apple Bloom turned her head to look at Twilight, aghast. "What're you saying?"

"I'm not saying anything dear. I just want you to know that if your stories are a way to get me or others to pay attention to you, its OK. You have my attention and I'm hear to listen to you."

"Are you calling me a liar?!?"

Twilight paused to compose a diplomatic response in the face of the filly's sudden flash of anger. Unfortunately, the pause was enough of a tell for Apple Bloom.

"You are!"

"No, no, I'm not calling you a liar. It's just that I think you might be exaggerating a bit."

The filly's little body trembled with suppressed rage while Twilight resumed brushing out the burrs and snarls. "I ain't no liar, not this time nor the last. I saw ghosts both times and there ain't nothing going on at home that I need 'attention' for. And now I'm thinking that coming to you was a mistake."

Twilight continued with the brushing. "I'm sorry Apple Bloom, its just that this is the second time you come to me with a far-fetched story about ghosts. I care about you and this behavior is starting to make me worry ab..." Twilight trailed off suddenly in her explanation and paused in her brushing. Apple Bloom was too irritated by this betrayal to notice.

Twilight resumed brushing but instead of a general and wandering application of the instrument she applied it to Apple Bloom's left flank alone for several moments. Instead of continuing on to the rest of the filly's coat on her left side Twilight walked around the tub to Apple Bloom's right and brushed at the coat on her right flank. This behavior was odd enough to draw the filly back out. "What're you doing back there?"

The young mare's response was flat and strange. "Apple Bloom? Tell me about the ghost-monster you saw in the woods. Tell me everything you can remember."

The filly could tell that something was wrong but she took advantage of her hard won invitation to tell her tale. "It was shaped kinda like a pony but all wrong. It had really long legs with hooves split in half like a goat. Its face was long and it had two horns on its head but they weren't like unicorn horns at all, they were like tree branches. It had a short little tail like a bunny and it hopped like one too."

"Deer."

"Yeah?"

"No, I mean the ghost you saw; it was a deer."

"Don't you mean 'thought I saw'?" the filly sassed.

Twilight used a shaking hoof to turn Apple Bloom's head towards the mirror above the bathroom sink. In the mirror, she could see the reflection of her flank. It was cleared of all the debris and muck she had dragged with her during her run from the forest, except for one dead leaf from an apple tree clinging to her bottom. It was brown and decomposed, really only consisting of the intricate lacework of the leaf veins. Apple Bloom reached up and tried to brush the dead thing from her body but she only encountered fur. With confusion she looked up at Twilight, who she now saw was pale and shaken. The young mare then turned the filly around so she could see her other flank in the mirror. An identical leaf skeleton was on her other flank.

"No, Apple Bloom. I completely believe you."

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Twilight had walked side by side with Apple Bloom all the way out to Sweet Apple Acres. It wasn't a particularly long walk, with each of them having reasons to hurry out of Ponyville, but it was quiet and awkward. Twilight didn't know what to say to the filly. This was supposed to be a time of joy and discovery but Apple Bloom's talent scared them both. As far as Twilight had known, prior to this afternoon, ghosts were no more than story elements useful for adding supernatural horror to a narrative. The implications of a spirit trapped within the world of the living, showing active use of intelligence, perception, and social interaction left her metaphysical theories in shambles.

As for Apple Bloom herself, Twilight assessed that the filly had to have gone through a terribly traumatic experience both today and during her encounter with the 'Blanks.' The older mare bit her lip and forced herself to breathe evenly as a wave of shame washed through her. Both times Apple Bloom had come to her and twice she had dismissed the legitimate fears of a filly who needed her help. The thought of how alone Apple Bloom must have felt after she had dismissed the filly's story turned the mare's stomach. Grimacing at the thought, Twilight apologized, "I'm sorry."

"I know," the filly replied though she wasn't thinking of Twilight's previous dismissal of her claims, only of the horrible brand on her flank and took Twilight's statement as an expression of sympathy rather than guilt.

Not long afterward their walk came to an end. The Apple's farmhouse loomed ahead of them, tall and imposing in the light of Apple Bloom's dread. Twilight slowed up as they approached the door that let to the Apple's kitchen, demurring to the filly's right to enter her own residence first. Apple Bloom nodded to her companion, bit her lip to brace herself for the expected confrontation, and then entered her home.

Applejack was standing in front of the stove, working alongside Granny Smith to prepare dinner. Apple Bloom inhaled in preparation to speak with her family but then her eyes fell on her sister's flank. The sibling she most idealized had a trio of shining red apples as her cutie mark declaring her to a an Apple in the truest sense. When she thought of her sister, Apple Bloom thought of her as a farmer, the hardest worker she knew, a staunch friend, the ideal earth pony and everything she had hoped to grow up to be. She stood there silently for a moment, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes as she contrasted herself with the paragon of her clan.

Her sister turned around, looking for a potholder, and saw her beloved little sister. "Oh! Hey there, Sugarcube. How did things go with the bugs today?" Apple Bloom responded by running upstairs to her room in a maelstrom of howling misery, leaving her sister standing there speechless. Twilight rescued Applejack from her stunned silence by clearing her throat while standing in the doorway. Eyes wide with shock, Applejack asked her friend, "What the hay was all that about?"

---------------------------------------------------

Big Macintosh was called in from the fields and an impromptu family meeting (plus one honorary member) was called to order around the kitchen table. Despite the closed door, the distance, and the thick timbers which comprised the farmhouse Apple Bloom's sobbing could still be heard. The sound of the family's youngest member's misery blanketed the room in profound discomfort.

"Apple Bloom got her cutie mark today, " Twilight stated.

"Aaaand?" Asked Big Mac with raised brows.

"She didn't get the talent she was expecting. She didn't get a talent anyone expected her to develop. Although, I was given information at an earlier date that indicated that this was a possibility. I chose to ignore that information because I thought the whole thing was too far fetched."

"I hear a whole lot of gum flapping but I ain't heard you say what her talent or mark is," pointed out the green family elder.

"The mark she developed is that of the vascular skeleton of a decomposing leaf."

Blank looks were the shared response to her very accurate description.

"A dead leaf, with only the veins left," she tried again.

"But Twi, what does that mean?" Applejack asked.

"I think it means she has some sort of talent with ghosts or the dead in general." Twilight opined in a professorial tone.

"She didn't do something unsavory to earn that, did she?" Granny asked with apprehension.

"No, no she didn't do anything like-" Twilight countered but was interrupted.

"Did we do something wrong?" asked Applejack.

"No," Twilight denied firmly. "She didn't do anything wrong, you didn't do anything wrong, nobody did anything wrong, and there's nothing wrong with her. It's just an unusual talent, that's all. Everything I could find on the subject in the library indicates that it is very rare."

"Nnnnecromancy?" Big Mac asked.

Twilight stared at the big, red farmer for a moment, trying to process the fact that he even knew that word. "Technically, that is the correct term but-"

"She can make zombies?!?" Scootaloo's voice rang out from the doorway and all eyes turned to see her and Sweetie Bell peeking around the frame.

"Spies! Inquisitors! Witch hunters! Hide the child!" Granny cried, diving for kitchen implements of destruction.

"Girls! What are you doing, sneaking around our house!" Applejack shouted.

Granny arose from behind the table armed with a cast-iron skillet in her mouth and wearing a colander on her head. She was restrained by the gentle but immovable hoof of Big Mac.

"Apple Bloom can raise the dead?" Sweetie Bell asked with a look of shock on her face.

"No, she can't raise the dead!" Twilight reassured everyone. "Necromancy just means that you can communicate with the dead in some way. Raising the dead would involve focused application of magic that only a unicorn could manage. As an earth pony her talent is likely much more subtle."

"Oh, that's a lot less cool," said Scootaloo, disappointed by the news as only a fan of the horror genre could be.

"Y'all still haven't explained how you've come to be sneaking around my doorstep," Applejack interjected.

"We were at my sister's with Spike and saw Twilight run by with Apple Bloom. It looked like she was really upset about something so we followed as fast as we could. By the time we got here you were already talking about Apple Bloom but it sounded really serious. I really wanted to know what was wrong but we were afraid that we'd be kicked out."

Applejack resigned herself to the fact that Apple Bloom's friends should be some of the first ponies to know about her sister's...condition. However, she wasn't about to let the eavesdroppers get off scott-free. "While I appreciate the concern you have for my little sis', I will not tolerate you sneaking around this farm. Next time you come up here, you better announce yourself or you're gonna earn yourselves some chores."

"Yes ma'am," the two fillies responded in unison.

"But while you're here, you might as well as go up and see her. She's real upset and could use some company right about now."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!" The fillies shouted as they galloped past the adults and up the stairs to Apple Bloom's room. They were confronted by a solidly closed door with the initials "A.B." etched onto an apple-shaped shingle hanging from a nail.

"Should we knock?" Sweetie Bell asked Scootaloo.

"Guess so." she replied and hit the wood with her hoof three times.

"Go away," answered a miserable little voice filtering through the thick wood.

"Apple Bloom, it's us, Sweetie and Scootaloo. Let us in." said the unicorn.

"No. I'm horrible. I'm a monster."

"No you aren't, you're just a necro-thingie." Scootaloo said in an attempt to calm her friend.

Silence was their only reply for several moments but then they heard some shuffling noises through the door which finally opened. Apple Bloom looked a terrible mess. Her fur and mane were only partially cleared of dirt and debris by Twilight's interrupted brushing. Her face was dirty and streaked by clean paths left by her tears. "I'm a what?"

"A necromancer is what Twilight said." Sweetie Bell replied, remembering the strange term better than her more athletically focused friend.

"I can raise zombies?" Apple Bloom asked, incredulous but somewhat excited by the prospect.

"See?!?" Scootaloo shouted as she was given proof that others thought the term meant what she thought it should.

"Twilight said it was about talking to the dead." Sweetie then turned a glare on Scootaloo, "Not about raising the dead."

"Oh, that would have been cooler," Apple Bloom said with mild disappointment.

"I know, right?" Scootaloo proclaimed in solidarity with the pro-zombie camp.

"Ugh, you two. Can we come in?" Sweetie asked, actually remembering why they were here.

Apple Bloom's head disappeared from the opening in the door, looking at something behind her. "I guess, just promise you won't freak out or anything when you see it."

"Ok," said the two fillies before pushing their way into her room. The immediately circled their friend, one going left and the other right, examining her new cutie mark without giving her a chance to shy away from either of them.

"Oh," said Scootaloo. "I thought they said she had a skeleton on her flank. This is just a dead leaf."

"Hey!" she chided Scootaloo. "Its actually kinda pretty," Sweetie Belle added for Apple Bloom's benefit.

"Really?" said Apple Bloom. "Isn't it kind of, you know, gross?"

"No, it's all lacy and delicate. It's really detailed too. Is it any particular kind of leaf?"

"Duh, its an apple leaf," Scootaloo offered.

"You know what an apple leaf looks like?" Apple Bloom asked Scootaloo, brows furrowed.

"Heck no! You're an Apple. All of your cutie marks have something to do with apples. If that leaf wasn't an apple, I'd have some tough questions to ask your sister if I was you."

Sweetie snorted a laugh at the exchange as Apple Bloom's jaw hung open.

"How could you say that, Scoots? Are you suggesting I'm adopted or something?"

"Well, obviously not," she replied smugly while poking Apple Bloom in the flank.

"Come on you two, we're supposed to be making Apple Bloom feel better."

"Actually, I kind of do," the yellow filly replied. "You sure its not gross or you aren't scared or anything?"

"If I say 'yes' will you sick a zombie on me?" Scootaloo teased.

"You better hope I never figure out how!" Apple Bloom replied with a giggle and then punched her friend playfully in the shoulder. The tussle expanded to include Sweetie Belle, all of Apple Bloom's pillows, and several stuffed animals being used as missile weapons. Out of breath from both exertion and laughing, the three girls laid side by side in the wrong direction on the bed.

"So, y'all aren't mad?" Apple Bloom asked her friends once she could catch her breath.

"About what? Sweetie asked, genuinely confused.

"About me getting mine first," she answered.

"Are you gonna quit the Crusaders?" Scootaloo said as a riposte.

"Not unless you make me," she said with worry.

"Then, heck no!" Scootaloo replied with enthusiasm.

"No way," Sweetie Belle confirmed.

Apple Bloom sniffed back some more tears but this time they were happy ones.

Author's Notes:

As most of you can tell from the text, I'm including the "Story of the Blanks" in the cannon of the Titano-verse. This chapter is a little light compared to the previous two. I may go back in and add text at a later date but I really like the ending point so the narrative will stay the same even if I do.

Crullity, Abuse, and Murder

Luna’s eyes fluttered open as she felt the call of her moon. Upon reaching consciousness, a small, private smile crossed the divine mare’s face. “Just one more night and then I’m to Ponyville and Twilight,” was the accompanying thought.

While not normally a quick riser, this evening Luna sprung from bed like a foal on Hearth’s Warming morn. With a bounce in her trot she entered her bathing chamber to carry out her daily ablutions. As she brushed her teeth she chuckled at the memory of her initial confusion upon her return. During her first week back she had convinced herself that the chambermaids had been protesting her presence by withholding chamber pots. Many potted ferns gave their lives that week.

Luna nearly laughed out loud imagining the expressions of horror that must have graced the staff’s faces at the discovery of the repurposed pottery. She actually guffawed, spraying toothpaste across the mirror, while imagining a week’s worth of whispered debates among her staff. Perhaps they even drew straws to choose the unfortunate soul tasked with informing their beloved solar princess that her rescued sister was stricken with madness and was giving her servants daily gifts of crockeries full of night-soil.

Luna wiped up the worst of the splatter as she shifted to flossing, an innovation she detested but understood the benefits thereof. The hygienic chore completed, she turned her attention to the shower. With a flick of her aura, the alicorn started the miniature waterfall and marveled, as she did every day at the water flowing fast, thick, and hot enough to steam. Her pleasure from the torrent of nearly-scalding water washed all thoughts away along with the sweat and dust her body accumulated since yesterday’s shower.

She was reminded that these efforts were, technically, unnecessary luxuries. She was a divine being and therefore not truly made of flesh and blood. The microscopic animalcules that rotted pony teeth could not ablate her enamel, although halitosis could still be a problem. As for dirt, she could easily release the current manifestation she occupied back into the aether and create a new body for herself in a matter of seconds. The new body could be utterly pristine and her maids would sweep up the pile of dirt and salt that the old body evaporated out from underneath. But all these acts served a purpose to her mind; they were mortal activities.

As a goddess she need not eat, sleep, bathe, or even breathe. She had abandoned such mortal trappings during her time as the Nightmare, disparaging such actions as beneath her divine status. The brief thought of her former persona was enough to rob her of the languorous smile she had adopted while under the shower’s spell. “I had forgotten so much in my anger,” she said to the shower-head. She now knew that, back then, she had forgotten the need for connection and in her rage she had severed the last remaining ties she had to ponydom and became a monster.

Refusing to allow the memories of ancient mistakes to ruin her good mood, Luna forced her thoughts away from the Nightmare. As she stepped, dripping, from the shower she began cataloging the activities available within the environs of Ponyville for a couple’s weekend. Central Equestria was unseasonably warm these last few weeks, noted the alicorn She wondered if Twilight would enjoy a day spent at one of the ponds for swimming found near the town. “Perhaps a hike into the cooler air of the mountains?” she wondered. Of skygazing there was no question, most likely every evening would include at least an hour of telescope time. Whatever the plan, Luna resolved that ice cream would have to play a prominent role.

Smiling once again, she magically lifted the water from her coat and guided it to the drain set into the floor. As the water flowed into the maze of pipes running through the palace she shook her head at the everyday miracle. Indoor plumbing was so common in the cities that nopony even acknowledged that subtle wonder anymore. She was reminded of Twilight in that instant. One of the reasons she was so fond of the mare was that she also didn’t take these small miracles for granted either. She tried to remember Twilight’s description of how the plumbing system worked. She hadn’t understood the treatise on water pressure but she could clearly recall the comforting cadence of Twilight’s voice while waxing eloquent on the endless technical minutia.

Cleaned and mentally prepared to face her last day of work this week Luna turned her attention back to her moon. The sun had set while she was in the shower and her celestial orb was slightly miffed to be kept waiting. The princess knew, in an intellectual manner, that she took a long time with her showers. However, in her heart of hearts, she didn’t feel like the experience was completely finished until there was no more warm water left within the system. The remembered lecture from Twilight disparaging this behavior as selfish and wasteful would have carried more weight if the unicorn had been less cute with her mane soaked and dripping with cold water. Luna’s thoughts lingered upon the memory of the two of them making up later that night. Twilight had been convinced to forgive her for the transgression, repeatedly and enthusiastically, later that night.

Tearing her mind away from the extremely distracting memory, Luna walked out of the bathroom wearing a lop-sided smile. While passing back through her bedchambers her eyes fell upon the empty blue and violet vase perched on her fireplace’s mantle. She had purchased the vase a few months ago for displaying the flowers she used to regularly receive from Twilight. After a moment’s pause, Luna chose to ignore the depressing implications and continued on to the balcony and brought forth the moon. Her technically mindless counterpart instantly forgave the tardiness as Luna wrapped her magic around her charge and lifted it into the sky. She sighed happily as the world was bathed in its cool, silver light.

Changing her focus from the sky to the city below her, she felt a thrill pass through her as lights and motion filled her field of view. The bustle of activity below in Canterlot town still filled the indigo goddess with excitement. Before her troubles the nights had been nearly deserted. Candles were expensive back then so only unicorns had spent any time awake after sunset and even they soon tired of having to supply their own light.

The nocturnal city was even more active than normal, thanks to the current heat wave. Even during the summer, Canterlot nights tended towards the chilly due to the altitude. But the excessive warmth of the daytime had tempered the evening drafts into balmy breezes and ponies filled the nighttime streets. Below her ponies in the finest couture were exiting playhouses and restaurants. The lower classes were still filtering into drinking establishments while the young amused themselves by simply loitering within squared dedicated to public monuments. The city at night was alive and tonight it was teeming.

Tearing herself away from her night, Luna placed her tiara upon her head and moved to leave her private chambers, shuffling into her formal shoes as she walked past the place where they had landed when she had kicked them from her feet yesterday. As she neared the silver-chased ebony doors that demarcated the limit to her personal realm she remembered a similar set of doors from an entirely different palace lost to dust long ago. Their old home, the castle built by the ponies to honor the royal pony sisters, now lay in ruins within the Everfree.

That majestic pile of stone had been designed and built with the diarchy explicitly in mind. Each half of the castle consisted of architecture thought to symbolize each goddess and their personalities. Celestia’s sector had been crafted of great, golden blocks of polished limestone that emotionally evoked Celestia’s immortality through sheer mass. The halls and chambers were huge, supported by the most audacious archways ever designed. The southern walls were graced with giant windows each glazed with stained glass. The technology for that art was in its infancy then and each pane was a masterpiece. The passageways themselves were dedicated to Celestia. Their width allowed platoons to march through at once and their arrangement was such so that shadows and shafts of light turned that wing of the castle into a giant calendar celebrating the solar cycle.

In contrast, Luna’s portion of the castle had been a warren of twisting, passages narrow enough to force ponies to travel them in single file. The architect had been a dear friend to Luna at the time. He was the singular sort of lunatic that blended genius and madness in equal measure and her wing of the castle reflected this perfectly. His subtle art had crafted a maze unequaled in the entire world. Hallways entered and exited on different floors, triangular motifs were created where all angles were 90 degrees, and passages seemed to pass through the same space without ever touching. Any petitioners seeking the moon goddess’ wisdom had to navigate this impossible labyrinth.
Contained within this maze were wonders and horrors in equal measure. Each room was dedicated to some aspect the moon goddess and her architect’s genius ensured that she could subtly guide those who sought her out to either sort of discovery. The moth atrium was a wonder equal to any of Celestia’s windows. Her firefly garden gave ponies a taste of what it felt like to dwell among the stars. The amphibian chorus of the singing ponds moved anypony lucky enough to hear it to tears.

As her nature darkened and the Nightmare grew within her heart, Luna began guiding more and more petitioners to the more dangerous portions of this maze. At the time she had told herself that the ponies seeking her had to “earn” their audience by surviving the more dangerous parts of the labyrinth. Chambers where frost grew like ferns cut and froze ponies. Strange, luminescent fish with more teeth than scales swam in black pools that supplicants had to cross. In the end, she had unlocked the doors to the deep chambers allowing slithering horrors to roam the halls and feast upon those unlucky enough to come across them.

Across this arc of personal history, one thing was constant about her old home; it was a place of secrets and whispers. As she opened the double doors before her, Luna smiled ruefully at the contrast before her. Ponies bustled along wide, clean hallways perpetually lit by the bright glow of modern electro-magical lighting (another beloved invention). Not only was her wing of the palace bright and crowded, it was loud. Office workers chatted amicably as their typewriters clicked and clacked. Middle managers shouted directions as pneumatic tubes shuttled paperwork from office to office. Rising above the dull roar was the never-ending sound of sawing and hammering as acres of office space were added every month but never quite kept up with demand.

A muscle-bound giant of an earth-pony stallion approached her with obvious trepidation...and paperwork. As he stood in front of her she could almost see the stallion’s brain stripping gears in an attempt to remember the proper forms of address to royalty. Eventually he went with, "Your Lunar Worshipfullness, it is an honor and a privilege to be given the chance to serve you," said in the limping cadence one only achieved by using words that were far longer than one was comfortable with. His thick accent marked him as somepony from the Manehatten underclass.

Luna tried to smile at the obviously new hire in a calming manner. This was a talent in which her sister excelled and Luna utterly lacked. The result was a sallow and ill-looking rictus creeping onto her face. The stallion’s discomfort increased.
Switching tactics, Luna spoke to the stallion. "Thank you, Mister..."

"Yous can call me Kneecaps, Your Majesty," He replied while holding out the roll of paperwork in the hopes that the goddess before him would take them in sacrifice and spare the mere mortal pony before her.

Luna grasped the paperwork in her aura and tucked the roll underneath her wing, to deal with at a later time. “Welcome aboard, Mister Kneecaps. And please, its just Princess or M'lady here.

"Yes, thank you, Your..Prince..Lady." The giant froze as his linguistic mangling worked its way through his prodigious skull to his solidly armored brain.

"Its fine. You'll get the hang of it soon enough," Luna said in an attempt to have comfort the poor overwhelmed (and overgrown) colt. "I do, however, have a favor to ask of you."

He made a strangled "Mmmm-" of titular indecision.

“In the future, please leave paperwork headed to me with my secretary. He’ll make sure it gets to me, after my breakfast."

Kneecaps’ eyes bulged in horror at his faux pas and he fled back to the meager protection of the cubicle to which he was assigned. Fillyish giggles soon erupted from the adjacent workspace, betraying the identity of the mares that had set Kneecaps on this particular collision course with embarrassment. Luna mentally noted from which cubical the titters came. Good-natured ribbing she considered harmless but she did want to keep track of the antics in case the pranks crossed the line into hazing or bullying.

Despite the stallion’s social clumsiness, Luna was still proud of him and she smiled far more naturally as soon as he was back inside his workspace. Only a month ago, Kneecaps had been a notorious enforcer for a loan shark operating out of the Manehattan docks. Upon his arrest, Mr. Kneecaps had been convinced to turn crown’s evidence in exchange for his sentence being reduced to community service within the lunar bureaucracy.

Upon her reentry into government activities, Luna had immediately run into the issue that all of the experienced government bureaucrats already had jobs, working for her sister. Efforts to hire ponies from outside the government into her civil service ran afoul of the nocturnal hours her court would be keeping. Very few of the ponies with the necessary skills and backgrounds wanted to work from sunset to sunrise and her staffing problems languished for several frustrating months.

About the time her problem was appearing unsolvable, she nearly literally stumbled upon the answer. One day (and rather tired and cranky since it was day) she had been down in the civil-service warrens underneath the east wing of the palace in order to file some procurement order herself. It was then, while her sister's own servants did not know of or even expect the presence of one of their diarchs that she had heard them complaining about the terms of their employment. One of the mares had described it as a form of punishment.

While it was Luna's observation that ponies were generally better behaved in this age of peace, crimes were still committed on a daily basis. Equicide or other unforgivable crimes were vanishingly rare in this era but crimes of mendacity and greed were just as common now as they had been millennia ago. So, from that night on, when ponies fitting a particular profile were convicted in her courts they were offered a choice between prison time or joining her civil service.

She had discovered that embezzlers made excellent accountants, loan-sharks made the best tax-collectors, and that some pimps were well-suited towards careers in Equine Resources. There were hiccups along the way, as expected, but every now and again one of her involuntary recruits found that they enjoyed the work performed, the nocturnal hours, the regular paycheck, and the fact that back-stabbings were far more metaphorical while working for Luna’s government. These souls requested to stay on within her service after the completion of their sentence and formed the core of her administration.

Celestia's parallel civil-service had been predictably aghast, something that Luna quietly enjoyed. However, it did bother the alicorn that the rapidly changing set of affairs had not yet prompted Celestia to come over and confront her little sister about the rapidly increasing number of convicted felons within the palace. "It isn't like her." Luna thought to herself as she left her staff offices behind, heading to the small dining room in which the princesses shared their private meals. "Does it mean that she finally trusts me or does she think that I'm doing all this just to get a rise out of her?" She quickly readjusted her face, away from the glum expression her thoughts had prompted since ponies still tended to overreact when she let her countenance reflect her true feelings. "Not that I wouldn't mind getting a rise or any other reaction out of her these days."

The dining room she entered was only small and intimate by comparison to the massive chambers used for state dinners. The table was bedecked in crisp, white linen and, as befitting the sunset meal, silver dining implements. This particular room had not yet been renovated for the use of electro-magical lighting and the illumination came from a platoon of ornate candelabras marching in formation down the middle of the table. At this table, which could comfortably seat a dozen ponies, sat a single being, her sister. Luna could see that Celestia had not yet noticed her entrance. The elder mare seemed to be fussing with her glass of water and the nearest candelabra. She could see a faint, golden wisp of her sister’s aura grasp the two implements and position them with great precision and concentration. Luna quietly and slowly crept up towards her sister’s position, not wanting to interrupt whatever bizarre behavior Celestia was exhibiting.

Once Luna was within a few feet she could see that her sister was using the water-filled glass as some sort of lens. An elongated and inverted image of the candle flame appeared on the table’s surface as Celestia shifted the glass. As her sister moved the drinking vessel to a new position, the image compressed into a single point of light many times brighter than the original flame. Luna pulled her eyes away from the point of light and looked at her sister’s face.

There was no emotion there, just a fey kind of blankness as the thrum of magic began to build around her sister. While her sister’s fur was sill gleaming white, there was a slight red tint to her corneas and puffiness in the skin beneath the eyes. Celestia’s foreshortened horn no longer bore the scorch marks or bandages that had resulted from her encounter with Chrysalis and only the close st of examinations would reveal the scar from the re-attachment procedure. Despite all this scrutiny, her sister’s attention was still absolutely focused on the glass before her.

The path of the candlelight waivered and bent as Celestia flexed her will. The bright spot on the tablecloth shrank down to an eye-searing pinpoint that rapidly darkened and released a thin curl of smoke.

“Tia!” Luna exclaimed as a small flame began to dance above the blackened spot.

As Celestia’s concentration shattered, so too did the glass gripped in her power. The water within cascaded from the broken vessel and soaked the tablecloth, killing the flame instantly. The solar diarch’s face was a portrait of guilt as her eyes shot back and forth, as if seeking witnesses to a crime.

“What in Equestria were you doing?!?” the younger sibling asked.

“I…I apologize. I was lost in my thoughts,” the elder replied.

With a glance to the other end of the table, Luna summoned the flatware intended for her use to her current location. She intended to dine beside her obviously distressed sister. She nodded to the steward, signaling the beginning of their meal.

“Celestia, beloved sister, you know you can tell me anything, do you not?” Luna implored.

The older sister’s lips curled in an approximation of a smile but her eyes remained mired in sorrow. “I…” she started but then hung up on that syllable.

Luna thought she could see some strange measure of guilt troubling Celestia and so reached out a wing to her sister, gently stroking the larger alicorn’s withers. The goddess of light flinched subtly at the touch but then leaned into the younger, changing the gesture into a hug.

“What troubles thee?” Luna asked, imploringly.

Celestia’s voice returned to its usual composed alto. “I am melancholy, that is all, and your embrace cures it.”

Luna knew that her sister was choosing to conceal whatever it was that was bothering her, but she chose to not press the issue. “She can keep her secrets, if her damaged pride demands it,” thought the alicorn.

It was at that moment that the steward returned with their preferred beverages, tea for Celestia and coffee for Luna. After a quick tightening of the embrace, Luna broke off the hug and gave her steaming mug of black ambrosia the attention it was due. The nocturnal goddess griped a teaspoon in her aura and used the implement to add a single mounded scoop of sugar to the opaque liquid. Three stirs clockwise followed by the same in reverse was her ritual before bringing the thick ceramic to her lips.

Coffee had not been known to her prior to her banishment, the trade routes to Zebrica were not well enough developed at the time for the fragile bean to make the trip unspoiled. Her introduction to the beverage had happened during the early days of her friendship with Twilight. As their relationship deepened into something more, Luna’s appreciation of the brew had followed the same trajectory and was now viewed as an absolute necessity by the alicorn. The first taste of coffee for the night was always the best and as the warmth, flavor, and caffeine spread through her, Luna sighed with pleasure.

Luna opened her eyes as she heard her sister chuckle at her response to the beverage. A genuine smile now graced Celestia’s lips as a paper-thin porcelain saucer loaded with tea, milk and sugar hovered beside her. “It’s good to see you happy, Luna,” her sister said warmly.

“My nights are not without strife, dear sister, but I am making a point to enjoy what is before me,” replied Luna.

A queer look crossed Celestia’s face. “How are things going with you and Twilight?”

Luna took a moment to frame a reply. During that pause, the staff brought out a dish involving polenta and roasted tomatoes for Celestia. A firmly built brown colored unicorn stallion in a white chef’s jacket came forth from the kitchen and placed a large platter of various doughnuts before Luna. Celestia quirked an eyebrow at the younger mare’s breakfast.

“I am most of the way though “D”.” Luna answered the look.

“What I’m more surprised by is that you are keeping to this ridiculous diet,” her sister replied.

“It isn’t technically a ‘diet,’ I am obviously not eating a platter of doughnuts for their nutritional value,” Luna countered in a dry tone.

“Preparing an alphabetical list of foods I can expect of Twilight Sparkle but why are you going along with this?”

Luna hesitated before answering. “She didn’t know that most of the dishes that I was familiar with were no longer eaten by ponies,” Luna explained, “and that many dishes she thinks of as common fare were invented or imported over only the last few hundred years.”

Celestia sighed, “Great, now you have me missing defruitum.”

Luna gave her sister an arch look.

“What? It’s not like the lead in it could harm us,” Celestia replied.

"Well, it certainly did harm to the minds of the nobles who imitated us," Luna countered.

"You cannot prove that it wasn't mearly the inbreading," the elder sister joked.

The brown maned stallion’s eyes silently widened as he followed the sisters’ banter.

Luna attempted to pull the conversation back onto topic, “I found that I lacked sufficient information to choose any restaurants or even any dishes for our dinner dates. So, as is her pattern, Twilight took my lack of input as a lack of interest in her or our outings."

“The five stages of Twilight Sparkle?” Celestia prompted.

“Disbelief, embarrassment, panic, overkill, and then copious checklists,” Luna reviewed the list they had compiled one night over a bottle of wine. "This was her proposed solution...after the fight was finished. Remarkably, there does seem to be some merit to this approach as I have discovered several modern dishes that I enjoy. Aloo gobi was delightful and crepes were a week-long pleasure.”

Celestia smirked, “Just make sure to warn me before kimchi night.”

“Why?” asked Luna, suddenly concerned and utterly ignorant as to the meaning of this strange word.

“Just…do me that favor, if you will,” Celestia answered enigmatically. “I don’t want to ruin the surprise.” The solar diarch smiled devilishly as she thought back to the epic battles that took place between them at the dawn of the world. Luna’s refusal to eat her cabbage as a filly had resulted in several extinctions and extensive orogeny. Luna's hatred for the vegetable was legendary. Cabbage was eternally banned from their old castle in the Everfree and upon her return Luna had immediately reinstated the ban.

Celestia's smile grew as she remembered the existence of a scroll containing several odes disparaging the poor vegetable, written by a young and overly earnest Luna. It lurked deep within the restricted section of the Library, an ancient relic of teenaged angst. "A perfect Hearthswarming gift for Twilight," she thought to herself.

Luna’s lips made a moue of displeasure as her sister's smile widened. Her track record with Celestia’s humor of this sort was somewhat painful. Her older sister may love her dearly but she wasn’t above the occasional ‘big-sister’ prank.

“Despite the monotony of eating one’s way though the dictionary,” Celestia said as she lifted one of the pastries in her golden aura, “It would be un-sisterly of me to not assist you in your culinary homework tonight.”

A fork, wrapped in a dark-blue aura, stabbed the doughnut hard enough to pin the errant treat to the table and vibrate. “It would be remiss of me to delegate this duty bestowed upon me with such care and forethought by Miss Sparkle,” Luna said in a light tone.

The stallion started backing away from the table, hoping that he could exit the room without attracting any divine attention.

“Sir Joe, what is the title of this here pastry that doth bleed amber upon the tablecloth?” Luna asked the unlucky pony.

Celestia interjected before the stallion could reply, “Luna, it really is more of a name than a ‘title’.”

“Um… it’s just Joe, your Majesties.” Doughnut Joe said as a means towards regaining some composure. Normally, he would swear at this point but Joe decided that blaspheming only a few feet from those particular gods was bad for business, karma, and everything else in his life. “That one,” he gestured to the skewered and oozing mess, “is referred to as a ‘bear claw’.”

Luna was silent for a moment as she rotated her head, quizzically. Finally she gave up, “Why?”

“Um…” said Joe.

Celestia sighed before rescuing the pony, “Because it looks somewhat like one?”

Luna turned her eyes back to the item in question for a few more moments before answering. “No it doesn’t.”

Celestia applied a modicum of force upon the transfixed pastry, tearing about a third of the bear claw free. After devouring and washing down the morsel with tea Celesta quipped, “Nor are bears usually filled with delightfully rendered apples.”

“Do the griffons still celebrate the feast of saint Ethun?” Luna asked from sudden rememberance. “They used to put apples inside anything for that holiday.”

“And anyone unfortunate enough to have been captured that week, even bears” Celestia added.

The chef made small strangling noises as he fought for composure.

Celestia continued, "But no, I do not think that griffons, in the main, do so anymore."

"Do you think the etymology derives from this custom?” Luna asked Joe as she ate the remaining two-thirds of the bear-claw. “Are they a Griffish culinary innovation?"

A whimper from the stallion was all the answer she received.

“Perhaps you should move on to the next variety,” Celestia suggested in a bid to rescue Doughnut Joe from the in-depth interrogation regarding the cultural origins of bear claws.

Luna selected another pastry from the tray. She lifted it in her aura and examined it as if it were an entomological specimen. This variety was pale and soft, lightly glazed, and graced with a spiraling set of ridges. “What is this one called, Mister Joe?”

"It's called a 'cruller,' ma'am," Joe replied in a strained voice.

"Oh, I can see why! Very aptly named indeed," She spouted with surprising pleasure as she turned to face Doughnut Joe.

"Is it?" was all the utterly baffled stallion could bring himself to say.

Celestia fought desperately to keep from laughing at the awkward exchange. Not to preserve either pony’s dignity, but in order to not attract any attention as she surreptitiously levitated doughnuts, one at a time, from the tray while her sister’s head was turned from the pile of golden fried, glazed, and jelly-filled treasures.

Luna continued apace, "Of course, the name says exactly what you have to do to make it."

"I crulled it?" he said, handling the term like a live viper.

"The verb is 'krullen', I take it that you've never studied Old Earth-Equuish?

"Sorry, ma'am, I've never had reason to," he carefully replied.

Luna gave the stallion an arch look that communicated quite clearly her belief that everypony should learn as many languages as possible. She then returned her attention back to the pastry tray. Her dark brows furrowed as her suspicions rose. She looked over to her sister, accusingly.

“What?” Celestia said innocently with a pastry-muffled voice and through sprinkle-coated lips.

Luna growled but chose not to pursue the theft further. She took a bite of the cruller. "Mmmn, it doesn't taste much like an earth-pony recipe. It is so light and fluffy. She licked her smiling lips, "Delicious."

With some of his confidence restored by the complement to his craft Joe helpfully added, “It’s sometimes called a Prench cruller.”

"Ah, this must be a yet another wonderful example of culinary fusion. The pastry tastes much like Pâte à Pantanelli." She took the all of the remaining doughnut into her mouth with a large bite which her sister watched with undisguised envy.

Finally back on more firm conversational footing, Joe found himself correcting the goddess. "It’s called 'Pâte à Choux'."

Luna's eyes widened and she spit the chunk of half-chewed pastry across the dining hall. "Cabbage?!?"

"Ahhhh!" Joe screamed in reflexive panic.

"Cabbage!” Luna shouted again.

“What?!?” the pastry chef shouted back.

“You said it's made of cabbage!" clarified the wrathful deity.

"No I didn't! I said it's made of Choux!" The panicked unicorn seemed ready to bolt.

Luna froze and scowled at the chef. "You don't speak Prench either, do you?" she said, turning to her sister for moral support.

Celestia froze, mid-chew, with bulging cheeks and chocolate-smeared lips. She blinked and forcibly swallowed something that was far too big for comfort before answering with an even more innocent tone. "What?”

Luna gave her sister her best withering stare.

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Luna sent the distraught chef away, pried the tray of doughnuts away from her sugar-addicted sister, and fled to her office. "Pâte à Choux, my left hock." she grumbled as she stalked between rows of cubicles while munching on pastries she was now lacking the names thereof. The newest additions to her staff froze in their work and bowed their heads while those used to her appearances merely nodded informal greetings. At the back of the room were a pair of crescent-moon bedecked mahogany doors, she swung them wide with a pulse of her magic and closed them smoothly behind her. She immediately regretted the noise insulating spell she had had woven into the wood as her eardrums were nearly burst by a wall of sound.

Her attention was immediately grabbed by the massive tangle of brass, chrome, and copper that loomed behind the desk of her personal secretary. Or rather, normally it loomed. Looming would have been fine. She was used to it looming. At this particular moment the “Brass Beast” was issuing forth an ululating approximation of a Tirekian death-cultist about to strike. Luna's ears immediately clapped down onto her skull in an attempt to save her inner ear bones from being shaken into dust. By reflex she began gathering her arcane force around her, preparing to crush the metal thing into a sphere dense enough to bend light.

She would have done it except for her personal secretary standing between her and the machine. He was on his hind legs, frantically spinning knobs and throwing valves. Low Rent was a brown unicorn stallion with three small white crystals for a cutie mark. He originally came from the bleak mountains north of Trottingham but had become somewhat famous in Canterlot's 'alternative pharmaceuticals' scene prior to his arrest. Shaking his black mane out of his eyes, the unicorn manipulated the machine with the focus of a concert pianist - utterly missing the fact that the goddess of the night, his boss, was standing behind him and had barely restrained herself from violently breaking several laws of thermodynamics to utterly destroy him and his "coffee maker."

The Brass Beast has started as an innocuous little thing that had merely sat upon the shelf behind his desk that made passable but weak coffee upon request. She had placed her office's coffee making duties into her secretary's hooves with no inkling that it would have lead to this state of affairs. "Perhaps," she reflected, "I shouldn't have encouraged his early interest in improving the devise and the resulting brew." But given the stallion's state of mind and the process of addiction recovery, it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

The series of manipulations accelerated into a frenzied crescendo, shooting gouts of steam into the rapidly warming air of her office's antechamber. The ululation changed into a wail whose pitch dropped from the top to the bottom of the range of audible frequencies in less than two seconds. The sound died a chuttering death that sounded suspiciously like a vulgar and anatomically improbable proposition in the language of Cetacean. After a second of silence, the Brass Beast began sputtering from a tiny nozzle positioned above a miniature coffee mug. Droplets of liquid, darker than Erebus' soul-stuff, began to fill the crucible. The aroma quickly traveled the distance to Luna's and the vapors alone were potent enough to cause the goddess' heart rate to double and her nose-hairs to curl. Before Luna could recover her composure, the unicorn drank the concoction down in a single slurp.

"It's bigger!" Luna shouted over the ringing in her ears.

"Wa'?" The stallion started and turned around. His outline began to blur from vibrations as the caffeine took hold.

"I said, 'it looks bigger than it did yesterday!'"

A broad smile creased his face, "Aye! I stayed here all day workin’ on ‘er. I figgered 'ow ta goose tha effeciency by annotha tan pracent by pu'in in a counter-current heat exchange!"

"Tell me how that is a good thing, Mister Rent!" Irritation stretched Luna's lips into a thin line as she waited for an answer.

"I could drink tan pracent less o' tha coffee?" he offered up, hopefully.

"Did you?" asked the goddess.

His smile became a guilty one. It was all the answer she required.

"Mister Low Rent, we've discussed this before. I encouraged your 'coffee' making in this office because it has been a great help in weaning you from the other substances you used to produce, sell, and consume. I understand that the urge for stronger hot beverages may be difficult to control but I want you to keep in mind that if you manage to turn innocent coffee beans into something hazardous to yourself or the general population, we will have to wean you off them as well. Have I made myself clear?"

"Ya, Princess," he answered. Subconsciously, but not unnoticed by Luna, his left fore-hoof slid protectively around the tiny porcelain receptacle that they mutually agreed to call his coffee mug due to the lack of a better term in Equish.

She had heard that one of her sister's favorite secretaries was also a chemist but she doubted her sister ever had to deal with situations like this. She pinned him in place for a few moments with the 'Traditional Canterlot Glare' to let him know that she was serious about this. Finally her turquoise eyes released the yellow and bloodshot ones that called his skull home and she deflated a bit. "Does that thing still have a normal coffee setting?" She asked him while rubbing a temple.

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Her senior staff was mostly made up of ponies that had proven themselves to be talented at their new civil-service jobs and had chosen willingly to stay in service after their sentence was completed. The two exceptions were the Captains of the Canterlot City Night Watch and the Equestrian Night Guard, respectively the bat-ponies Frolicsome Meadowlark and Sunshine Smiles. These two old and stalwart friends didn't particularly like the ponies she had chosen to surround herself with but over the past few months even they had to admit that some of her unusual recruits were very good at their jobs.

Luna kept their chatter light and inconsequential while waiting for the others to arrive. She didn't want to go over her decision to skip town again and again as her officers trickled in from various points around the palace. The first to arrive was a male, middle-aged Zebra wearing an Equestrian style business jacket and collar. "Good evening to you, mistress of the moon," he said as he pulled up a chair.

Luna and the two bat-ponies winced at the almost-rhyme with which the Zebra greeted her. It was a strange and rare for a zebra to be bad at poetry since, at a minimum, they would get a great deal of practice. The zebra before her was a strange anomaly. He was not merely bad at poetry. He was quite possibly the worst poet in the world.

"Good evening, Ponzi. Would you care for some coffee?" Luna asked, politely.

Luna often wondered about this strange creature’s life and tonight was no exception. “Was his total incompetence with words somehow related to his unusual talent with numbers?” she mused. He was once an esteemed banker and investment guru, until the law caught up with his elaborate and elegant network designed to defraud investors.

"If strange be the brew, it would...make me...blue." He struggled to reply.

"It's normal coffee, this time. I even tried some and it is very good...and safe."

The zebra nodded, pushed his glasses higher up his snout and poured himself a half-cup from the carafe.

"Are y'all sure you ought to be doin' that?" a low but feminine voice said from the conference room doorway. "Last time you had a cup o' that devil-juice we had to peel you off the ceiling."

Ponzi glared at a heavily made up and elaborately dressed pink, pegasus mare with a heart-shaped cutie mark posing dramatically in the doorway. "I've been assured by the Princess that this batch is safe. He then realized that he hadn't rhymed and hastily added, "And I trust her to keep me...la da...safe." Everyone stared at the zebra, rubbernecking while the entire art of poetry died a violent and horrible death.

Shattering the macabre moment, the pink mare batted her fake eyelashes in mock sympathy and declared, "Now that there was just sad," and flounced her way over to the table. "M'lady," she greeted Luna with a curtsy.

"Miss Play," Luna replied. Luna had learned the hard way that the mare from Los Pegasus insisted on the Miss, despite the fact that she was nearly the same age as the zebra. While she had claimed to have been an actress in her youth, she had been convicted of operating a very successful brothel as well as several counts of blackmailing city officials who were regulars at said brothel. Since her sentencing, she had proven surprisingly adept at formal hospitality within the court; a fact which brought Luna no small amusement. She had awarded her talent with the title of Chamberlain and additional duties seeing to the needs of visiting dignitaries and delegations. The princess deliberately did not ask about the full variety of entertainment available to these rich and powerful persons but they always arrived at her office smiling, relaxed, and ready to compromise.

"Oh good, there's coffee," a brash, young, yellow earth-pony mare with a black mane observed while rushing to the table and pouring herself a cup. After taking a deep gulp of the scalding hot liquid she seemed to notice the other ponies around her. "Oh, you," she said as she realized she had inadvertently sat across from Miss Play. "Got your hooks into anyone new tonight?"

"As if I would tell you about my social calendar," the hospitality expert sniped back.

"I was talking about your work calendar," Broadsheet quipped back.

The pegasus answered by way of a glare that promised death but only after a long period of suffering.

Luna disliked the fact that she needed an officer to handle publicity and myriads of newspapers that published within Equestria but she could not deny that Broadsheet was adept at handling these issues. The Fillidelphian earth-pony had developed a reputation as a muckraker back in her home town. But what had eventually landed her in Luna's employment were a series of exposés on corruption within the city government. Several ponies had lost their jobs and others lost their next elections. But it turned out that Ms. Yellow Broadsheet couldn't actually get anyone within the corruption ring to talk to her so she invented a fictional, deep cover source. Her guesses were accurate enough to have destroyed the corrupt administration but when it was discovered that she had invented her interviews she was promptly fired, sued, and criminally charged.

"Don't mind the young ruffian, Miss Play. If need be, I'll defend your honor in a Duel Magistus." An elderly unicorn stallion with a grossly inflated Canterlot accent and waistline waddled into the conference room. If there was a member of her inner council who Luna could be said to actively dislike, Doctor Ponderous Talent Maj.D. would be him. He had been drummed out of Celestia's School for Talented Unicorns when it was discovered that he was falsifying his research and had used his research grant money to instead finance his decadent lifestyle. He was pompous, arrogant, horribly smitten with Miss Play (who loathed him), and generally unlikable. He was also an extraordinary intellect, a gifted magician, and a talented administrator. Luna tolerated him by constantly reminding herself that he had been cursed with the name Ponderous Talent since his birth to a pair of working-class unicorns with aspirations.

"I'm sure that won't be unnecessary," the pink pegasus replied.

"Yep, totally a lost cause." Broadsheet chimed in.

"Now, now; play nice kids." The last of her cabinet, her chief of staff, sidled into the conference room and took the seat at the foot of the table, opposite Luna. The grey earth pony with a scythe cutie mark nodded to his boss and then turned his attention to the other officers scattered about the table. "Now, if we're done fooling around here, I believe our Princess has called us here for some important reason or another."

Wheat Cutter, known within his former peer group by the more ominous sounding "Cutter," had started out as the sixth child of a poor farming family outside of Trottingham. Despite having no access to school, he had taught himself how to read soon after leaving his family's farm. The charges for which he was indicted were racketeering, mail fraud, banditry, sale of stolen goods, the operation of a criminal organization, and failure to pay taxes on income. Due to lack of direct evidence the only charge for which he was convicted was tax evasion. For which, he received his assignment to Luna's civil service.

When Luna had noticed Wheat Cutter’s success at managing the fractious and difficult ponies she had filled her offices with, she realized that in many ways the skills he had developed for managing a criminal enterprise were still quite valid when dealing with her oddly constituted bureaucracy. The pony had created an empire managing thugs, pimps, fences, and drug dealers. He was essentially doing the same job for Luna except that now he had health insurance (including a dental plan), a generous pension, and a much lower risk of back-alley assassination.

Her officers quickly came to order and Luna had their undivided attention. "Thank you for coming so promptly," she began. "I know I ask much of you but I'm afraid that I must ask a little more tonight. Due to personal issues unrelated to the diarchy or the kingdom, I'm going to be taking a short vacation. I’ll be away from Canterlot for a long weekend, starting this morning."

All of her officers began talking at once producing a perfect babble. Cutter cleared his throat and the room went silent. "Might I ask if everything's alright?" he asked Luna.

"More or less,” she equivocated. “It's a personal problem and of no matter or risk to the nation."

"Will you continue raising the moon or do we need to get Celestia to cover for you?" he followed up.

"Yes, I'm only going to Ponyville. I will be able to continue my lunar duties without any trouble. I should also be reachable via dragon-flame. I have a candle in my office attuned to Spike the dragon and you should be able to send letters immediately using that method.

"Will you be ruling by correspondence then or is this more of a break from the daily grind?" Miss Play asked.

"I was hoping that this office would be able to continue functioning without my oversight for a few days," Luna answered. "If something out of the ordinary occurs I want you to contact me but for routine business I would appreciate it if it was handled here, without me, and giving us…me…some time to address my personal business."

"I think I speak for us all when I say that we hope you have a productive and restful vacation. Just leave the busy work in our hooves and everything should be fine for a few days," Cutter said while the rest nodded

"Thank you for your flexibility in this, it means much to me," Luna said with a genuine smile. "Now, Mister Low Rent, please pass out the documents I've prepared. Listed here in this chart are the major events scheduled for this weekend, I'd like to go over each of them in advance so that you can implement my wishes while I'm gone." From there, the meeting descended into the minutia of government and didn't end until dawn.

Rotten Apples

Twilight was dreaming again: Rotting apples the size of ponies shambled through Ponyville's streets, chasing the citizenry to and fro. It appeared that the poorly behaved fruit had the goal of devouring her friends and neighbors, despite being apples and having no mouths. As she finished the thought the apple-zombies split their skins vertically, opening gaping maws with rotting, worm infested, teeth. "I have got to stop doing that," she chided herself. Her sarcastic commentary on her own dreams had led, on prior occasions, to some rapidly escalating and very disturbing nightmares that bothered her to this day. Upon describing this pattern of worsening nightmares to Luna, back in happier days, the alicorn had cryptically told her "Never get into a staring contest with your soul, it will always win."

A different, and equally unexpected, side-effect of becoming a lucid dreamer was boredom. Unless a dream was particularly disturbing (or insightful) she no longer had any need to participate in the dramas playing out behind her eyelids. If she were still dreaming passively, she would have been frantically running around trying to save her friends from the undead fruit. But since she was fully aware that no one was actually in harm's way, her only choices were either to half-heartedly playing along with the dream and its characters or to just ignore the whole dream-carnage business and find something else to do. She was still working on developing a spell to allow her to insert books she hadn't already read into her dreams, so far the results had been nothing but disappointing.

Twilight had just made up her mind to try going to Sugarcube Corner and have some calorie-free baked goods when there was a knock on a door. She turned towards the noise and saw a door, large, wooden, and black, standing freely in the middle of the road. Rampaging fruit dodged around it, so she surmised that her subconscious must be aware of its existence. She walked around the door to the other side but it was entirely identical on that face as well. She noted that it opened outward from either direction. The knock sounded again. Looking to her left and right, and then feeling embarrassed by her embarrassment within her own dream, she responded as normally as possible. "Who is it?" she asked.

The somewhat muffled reply was unmistakable, "It is I, Luna. May I come in?"

Twilight smiled. "Well, this is new. And far more thoughtful than usual," she thought. She considered invoking the power of refusal, simply because she could, but then remembered how bored she had been just moments prior. "All right, come in."

The door opened as the silver doorknob turned. Within was a darkness that tugged at Twilight's memory, begging to be named but she was unable to do so. Luna stepped through the blackness as if it were a membrane and was suddenly bathed in dream-provided sunlight. The alicorn looked oddly naked, she was without her diadem, pectoral, or even her elaborate shoes. The total took a few centimeters from her height and make her look quite a bit younger. She smiled warmly at Twilght and she felt her heart do a little flip of joy despite her attempts to both "play it cool" as Rainbow Dash had suggested she do. The suggestion was remarkable in that it was quite likely the first thing Rainbow and Rarity had ever agreed upon in her presence.

"Twilight, it is good to..." Luna had started to greet her but then was distracted by the horde of undead marauding apples. "Well, this is new," She understated; the wings were a common enough occurrence in Twilight's dreams that they didn't even merit comment anymore. "Is everything all right?"

"There's kind of a problem with Apple Bloom,"

"Your earth-pony friend's daughter?"

Twilight's eyes widened and then she remembered that the two of them were very much alone and calmed down. "No, heh, I can see why you might think that. She's her little sister. She just got her cutie mark today."

Luna's eyes shifted to take in the scenery of the appleocalypse. "And that leads to all this, how?"

"Her talent seems to be necromancy."

Luna paused before confirming, "She can speak with the dead?"

"Finally!" Twilight exclaimed in relief and feeling a strong pulse of affection for Luna

"Finally what?" the princess asked.

"You didn't ask about the zombies."

"She can raise zombies too?" Asked Luna, confused.

Twilight face-hoofed and groaned in psychic pain.

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The two alicorns were seated calmly at a table inside Sugarcube Corner while the screams of dying ponies, the moans of the zombie apples, and the roar of collapsing buildings all passed by in the background, unacknowledged. Twilight was having pie a la mode and a coffee while Luna was enjoying a vanilla milkshake.

"I have to agree, this is one of your better ideas," Luna said after a particularly delicious sip.

"Sadly, it is also one of our better dates." Twilight ruefully quipped.

"At least I can blame you this time if something goes wrong," Luna countered with a crooked smile.

Twilight gestured to the carnage filling the streets, "And how is this my fault?"

"I do remember some alicorn princess of the night saying something similar a few weeks ago."

"The Canidian embassy dinner?" Twilight asked, archly.

"How was I to know that they were going to serve veal? Anyways, they took it away after you were...ill... and replaced it with a potato dish."

"Poutine is not acceptable food for a pony," the purple mare insisted.

"It was mostly fried potatoes and cheese," was Luna's flip response.

"And gravy, don't you dare forget the gravy. You kissed me that night and I could still taste it!" Twilight shuddered at the memory. "I was so hungry by that point it almost tasted good."

Luna gently laughed at the memory of the ridiculous night and felt like giving Twilight a vanilla milkshake-flavored kiss to make up for the sullied one. But all joking aside, she could tell that the subject was still a sore one for Twilight and deliberately changed the subject. "So, a necromancer you say."

Twilight was unsure as to which topic was less romantic, beef bone gravy or a child that speaks with the dead. "Yeah."

"It must be really bothering you."

"Why do you say that?" Twilight asked.

Luna arched an eyebrow and gestured out the now blood-streaked window.

"Ah, that, ok, I admit that I'm kinda freaked out. She seems like a pretty normal filly. She wasn't into anything weird. She didn't go around cutting up small animals or anything. Everyone thought she would get a mark for carpentry or something."

"Twilight, what does torturing animals have to do with talking to ghosts?"

The purple mare sighed, she hated admitting to irrational bias. "Nothing," she muttered.

"How are her par- her family taking it?"

Twilight caught the correction but chose not to say anything. "Heck," she thought to herself, "I've wondered the same thing myself once or twice." She addressed Luna's question, "They are worried, protective, and afraid: both for her and of her. They were the one's originally asking if she had done anything wrong in order to get this cutie mark."

"I hope you corrected their misconceptions, Twilight. The poor filly is going to have a hard enough time as it is. The last thing she needs is her family thinking that she's some sort of cultist."

"I did what I could but they had the usual questions that any paren- family member has when a child develops a mark they don't approve of." She mock-scowled at Luna as the other alicorn grinned at having induced Twilight to make the same mistake regarding Apple Bloom's parentage. She resumed her story," 'Can it be removed? Can she get a replacement one? Could you please write the Princess to make sure?' They love her but its just so far outside of their idea of normal they have no way to handle it."

"Love," Luna replied. "As long as they follow what the love in their hearts tell them to do, they'll be fine in the end."

"Luna, she's already come close to dying from this once." Twilight then told Luna an condensed summary of Apple Bloom's encounter with the 'Blanks.'

Luna sat without speaking for a few moments while pondering Twilight's story. Twilight turned to face the window again. She could see everyone she knew and loved torn to bloody shreds on the streets of Ponyville. The screams had finished, the rotten apples had won. A rattling gurgle dragged the purple mare's attention back to her companion as the milkshake died at the hooves of Luna.

"I think you may be right Twilight. Love won't be enough to help this girl. I do have a suggestion but you won't like it. In fact you may get very angry with me for even suggesting it."

Twilight's blood ran cold, fearing what drastic measures the Monarch of Darkness might suggest.

"She needs training, from another necromancer."

"Oh," Twilight said, surprised at how simple and reasonable the suggestion was. "Ok, that sounds good. Are you willing to help her with that?"

Luna took an awkward moment to answer, "Twilight, I am not an expert on necromancy, despite its reputation as a dark art."

"Oh, heh. Ok then, do you know anyone who is?

"Yes, but only the one do we know." Luna said with trepidation.

Twilight noticed Luna's slip into the self-plural. She only did that these days when she was nervous.

"Tis Grogar."

"Oh, Luna no!" Twilight wailed.

"Yes, for this I am deeply sorry." Luna lowered her head.

"But he's such an asshole."

Luna looked up, mouth agape in shock at Twilight's vulgarity.

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Twilight was sleeping on her back, arms and legs akimbo underneath the translucently thin sheet covering her. Her lips were twitching as she talked in her dream, but they were smiling. The indigo alicorn standing over her watched those lips as a portion of her consciousness walked alongside the mare she loved through the overrun ruins of Ponyville. Luna knew that this wasn't exactly fair, Twilight could only be at one place at a time, but as she gazed at Twilight's unguarded face her whole self was in agreement: Totally worth it.

The morning sunlight had not yet forced Twilight to wake, despite its bright golden stream falling directly upon her. The beam illuminated the air above the unicorn's nostrils, revealing the normally invisible motes of dust and fluff lurking within. Each breath the mare took stirred the air before her, causing the glowing dust to swirl in a miniature vortex. The sight reminded Luna of the fireflies that she loved so much. It reminded her how beautiful and alive her Twilight was. It reminded her how much she loved her and how much the thought of losing her scared and hurt the alicorn. She wanted nothing more but to worm her way underneath that sheet and hold and be held by her lover. But she also knew that things weren't well enough between them for that. She had lost the implicit permission for such things that a happy relationship conveyed. That too hurt.

Things were going well during their stroll back to Golden Oaks. That gave Luna some hope. It wasn't salvation or absolution but it was a step in the right direction. She could feel Twilight's dream drawing to a close; when the mare overlapped the location of her waking-world body she would rejoin the waking world herself. Luna reminded herself that she couldn't be here when she woke up, that Twilight would take her uninvited presence within this intimate space as a violation of her privacy. Luna spent one last moment to look over her shoulder at her sleeping beauty and then fled to the kitchen below. Luna only knew how to cook two things, porridge (that Twilight called oatmeal) and coffee (a mandatory skill for dating Twilight); she would begin making both.

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Twilight felt the glowing warmth of the sun on her body and caught the scent of fresh coffee. She pulled the sheet off of herself and flopped about the bed, stretching like a lazy cat. She could feel the smile on her face and the one in her heart. While her dream was macabre and conversation with Luna serious, she had enjoyed herself. Her dream last night was one of the best dates they had had during the entire tenure of their relationship. The smell of coffee tantalized her and let her know that Luna had arrived while she was sleeping.

At the thought, Twilight's smile faded. "She was here, in my home, and didn't join me in bed," she thought to herself. As much as she loved the fact that she had coffee waiting for her, she was disappointed that Luna hadn't surprised her with some morning snuggles. Twilight frowned as she ran a few simulations in her head to analyze what her possible responses to finding Luna in her bed would have been and found that part of her would have resented the intrusion. She sighed, hating the complexity of relationships, the frail state of her one with Luna, and her own neuroses. "Maybe Luna had chosen the safest route by waiting for her in the kitchen, coffee in hoof," she admitted to herself. But in avoiding upsetting one portion of her psyche, Luna had disappointed the part of her that ached to be woken up by her marefriend kissing her in some totally inappropriate places.

Resisting the urge to beat her own head against the wall, Twilight got up to go to the bathroom. "Queen of Dreams or not, Luna would not appreciate being greeted by morning breath," Twilight told herself while dragging her hooves down the hallway.

--------------------------------

Luna saw something purple move at the edge of her vision and turned to greet her marefriend with the brightest smile she could muster. "Good morning, darling. I let y-" she then saw she was speaking with Spike, who was yawning and rubbing his eyes.

With a smirk he answered, "Hey there snooki-wookums, got anything good in the pot?"

Luna laughed as soon as she regained her composure. "Sorry Spike, We are slightly on edge this morning."

He shimmied up one of the stools surrounding the kitchen table. "Things aren't better between you and Twilight yet?"

She paused for a moment, not knowing what or how much to tell the young dragon. While still an infant by the accounting of dragons, he was of an age where many ponies would start having their first tentative explorations of romance. Also, she didn't know what Twilight had told him and how much she wanted her ward to know about her love life.

"I'll take that as a 'no'," said Spike after the pause had grown too long.

Luna offered him a pained smile. "You are right, Spike. But I want to talk to Twilight first before I discuss the details with you."

He responded with the non-committal reply universal to every teenager of every species everywhere: "Whatever."

Luna levitated a bowl of porridge over to the wyrmling while pulling a shaker half-full of crushed amethysts down from a high cupboard and placing it besides the bowl.

Twilight arrived while Spike was still shaking the purple grains across the top of the oats, the entire bowl had a thin crust of gem-dust. "Spike, that's enough for now."

"Fine," he replied while sneaking one more shake in before putting the container down.

Twilight shuffled up against the table, taking a seat at a stool next to her number-one assistant. Before she could say anything a large, steaming mug of black coffee slid to a stop directly underneath her muzzle. A bowl of oatmeal slid next to the mug an instant later with an slight "clink" as the two pieces of earthenware touched. The unicorn looked up and saw Luna less than a meter away with an alarmingly wide, and forced, smile on her face. "Um, thanks" she said and then concentrated on her coffee "I'm so not awake enough for this yet." she thought to herself.

"Good morning, dear." Luna greeted with a forced lightness that gave the words a saccharine tone. Twilight's left eye twitched in response.

"Morning, Luna." Twilight grumbled. She wasn't upset at the mare but the tug-of war going on inside her head had seriously soured the unicorn's mood.

"Are you feeling ok?" Luna asked as she noticed Twilight's sudden change in mood from the dream to now.

"I...I just have a headache. Don't worry about it, the coffee should help." Twilight lied.

Spike was the one who broke the awkward silence that then enveloped the kitchen. "So, Luna. Are you here to take Apple Bloom away from her family?"

Twilight spat out coffee while Luna looked stricken. "No, never!" Luna exclaimed.

"Spike! Whatever gave you that idea?" Twilight demanded.

"I heard that she got her cutie mark in zombies," he answered, cowed by the strong reaction his question prompted.

"From who?!?" His mother-figure continued.

"I was over at Rarity's last evening and Sweetie Belle came by and told us that Apple Bloom was a necro-thingie. Rarity said it has something to do with zombies. They had a fight about it though. I left after that started but I heard Rarity tell Sweetie she can't play with Apple Bloom anymore because she was dangerous."

"Did she." The statement from Twilight wasn't a question, more a declaration of war.

"We will need to act quickly," Luna added.

"Yeah, we need to head straight over to Carrousel Boutique and give Rarity a talking to she’ll never forget!" Twilight rubbed her hooves together.

"Um…I was more thinking that we needed to get Apple Bloom to Grogar and begin her lessons as soon as possible. Getting her out of town will give people time to calm down and be less fearful."

"Oh…I guess. Wait, Luna I think you're wrong on this," Twilight interrupted herself.

"You think she doesn't need training?" Luna asked, confused.

"No, that I agree with," Twilight clarified. "The problem is if we do carry her off to wherever Grogar is lurking, everyone will think exactly as Rarity did. We can't let ponies think that we needed to swoop in and rescue everyone from her. She'd never recover their trust."

Luna nodded along, seeing Twilight's point. "So, we are going to invite Grogar back to Ponyville." Luna cocked an eyebrow at her marefriend. "Are you going to be able to tolerate this?"

Twilight sighed, "I'll deal with it, somehow."

Author's Notes:

In case you are wondering, I love poutine. You can hate on it for many different reasons but taste isn't one of them.

An alternative version of the necromancy/zombie joke was for Luna to look around at the zombie fruit after Twilight told her that Apple Bloom was a necromancer and then tell Twilight "You do know that necromancy isn't about raising zombies, right?" follow by Twilight fury.

Blasphemy and Pitchforks

Apple Bloom was feeling better after hanging out with her friends. Her whole day had been one emotionally wrenching disaster after another and she was exhausted by the constant ups and downs. Before she could fall asleep, however, her stomach began to rumble with hunger and she remembered that she hadn't eaten anything since lunch all those hours (and what felt like a lifetime) ago. The hour was late and the sounds of crickets filtered up though her window. She decided to sneak down to the kitchen and grab herself a snack out of the cold-box.

Carefully, she opened her bedroom door. Care had to be taken or the shingle bearing her name would bang against the wood. During the last couple of years she had also learned which boards would creak and avoided those too. With a filly's light hoof-falls she approached the top of the stairs leading down to the family room and the kitchen beyond. She froze as she heard the hushed voices coming from the kitchen. Apple Bloom knew eavesdropping was wrong and by the furtive tones of her family she could tell she wasn't supposed to be hearing what the adults were saying but then she heard her own name mentioned and snuck forward to listen.

"What are we going to do," she heard her sister say, despairing.

"What is there to do," Granny answered, philosophically. "Yer smart friend said there wasn't anything ta be done."

Apple Bloom heard Applejack growl, "Yep, that's what she said."

"Sis." Mac said as a chastisement to his sister.

"She is the most powerful unicorn alive an' the Princesses would do anything she asked 'em for. Are you telling me that you believe Celestia can't do anything to fix Apple Bloom?"

Apple Bloom's bottom lip began to shake when she heard her sister use the word "fix."

"It may or mayen't be a matter of won't, young miss, but don't you start blaspheming the Princess' name. She was mightily kind to us back in the day," Granny scolded.

"Yeah, she gave us land no one else wanted because it was too dangerous. We did well despite of her, not because of her, and in exchange we built her a prosperous town and all the taxes she can collect.

"Applejack!" Macintosh's basso shook the house. He was immediately shushed by his grandmother.

'I know this is hard news, granddaughter but you can't be going on this way." Granny said in soothing tones.

Apple Bloom then heard a sound as rare as hen's teeth, her sister sobbing. "I love her Granny, I love her so much. All I've ever wanted was for her was to be happy, grow up strong, and to pass the farm down to her. But that thing on her flank ruined everything. You didn't sit up with her, after she came back from the Everfree that night. She would wake up screaming, night after night, crying about the fires in their eyes begging them to let her go. I held her in my arms all those nights like she was a foal again and it broke my heart to see her like that. I thought it was just a bad dream an' it was real, we nearly lost her that night. It would kill me Granny, it would kill me if we lost her.

Silence filled the house as tears quietly fell to the hardwood floor besides Apple Bloom's hooves.

Big Mac finally spoke up, "Sis, maybe she has a purpose. I heard the story too. It sounded like she helped that one ghost. Maybe that's what she's here for. Maybe that's part of Celestia's plan?" It was the most words Apple Bloom had heard from Mac since she had gotten out of publishing.

Applejack's voice sounded choked and rough, "Mac, haven't you ever hated your Mark? I mean...apples. Sure we are great farmers, we grow the best apples in all of Equestria and I take pride in that. But, haven't you ever wished for your Mark to have been something more...exciting?"

"I guess, sure," the red stallion replied, unsure of his sister's point.

"Apple Bloom is now Marked for a life full of horror, death, and fire. Apples is gonna be the thing she wishes for unless we can help her," the orange mare explained. No one had an answer for that and the house grew quiet once again. "I'm tired an' I can cry just as well in my bed as here. Goodnight." Applejack said and then left the table.

It took a moment for the spell to be broken and for Apple Bloom to realize her sister was walking straight towards her. Tip-hoofing as fast as she could, the yellow filly ducked back into her room an instant before her sister's head poked over the lip of the stairs. The filly panted silently as she listened to her sister's hooves pass in front of her bedroom door. Among the hoof-falls she heard a sniffle and then her sister's door closing just slightly too hard.

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Despite her exhaustion, Apple Bloom couldn't sleep. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen (or heard) her sister so upset, let alone cry. Her sister's words kept running around in her head and wouldn't pause long enough for sleep to catch them. The crickets had given up their songs and the night had grown quiet enough for her to listen to her sister's hidden tears. Minutes would pass in silence and then there would be a snuffle or the sound of Applejack blowing her nose. In the small hours of the night that too finally lapsed into silence as her sister finally received some measure of peace.

It was then that there was a sudden rattling against her window. Her room was pitch black and her mind was filled with the innumerable ghosts and ghouls that might be knocking at the sill. Her eyes were just above the blanket pulled above her nose and wide with terror. The noise came again, insisting to be acknowledged.

"I have a purpose. I have a purpose. I have a purpose." Apple Bloom whispered to herself as she creeped out from under her covers and towards the window. "Maybe he's just lost and wants directions to the graveyard," she said in an attempt to muster her courage. Reaching the window, she pulled open the sash with her hooves. Below there was an unnatural green glow, pulsing irregularly. Its glow washed the colors from her coat and mane leaving her an image in black and white. A pebble then smacked into her nose. "Ow!" she said, more out of surprise than pain.

"Oops, I didn't see you there," a familiar voice whispered up from below.

"Sweetie?!?" Apple Bloom whispered back.

"Yeah! Why? Who did you think it was throwing pebbles at your window?"

"Um..." Apple Bloom was reluctant to admit that she had thought her visitor was a ghost.

"Oh My Gosh, were you expecting a colt?" Sweetie said as her eyes grew wider along with her smile.

"What?" Apple Bloom said flatly, forgetting to whisper

"That is so romantic! Does he come by and serenades up to your window? Or is it poetry? Sonnets?"

"What?!?" She repeated as the conversation rapidly began moving in a direction she had not anticipated.

"Oh Apple Bloom, oh Apple Bloom. How now shall I compare you to a full moon," Sweetie Belle mocked the imaginary suitor.

The yellow filly stared down at her friend while dying inside from lethal levels of embarrassment.

"This so isn't fair, you get both your cutie mark and a coltfriend before either of us." Sweetie pouted.

"Wait, no, no no! I ain't got no coltfriend! I thought you were a ghost!" Apple Bloom admitted, the truth now seeming far less embarrassing.

"Oh," the unicorn's disappointment was palpable. "Do ghosts throw rocks at your window?"

"No. I mean, not yet, I guess...Ghah!...Sweetie why are you here?" Apple Bloom desperately tried to wrest control of the conversation and steer it back to somewhere sane.

"Can you sneak out? We need to talk." Her friend answered.

"Sure, give me a sec." she answered and then closed the window. She repeated her earlier performance and while sneaking through the kitchen remembered her earlier hunger and grabbed an apple from the cold box. Sweetie Belle was waiting for her a few meters away from the kitchen door and hugged her fiercely when she arrived.

"So, what's going on?" Apple Bloom asked around half-chewed bits of apple.

"Rarity says she's going to get our parents to not let us be friends anymore."

"What?! She can't do that!" Apple Bloom replied in shock.

"She's gonna tell our parents that it's dangerous to be friends with you and they can make it so that I'm not allowed to do things with you outside of school anymore."

"But that would kill the Crusaders!"

"I know! Sweetie agreed.

"That's not fair!"

"I know!"

"We can't let her get away with this!"

"I kn- How are we going to stop her?" the unicorn filly asked, interrupting herself.

"I have a purpose." Apple Bloom repeated her brother's words like a mantra.

"What?"

"Um, I mean, I have a plan. Come on!"

"Where are we going? she asked.

"Whitetail Wood."

--------------------------

Twilight and Luna were standing underneath the obnoxiously decadent temple to her own grandeur Rainbow Dash called home. "Rainbow! Rainbow Dash! Wake up and come down here!" Twilight was shouting at the top of her lungs.

"Twilight, if you want I could just use the-" Luna tried to offer.

"No. RAINBOW!!!"

"Or I could fly up-" The alicorn tried again.

"No. RAINBOW!!!"

A sky-blue face pushed her way through the bottom of the cloud house. "Jeeze Twi, What the hay has got you so riled up. Oh! Hi there Luna!

"Um, hello Rainbow Dash." Luna responded, feeling uncomfortable from all the shouting.

"Rainbow, do you know where Grogar is?"

The cyan mare looked over to the Princess standing next to her friend. "Who wants to know?"

"Discord, he wants to get his old bowling team back together." Twilight snapped with maximum snark.

"Um, Twi. Just cause he's an old god that broke out of Tartarus and nearly killed you, Luna, and Celestia. That doesn't mean he's buddies with Discord. It might be a trap." Rainbow replied, totally oblivious to Twilight's sarcasm.

Luna tried to express her concern in a soothing tone. "Twilight, are you sure we have to do things this way? You seem to be getting...agitated."

"I...AM...FINE." Twilight growled through clenched teeth while smoke started to curl from the grass touching her hooves.

Rainbow Dash zipped the 12 meters to the ground in a blink. "Twi, seriously, you gotta calm down. What's going on?

The double-barreled concern and friendship broke through to the purple unicorn. She took a deep breath and focused on finding her center. It took a good portion of a minute but she managed to regain some of her composure. "I need to get a message to Grogar. Apple Bloom has developed a talent for necromancy and he's the only living necromancer in Equestria. We need him to come back to town, again, and help her get control of her talent." She breathed out her remaining breath with a whoosh.

"Oh, sure! He's out past Appaloosa hanging with the buffalo. I can get there in a couple of hours. He can take the train back here in a day or two. No problem." Dash answered without any signs of stress.

Luna stroked Twilight's fur, smoothing it back down flat.

Rainbow continued past where she should have stopped. "It's a real shame about Apple Bloom's cutie mark."

Luna answered for the still-flustered Twilight. "There is nothing wrong with her having a talent for necromancy."

"Necromancy?!?" Dash said, shocked. "That darn Scootaloo said she couldn't raise zombies, made it sound like it was broken or something. I gotta talk to her about paying closer attention to things." Dash said, totally missing that Twilight's hair had went "sproing" and her teeth were grinding.

"Miss Dash, perhaps you should start your journey." Luna prompted in an effort to diffuse the purple ticking bomb.

"I guess so, its not like its gonna take me all that l-" It was then that she noticed Twilight's state. The poly-chromatic mare stared at her friend for a couple seconds and then, "Okgottagoseeyoulaterbyebye." Rainbow dash then disappeared, leaving a rainbow contrail pointing towards the southwestern horizon.

Luna tried making soothing noises and stroking Twilight's coat in an attempt to bring her marefriend back from her stress-induced fit. It was just beginning to calm her down when Applejack, Big Mac, and Granny Smith came down the road towards the two of them, carrying various farming implements. As they drew near Luna saw tears running Applejacks face and was able to more accurately classify her manner of carrying the pitchfork as "brandishing."

"I heard you were here!" Applejack spat the words with rage and sorrow. "Not even one day and you've already come for her! I don' care what's wrong wit' her, she's ours an' you can't have her!"

Luna looked over her shoulder to make sure she was the one the farmer was addressing.

"Why didn't you even let her say good-bye to us you evil witch!" The farmer continued, the foam flecking the sides of her mouth mixed with the tears that ran freely down her cheeks.

"Miss Apple-" Luna tried to answer but was cut of.

"Give her back! Give us back our Apple Bloom!" the orange mare demanded in a voice that could only be born of heartbreak.

Luna knew what to do: Calmly yet firmly deny that she had anything to do with Apple Bloom's disappearance, explain in a firm, even voice that she had never intended to take Apple Bloom away, and then volunteer to help the Apple clan track down their missing filly. Despite this knowledge, Luna found herself rocketing into the sky at her best acceleration dragging a screaming Twilight in her telekinetic wake and having pitchforks and other farming implements sailing after her like so many javelins.

"That may have looked just the slightest bit guilty." she said to herself and her up-side down, backward, and panicking marefriend. The flight was over quickly as Luna slammed through the balcony door/window that opened into Twilight's bedroom. The door didn't survive the process but the alicorn remembered to remove the broken glass from the bed before placing the unicorn onto the soft platform.

"-UUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" Twilight's scream was cut off with an "oof" as she dropped the last half-meter to the surface of the bed.

Luna was pacing in place fluttering her wings in agitation, wide eyes with fear. "We're so sorry Twilight please don't break up with us," the goddess begged in a torrent of syllables.

"How many times has it been?!?" fury dyed her words crimson. "How many times have I asked you not to 'ever do that again'?!?"

"I don't know but I'm sorry we panicked but it wasn't our fault we did nothing and Applejack threw things at us and-"

"I don't care, Luna." Twilight cut her off. "What did I say? You had one more chance; one. It doesn't matter that you caused this or not, I can't take it anymore. I'd have less chaos in my life if I was dating Discord."

Luna fell silent as Twilight ranted, her mouth hanging open and tears starting to gather at the corners of her eyes. Seeing Twilight's face and guessing where this conversation was leading the alicorn whispered the word "No," begging.

Twilight shook her head. "I'm sorry Luna but this was it, we're done."

"Please...don't." Luna kept begging as the tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks.

"Luna, don't make this any harder. Just g-" Twilight gasped a shuddering breath, "I...I need you to go."

"But-"

"Luna, please, go."

Everything on the alicorn was shaking but she managed a nod.

Twilight waited, silent and resolutely avoiding eye contact.

Luna turned around and lept from the balcony. She beat her wings as if she could outrun her own heartbreak. She didn't look back so she didn't see Twilight break down into body-wracking sobs.

For several minutes Luna just flew. She didn't have any destination other than "away." She fought against the thinning air. She fought against the ice beginning to crust her feathers. She fought her way to where the blue faded from the sky and the black, star-speckled expanse of her father's belly was visible. She fought against the sorrow, pain, and hate that threatened to overwhelm her. Part of her, the "old" part of her, screamed for revenge. The seductive whisper was back "Those backwards earth-ponies had cost her dearly and she should return to their land and smash every tree they've ever planted, crush all their buildings, and salt the very soil they claimed as theirs. The ruin and desolation would last for centuries as a warning to all those who would forget that the Princess of the Night was also a goddess and that invoking her wrath would bring nothing but sorrow."

It was tempting but Luna knew where that led; to who that led. Instead, she chose to stay here at the edge of space. Her muscles and lungs burned as the pumped her wings as hard as possible to simply to maintain her position. Her tears froze as they shook free from her eyes. Her screams were thinned and muffled by the lack of air. No one could see her here, far above where mortal life could venture. No one besides her father who had never judged her for either ill or fair.

Eventually, even the immortal mare ran out of tears to shed. Still full of sorrow, but now clear of head, she thought about her situation. This wasn't the first time she'd had her heart broken. While still a rare event, every few millennia a mare or stallion came along who stood head and shoulders above the throngs of nearly anonymous ponies. Sometimes it ended this way, sometimes it was she who ended the affair, but sometimes the love lasts a lifetime - literally. Luna had thought that this was what she had found with Twilight. She still loved the mare (and her heart clenched as she thought the words) and she believed that Twilight still loved her. "But should I respect her wishes and allow this courtship to end?" she wondered. "To fight for what one desires is a virtue, to fight for the continuation of love is heroic, but to do so while disregarding the wishes of her beloved? What is that?"

The lunar mare fretted, "If I give her the time to calm down I might also give her the time to accept the end of our courtship. If I pursue her, though, I might anger her further, dooming my efforts." She looked back down at the world she had so recently returned to. She was high enough she could see the curvature of the globe and all of her kingdom layed out below her. She could see from the beige desert sands of the southwest to the glittering,eternal snows in the far north - except for one circular patch of green and blue she noted. Her eyes widened with realization.

Luna had never been particularly fond of her "niece," but there was no disputing that the pink pony princess was an expert on all things romantic. As a bonus, her paramour's brother was her husband and might be able to give her even more specific advice for dealing with Twilight. She shook the frozen remnants of her tears from her face and angled her wings for the long decent down to the Crystal Kingdom.

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Twilight watched Luna leave, she noted that her lover didn't look back. "Former lover," her mind helpfully added for the sake of precision. After that, Twilight collapsed to her knees as sobs ripped through her. The wooden floor of her room was still covered with broken glass but she didn't feel their bites; the wound in her heart hurt far too much for her to notice. The analytical portion of her mind wondered at her own capacity for this emotion. She had been surprised by the pleasure that friendship and eventually love had brought into her life. Her logical self found it equally surprising that the removal of a relationship seemed to cause pain in direct inverse proportion to the pleasure that relationship was capable of invoking. The remainder of her mind was totally dedicated towards wailing in heartbreak.

The next several minutes were a blur to the purple unicorn. She could barely get enough air to breathe through her choked crying as she curled herself up into a tight ball of equine misery. She hated Luna for failing her. She hated herself for having made the ultimatum. She hated herself for following through with her threat. She hated Luna for having brought them to this point. She hated Applejack for jumping to the conclusions that pushed Luna into her rash action. She hated Apple Bloom for-. The thought stopped her cold; Apple Bloom was the victim, if indeed there was a victim at all. "I almost hated her for being different," she thought. "None of this is her fault," she reminded herself.

Her attention was pulled away from her own misery by the door to her bedroom creaking open. Spike was standing there, eyes wide with fear. "He must have been home and heard me crying," she thought.

"Twilight, are you ok?" the dragon asked, his voice barely above a whisper. There was no sarcasm or teenage attitude in his voice, only sincere concern.

"I'm fi-f-f-ffff-" Twilight tried to respond but started shaking and crying again. Her head dropped back to the floorboards. A minute later she felt a tiny, clawed hand running through her mane, petting her in an attempt at wordless comfort. With the speed of a striking viper she snatched the little dragon into a tight embrace and while she cried harder for a while, she felt far better with him there.

Twilight had no idea how much time had passed. Her thoughts had stopped taking on the shape of words. There was just the pain of her heartbreak and the comfort given to her by the dragon she thought of as her son. Eventually, a knock at the door intruded upon her despair. She pulled herself up to her shaking legs and whispered "Thank you, Spike," to the drake and kissed him on the cheek.

Spike, flummoxed by the shear amount of emotion floating about managed a masculine, if awkward, "Sure."

Twilight smiled weakly at him and then started towards her bathroom to clean herself up. She paused as her caller shouted out.

"Um, Twi. It's me and Rares. We really, really need to talk," said Applejack in her distinctive drawl.

Twilight's jaw jutted out in anger as she recognized the voice. She then decided that if those two wanted to talk to her so badly, they might as well do so while looking upon what their mistakes had done. She trotted down the steps to the front door of the library and threw it open with a pulse of her magic. She stood before them, her face puffy, fur soaked with tears, muzzle running with snot, and her legs bloody and scratched.

They looked like they were seeing a ghost.

Author's Notes:

I found this chapter a bit challenging to write. I wanted to explore and convey just how upset Twi and Luna are but I didn't want either of them to come off as self-indulgent pricks. Hopefully it worked.

Guilt and Vengeance

"Dear Celestia," Rarity swore at the sight of Twilight's condition.

Applejack stared at Twilight, her orange face paling as she took in the blood, snot, and tears. "Oh, Sugarcube, I'm so sorry. I won't let Her hurt you ever again." Applejack reached out a forelimb to comfort her friend but was shocked when Twilight shied away from her.

Twilight growled, "No, AJ. You did this."

"What?!? I did? How in tarna-" Applejack was cut off by a swift kick to her side, delivered by a white and perfectly polished hoof.

"What our dear Applejack meant to say was, 'We know we've been in the wrong and have been acting terribly.' Also, she wants to say 'that we are deeply sorry and beg your forgiveness'."

"You do?" Twilight asked as her temper came back under fuller control.

"We do?" Applejack asked her white friend.

"We do." Rarity confirmed with ice in her voice.

All eyes were on Applejack, waiting. "I...we do," she said and deflated a bit.

Twilight regarded her two, poorly-behaved friends. "I'm not sure I can forgive you for this, AJ. You accused Luna of foal-napping and then threw a pitchfork at her. If any guardponies had seen that you'd be on your way to prison right now."

"I wouldn'tve thrown a pitchfork at just anyone, Twi. It was Luna. The worst it coulda done is annoy her a bit." Applejack at least had the decency to look chagrined.

"What about me, AJ. You could have hit me with that thing."

"M' aim's pretty good." the orange mare muttered.

"Really?" Twilight's anger was building again. "You want to go with the whole, 'I'm pretty good at throwing sharp objects at monarchs so you weren't in any real danger defense'?

"Ok, ok, I was angry and scared and I jumped to conclusions and I was stupid and wrong!" Applejack's own voice rose in response to Twilight's tone. "Applebloom's gone missing and I had thought that Luna had took her away for 'training'."

Twilight could hear the extra set of quotes. "What do you mean by 'training'?" she demanded.

"Twilight, you of all ponies should understand. Everyone's worried that AB's got a dangerous talent. It wouldn't be the first time one of the princesses swooped in and took a foal away from their family to keep everyone safe from them. I can't even imagine how your family dealt with it."

Twilight realized what Applejack was implying about her own history to and inhaled deeply as she was surprised by the hurt. She opened her mouth, about to test if it was possible to flay the skin off an earth-pony by the power of voice and vitriol alone.

"Aaand now we need to change the subject!" Rarity interrupted, wedging between her two friends before they came to blows. "Twilight, Sweetie Belle is gone too. We're worried that they ran away together."

Twilight licked her lips as she restrained her impending tirade so as to give Rarity a chance to elaborate.

"Scootaloo's not missing, so its just the two of them and it's my fault. Please Twilight, forget what Applejack just said and help us find them. Help us find two lost and scared foals," Rarity continued without pausing long enough for Twilight to interject until she was finished laying out her request.

Twilight exhaled in a whooshing sigh. "We aren't done with this Applejack, not by a long-shot." She raised her head and locked eyes with the green ones before her. "Finding the girls is more important than this, where do you think they went?"

"Canterlot." Rarity answered.

At the same time Applejack replied, "Everfree Forest."

The two looked at each other and tried again.

"Whitetail Wood," said Rarity.

"Ghastly Gorge," Applejack said simultaneously.

Twilight facehoofed, "Ok, I'll put that down as 'you don't know'. Come in, I'll see what I can do to track them down."

The three mares entered the library tree underneath the light of the noonday sun.

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Dawn was just beginning to break over the Canterlot mountains to the east as the two fillies pushed their way through the last of the tall grass.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Sweetie Belle asked Apple Bloom as they neared the boundary to the forest.

"Sure it is! You come along with me and we can help the ghost deer together. That way everyone can see that my talent is a good thing and not any danger to my friends and family."

"...Ok, but what if it is dangerous?"

Apple Bloom looked back at the unicorn, "The ghost I met here was nice. He helped me find my way home when I was lost." It wasn't anything like the last time."

"Yeah, that Blank thing sounded kind of bad." Her green eyes were wide as she took in the look of the gloomy forest.

"Oh yeah, it was terrible. I almost died. Actually it would've been a lot worse than dying." Apple Bloom replied without any trace of fear in her voice.

"Yeah, that totally makes me feel better about this," Sweetie planted her hooves.

"Oh come on!" Apple Bloom looked over her shoulder to her friend. "I promise, it won't be anything like that."

"You're sure?" Sweetie asked, obviously worried.

"I haven't been wrong yet," Apple Bloom replied, voice dripping with bravado.

"Isn't this the first time?

"...You comin' or not?"

Sweetie looked guilty, she felt that she shouldn't doubt her friend. Especially since all the adults were being dumb about Apple Bloom. This was their chance to prove them wrong and keep their friendship (and the CMC) alive. She clenched her lips and summoned a fitful and sputtering green light from the tip of her horn. Dawn was spilling over the fields and mountains but, underneath the canopy of leaves, the forest was still dark. "Ok, let's go."

Apple Bloom smiled and nodded. She took the lead, using the faint light from Sweetie's horn to pick her way around the otherwise hidden logs, brambles, and burrow holes. She didn't know where to go, not exactly, but made sure to project an air of confidence - for Sweetie's sake she told herself. She was looking as had as she could, eyes darting to any movement or flicker of light as she led them deeper into the forest but she saw nothing supernatural.

Hours passed as the two fillies pushed deeper into the forest. Eventually, to Sweetie's great relief, the sun gained enough height in the sky so that its light could filter down through the thick leaves. They were able to see without her horn-light and he white unicorn stumbled as she released the concentration that had kept the green spark going.

"Sweetie?!? Are you ok?" Apple Bloom asked, alarmed by her friend's sudden trouble walking.

"Yep but-" she shook her head, causing her sweat-logged curls to shift messily. "But, I'm tired from making that light while walking. I've never done that for so long before."

"Do you need to rest? the earth pony asked. Apple Bloom was barely winded but she was an earth pony and knew that Sweetie Belle had a hard time keeping up with her and Scootaloo during their more physically strenuous adventures.

"Please, could we?" Sweetie circled around and found a relatively bare patch of dirt underneath an oak tree. She didn't sit as so much collapse onto the patch, panting. Apple Bloom trotted up besides her exhausted friend and sat leaning against her flank so that her friend could know she was there without having to open her eyes.

It wasn't long until Apple Bloom heard Sweetie's breaths even out and deepen as the unicorn fell asleep. Now that the sun had fully risen, the uncharacteristic heat that had been plaguing Ponyville this last week began to build once again. As the mercury rose so did the volume of the cicadas as they resumed their ascent up the rough bark of the trees. Apple Bloom found herself simply staring at the insects as each struggled against impossible odds to seize the finest spot from which to sing. The parallel with her sleeping friend was obvious to the earth pony; not for the first time did she wonder about Sweetie's singing ability. If singing was her friend's talent; she, like these bugs, would need to find a taller perch to sing from. Ponyville was nice but you couldn't launch a music career from here. If Sweetie's talent was for music, she would be leaving Apple Bloom behind.

The earth pony suddenly felt like she was falling as she realized that her musings were no longer accurate. Her imagined farewells had assumed that she had developed some talent having to do with apples and that she'd spend her adult life working at Sweet Apple Acres. Applejack's words came floating back to haunt her, that future was gone. It was like the time the CMC had tried base-jumping with Pinkie; her stomach was trying to escape via her esophagus as her rock-solid destiny was left far behind. She was plummeting towards a future she could no longer imagine. She'd be leaving the farm. She'd likely be leaving Ponyville. Her breathing sped up from equal measures excitement and fear. It was then she noticed the white stag again.

He was peeking out from behind one of the great oaks that dominated this deep portion of the wood. Now that she was looking for it, she could tell he was translucent as well as luminous. The expression on his alien face was inscrutable as he regarded her.

"Um, Hi," Applebloom nervously greeted the ghost.

His head tilted, ever so slightly, to one side.

"Um, I came back to say 'thank you,' for helping me find my way home yesterday.

There was a nearly imperceptible nod.

"I, ah, was wonderin' if there was anything I could do for you in return."

The antlered head tilted the other direction.

"Um, since I can see you an' all, maybe I could help you 're-solve your lingering issues'," she said, plagiarizing words Twilight had previously used. "Or maybe there's a message you want me to carry somewhere?"

The stag regarded her blankly for an uncomfortable amount of time. Apple Bloom began to wonder if Twilight and her brother were wrong about the utility of her talent. Suddenly the stag nodded and sprang off, deeper into the woods. He stopped after a few bounding leaps to make sure she was following. Apple Bloom scrambled to her hooves and the stag continued on.

The yellow filly turned to her sleeping friend and whispered, "Sweetie, Sweetie, wake up!"

"Huh, what?" the unicorn flailed groggily.

"Shhhhh! The ghost deer is back, he's wanting us to follow. Be quiet, I don't want to scare him."

"Oh! Cool!" Sweetie Bell sprang up to her hooves and followed as quietly as she could. After a few minutes of following her friend Sweetie asked, "Apple Bloom? Are you sure we're going the right way?"

"Of course we are, we're just following that there stag." Apple Bloom replied in a whisper.

"Um, Apple Bloom. Its not that I don't believe you but I don't see anything here but trees."

"Wow, that's really weird." the earth pony replied and kept on following the deer only she should see.

Sweetie Belle whimpered and followed her friend, unwilling to abandon Apple Bloom but also very aware of the fact that she was unable to find her way out of the woods on her own.

After an exhausting chase through the dense woods, the spirit stopped after entering a clearing. Apple Bloom's eyes took a moment to adjust to the sudden brightness and then studied the gap in which the stag stood. A shallow hill fell from the left to her right, ending at a small but fast-flowing stream. The hill seemed to be missing a portion, as it looked like the part facing the river had been somehow cut, exposing stacked, broken, sheets of reddish rock. The ground directly in front of the face was littered with stones of varying sizes and shapes. As Apple Bloom stepped into the clearing she began to notice that the rocks looked chipped and flaked, as if deliberately shaped. Looking down-slope she saw three rock rings, mostly overgrown with moss and weeds. They were each about three meters across and the remaining stones stood hock high to her, each had an opening facing a small pile of fire-blackened stones that sat in the center.

Apple Bloom's vision swam as more pale figures joined that of the stag. A second male moved alongside the white form, this one with a much smaller rack of antlers. Three more deer drifted up to the two stags, they had no antlers and were a head shorter than the two males. "Does" Apple Bloom reminded herself of the terminology Twilight had conveyed to her yesterday. The last to emerge was the dim and wavering form of a fawn, his antlers no more than fuzz-covered nubs on his head. She could see the settlement as it once stood as the deer remembered their home for her. Wooden poles were driven into the ground inside the stone rings and thick boughs of pine served each tiny house as thatching. The does spent time at different chores. One was down by the stream manipulating something invisible. Another was besides the remembered fire, tending to some cooking the filly couldn't see. The last doe romped in the clearing, surrounded by wisps that felt like the memory of fawns to her. Only one of those forms frolicking with her provided his own substance and light, all of the others were visible only in the reflected light of the ghost-doe's memory.

This idyllic scene was interrupted by the appearance of several ponies from the far end of the river. Their shapes were hard to see clearly as they too were not ghosts themselves but images from the memories of the dead. What she could see gave her the impression of long, straight horns jutting from their foreheads and ancient armor covering their withers and flanks. The unicorns reared and charged the deer. The stag she knew locked antlers to horn with the leader as the younger stag stood pack and flung spears at the invaders. The projectiles hit home but the stone tips shattered against the metal plate these ponies wore, stymieing the stags attempt to defend his home. Once the unicorns dismissed the younger male as a non-threat they surrounded the great stag and impaled him upon their horns. He kicked and spun but could not defend himself from all the others as he was still locked, skull to skull, with their captain. The stag fell, and as he lay dying he helplessly watched as the unicorns ran down the younger stag, the does, and the fawns. No one survived.

Apple Bloom's mind was blank. 'Blood and horror' did not begin to describe the slaughter she had witnessed. Tears ran freely down her slack cheeks and their saltiness creeped into the edges of her gaping mouth. Her knees shook, her skin twitched, and the strong scent of urine told her that she had lost control of her bladder at some point during the vision.

"-Bloom!" Sweetie Belle's full-throated shout brought Apple Bloom back to some measure of consciousness.

"Sweetie?" The yellow filly croaked.

"Thank Celestia! I thought I was going to have to carry you back!"

At the sound of the goddess' name the specters raised their heads and seemed to finally notice Sweetie Belle. The ghost-deer still carried their death-wounds and seemed to be struggling to rise from the ground. Apple Bloom could feel the intensity of their combined gaze fall on Sweetie's horn. "No," Apple Bloom begged. "She's not one of them that hurt you."

Sweetie continued, oblivious. "You just stopped once you got into the clearing. First you were smiling but then you got scared; really, really scared." The unicorn's gaze dipped for just a moment to he puddle underneath Apple Bloom, politely not detailing the physical signs of the filly's terror.

Apple Bloom could see the earth underneath the ghosts begin to buckle and boil. "Each spirit was laying where they had died," her brain supplied trying to make sense of what she was seeing. As a terrible theory began to take shape she interrupted Sweetie's monologue. "Sweetie, do you see something going on with the dirt over there?" She gestured to the nearest ghost, struggling against some invisible pull.

"Um, yeah. It looks like something is digging its...way...out." Sweetie's eyes grew to the size of platters as her pupils contracted down to specks. Humus-stained bones broke the surface as a leg dragged the rest of the animated skeleton free from its grave.

To Apple Bloom, the two forms seemed super-imposed. A translucent memory of self enveloped each set of remains. They did not move with the grace their purely spectral forms possessed, instead they lurched and crawled towards her and Sweetie. She corrected herself as realization took hold, they were after Sweetie. They were after revenge. "I should never have brought you here," she said to her friend.

"I thought you said you couldn't do zombies," Sweetie said with rising alarm.

"I'm not doing this," was Apple Bloom's simple yet ominous reply.

"Ok, in that case, what are we going to do?" the unicorn asked with a panicked voice.

"Run!"

Author's Notes:

Honest hurts, honesty doesn't always make you friends, honesty needs the other elements to function within the confines of friendship.

Also, while necromancy itself might be somewhat dangerous, untrained necromancy is downright suicidal.

By the way, humus is a very organic type of soil. Hummus is a bean dip.

Blood and Bones

The three mares entered the library. Twilight headed directly to a bookshelf and Applejack stood awkwardly in the middle of the room. Rarity sighed dramatically and brushed her mane out of her eyes as she entered the cool interior of the tree. Her actions were not designed to deliberately draw Spike's attention to her... but she did so enjoy the attention.

"Hey Rarity," the dragon's greeting was simple and monotone.

The lack of any signs of infatuation or desire was unusual for Spike and troubling to the white mare. "Hello Spiky, are you all right?" she answered with the hope of drawing him out.

"I guess so, I'm pretty-*gurble hack blech*!" Spike belched in surprise and a scroll coalesced out of his green fire. The paper scroll was sealed with indigo wax and a raised silver crescent graced the center.

Twilight looked up when she heard Spike's gastrointestinal mail system but her eyes narrowed when she saw the markings on the scroll. "You have got to be kidding me!" She yanked the scroll out of Spike's claws with her magic and focused balefully upon the scroll. "You...Have...Got...To...Be...KIDDING ME!" she growled through clenched teeth as she crumpled up the letter in time with her words. She then flung the offensive object into the fireplace, since that was where letters of this sort were supposed to be flung. She was disappointed that there was no fire in the fireplace, it being high summer, but she felt a small measure of satisfaction from the gesture.

Applejack watched the small drama unfold with worries about her personal safety running through her head.

"Spike?" Twilight addressed her assistant with a voice under absolute iron control. "I'm going to need that amulet you said looks like a brass top, also the medium-sized map of 'Ponyville and Environs'."

"Sure thing," Spike agreed without any protest of debate, raising yet more questions for Rarity. He disappeared through the door to the cellar.

Twilight pulled a book from the shelf and placed it on the table in the center of the library's reading room. At the same time she removed the wooden bust that normally served as a decorative centerpiece. "Ok, you two. I can find them but I'm going to need something that resonates with their magical signature."

Blank looks answered her.

"Something that belongs to them," she explained in simpler terms. "How did you think I was going to find them?"

"Um, magic?" Applejack answered, honestly.

"Rarity? You should know better than this!" the purple mare scolded.

"Dear, magical theory wasn't exactly my strong suit while I was in school and that was longer ago than I'd ever admit to anyone," the white unicorn demurred.

Twilight took a calming breath and then explained. "I can't just 'magic' their location. I need something to provide a sympathetic connection to at least one of them. A cherished toy, a gem they enchanted, a bit of their mane, the blood of a parent or child-"

"Stop, that last one there. We got that." Applejack interrupted.

Rarity's eyes widened, "Applejack, she didn't mention a sister's blood. You don't want to start up any rumors, do you?" Rarity's sing-song delivery was desperately trying to make the issue sound like a lighthearted faux pas.

"The essence of a sister, while sharing some qualities with the target just isn't close enough to allow me to tunnel through the sub-etheral field-" Twilight lectured, only to be interrupted again.

"I heard ya. Do it." Applejack held out her forelimb to Twilight.

"Um, Applejack, sweetie, can I talk to you over here for a moment first?" Rarity frantically beckoned the earth pony into a corner away from Twilight.

While they were rapidly whispering to each other, Spike returned with the requested supplies and spread the map out over the table. Twilight, while not trying to listening in, did hear a few snippets of the hushed argument as she prepared the map and amulet.

".......all that work...." Twilight heard in Rarity's hushed tones.

"....lies....." Applejack countered.

"...Manehattan...?" Rarity asked.

"....family..." Applejack's voice sounded resolute.

"....parents...." Rarity answered, sounding disappointed.

"Fine."

"Fine."

Rarity turned her attention back to Twilight, "Um, Twilight, darling? Is there any chance we could ask you to keep a tiny, tiny, little secret?"

"You mean the fact that Apple Bloom is AJ's daughter, conceived out of wedlock while she was a living with the Oranges in Manehattan? Twilight replied without looking up from her preparations.

Rarity gasped dramatically, "You knew?!?"

"Despite the fact that Applejack is quite possibly the worst liar in all of Equestria, I didn't. At least not for sure. Until now."

"Oh." the white mare said, uncharacteristically embarrassed. “So, is there any chance you could keep that little tidbit to yourself?”

"It’s none of my business." Twilight said dismissively, continuing her work. "If you want to keep lying to everyone about everything, that's your prerogative."

Applejack looked like she was about to be sick.

"Applejack, your hoof please." Twilight ordered, he own held out sole up.

The mare in question approached and cautiously placed her hoof in Twilight's, she smiled with hope of forgiveness as she held hooves with her lavender friend.

Twilight met Applejack’s effort of consolation with a nonplussed, raised eyebrow. She bruskly flipped the mare’s limb over to the more clinical sole-up position. Taking the brass amulet in her aura's grip she stabbed the point down into the soft portion of the mare's foot. Twilight knew that no more than the smallest drop of blood was required for the spell to work. She also knew that Applejack didn't know that and that the farmer had more than a little payback coming to her. Applejack's eyes shot open as she hollered out in pain. Twilight didn't smile at the tiny act of revenge but wanted to.

"All right, that should just about do it," Twilight said with a self-pleased tone as she released the wounded appendage.

Applejack cradled the abused limb to her chest, her eyes accusing Twilight of capital crimes.

"You’re really going to be upset with her for that? After everything else?” Rarity chided.

"Ok, ok. Just find her, all right?" The farmer rubbed her wounded hoof against her fur but accepted it as a form of penance.

"Working on that," Twilight held the amulet in her aura and swung it over the map. At first the shining brass behaved like a pendulum, simply swinging back and forth. As Twilight pushed more of her magic into the item, the droplet of blood began to smoke and sizzle while the weight began to swing over a gradually smaller area of the map. Eventually the chain grew taut and the tip of the amulet pointed at the Whitetail Wood. The tip was not exactly still, it shifted ever so slightly as its target herself moved. "Got her," Twilight exclaimed with triumph.

The two mares and one dragon all peered over the edge of the table to see. "Huh, I guess she went back," Applejack conceded.

"I can teleport there using this spell's connection to her," Twilight explained as the strain of the complicated spell began to show on her. "But…I can't carry anyone else with me," the unicorn gasped. "Meet...me...there?"

"As fast as I can." Applejack vowed.

Twilight vanished in a flash of purple.

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Apple Bloom didn't know where she was going. She didn't know how long or far she had been running. As a working farm-pony she was no stranger to fatigue but this was the most exhausted she had ever been. Every muscle burned, begging for her to stop, screaming for her to drop the nearly catatonic unicorn she carried on her back. With every step her hooves grew heavier and roots and stones she would normally step over without notice caused her to trip and stumble. Each time her gait faltered, the wights gained on them.

Sweetie Belle had kept up with Apple Bloom for the first five miles or so, a miracle bred of terror, but eventually the unicorn could go no further. She had fallen to the earth after tripping, covered in foam and gasping. Apple Bloom had tried asking, pulling, scolding, pushing, screaming, begging, and even reluctantly kicking her friend in an effort to get her moving again. The earth pony's fear climaxed as the skeletal forms broke through the underbrush, mere steps away. She nosed underneath her friend, slinging the foundered filly over her back like a sack of apples, and resumed fleeing the vengeful dead.

Countless miles had passed since Apple Bloom had taken up the burden of her weeping friend. She knew she could run faster and further without the filly on her back but could not abandon her. The pain blinded her to everything but the effort to keep moving. She had no idea if she was running in a particular direction or in circles; she had no landmarks with which to orient herself. She simply ran, forcing breath into burning lungs and pumping her leaden legs, never daring to pause. Her mind only barely registered the flash of purple ahead and to the right. She ran past it, whatever it was, without a moment’s thought.

-----------------------------------

Twilight appeared in a flash of purple light, her legs wobbly from the long-distance teleportation. She saw Apple Bloom running towards her with Sweetie Belle draped across her back. The mare smiled warmly, attempting to project a calming presence towards the obviously panicked fillies. She crouched back on her hind legs and opened her forelimbs wide, expecting to gather the lost girls into her arms and comforting them.

As the two shot past her without even a glance, Twilight's brows knit together in confusion as she regarded them over her shoulder. She turned back towards the direction the fillies had come from and her blood ran cold. Six animated skeletons of what appeared to be deer were running towards her with gaits reminiscent of broken puppets. Despite their clumsy movements, the wights were closing the distance rapidly. Their leader, a large stag with a forest of antlers crowning his bare skull, locked his vacant eye-sockets on Twilight. Despite the lack of eyes, Twilight shivered as she felt that she was being observed and judged. The rest of the herd pulled up alongside their leader and joined him in regarding her.

“Um, hello?” Twilight said tentatively.

The stag lowered his head, bringing his jagged and broken antlers to bear on the purple unicorn and charged.

From Apple Bloom’s point of view, Twilight’s yell grew rapidly in volume as the adult galloped into view alongside the running filly. "What did you do?" Twilight demanded of the child.

"They wanna kill Sweetie!" Apple Bloom wailed, explaining but not quite answering the question put to her.

"To where are we running?" Twilight asked, careful not to end her sentence with a preposition.

"Away!" the filly cried breathlessly.

In response, Twilight grasped Sweetie Belle in her aura and shifted the filly to her own back. Apple Bloom's pace increased to match the mare's as the weight was lifted from her. It didn't take long, however, for Twilight to begin to feel the first twinges of muscle fatigue. She wasn't exactly out of shape but having to gallop cross-country while carrying a filly, immediately after a long-range teleportation, performed as the culmination of a very complicated dowsing spell, just minutes after having had her heart broken was a bit much, Twilight admitted to herself as she began to breathe hard. She thought about slowing down and pacing herself as she did during the Running of the Leaves but a glance over her shoulder at the pursuing wights killed that idea stone dead.

Twilight still had the dousing amulet around her neck and a realization came to her as she felt its weight thumping against her chest. Running aimlessly was only delaying their capture, not preventing it. They needed a destination and the drying remnants of Applejack's blood dousing amulet could provide that. Searching for someone who shared half the essence within a sample was complicated, projecting that information onto a map was also complicated, and using that resonance connection for teleportation was even more complex. Using the blood on the device to supply a bearing towards the donor would be simple, so simple she could even do it while running from undead horrors, she hoped.

Twilight began trickling a tiny fraction of her power into the amulet and felt it lift away from her breast. The chain bounced and pulled but it gave her a general direction to follow and that was what they most desperately needed. "Apple Bloom! This way!" she shouted and the filly followed her as they galloped in a long arcing turn. They kept that bearing for several minutes and Twilight began to marvel at the endurance of the earth pony child as she herself struggled to keep running. The wights never wavered in their pace and every time one of the two ponies stumbled, the horrible things gained on them. The skin on Twilight's flanks twitched and crawled as she imagined the filthy bones reaching out to do...things to her. She then realized she had no idea what the skeletal forms were capable of. "Perhaps," she wondered, "the necromancer would know."

"Bloom...what...do...us...if...catch?" the mare asked the Apple Bloom, between gasps for air.

"Dunno...bad...kill?" was the child's less than helpful reply.

Twilight's vision had narrowed into a grey-tinged tunnel filled with clawing branches and tripping roots when she finally glimpsed a glimmer of unfiltered sunlight in the distance. They were close but exhausted; Twilight knew her reserves were running dangerously low and she could see that Apple Bloom had finally reached her limit. "That settles it," she told herself. "We make our stand at the clearing, alone if I have to." Despite her inner monologue, she prayed to Celestia that Applejack had set some sort of land-speed record and would meet them there.

Twilight reviewed her catalog of spells, quickly calculating how much time and energy each would require and weighing those investments against their estimated utility. Her face grew grim as she reviewed her results. She glanced down at the filly desperately stumbling forward in a flight for life. She spared a quick glance over her shoulder and immediately bared her teeth in a rictus of terror. She looked back at the child beside her and when Apple Bloom met her eyes, the Twilight mouthed the words "I'm sorry." The filly's color visibly paled as Twilight tucked her head down and forward and pushed with everything she had for every modicum of speed she could pull from her aching body.

"Twilight! No! Don't leave me!" Apple Bloom screamed with a mixture of terror and utter betrayal.

Twilight was tempted to turn around and tell the filly that it wasn't her that was being abandoned. It was Spike, Shining Armor, her friends, Celestia, and Luna who were going to be abandoned by her. She had found in her calculations no combination of actions and/or spells that could save all three them. "Two out of three isn't that bad," she told herself. Herself answered back, "two out of three is 66% so the last thing you do in life will be to earn a 'D'." She told herself to "Shut up," and concentrated on buying fractions of seconds with damage to her body.

The mare leaped over the last row of ferns and into the thick, golden sunlight. After the half-light gloom of the wood, the unfiltered rays of Celestia's orb felt like plunging into a warm bath. She took one more galloping stride for maneuvering distance and spun. "There are worse places to die," she told herself as she spun to confront the wights. "Been there, done that," she added with a fey laugh.

------------------------------------------------

"Don't leave me!" the filly begged, unbelieving, as she watched Twilight abandon her and pull further and further ahead. Apple Bloom could now hear the snapping of twigs and crunch of leaves all around her as the pursuing ghosts gained the last few centimeters separating her from them. "I'm going to die, right now," she thought with shock as antlers brushed her flanks. She tore through the ferns, aiming for the thinnest portion of the vegetation. On the other side she found a goddess.

A violet alicorn reared with wings spread wide, rampant as if upon a banner. Her mane streamed out upon an astral wind, an image of the horizon at the moment between day and night. She was a vision of power and beauty beyond mortal limits and the yellow filly's heart broke in that instant. She stumbled and fell, prostrate before this goddess and was powerless to regain her footing.

With a voice like a thunderclap, the alicorn spoke. "Halt specters of the fallen! I abjure thee!"

Apple Bloom then heard a voice from behind her and turned her head to see. The great stag, bones wrapped in spirit addressed the goddess. "Blood," he said in a voice like the rustling of old paper.

"Not from these children!" the alicorn declared and from her horn a translucent wall of magenta energy followed the sharp border of the wood.

The stag's response wasn't verbal. He simply motioned the faun, his murdered son, to stand besides him. His expression dared the divine being before him to find any difference or justification. Apple Bloom, herself quaking before the goddess, tried to imagine the rage that simple act of defiance took.

"Begone!" the alicorn ordered while stamping her hooves, shaking the earth the filly lay upon. The deer turned and without hurry dissolved into their forest.

After several moments the deer failed to re-appear and the goddess turned her attention to the filly. "Well, that went better then expected." she said, smiling radiantly. Apple Bloom responded by immediately passing out.

Author's Notes:

I'm experimenting with longer chapters, given some of the comments I've been getting.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Societal Taboos

Applejack hurt. Her muscles and joints ached from the strain of the five-mile sprint from Twilight's library. Her hoof throbbed where the unicorn had taken her blood. But those bodily complaints were just pain; what truly hurt was her soul. She tried to keep her mind blank, focusing entirely on the act of running, but anytime her attention wavered her mind vomited forth the memory of one of her many and recent poor decisions. With each memory came a flare of spiritual pain, causing her gait to falter and her creases around her eyes to grow deeper.

Two years ago she had been chosen as the Bearer of the Element of Honesty and sometimes Applejack thought it a cruel cosmic joke. She knew honesty, she could feel the truth like a sort of smell or taste, but she felt that the reason for this was because her entire life was a lie. After her parents had died, she was sent off to live with the Oranges in Manehattan. Every lesson there had been a lesson in deceit. Hide your accent, cover your blank flank with a skirt, be polite and smile at everyone no matter how loathsome, dissemble about where you came from, and the most important lesson of all was how to lie to yourself. She had convinced herself that she loved that stupid colt when all it really was was a craving for something, anything, honest and real.

Her mind continued to wander as she fought for speed. She remembered the fear at discovering that she was with child. She was already back at the farm but everyone in the clan would have known that the Oranges had failed in the worst possible way as chaperons to the teen-aged filly. Not only would have Applejack had been labeled as a 'ruined' woman and unsuitable for a proper marriage but the Oranges would have been cut off from the family as a whole. Her uncle and aunt would have lost all their business connections with the farmers of her family. They would have been shamed and 'ruined' as well.

It has started as such a small lie. No one besides Mac and Granny knew that she was pregnant. Being out at the farm meant that she could avoid going to town without much trouble and the doctor was sworn to secrecy. Apple Bloom looked like an Apple and the various branches of her family were spread so far apart and visited so seldom that it was easy to pass the baby off as being born shortly before her mother passed away and that they had simply missed out on the news back when he was supposedly born.

But the lie had grown. Every question about Apple Bloom's origins led to another lie. Apple Bloom's birth date was pushed back a year so that she wasn't born after her "mother" died. But that lie required her to be enrolled in school a year earlier than normal. It hurt so much, watching her filly struggle to keep up with the older children. Conference after conference she had to hear from Cheerilee that Apple Bloom was developmentally behind the other kids her supposed age. Then the whole Cutie Mark obsession started and she had to lie to Apple Bloom's face again and again as she watched her filly struggle to catch up with older children she thought were her peers.

The farm mare couldn't pinpoint exactly when it happened but at some point the lies stopped being about protecting the family and became about protecting the original lie itself. The purpose of the deceit faded as time passed but now the worry wasn't about her own honor or even that of the Oranges but was about how Apple Bloom would take it, finding out that she'd been lied to for her whole life. The thought of that confrontation hit Applejack like a punch to the gut but she kept running despite the pain and distraction.

Applejack tried to turn her racing mind away from her daughter and cast about for any other topic to rest her mind upon. Her memory landed upon her conflict with Celestia regarding livestock. She regretting with all her heart that knowing the truth did not equal knowing what was right. It was true that farm-ponies across the nation had invested significant resources into purchasing and maintaining these herds. It was also true that cattle and pigs were a type of people and therefore owning them was a form of slavery. Even at the time, she knew that slavery was an evil and that it had to end. She had told herself that by disputing Luna's dictum she was just protecting her family and all the other farming families across the realm. She had gotten a far better deal for the farmers than they were originally going to get and the farms had limped from ownership to employment of these non-ponies. Everything she did was founded on the truth but then why did she feel so psychically dirty? Why did she stay up, night after night, hating who she had become?

Despite her efforts her mind forced itself back to Apple Bloom. She had tried to be supportive of Apple Bloom when she was with the filly but what if the girl had been eavesdropping during some conversation or another. She would have preferred it if she could deny her own words, claim that "I didn't mean it," but she knew she had and Apple Bloom would know she was lying. She wondered, "At what point does concern for one's child become rejection of that child?" She loved Apple Bloom, she loved the girl so much that every cut, scrape, disappointment, and fear the child had was duplicated within Applejack's heart. Like any mother, she wanted her daughter to have a good life: to be happy, to be safe, and to excel in her talent. But to carry out her talent described by her Mark, Apple Bloom would have to go into dark places and face real danger. Her child's place was to be in danger and Applejack felt trapped between the two poles of her heart. So far, she hadn't found a way out of this emotional paralysis.

The edge of Whitetail Wood began to come into view, its appearance being a most welcome distraction from her musings and a relief to her panicking heart. The heat and her own inner turmoil had slowed her down but Applejack was still fairly sure she had set some sort of record for the run, not that such things mattered in this moment. As the trees grew taller in her vision she saw a flash of purple as Twilight leaped out of the forest's dense boundary. The mare looked tiny and frail as she turned while rearing, a white burden falling from her back as she did so. A dagger of ice plunged into Applejack's heart when she saw that Apple Bloom wasn't with the unicorn.

Applejack's body surged with adrenaline and she sprinted through the tall grass, heedless of danger or pain. The spike in her heart grew colder as she saw Twilight try to summon forth her power. The magenta light radiating from the tip of the unicorn's horn was pale and wavering and the farmer noticed white dollops of foam dripping from her exhausted friend. Applejack surmised that whatever had happened within those woods had drained Twilight within an inch of collapse, a fearsome prospect given the raw power the purple mare had at her command.

Applejack saw a yellow and red form tumble out of the woods. But before the ice in her heart could melt, her eyes fell on what chased her daughter. Six skeletons, all stained dark from the forest soil and two sporting the jagged remnants of antlers came barreling towards the forest's edge and Apple Bloom. "Just a few more seconds," she grunted to herself as she pushed her legs beyond the limits of pain.

"Stop...Stay back!" Twilight begged of the macabre forms, panting and breathless.

For a moment there was only the sound of her hooves tearing up the distance between her and the tableau before her.

"No, not from them!" She shouted as if answering the monsters. There was a weak flash as Twilight pushed the last remnants of her strength into a barrier between Apple Bloom and the skeletal deer. The unicorn fell to her knees as she squeezed herself dry, the barrier could only last for seconds. "Get back!" she cried out at the wights even as her body collapsed.

Applejack tried to use the sliver of time Twilight had bought them. Applejack angled her path so that her body would pass between the deer and Apple Bloom and skid to a sliding stop inches away from the threatening dead. She met the eyeless gaze of the largest deer and held it for several heartbeats. The deer broke the stare first, turning away and disappearing into the dense foliage.

Twilight mumbled something from behind her, "...better than...expected."

Applejack reluctantly turned her back on the haunted forest and took in the sight of Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Twilight Sparkle all rendered unconscious by this ordeal. As relief flooded her body and washed away the adrenaline, she began to shake uncontrollably. The orange mare laid down alongside Apple Bloom, facing so that she could keep her eyes on the forest, and waited for anypony to wake up. A short time later a rainbow contrail in the sky promised rescue and Applejack waved and hollered, guiding Rainbow Dash down to them.

---------------------------------------------------------

"Luna! What an unexpected pleasure!" exclaimed the pretty pink princess. Cadance trotted up to Luna and kissed the mare on each cheek, adding superfluous "Mwa!" noises with each peck.

Luna's personal space felt well and truly violated by the greeting but she forced herself to smile and mirror the intimate gesture. She reminded herself that she had already once endured Tartarus for Twilight's sake and that dealing with the saccharine-sweet and touchy-feely Empress couldn't be much worse than Grogar's hospitality.

"So, what brings you to the far north, dear aunt?" Cadance asked from a half-step too close.

Luna hated that form of address, it was arbitrary and made her feel old. "We...me and." Luna faltered and then re-started. "Twilight and I are having some difficulties, with our relationship. I need some advice and presumed that you might be able to give some given your field of expertise."

"Oh!" the pink alicorn replied with a level of surprise that puzzled Luna. The other mare finally took another step away, allowing Luna room enough to breathe her own air. Cadance gave a coy look at Luna, "I had thought, being that you are so much old-. Heh, I mean more experienced, than most that you would have figured everything out by now."

Luna mentally scrambled for an answer, "Well, every relationship is different, We've found."

"Oh, don't I know it!" Cadance replied while her smile changed somehow into something unfit for decent society. Luna grew concerned as her discomfort level increased.

"Princess Luna! I heard you were visiting!" a clear tenor rang out across the audience chamber. Twilight's brother cantered over to the pair and much to Luna's relief didn't attempt to hug or kiss her.

"Hi there sweet-stuff, we were just talking about you." Cadance greeted her husband.

"You were?" he replied playfully.

"We were?" Luna replied confusedly.

"Well, you and Twilight at least, but I don't think you want to be here for the rest of the conversation." the pink mare advised.

"Well, actually I was hoping to get his opinion as well," Luna contradicted.

Cadance looked concerned, "I know things have changed a lot in the last millennium but, are you sure?"

"Of course," Luna replied. "He more than anyone would know the details regarding Twilight's quirks and peculiarities, like and dislikes, et cetera."

"Would he." Cadance said as she fixed her husband with the 'You are about to be in big trouble" stare every wife learns to give and every husband learns to fear.

"I'm going back to what I was doing...over there...away...from whatever this is," the stallion said in cautious tones while backing away. He didn't know what exactly was going on but he knew he wanted no part of it.

Cadance gripped her husband in her aura, his hooves sliding across the crystalline floor. "Oh no you don't, mister. Now you're going to tell me why Luna seems to think you should be intimately familiar with your sister's sexual habits."

"What!?!" both Luna and Shining Armor replied explosively.

"But you said you came to me for advice," Cadance said, confused.

"Advice about love," Luna clarified.

Cadance blinked in response.

"Emotional love: relationships." Luna tried again.

"Ohhhh." the pink alicorn sighed. "That makes way more sense. I thought you were looking for advice for-"

"Stop, stop right there!" Shining interrupted his wife. "Ewwww!" he cried with a shudder.

"What? Its not like you didn't know Luna and your little sister were having sex," Cadance continued.

"La la la la la, I'm not listening, la la la la," was the stallion's mature reply.

"Stallions! I swear, they are so immature about these things..." Cadance looked over to where Luna had been standing only to find empty space. She was several meters away tip-hoofing for the nearest window from which to fling herself. "Luna! Not you too?"

Luna froze, wishing desperately to be invisible, or elsewhere, or dead.

"Come on, you two. Lets go sit down," she gestured to a comfortable looking sitting area, "and discuss Luna's relationship with your sister like adults."

Luna and Shining locked eyes, silently swearing to a suicide pact in the case that Cadance dragged the conversation back into the "Bad Place" again. They then cautiously followed the love goddess to the couches and sat primly, as far away from each other as possible.

"So!" Cadance began. "What seems to be the problem?"

"We, um...no really, we this time, um, broke up today," Luna answered unintelligibly.

"That isn't a good sign," Cadance replied archly.

"What happened?" Shining asked, genuinely concerned.

"There's been this problem that's been building for a while," the blue alicorn answered, circuitously. She saw Shining's eyes grow wider and his smile grow brittle. "No, no, nothing like that." The unicorn relaxed a bit. "It's that every time we go out to do something some sort of disaster strikes and messes everything up."

Shining sighed in relief.

Luna continued, "When its just the two of us, alone, everything is fine. We have a great time together, we have a lot in common, and we really enjoy each other's company." (Cadance smirked) "Its just that whenever we try to to anything other than that something goes terribly wrong and I, sometimes, react poorly. Twilight said that she didn't blame me for the crazy things that happen but she still couldn't take it anymore. And then she told me that we were done." Talking about their final conversation caused Luna's throat to catch and eyes to tear up. Her gaze had fallen to the floor, safely away from everyone else's eyes.

"Darn it, Twily," was the stallion's response.

Luna looked back up at him, meeting his eyes with her own tear-filled ones.

"I'm sorry she's treating you like this," he continued. "She's always been such a perfectionist and it sounds like she's letting it ruin something really nice."

"But is there anything I can do?" She asked.

Cadance piped up, "Fly down there, don't take 'no' for an answer and pleasure her until all she can say is your name."

Shining Armor's coat color shifted from white to pale green.

"O-k," Luna answered, horribly uncomfortable with this suggestion, "And lets just say, for instance, that I didn't want to...um, 'take her' against her will."

"Is there such a thing?" Cadance asked, again confused.

It was then that Luna remembered exactly what Cadance's magic did. She leaned her head forward onto her hooves. "This was a terrible mistake," she groaned.

Shining Armor rescued her, "Luna, just give her a little bit of time to cool down but not so much that she gets used to you not being around. I'd go to her tomorrow, face to face, no letters or dreams, and just tell her how you feel. Not just that you care about her but about how she's behaving and how she's hurting you. She's a good pony, Luna. She just gets agitated sometimes and lets the little stuff bother her so badly that she forgets about what's important."

Luna looked back up at her lover's brother and finally smiled. "Thank you, that actually might help," she said to him.

"Your welcome," Cadance replied instead.

Luna's smile vanished like morning dew, "As for you; you must be the luckiest mare alive to have wed this stallion." Luna gestured to Shining.

Cadance's face parted in a sultry smile, "Don't you know it. Did I ever tell you about this thing he does where..."

Luna vanished with a blue flash of teleportation, fleeing the conversation at the speed of light.

Author's Notes:

Applejack gets a POV chapter! Maybe it'll help folks see the journey her character is on a little better.

Some folks might not like how I portrayed Cadance, I'm envisioning her as the child of Discord and Harmony and a pony version of Eros or Aphrodite. I'm sure she's a very nice pony, its just that she's very, very comfortable with some topics that Luna isn't.

Grogar, Grogar, Grogar.

Twilight woke from the dreamless sleep of unconsciousness as the full moon shone brilliant white light in her eyes. The orb of night was hanging at its apex and was so bright that it smothered all the nearby stars with its glory. “Luna,” she croaked in a voice husky from abuse.

“Try again,” said a rumbling basso, while chuckling. “But aim lower this time.”

“Oh, Tarturus,” the purple mare swore, turning her aching head to bring Grogar’s bulk into view.

The giant ram tisked her. “A bit of an over-correction there. Perhaps you're still a bit addled from yet another brush with death?”

“I’m not addled,” the mare growled defiantly while pondering the etymology of the phrase ‘to get one’s goat.’ “I’m fine,” she insisted while struggling to her hooves. Halfway through levering herself upright all of her muscles seized in a massive cramp. Whimpering, she collapsed in a heap of twitching limbs.

An eyebrow quirked on the ancient and scarred face. The facial gesture was eloquent.

“I’m...fine.” Twilight insisted through grit teeth.

“You shouldn’t be,” Grogar countered, his tone particularly inscrutable.

Twilight panted from her prone position, assessing her physical condition. “Ok, I’m not fine. I hurt everywhere."

“Comparatively speaking, ‘just a unicorn,’ you are fine.”

“I got lucky. Maybe the revenants didn’t know I was magically exhausted. They must have thought my barrier would have held them back.” Twilight’s irritation with the god rose at the use of his favorite nickname for her. She had described herself as ‘just a unicorn’ to Grogar back when he was a captive in Tartarus. The annoying god used the term as often as he could with her, usually with a smirk or a chuckle.

“Ah yes, luck. That must be it.” He answered, smirking again.

“Shut up and give me a hoof,” the unicorn said, dismissing his line of implication.

The great ram leaned over, bringing the tip of one of his great curling horns within Twilight’s reach. She grabbed onto it with a forelimb and then Grogar straightened his posture, pulling the mare up to her shaking hind legs. In the pause while Twilight tried to catch both her breath and her balance Grogar spoke again. “If you keep on surviving fatal encounters, ‘just a unicorn,’ people will eventually begin to doubt your mortality. You should be more careful.”

Twilight glared at the dimly-glowing eye socket looming just inches from her muzzle. “And why exactly do you care since...Oh, let me try to remember,” she added sarcastically. “Yeah, you were one of those ‘fatal encounters’.”

“Yes, Twilight Sparkle. I, a god, killed you and yet you stand here...living.”

A chill passed through the mare and the fur on the back of her neck stood. For some reason, Grogar using her full name just then was worse than any nickname. “Please let me down,” she said quietly, unnerved.

“Of course, Y-,” the ram cut himself off and smiled again. “...Miss Twilight.” Grogar gently bent a knee, bringing her forelimbs within reach of the ground. Carefully, she pulled back her limb from his horn and stood on her own, knees shaking like a foal. The god remained bent on one knee for an odd moment too long, as if bowing before her. Twilight’s disquiet grew into dread observing the genuflection.

“Oh, these ancient knees. It takes me so very long to rise again.” Grogar said, apparently to himself while rising to his own hooves.

Twilight’s mind grabbed onto the plausible explanation like a drowning mare would grab onto a life-ring. Anything to dismiss the possibility of Grogar kneeling before her. “After all,” she told herself, “I’m just a...”

Grogar chuckled softly to himself for no apparent reason and Twilight vowed to research mind-shielding spells at her earliest opportunity.

Desperate for another topic of conversation she looked around at her surroundings. They were in a clearing surrounded by trees on every side. In the bright moonlight the bark was painted silver and the leaves glinted obsidian. “Where in Hades are we?”

“On an Apple farm,” he answered, making sure the capitalization was audible. "The white, fussy one told Rainbow Dash where you went and she brought the bunch of you back here after your misadventure," he added.

Twilight groaned at the pun but stopped as felt a stab of pain in her heart. “Luna,” she thought, “I’ll never get to hear those terrible jokes anymore.”

With another use of an eloquent eyebrow, Grogar asked her what was the matter.

“Oh, no. I am not talking about that with him,” she said to herself. She sprang at the nearest alternate topic at hoof, “Apple...Apple Bloom! Is she ok?”

“Your friends were disturbed but not mourning a dead child. I presume she yet survives.”

“We need to go to her,” said the mare.

“Is that the child with the gift?” Grogar confirmed.

“I don’t think she feels very gifted right now,” Twilight muttered.

“Few who truly are think so.”

The empty sockets within the old god’s face felt as if they were somehow boring into Twilight’s soul. The unicorn shuddered and turned away, unable to bear their crimson gaze. She picked a direction at random, waking simply to gain some distance from the horrible ram. A few minutes later she arrived at the Apple’s barn. Grogar was there waiting beside the double doors and looking as pleased as a well-fed cat.

--------------------------------------------------------

Apple Bloom woke screaming as rot encrusted hooves pinned her down as the smell of decay filled her lungs.

“-Bloom! Apple Bloom! Its me! You’re safe!” Applejack’s voice cut through the horror as she realized the limbs that held her were whole, orange, and single hooved.

The filly blinked as the familiar confines of her own room came into view. She looked up and saw her sister’s face, gray and pinched with worry. Her hat was missing and blond hair hung limply around Applejack’s shoulders. What disturbed Apple Bloom the most, however, was her sister’s eyes. The filly saw fear and concern therein but she also saw two emotions she didn’t expect to find there, guilt and some powerful form of need or want.

“You’re safe now, safe,” her sister said again. The mare scooped Apple Bloom up into her arms and squeezed the filly in a crushing hug. Applejack kept repeating that last word, as if chanting the phrase would make it somehow more real. Apple Bloom allowed herself to fall into the embrace, searching for comfort from the hot beating heart of the living mare surrounding her. Several minutes passed like this, tears ebbing and flowing as various memories floated by.

“Sis, its ok now. You can let go,” Apple Bloom eventually told her sister. Applejack shook her head while continuing her chant. “Applejack, please, let me go.”

Applejack stopped her chant, “I ain’t ever letting you go, not ever.”

“Applejack!” the filly whined while pushing at her sister’s chest with a hoof. The pair came apart abruptly, each rocking back on the bed. Apple Bloom regained her balance and looked at her sister again; the comparison that came to her young mind was to wilted winter apples pulled from the cellar in early spring. She had never seen her sister act this way before and it scared her.

The stricken mare finally looked up from her hooves and met Apple Bloom’s eyes. “I know I’m a horrible mother, AB. I know I’ve done you wrong and I’m sorry. You deserve better than the like of me to be your mom but we’re family and I’m begging you to give me another chance. Whatever your talent, whatever you want to grow up to be, I want to be here for you if you’ll let me. Please, stay with us.” Applejack turned her tear-soaked face away from the filly, shame bowing her shoulders. “Or, if you really can’t stand to be here with me, I’ll help you find somewhere safe to live. You don’t have to run away like that again.”

Apple Bloom grew more and more uncomfortable as her sister talked. She could tell that Applejack meant every word but it seemed that her sister had thought she was running away for good. “Sis,” Applejack winced when Apple Bloom said the word, “I know you do the best you can. I know it’s been hard for you, raising me like I was your own. I wasn’t running away, not like that.” Applejack looked up from the bedspread, a cautious hope touching her features. The filly continued, “Me and Sweetie were only going off to Whitetail to show everyone that I wasn’t a dangerous freak.” The foal’s face fell, “That didn’t work out so well.”

Applejack reached out raised Apple Bloom’s chin. "You ain’t no freak and I won’t tolerate anyone saying that about you, not you, not anypony.” To Apple Bloom, the mare looked like she wanted to say more but stopped herself.

Apple Bloom nodded in response.

Applejack nodded back. “Now, I gotta ask, why did you go and get Sweetie to bring along? Why her and not Scoots?”

“I didn’t,” the filly answered. “She came out here after Rarity told her we weren't allowed to be friends no more. That’s why we had to show everyone that I wasn’t dangerous.” Apple Bloom’s bottom lip began to tremble again

Applejack’s lips went thin and pale over her teeth. “Oh, we’re just gonna have to see about that,” the mare growled in a tone that made Apple Bloom’s eyes widen in alarm. “You ok to walk?”

“I guess so, why?” the filly answered, uncertain.

“We’re going over to the barn, that’s where everyone’s meeting.” Applejack replied.

Apple Bloom sat silent for a moment and then asked, with fear tinging her voice, “Even Twilight?”

“If she can she will be,” Applejack answered. “Saving the two of you took everything that poor mare had. Knocked her clean out. When Grogar arrived he took one look at her and dragged her off into the orchards. I suppose he's doing some sort of magic cure thingie.”

Apple Bloom eyed her sister apprehensively. It wasn't like her sister to leave out details like a new pair of wings, a doubling in size, and the aegis of a god. Maybe she had been seeing things, exhausted and terrified. “I hope she’s...better.”

With things once again settled, Applejack helped her daughter down from the bed. The filly was still shaky from her ordeal so the elder walked alongside the filly, providing her entire side to lean against for balance. Out in the yard, Apple Bloom caught Applejack staring at her with that needful look once again.

“What?” the younger asked, driving straight to the point.

Applejack started, as if caught in some kind of shameful act. “ I, um, uh...nothing?”

Apple Bloom stopped walking and looked her sister in the eye.

The farmer eventually broke down under the steely gaze. “I, ah, well, I realized that you’d grown an inch and that I hadn’t noticed it before now. Between that and yer cutie mark, I, ah, guess I ought to get used to thinking of you as a young mare instead of a filly.”

The ‘young mare’ could tell that her sister had spoken the truth but had left something terribly important unsaid. Apple Bloom narrowed her eyes in suspicion and said, “Whatever it really is, you’re gonna tell me eventually. Aren’t you?”

Applejack looked scared of her, an impossibility just two days ago. It disturbed Apple Bloom deeply. Her sister replied in a whisper, “Yeah, I will. I promise. Soon.”

“You better,” was Apple Bloom’s rejoinder as she released her sister from eye-contact and passed into the barn.

Lanterns were already lit within the large space. In the middle of the barn, looking small and pale, were Rarity and Sweetie Bell. Apple Bloom shouted her best-friend’s name and galloped towards her, excited to see that the filly had survived the adventure more or less unharmed.

Sweetie’s eyes widened with fear as she saw Apple Bloom and she took a pair of fumbling steps backwards at seeing the earth pony’s charge. Apple Bloom’s gait faltered as she stopped a few meters away from the pair of unicorns. The smaller now mostly hidden behind the larger.

“Sweetie?” Apple Bloom asked, praying for any explanation besides the obvious.

“Um, hi, Apple Bloom,” the white filly answered with a voice high and tight with terror.

“Sweetie, I’m real sorry things didn’t go like we planned,” Apple Bloom apologized, hoping for forgiveness and acceptance.

“‘Didn’t go as planned’?” quoted the older unicorn. “You nearly killed both her and Twilight with your...display of talent.”

The words hurt Apple Bloom like a kick to the side. “Please, I’m sorry. I’ll never do anything like that again,” the filly begged Rarity.

“Hold on there a sec, AB,” the elder Apple had entered the barn and the conversation. “You ain’t got all the apologizing to do today.”

“Certainly, you don’t mean moi,” said the unicorn while portraying the very essence of wounded innocence..

Applejack laid out her case. “You going to tell me you didn't forbid your little sis from being friends with Apple Bloom?"

The unicorn harrumphed, "I have no need to deny that and I think that this," Rarity paused as she searched for an appropriate term, "fiasco shows that I was completely justified in my concerns."

"Well, as soon as your back was turned Sweetie Bell galloped straight here and told my...Apple Bloom what you said." Applejack was beginning to grow visibly angry. "If you hadn't acted so ham-hocked they wouldn't of ran off in the middle of the night!"

"Your...sister,” Rarity smiled sharply as the subtle pause had its intended effect on the farm-pony, “is a hazard. I’ve put up with her bad influence on Sweetie up to this point but I just cannot tolerate this any more. Mud and tree-sap are one thing but ghosts and zombies are altogether another.”

“The only reason Apple Bloom took such a chance was because of your meddling. The way I see it, you nearly got my sister killed.”

Apple Bloom tuned out the adults as they descended into bickering. Looking over to Sweetie Belle she tried to smile apologetically to her. The unicorn’s look in return was a blend of fear, guilt, and shame.

“I’m sorry,” Sweetie Belle mouthed and Apple Bloom’s face fell.

With a dull boom, the wide double-doors to the barn swung open. Half again as tall as a pony, the great shaggy ram raised his head after presumably opening the doors with a slight push from his massive curling horns. This wasn’t the first time Apple Bloom had met the ancient god. After returning to the living world Grogar had held court in her family’s pasture for several weeks. Despite her familiarity with him, his bulk intimidated her and she fell back a step.

Grogar took a few steps into the barn, the bells strewn about him jingling softly. “So, who is the child here?” he rumbled.

Applebloom’s mouth fell open. She heard his words and knew how the others were supposed to hear them but there was something in the way the corner of his eye crinkled...he was telling a joke. Her mouth opened and shut as she understood the jab the ram had taken at her sister's and Rarity's expense. She was torn between laughing, telling the two targets that he was laughing at them, or defending her sister. She was saved from having to choose as her attention was drawn to Twilight Sparkle, looking even more haunted than her sister, lurking in the shadow of the monstrous goat. Apple Bloom squinted, trying to see as hard as possible but there was no sign of a pair of wings or any other markers of divinity.

“What do you mean? You've met Apple Bloom before,” Applejack obliviously replied.

“Grogar,” Twilight invoked the god’s name as a warning. Apple Bloom was pleased to see that someone besides herself could sense the old goat’s meaning.

Grogar turned his head to look back over his shoulder at the unicorn ruining his fun. “Fine.” Turning back to the barn’s occupants his voice rumbled over them, “Apple Bloom, come to me.”

She reluctantly shuffled up to the goat, head bowed even though she didn't really think of him as a god.

“No, meet my gaze,” he ordered.

Her lips pursed and she sighed, then she raised her head. She noted that the glowing red vacancy was not at bright as it was when the ram had left their farm some months ago. She also saw that none of the scars on his face were fresh burns. The scars weren't likely to fade but at least the burning had stopped.

As she assessed him, she felt herself being stripped bare underneath his eyeless sight. “What does he see?” she wondered to herself. She was surprised to find that she was more curious about the nature of the god’s vision than by what he found within her. “Why have I stopped caring? What does that mean?”

Grogar nodded, interrupting the filly’s musings. “I’ll take her,” he declared.

“Good,” said Rarity.

“That’s it?” Applejack asked at the same time.

The two mares resumed glaring at each other. The resumption of their argument was derailed by Grogar stepping deeper into the room, approaching Rarity and eventually forcing the white mare back as he entered her personal space. This maneuver left Sweetie Bell standing alone before the god.

“I am taking your friend away, little one,” he said to her.

In a shaking voice she replied, “I know.”

“She will not come back the same,” Grogar continued

Sweetie nodded, tears collecting in her eyes.

“But when she comes back, she’ll still be your friend.”

The tears ran freely now, coursing down her white cheeks and gathering at her shaking chin.

“Go say good-bye,” he said, more like giving permission than ordering.

Released by these words Sweetie Belle shot across the barn and tackled her friend so hard her father, the retired hoof-ball player would have beamed with pride. “I’m sorry,” both of the fillies cried while embracing. This was followed by several declarations of unending filial love and the terrible missing of each other to come.

Applejack watched the two friends' farewell with growing pain in her heart. Turning to Grogar she asked, "You're gonna bring her back to me, right?"

"No," was the goat's answer.

Panic began to swell within Applejack, "Wha-"

Grogar interrupted her. "If she comes back, it'll be she who 'brings' herself home. She won't be mine or yours anymore. She'll be her own."

Applejack had no idea how to feel about the ram's statement.

Grogar turned his attention back to the fillies. There confessions had degenerated to simply holding each other and snuffling quietly. “Apple Bloom, come along. It is time.”

Twilight stepped into the path of the goat, blocking his exit. “Um, Grogar. I was wondering if I could accompany the two of you, if only for a little while. As you know, I’m studying all forms of magic and necro-”

“No,” Grogar interrupted.

“But this sort of magic hasn't been studied using any of the modern-”

“No,” again he interrupted her. “This magic isn’t for you or your kind.”

“But-”

“No. Now move,” the god insisted.

Twilight did but with obvious poor grace. She looked as if she were wracking her brain in an attempt to muster an argument that would convince the great ram. Apple Bloom watched all this play out with fascination.

“Come.” he said again once the way was clear.

Apple Bloom gave Sweetie Belle one last squeeze and then let go.

Sweetie nodded while whipping her eyes. “See you soon,” she said.

“As soon as I can,” was Apple Bloom’s reply. Then the moment ended and she came alongside her new mentor as they walked out the barn door together. The full moon was bright but the light from the barn’s lanterns threw their shadows out before them the contrast in size made the filly shiver.

Apple Bloom looked back over her shoulder at those she was leaving behind. Three mares and a filly stood silhouetted by the lantern-light, shadow versions of themselves reaching out towards her. On the ground she could see the distinctive outline of her sister’s Stetson, Rarity’s horn, and Twilight’s wings. She blinked, the shadow image of wings remained and her step faltered.

“Um, Grogar?” the filly asked.

“I know, keep walking,” he answered, apparently unfazed.

“But, Twilight...she has,” Apple Bloom tried to explain as the ram must be mistaken as to her meaning.

“I know. And far more importantly, she doesn't. Not yet.” Grogar kept walking, forcing the filly to follow him into the night.

Author's Notes:

He's Baaaaaaaak

Things Change

The door to the Golden Oaks Library burst inwards with a crash that sent Spike vaulting over the armrest of the chair in which he had been sitting. The dark shape of one of Equestria’s gods strode into the reading room and the wind following her blew out all of the candles and lamps. Indigo fur faded into the darkness flooding into the previously warm and bright space, leaving only her lightning-filled eyes floating mid-air. “Twilight Sparkle, I demand an audience with thee!” the goddess shouted with her ‘Canterlot voice.’

For several moments the only answer was the plonk and tinkle of an over-sized snack bowl’s worth of gems raining down around her. Luna cleared her throat and then tried again at a more normal volume. “Um, Twilight? Are you within? I really do need to speak with thee.”

The juvenile dragon poked his head out from his hiding place. “Luna? What are you doing here?”

“I am here to have a confrontation with Twilight. There are many things I must say to her,” the divine mare answered. Luna was being drawn off-balance by the utter lack of dramatic confrontation. She had played the argument out in her head dozens of times but had never planned for having to talk to Spike.

Anger creased the little face, “ You've done enough to her Luna, go away.”

Over the last few months of her and Twilight's relationship Luna had grown close to the dragon whelp. More often than not, the young dragon would take her side in the two mare's quarrels. His utter dismissal hurt, badly. “But she was, I haven’t, I need to point out her errors. I must tell her how she hurt me.”

At this, Spike’s eyebrow scales rose to nearly the top of his head. He stepped out from behind the dubious protection of the furniture and stalked towards the alicorn. “Don’t you dare!” he fumed poking the mare in her chest with a finger.

Luna took a step back in the face of the dragon’s rage. “But, wait, I-”

“No. You don’t get to. She cried for hours after you broke up and I won’t let you hurt her like that again!”

“After what I did? She was the-”

“No, Luna; I don’t care!” the dragon interrupted. "I like you Luna but I love Twilight. She might be a pony but she's the closest thing I'll ever have to a mom and you hurt her." He stalked the retreating mare, green fire leaking from his lips. "You hurt my mom, Luna, and I won't let you hurt her again."

Luna's haunches were pressed against the wall now, having backed up as far as she could. "But I-"

"No. If, if, she ever chooses to talk to you again, it’ll be on her terms. So, go away and stop sending her letter after letter. She hasn’t read any of them and sending more is just a waste of paper.” To emphasize his last point, Spike pointed to the pile of unopened scrolls, stacked like cord-wood next to the fireplace.

Luna’s eyes followed Spike’s motion and saw that each scroll bore her personal seal and remembered her instructions to her staff. “Oh no.” she said, encapsulating her sudden dread within the short sentence. Spike was still glaring at her but she stepped over the small reptile. She approached the pile of letters as if they were an explosive device and carefully grasped one in her aura and broke the seal.

Luna’s eyes scanned the document, her visage became progressively more grim. As soon as she finished the first, she read the next, and the next, and the next. She was dimly aware that Spike had stopped staring daggers at her, puzzled by her intense scrutiny of letters he had mistakenly believed were from her and not to her.

As she finished the last of the letters, she prayed: “Father, Mother, and all the Fates. Please let this be an error.” Shaking herself free of the horror playing out behind her eyes, she noticed the drake staring at her. His expression was an inscrutable mix of contradictory emotions. “Spike, I have to go. There is an emergency back in Canterlot that I must attend to. Please tell Twilight that....Tell her...”

The goddess’s mind flashed to the myriad scenes of Twilight’s disappointment during their relationship. Again and again, ‘emergencies’ had cropped up to ruin their evenings. She let out a shuddering breath and tried again, “Tell her nothing, I was never here,” she said to Spike while silently vowing to return as soon as possible to regain her love. “And please burn the letters, don’t read them or let anyone else do so. I ask you to do this as your Princess, not as a friend nor as...whatever me and Twilight are...were. Will you do this?”

Spike nodded, too puzzled for words.

“Thank you,” Luna looked around the interior of the library, is if trying to memorize the contours of this place. Turning back to Spike she simply said, “Fare thee well,” and then left via the abused door.

After Luna was gone, Spike crouched next to the fireplace and stacked the letters, neatly, into a pile. He kept his oath to the princess, resisting the terrible urge to read whatever had disturbed her so. But as the letters crackled and burned underneath his breath, one of the letters curled open. Before the green fire consumed the paper he inadvertently read a single word: “Discord.”

Alone in the dark, the boy used his dragonfire to re-ignite the candles and lamps. The light they now cast felt inexplicably thinner and weak.

------------------------------------------------

Eventually the waiting became too much for the filly. “Mister Grogar, why are we just standing here?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Because she’s late,” the great ram answered, enigmatically.

The filly looked up at her mentor with suspicion. At first, Grogar had asked her to relate every detail of her encounters with the ghosts but she had finished her recounting over an hour ago. Since then they had been sitting in silence, except for the occasional yawn from the filly. The full moon was high in the sky but falling into the west, indicating that midnight had already come and gone. Losing patience with the the goat’s laconic tendencies she prompted him again for an answer that actually conveyed information. “Who’s late?”

“Twilight Sparkle,” was the half-whispered answer.

Now Apple Bloom was truly puzzled. “Didn’t you tell her that she couldn’t come, that ‘this magic wasn’t for her to know’?”

“Exactly,” was his answer.

At first, the filly pursed her lips in frustration, growing angry at the god’s explanation. Before she lost her temper, however, she paused and took a breath. She thought, really thought, about what Grogar had said and what she knew about her sister’s friend. Suddenly, it dawned on her: by refusing the mare Grogar had turned whatever lesson he had in mind for her into mysterious forbidden lore and therefore irresistible to the unicorn scholar. “Oooooh,” she said as things became clear.

Grogar’s reply to her was a wry smile. Within a few minutes there was a sound from the grassland behind them, as if a mare totally lacking any training in outdoors stealth was trying to sneak through the tall grass. “Finally. Miss Sparkle, if you would be so kind as to stop skulking about and come over here?”

Twilight stumbled as she passed through the last foot of dense bluestem. Her legs wobbled and pinwheeled as she fought to regain her balance. She ended up on her rump a few meters away from them by an awkward combination of falling and sitting that left her dignity in tatters. “Um, I thought...um, that I heard something. I mean, somepony calling for help and-”

“Jeeze Twilight, even my sister’s a better liar than that,” Apple Bloom interrupted, putting the half-formed lie out of its misery.

Twilight had several choice replies regarding Applejack’s ability to deceive fighting to exit her mouth. She managed to keep her promise to demur on that subject, barely, but unable to reply she just sat there, mouth resolutely closed.

Judging by Grogar’s toothy smile, he was apparently quite amused by their exchange. “If you were much later, we would have had to start without you.”

“Late?” the mare asked, “You told me not to come.”

Again Grogar answered using only an eyebrow. Apple Bloom began to wonder if those particular facial muscles ever got tired.

Twilight regained her feet and walked slowly over to join them. The purple mare was muttering petulantly to herself. The only words the filly could make out were “stupid gods’ and “atheism.”

After Twilight had joined them Grogar addressed her. “I am given to understand that you have extensively studied Starswirl the Bearded’s catalog of spells.”

The choice of topic immediately drew the muttering unicorn back out of her surliness. “What? Er, yes. Yes I have. Why?”

“There is a particular spell of his I need you to cast. I cannot do so despite having helped him develop it,” was Grogar’s answer.

“You expect me to believe that you helped Starswirl the-”

“Our kinds were not in conflict until after the founding of Equestria,” Grogar interrupted.

“But even with that being true, the chances that you and he were personally acquainted are simply astronomical!” Twilight protested while her irritation at being constantly interrupted built.

The ram gave a rumbling sigh and then continued, “I don’t care if you believe me or not. I need you to cast Starswirl’s Amniomorphic Spell.”

“Why in Celestia’s name do you need me to change you into a lamb?” Twilight demanded.

Grogar didn’t answer her, instead he just sat there quietly waiting for Twilight to catch on. Eventually, Twilight’s gaze fell on the yellow filly sitting quietly besides the ram. The unicorn’s eyes widened as she said, “Oooooh.”

Grogar privately cursed his lack of eyes to properly roll. “If you can manage casting it twice, you may come along.”

“I...I,” the mare swallowed, “I think I can but the spell needs some very specific equipment: Candles, chalk, incense, bells-”

“I promise,” the ram interrupted, “All you really need to make this work are the bells.”

“I suppose that is possible but where am I going to get bells tuned to exactly the...”

Twilight trailed off as Grogar parted the fur covering his chest exposing a pair of criss-crossing bandoliers of some sort. They were dyed a dingy shade of red and appeared to be made of some creature’s preserved skin (leather; her mind insisted on the proper term even while shuddering in horror at the thought). Attached to each was a series of bells ranging in size, material, and presumably tuning as well. The god grasped one with the toes of his cloven hooves and removed it from the strap. The bell was placed on the ground before the mare and two others quickly followed.

“I think you’ll find these sufficient to the task,” said Grogar.

Twilight looked down at the simple brass bells as if they were poisonous. She was reminded of what Grogar’s bells had done to Luna back in Tartarus (she felt a pang in her heart from just thinking her name). She then thought about the costume she had worn a year ago for Nightmare Night. Hadn’t Luna (another pang) complimented her on the outfit’s accuracy, specifically the series of round, brass bells attached to the brim of the hat and the hem of the cloak? Bells that looked very much like the ones Grogar wore. Twilight felt nauseated as she was forced to incorporate this evidence of collaboration into the idealized image of Starswirl she had developed during a decade of hero-worship.

The mare grit her teeth and hefted the psychically filthy bells in her aura. “Ok everyone, hang onto your hats,” she warned as magic began to gather around them. As the magenta field took shape around both Twilight and Apple Bloom, the bells began to ring. Their tuning almost made a chord but the third note was half a note too low and the dissonance made Apple Bloom’s ears buzz.

The filly glanced over to her mentor and asked, “Didn’t Twilight magically exhaust herself just twelve hours ago?”

“Thirteen, and don’t remind her unless you want to end up a llama,” was Grogar’s hushed answer.

“What’s a ‘yamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’?!?” Apple Bloom’s question was pulled into a strange braying bleat as her body stretched and squished into a new, strange shape. She felt like a mis-strung guitar, with all of her bits in the wrong place. Out of one eye (she couldn’t bring both to bear on the same point) she saw Twilight undergo, presumably, the same sort of transformation. It looked disgusting and painful but the unicorn both finished the spell and managed to remain standing - if panting and wobbling.

Twilight’s mane was gone, as well as the long hair of her tail. She was the same violet color as before but her sleek coat had been replaced by fluffy wool. The mare (the ewe, Apple Bloom mentally corrected) was slightly shorter than before with a stocky body and thin spindly legs that ended in cloven hooves. While Twilight’s new face was definitely reminiscent of her old, pony one, the sheepish features would have rendered her a stranger if the filly hadn’t already known it was her. It was very, very weird and Apple Bloom assumed that she was equally transformed and alien.

“Well, just look at the two of you. Simply adorable,” the great ram said with a genuine smile.

The lamb and the ewe turned and glared at him as one. Twilight said, “Baaaaaah,” and then covered her mouth in surprise.

Grogar snorted in suppressed laughter, “I’m sure you’ll get the hang of talking like this soon enough.”

Apple Bloom replied with a testy but high-pitched, “Baaaah!”

Grogar desperately fought against a giggling fit.

Twilight tried again with slightly more success, “Baaaaaaastaaaaard!”

In response Grogar fell over, entirely losing himself to belly-shaking guffaws.

--------------------------------------------------------

Luna landed with near silence on the royal balcony. “A royal balcony,” she mentally corrected as it wasn’t her royal balcony. Technically, she didn’t have any legal right to be here. As a diarchy, the two Equestrian princesses each wielded equivalent executive power everywhere within the kingdom and absolute power within their respective private chambers. As a goddess, by entering her sister’s chambers uninvited she placed herself at Celestia’s mercy. As a sister, she was barging into her older sibling’s private space; something she never did lightly. Luna held her breath and nosed her way through the drapes demarking the boundary of her sister’s private realm.

The first thing the lunar mare noticed was the empty bed. At this hour, her diurnal sister should be fast asleep and the crisply made bed was worrisome. Luna’s eyes rapidly adjusted to the near-absolute darkness within the shrouded room and piles and piles of books scattered about the apartment came into view. Hundreds of tomes, many ancient and unique, were scattered about like so much flotsam.

Celestia’s respect for the written word was well known and bordered on the religious. Seeing the state of the literally irreplaceable tomes sent a shiver of fear through Luna's shoulders. They lay open, often with other books stacked haphazardly upon them, breaking their spines. Some of the letters that had been waiting for her at Twilight's had related rumors of madness. This tableau did nothing to assuage her fears.

Luna swallowed, fear causing the fur on her shoulders and croup to stand on end. Her wings were spread in a fight-or-flight posture as she wended her way through the literary obstacle course. As she passed the books she glanced at the open texts at random. She saw books on astronomy, prophecy, destiny, Tartarus, the Fates, Marks, others postulating about the nature of alicorns, others about the nature of draconequus, and still more about the nature of the pony soul. It was a worryingly esoteric collection for her sister to be reading.

A faint and flickering light spilled out from under the doorway leading to her sister’s study. With the faintest silver glow, the goddess of the night inched open the door and moved an eye into the gap. She saw that the detritus of her sister’s research continued into this second and much larger room. "The entire restricted wing of the archives must be here," she thought to herself. Her sister’s white bulk was hunched over her desk, a single candle guttering and smoking beside her. Instead of the smooth aetheral flowing mane Luna had grown used to seeing on her sibling, Celestia’s mane looked like each of the dawn-colors were fighting for supremacy. The goddess’ normally folded wings were half-spread, furling and unfurling in agitation.

Luna’s heart ached at the sight of her sister’s state. “In some ways, Twilight is so much like her,” she thought to herself while comparing the current scene to the frantic studying binges to which her love (former love, she scolded herself) occasionally lost herself.

“Come in sister,” Celestia said without turning around. Her normally clear alto voice sounded rough and strained.

Luna closed her eyes and grimaced at being caught out. Not having any other option, the mare opened the door the rest of the way, causing an avalanche of yet more discarded books. Wincing at the noise, Luna tip-hoofed the rest of the way to her sister’s desk.

Celesta looked like a broken mare; bags hung underneath red, raw eyes and her pure-white coat was mottled with stains from dust and ink. Salt from uncounted tears, long dried, sparkled on the goddess’ cheeks. Luna’s gaze was torn from this sight by the black-bound tome sitting closed on the desk before the princess. Luna immediately recognized the book, it was Starswirl’s last journal and spellbook. It bore no title, only an image of the long-dead mage’s Mark on the cover. The book had no title but for those who knew Starswirl back then knew what magic this book was supposed to contain: Apotheosis.

“Your spies are terrible if you just now found out about this,” the elder alicorn lightly chided.

“They aren’t spies and I was out of touch. This delay is no fault of theirs,” was the nearly automatic rebuttal. “Why is that here?” Luna asked her sister. Starswirl had been a keen student, a fast friend, and the greatest sorcerer the unicorn race had ever produced. The spell in that book had killed him.

“I’m going to give it to Twilight,” Celestia said as if pronouncing the mare’s death-sentence was simply what one did on a Friday night.

“No, Tia, you can’t. She'll try to cast it. It'll kill her." Luna’s heart felt as if it had been replaced by frozen lead.

“That doesn't matter, she's already dead.”

“What are you talking about,” Luna asked, confused and alarmed in equal measure.

"Tartarus, Luna. I'm talking about what happened to her in Tartarus."

"Where she almost died?" Luna asked.

"No," Celestia's voice cracked on that short word. "She didn't almost die, Luna. She really, truly died that day."

"So? She got better. This is Twilight we are talking about, doing the impossible is her hobby."

"We may love her, Luna, but we aren't the only gods in this world. The Fates cut her thread that day and yet she walks."

Luna felt the blood drain from her face. "One did not cheat the Fates," she remembered the adage told to her by her their own mother.

Celestia acknowledged her sister's terror, "Yes, exactly."

"There has to be something we can do," Luna said.

Celestia, tears beginning once again, gestured to the black tome.

"Something else," Luna growled. “Starswirl tried this and it killed him,”

“She’s not Starswirl,” her sister rebutted.

“No, she’s not. He had nearly five decades more experience than her,” Luna struggled to contain her panic.

“She’s nearly mastered the magic of friendship,” Celestia countered.

“He had actually mastered the magic of conjuration! Please, think about this!” Luna was now so agitated she was shouting.

“Because of her, the world is changing.” Celestia closed her eyes and shook her head, as if clearing cobwebs. “No, that’s not right. The world is crying out for change. It wants change. It needs change. It must change.” Fresh tears overran their dam and began to dissolve the salt on Celestia’s face, the divine mare took no action to stay their course and they fell, dripping to the wood of her desk. The hollow sound of their impact was the only noise for several minutes

“You can’t do this.” said Luna, her voice shaking from the shock of seeing her steadfast sister in such a state. "I won't let you."

Celestia made a noise that may have started as a laugh but changed immediately into a sob. “I have another asset, one that Starswirl didn’t have. I’m freeing Discord.”

“So I heard. I can’t let you do that either,” said Luna.

“The only way to save her is to change the world and her fate along with it. Only by cutting the thread at her end can we free her from the Fates."

“And how did you come to this realization?” Luna asked dreading the answer.

“I’ve been speaking with him,” her sister confirmed. "As long as Discord is imprisoned, change is muted. The universe is too static for her to survive the transformation. Not unless we let him go.”

Luna broke eye contact with her sister, turning away from this twisted version of Celestia. “Sister, he is a consummate liar. His words are poison, you cannot trust them.

Celestia shook her head, “I’ve independently confirmed what I can. Being free certainly is to his advantage but I don’t think he’s lied to convince me.

“Have you forgotten what happened the last time he got loose? What about the wedding? I gave him an inch and I was almost trapped in Tartarus for all eternity. What about our mother?”

“He didn’t kill her, Luna, we did,” was her sister’s emotionless reply.

The words twisted in Luna’s gut like a knife. “That’s even worse. He caused our mother to commit suicide with the help of her daughters. It’s fiendish and horrible and unforgivable,” Luna’s words accelerated as she spoke, panic causing them to spill forth in a torrent.

“Have you ever asked him why he did that?” Celestia asked.

“No! Of course not! I’ve learned my lesson!” Luna was nose to nose with her sister now, shouting directly into the older god's face.

Celestia’s bloodshot eyes pinned Luna in place for several seconds, allowing the silence to build to acutely uncomfortable levels. Finally, the elder broke their staring contest and turned away. She then broke the silence with an apparent non-sequitur. “Luna, what is his name?”

“Discord,” Luna replied immediately.

“No. That’s what we call him. What does he call himself?”

Luna was still puzzled, “I don’t know. Being what he is, it could be anything. How about Banana-Blue-Five Steam-Engine the fourth? It’s as good a guess as anything.”

Celestia smirked, not a common expression for the alicorn. “He doesn’t have one,” she replied.

“How can somepony not have a name?” asked Luna, still unsure as to where this was going.

“He’s not a pony, he’s a force of nature. The closest thing to a name he has would be ‘I’ or ‘me’. He doesn’t think of himself as Discord, that is what we and our kind call him and it is an incomplete moniker.”

Luna had nothing to say in response, utterly confused.

“Luna, he is change. Like I am the sun, you are the moon, mother was harmony, and father is the sky. To define him only as ‘Discord’ would be the same as defining you only as Nightmare Moon.”

Luna, in wrath, slammed her hooves on the desktop. Wood splintered and cracked. “That isn’t the same thing at all! Don’t you dare conflate him with me!”

Celestia’s face was stony, “I’m sorry you can’t see the parallels, but that doesn't make them any less true.”

Desperate, the indigo alicorn lowered her head onto the desk before her sister, supplicating herself, begging. “Please, sister, there has to be another way.”

“I’ve looked, Luna, oh how I’ve looked.” Celestia sounded defeated.

“Sister, I love Twilight but there’s no way I can let you release that demon. I’m going to have to take this before parliament.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Celestia lips pulled down with regret as her horn began to glow with gathering power.

Luna only had time to gasp before Celestia’s golden aura washed over her.

Author's Notes:

I didn't make up the Amniomorphic Spell, that is totally canon. I think it was a typo on the writers or VA part (Omnimorphic makes way more sense) but I've found a way to run with it.

Forgiveness

The three ovines picked their way through pitch-black forest. The moon had nearly set so the only illumination underneath the canopy came from the dimly glowing eyes of the giant ram leading the way. While they walked the hour flowed into the strange temporal backwaters that could no longer be comfortably called “late” but neither yet called “early.”

Twilight hissed as her now-unfamiliar ankle turned on an unseen root. She held her balance and avoided falling but raised her quavering voice in sheepish complaint. “If I were still a-a-a unicorn, I could make some light.”

“But as you so keenly observed, you are not,” was Grogar’s sardonic reply.

A few minutes later Apple Bloom broke the silence. “How long are we going to sta-a-ay like this?”

“I must refer your question to the ewe who cast the spell,” Grogar deflected.

Twilight growled in irritation. “Since, I can’t dismiss the spell we’ll have to wait until it wears off. It should only be a day or so.”

“Ok, then” the filly answered without stress or alarm, apparently expecting a worse prognosis.

Grogar shushed the two of them, “We’re almost there. Remember, above all else: don’t run.”

The females nodded in unison, forgetting about Grogar’s scourged eyes. The strange trio then continued forward, even slower than before.

Several minutes later they passed into the clearing where the deer had once made their home. As she left the cover of the canopy, Twilight’s jaw dropped as the night sky came into view. The stars burned with an intensity she had never seen before. Even the smallest specks, usually only visible using her telescope, poured their light out in torrents. The milky way could no longer be resolved into single stars and coated the sky like a thick coat of paint. The constellations, so well known to Twilight she thought of them as companions, were rendered unidentifiable due to the presence of so many extra stars. Her eyes widened as she took in the spectacle of Luna’s creation.

At first, the only emotion Twilight felt was wonder as the unprecedented beauty of the sky touched her soul. As her momentary rapture passed, her heart fell into her stomach as she started to wonder what the display meant. Hypotheses rocketed back and forth across her brain: “Is it an expression of grief? Or is it a message of ‘good riddance to bad ponies’? Did this show hope or despair? Or did this have nothing at all to do with us or me?”

“Twi?” Apple Bloom bleated. “A-are you ok?”

“I...I’m fine,” Twilight lied.

“Then why are you crying?”

The violet ewe raised a cloven hoof to her cheek and felt the wool’s moisture. “I...” her answer stalled out after the simple word. Twilight didn’t even know how to explain it to herself, let alone to the girl. It was all she could do to not break down in sobs as she met Apple Bloom’s innocent but insightful eyes.

“If we may proceed?” Grogar harrumphed in an attempt to drag everysheep’s attention back to the task at hoof. The ram gestured into the clearing with a tilt of his curling horns. Visible in the blazing starlight were piles of bones, one for each of the revenants that had pursued Apple Bloom, Twilight, and Sweetie Belle.

Twilight immediately pushed all thoughts of her failed romance to the back of her mind. “Are they...?” Twilight asked.

“No, they’re...empty.” Apple Bloom answered.

“Agreed, but their owners are nearby,” Grogar added.

“What do we do now?” the yellow lamb asked.

“We give them what they are due,” he answered.

Twilight said the first thing that came to mind. “Justice?”

“Let’s start with something a bit simpler,” the ram replied with a small but legitimate smile. “How about we start with a proper burial?”

“Oh,” Twilight exclaimed, happy to have a tangible goal to keep her mind occupied. “Six graves, coming right up.” The former unicorn reached for her magic, intending to telekinetically scoop out the required holes, and found it missing. She nearly stumbled at the unexpected absence.

“It looks like we’ll be doing this the hard way, Miss Sparkle,” said Grogar with obvious mirth. “How ever will you manage?”

“Har-de-har-har,” she sniped back.

The ram chose to ignore Twilight’s retort. “Me and Apple Bloom will dig the graves. You can clean the bones.”

“Clean...the bones,” Twilight’s nose scrunched in disgust. “Why? Aren’t we going to just put them back under the dirt?”

“Burial customs; it was their way,” replied Grogar.

“Ok, fine.” Twilight replied, a bit chagrined by her initial reluctance. She turned to her yellow companion, “Um, Apple Bloom? Did you happen to pack a rag- Ba-a-a-ah!” The violet ewe bleated and spun around at the sudden pain in her flank. Immediately behind her was Grogar, looking as innocent as a cat and holding a large tuft of violet wool between his craggy teeth.

The ram lowered his head and gently placed the stolen fluff on the ground between them. “This should be up to the task.”

Twilight stared daggers at the ram but took the tuft of wool in her own mouth without comment. She then moved to the nearest pile of deer bones and began working.

------------------------------------

Apple Bloom’s breath took on a practiced rhythm as she worked alongside Grogar, pawing at the earth with her cloven hooves. The giant ram was able to scoop out far more soil with each movement but the filly was used to carrying out farm-work beside Big Macintosh. She added her finesse to his power with practiced ease and the hole grew quickly.

As the work progressed, Grogar began to make a low, rumbling sound in the back of his throat. At first, Apple Bloom thought it was some sort of breathing difficulty and began to grow concerned for the ancient thing. By the time they were starting the second grave, the filly deciphered an odd rhythm to the droning and realized that the old goat wasn’t in any distress but was singing. It wasn’t a proper song, at least no how ponies sang. The pitch never changed as the ram droned on. There were no verses, it just seemed to continue on forever.

As they began the third grave Apple Bloom was concentrating more on the god’s chant than on the work before her, something that would have earned her a cuff back on the farm. The rhythm was strange, she tried to count along to the pulsing beat and kept finding herself falling off the beat somewhere around seven-and-a-half. She eventually gave up on finding the beat and turned her concentration onto the sound itself. The filly could find syllables and other gaps between consonants but could find nothing that she could parse into actual words. She wondered if the chant was simply abstract, a series of noises, or some unknown tongue, ancient and occult.

The duo began their work on the fourth grave. Apple Bloom started to notice shapes moving at the edges of her vision: the ghosts were back. The girl turned towards Twilight and inhaled, intending to inform the librarian about the return of the spirits. However, before she could speak, Grogar’s soil-covered hoof pressed against her lips. Once she turned to lock eyes with him, the ram shook his head to request silence. As he pulled his hoof away from her face, she could feel the grave-dirt adhering to her lips. She ground the back of her foreleg against her lips but couldn’t completely rid herself of the dark soil’s tannic tang.

The pitch, tempo, and volume of Grogar’s chant all increased in response to the ghostly audience. Further adding to the strange, not-song, the ram began to stomp his right-front hoof at odd intervals that somehow landed in-time with the surging rhythm. This movement caused a chorus of high-pitched bells to sing out. Their jingling voices somehow lingered in the air, adding a layer of sound each time the god stomped his hoof. The aural miasma grew thicker with every beat, filling the clearing with a hypnotic blanket of sound.

Apple Bloom’s stomach dropped as she felt the clearing fall away from the world at-large. The further they fell, the clearer the six, cervid ghosts became. Instead of just seeing their luminous shapes, the filly could now see the hairs of their fur and the irises of their eyes; they looked real. She began to whimper as the clearing sank deeper and her own flesh began to melt and run. The false form she was wearing fell away from her soul and the matter that comprised her body rearranged itself to match the truth of her. She was once again a pony and her Mark burned on her flank, shedding a sepia light around her.

Blinking her restored pony eyes, Apple Bloom saw yet more shapes encroaching the clearing. Dozens upon dozens of faint glimmers were waxing brighter with each beat of the chant. As the motes brightened they began to take form. These too were ghosts of deer, so long dead and forgotten as to be nothing more than glimmers back in the real world, even to Apple Bloom’s gifted eyes.

Seeing movement out of the corner of her eye, the filly turned her eyes back to Twilight. She watched as the purple ewe’s body gradually shifted back into the shape of a mare. The process looked gross and painful but it looked like Twilight didn’t feel anything nor even notice the shift. The mare simply continued scrubbing at the stubborn stains, now with a mouthful of her tail.
While the unicorn worked, the ghosts of the six deer whose home this was closed in on Twilight.

“Twilight,” Grogar said the unicorn’s name, the words somehow being spoken without interrupting the god’s chant.

Without stopping or looking up from her labors, the mare made an interrogative noise.

“I forget, what was it you first said these deer were owed?”

Apple Bloom watched in rapt attention as Twilight spat out her own hair. The hair kept moving under its own volition and creeped towards the unicorn’s truncated tail which now rippled and flowed as well.

Twilight cleared her throat even as it lengthened, “I said they were owed justice.”

“Why?” Grogar prompted as Apple Bloom mouthed the same word. The six ghosts inside the clearing paused in their approach, evidently listening to Twilight’s answer.

Twilight fluttered growing wings in agitation, gathering her thoughts before replying. “They were murdered by my people. Those who did it may have thought they needed to do so in order to have a home for themselves but there had to have been another way. What happened was inexcusable.”

“That is the sin but what about justice. How can you give justice to the long dead?”

The longer sentence allowed Apple Bloom to compare Grogar’s words to his mouth’s movements. Everyone within the clearing heard those words but they did not come from the ram’s mouth.

Twilight sat for a few moments, searching for the answer while her body finished shifting around her. Still deep in thought, she resumed her cleaning, using her hooves to guide the flowing divine essence that now comprised her tail over the filthy mortal remains. “I don’t know,” the goddess eventually admitted. She pulled her eyes away from the bones to look over to Grogar and Apple Bloom. Her sight-line passed blindly through one of the spirits surrounding her.

“What about ‘blood for blood’?” the ram asked as the faded spirits pressed against the edge of the clearing.

“No,” Twilight quickly replied. “That’s just revenge.” Another long pause, “This guilt, it’s so remote but pervasive at the same time. It’s huge, it...” She brushed at the bones in her hooves, “stains everything but those whose did this are long dead too.” The alicorn shook her head, as if trying to dislodge the distasteful thought. “I am to blame, just by being a unicorn living in Equestria, through no action of my own.”

The spectral stag lowered his antlers and shifted his weight. His intent was obvious to Apple Bloom, he was going to impale the mare in the throat. The filly shouted her name in warning, “Twilight!” The ghosts paused and turned their heads as one towards the filly. Grogar’s breath hissed inwards in alarm. She gulped.

The eponymous alicorn’s raised her head and focused her eyes on Apple Bloom. Her brow creased as if just now noticing that the filly had once again become a pony and began to question that fact. Apple Bloom heard Grogar’s chant falter and strain as she saw Twilight fighting to clear her mind. The purple goddess shook her head and the clearing shook with it.

The ghosts surrounding the clearing didn’t fade as Grogar’s spell began to come apart at the seams. Instead they began stepping through the unseen barrier enclosing the clearing, intent on the alicorn who still couldn’t see them. Apple Bloom heard the great ram’s voice straining and gasping as he struggled to hold the spell together in the face of a goddess’ disbelief.

Apple Bloom turned as she saw Grogar fall to his knees. The god couldn’t speak, as he fought to put one syllable in front of the other. His empty eyes were begging her to do...something. The filly fought against the blinding terror that threatened to consume her mind as more and more ghosts filled the space around them.

Twilight, still unaware of any threat, finished fighting free of the hypnotic effects of the chant. She looked up at the stars blazing in the night. To the alicorn, they seemed further away than before in some indefinable way. Within her mind she lined up her recent treatment of her mare-friend against the words she had just been saying. To no one she whispered, “Oh Luna, I understand now.”

The pieces fell together in Apple Bloom’s mind and she said, “What do you understand, Twi? What about justice?” she prompted while forcing herself not to scream the words.

“All I can do is apologize and beg for forgiveness. I can’t give them back their lives but I cannot allow them to take the lives of others.” Twilight’s eyes stayed riveted to the stars above, as ghosts pressed around her, only inches from her exposed throat. “I’m so sorry, please forgive me.” Tears ran freely from her eyes.

The last strands of Grogar’s spell snapped and the clearing crash-landed back into the real world. Apple Bloom’s eyes had closed in the magical impact and when she reopened them Twilight, the unicorn, was sitting in the same spot where the goddess had been just a moment ago. Hundreds upon hundreds of ghostly deer surrounded the purple mare. The crowd far exceeded the capacity of the clearing and spread out into the woods. The great white stag, antlers just inches from Twilight, raised his head and pulled the deadly points away from the mare. Twilight’s eyes shifted to meet the stag’s and she whispered, “I’m sorry,” to the undead cervid.

The world froze, as if Gaia herself were holding her breath. The stag silently regarded the unicorn, while Apple Bloom silently counted her panting breaths. “One, two, three, four, fi-” The stag moved, a subtle nod amplified by his branching antlers into a graceful gesture. He closed his unearthly eyes and the filly felt him let go. It didn’t become invisible or move to some other part of the forest, the stag went to whatever came next. The glowing essence of the spectre lost its sharp edges and blew away on whatever ethereal breeze tugged at alicorn manes. Spreading like a forest fire, the other ghosts followed the stag’s lead and the deer discorporated into quickly fading plumes of aether. In a matter of seconds, they were alone.

Apple Bloom was still staring into the now vacant trees when Twilight spoke. “Hey, you two. Stop staring at the trees and let’s get this done. I have to get home and read some letters.”

The filly turned back to Twilight mouth hanging open in incredulity. “You’ve gotta be-!” Apple Bloom felt a large hoof drop onto her shoulders, cutting her off. She turned her face to Grogar and pleaded, “But how-”

“Does it matter?” the ancient ram asked her, again interrupting her.

“But-”

“To one or hundreds, she said what was needed.”

“But-”

“Moreover, she was who she needed to be at that moment,” he said.

“What do-”

“It is a rather short list: those who are able to apologize on behalf of an entire nation and have it count.”

“But-” Apple Bloom had expected to be interrupted once again and found herself entirely off-balance and clawing for something with which to follow her objection.

“Yes?” he asked.

“But....” Apple Bloom looked back and forth between Twilight and the piles of bones before sighing. “Just...but.”

The filly received the eyebrow in response.

Twilight cleared her throat impatiently from her spot besides the bones. There were five piles of clean bones with only one more left to go. The mare glanced meaningfully at the nearly complete work.

“We should get digging,” Grogar whispered to his apprentice, “we wouldn't want to leave Her Highness waiting.”

Author's Notes:

So there's another chapter after this one. The one I was going to post was around 5K words, so...enjoy about half of that. It's really only one scene but a lot happens and there are two points of view.

Mentors

Twilight pushed her way through the last layer of ferns edging the Whitetail Wood, took a few steps and then stopped. She looked over her shoulder, obviously impatient at the slower pace of her companions. While they were still mostly shrouded by the thick leaves she could clearly hear their voices.

“Very much so,” Grogar answered the filly’s unheard question.

“So...I’m gonna have to get some bells?” was Apple Bloom’s follow-up question.

“They don’t have to be bells,” he replied.

“But you use them,” said Apple Bloom.

“I didn’t always,” said Grogar.

“You didn’t?”

The ram chuckled once, “As hard as it may be to imagine, there was a time before anyone used metal.”

Apple Bloom’s voice was tinged with awe, “But then what did you do for the music?”

Grogar’s voice took on a distant quality, “A long, long, long time ago I had a set of pipes.”

“You invented plumbing?”

Grogar’s responding laugh sounded relaxed, happy, and very much alive. “No, no. Pipes like a flute. Each with a single note, tied together into an instrument.”

“Could you show me how to make one?” she asked.

“It would be my pleasure,” the god said warmly.

By now Twilight had noticed that there was a distinct lack of noises associated with walking through foliage. She rolled her eyes and cleared her throat. The noise of rapid, crunching steps resumed and the pair shortly emerged from the undergrowth, both looking a bit sheepish.

“I’m going back to my library,” Twilight informed them. “Where are the two of you headed?”

For the next few moments, Apple Bloom passively awaited her mentor’s answer. As the comfortable silence stretched into awkwardness, the filly glanced questioningly over to the ram. Grogar was calmly sitting on his haunches and when Apple Bloom caught his gaze he looked down at her, silently and expectantly.

"Oh!” Apple Bloom exclaimed as she realized that she was the one to decide where they were headed.

Twilight watched as the filly spent the next few seconds wracking her brain. A short amount of time later the girl’s face set in decisiveness.

“We’re heading to Zecora’s,” Apple Bloom said. “There’s a...there was a village out in the Everfree Forest. There’s a lot of ponies stuck there. They need my help and Zecora might be able to help us help them.”

Twilight’s brows rose in surprise. “Are you sure, Apple Bloom? That could be pretty dangerous.”

The filly stared at Twilight like she had grown a second head. “Seriously?”

“What?” the unicorn asked.

Apple Bloom glanced over at Grogar. The two seemed to have some sort of nonverbal conference. It ended with Apple Bloom snorting single ‘ha’. “It’s ok, Twilight. We’ve got this.”

Twilight sighed at the observation that Grogar was already beginning to rub off on the filly. “Just what the world needs,” she thought, “two of them.” “Ok, I guess that’s it then.” was Twilight’s reply. An uncomfortable moment of silence passed. “Soooo...it’s been..., ” Twilight searched her brain for a non-offensive term. A modern turn of phrase she had heard Rainbow Dash use came to mind. “...real.”

It was Grogar’s turn to snort in amusement for no reason discernible to Twilight. “No, not entirely. But that’s ok.” In a more serious tone, “Are you sure you don’t want to come along? There’s much you could learn.”

“I’m sure,” she answered. “There’s something I really need to take care of, right away.” The unicorn wrestled with the next sentence but eventually decided to speak. “Um...next time the two of you are in town...”

“Yes?” Grogar prompted with an innocent expression on his face.

“Next time you’re in town, I would be ok if you wanted to stop by the library. You know, to say ‘hi’ or something,” she finished.

He replied by playing coy, “I’ll think about it.”

Twilight turned her eyes away from the deity, uncomfortable admitting that she may have been overreacting to the ram’s infuriating ways. Her eyes were immediately captured by the horizon. Deep in her bones, she felt the moment of dawn arriving. This sense was something she had retained since her last adventure involving Grogar but, due to her nocturnal study habits, she was rarely awake to witness Celestia raising the sun and wanted to cherish this moment.

Nothing happened. The sky was still stained robin’s-egg blue in the east but the sun lingered behind the horizon. Her eyes grew wide as concern began to rapidly grow within her breast.

“What’s wrong?” Apple Bloom asked her.

“The sun, it’s...” In that moment dawn broke in its usual radiant glory. “Oh, I guess it was nothing.”

As Twilight turned back to her companions she thought she saw Grogar’s brow furrowed in worry. An instant later, all trace of the expression was gone.

“We should get going,” the ram said without any inflection.

Twilight nodded and turned to start galloping back towards her home.

---------------------------------------------------

She threw open the door to her beloved library with a twitch of magic as she arrived. Her eyes immediately sought out the balled up letter from Luna, hoping to rescue it from the fireplace and read it immediately.

“Spike? Are you home?” the unicorn called out.

“Twilight!” the dragon shouted from the kitchen. “You’re home!” he yelled as he ran to her as fast as his little legs would allow. Upon reaching her he buried his face in her chest and hugged her as hard as he could.

“Hey Spike,” Twilight comforted, surprised by the intensity of the drake’s greeting. “You ok?”

He squeezed her once more for good measure and then let go of the unicorn. Taking a step backwards into comfortable conversation range he lied, “Yeah, I’m fine. I was just worried about you.”

“It turned out ok in the end. It looks like Apple Bloom is going to be fine.”

“Um, what about Sweetie Belle?” Spike asked - with affected nonchalance.

“She’s ok too, Spike,” Twilight answered with a smile. “Though you should probably check up on her tomorrow.” The unicorn then realized what time it was, “Er, I mean later today.”

“Well ok, if you think it’s a good idea,” Spike feigned indifference was comically transparent.

“Sure, Spike. Hey, where did you end up putting that letter from Luna?” Twilight said while looking around.

“Er, letters? I mean letter? Um, what letter?” Spike lied, badly.

Twilight walked over to the fireplace into which she had tossed the thing in a pique of rage. Her heart fell as she saw the fresh ashes. “Oh, Spike! You burned it.”

“Um,Twilight, it was in the fireplace.”

She groaned, “I know, I know...it’s just that I was wrong to throw it away and had hoped it was still here.”

Spike was torn. He knew now that the letter hadn’t been for Twilight but he also hated not knowing anything beyond that single word he had read. “You could write her one,” he suggested.

Her eyes brightened with hope. “You’re right!” she exclaimed. Twilight then galloped over to her writing desk, not wanting to have Spike write this one for her. She grabbed a quill in her aura and drew the implement across the page with blinding speed. She wanted this note in Luna’s hooves now.

Dearest Luna,

I have made a terrible mistake and have hurt you when all you’ve given me is love. I was being unfair to you, holding you responsible for actions that were not your own. While I cannot promise to never make this kind of mistake again, I promise to try not to. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me and give me the chance to learn from this.

With love and hope,

Twilight

“Spike!” she called while blotting the ink dry. “Send this to Luna?”

“Ok, ok.” the drake agreed while ambling over to her. He shook his head at the vagaries of romance and the pendulum-like dynamic between these two mares.

Visualizing the intended alicorn recipient Spike blew out a tongue of green flame. The letter caught fire and lay on the ground, burning. He and Twilight looked at each other for a moment before stomping out the orange, mundane flames.

“Spike, what did you do?” Twilight asked.

“Nothing, I mean nothing new. I did it like I always do.”

Twilight eyed her charge for a moment before returning to her writing desk and scribbling another copy of the letter. “Here, try again,” she ordered.

Again, the letter simply burned.

Twilight’s eyes began to bulge with panic. She turned back to the desk and wrote a single word on a page of paper: “TEST.”

“Spike, send this to Celestia,” forgetting all honorifics in her agitated state.

Spike made sure to concentrate fully on the task before him. He visualized Celestia, every hair and hoof, and then reached out with his flame. The letter vanished in a swirl of green smoke. “Oh,” was all he could say.

Twilight’s face was drained of hope and her shoulders slumped. ‘I...I guess she broke off the connection spell. I deserve that.”

Spike warred with himself, wanting to both protect and please his de facto mother. After watching Twilight deflate he caved in.. “Twilight? Maybe we could send the letter to Luna by way of Celestia?”

She looked at him over her shoulder. Only a faint glimmer of hope was left in the eye that was pointed towards him. “Do you think that would be ok?”

“I don’t see why not,” was the drake’s simple answer.

Twilight drew her head up and squared her shoulders. “Ok, one more time,” she said out loud to herself as she approached the desk again. A third copy of the letter begging Luna to take her back was written by horn. After rolling and sealing the scroll she wrote “To: Princess Luna, ℅ Princess Celestia,” on the outside. She vastly preferred that Celestia not open and read her letter pouring her heart out to the goddess’ sister but at this point it was a risk she was willing to take.

With a nod to Spike, she levitated the scroll in front of him. He obliged and sent the desperate letter on its way. The two of them then stood awkwardly, not knowing what to do next.

“Um, it might take a little while for the Princess to sent the letter over to Luna,” said Spike.

“Yeah,” was all she said staring at the young dragon’s mouth.

“And then she has to read it, and then write a reply, and might take some time to think about what she’s going to say...” Spike left the sentence hanging with the implication that they should perhaps go do something other than stare at his mouth clear but unspoken. “Come on Twilight, this is getting creepy.”

“Guuugh, fine!” Twilight conceded. She decided that the time spent waiting for a reply would best be used for a badly overdue shower and headed to her bathroom.

------------------------------------------

A whisp of green smoke gathered above Celestia’s head, about six inches before and above her muzzle. The letter from Twilight precipitated from the vapor and fell amongst the shattered remnants of her desk. The early, yellow sunlight blended with Celestia's golden aura as she grasped the missive with her magic, retrieving it from the still-smoldering ruins of her study. The most powerful mare in existence struggled to hold the letter still enough to read.

Seeing the address, she sighed and broke the purple wax seal with a pulse of magic. The scroll dipped from the effort.

The goddess' blood-shot eyes crawled over Twilight's letter. Finishing, she shut her eyes and dropped the paper to be lost among the thousands of semi-charred pages fluttering about in the morning breeze.

"Too late. Far too late," she muttered to herself voice breaking from the weight of her emotions.

After several moments of searching the rubble she found an unscathed sheet of paper and quill that wasn't too badly damaged. She swiped the soot from a spot on the wall and pinned the paper to that single clean space. She poured her remaining energy into the effort of moving the quill smoothly, emulating her normal horn-writing, and penned:

My Faithful Student,

I am sorry to say that I cannot deliver your letter to my dear sister at this time. Upon returning from Ponyville, Luna announced that she was taking an extended leave of absence and did not leave any forwarding instructions for her mail. I believe solitude was her goal. I will turn your letter over to her staff and it will be waiting there for her return.

I do, dear Twilight, have my own reasons for writing you. I am coming to Ponyville tomorrow with a very important visitor. I apologize for the short notice but this matter cannot wait. We will be arriving by chariot at noon. Please bring all five of your friends and meet us at the meadow near Fluttershy’s home.

Princess Celestia

Celestia rolled the paper into a scroll and sealed it. She closing her eyes in unaccustomed concentration as she used an unusually large portion of her power to sent the letter on its way.

----------------------------------

Grogar and Apple Bloom watched from the edge of Sweet Apple Acres as an orange mare with a bright yellow mane, unaware that she was being observed, moved from tree to tree within the orchard. The giant ram seemed fascinated as he watched Applejack at work. The farm pony would go up to a tree, sniff it, gingerly bite the bark, and then knock softly against the wood with her hoof while pressing one ear up against the plant.

“What is she doing?” he asked his yellow companion.

“She’s checking up on them. She seeing how they’re doing for water, fertilizer, and minerals.”

Grogar shook his head in amazement at the display of such skill applied to such humble work.

“Is she my mom?” Apple Bloom asked, out of nowhere.

“She raised you from a foal,” was his answer.

“No. I mean, really my mother.”

“She raised you from a foal,” Grogar repeated.

Apple Bloom stared daggers at the great ram.

He sighed, “Does it matter?”

“I don’t know but that’s for me to figure out, not you.” she replied with confidence.

Grogar smiled with equal parts amusement and pride. “Your talent is seeing something that, while true, most can’t. Truth is something rare and precious, Apple Bloom, and talents like that are very, very rare. When they do present, it often passes from parent to child.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” she replied.

“Then why did you ask?”

“Making sure. You are supposed to be my teacher now.”

Grogar frowned, “Perhaps we could refer to this as an apprenticeship? Teachers bring to mind chalkboards and multiplication tables.”

“Apprentice and master? Nope,” countered the filly. “ That sounds like I should be stealing bones from the local graveyard and then waiting on you hoof and mouth.”

Grogar’s reply was a pleading look that was made utterly ridiculous by his size, fierce mien, and scourged eyes.

“Ain’t gonna happen,” repeated Apple Bloom a moment before they both broke into chuckles.

“Fine,” Grogar agreed. “How about a mentorship?”

Apple Bloom tried it out, “Grogar is my mentor. Ok, that works. Mentor and ment-” She stalled out looking for the proper suffix.

“Mentee,” Grogar supplied.

“I guess it’s better than ‘Apprentice’,’” Not entirely liking the proper term for her role.

“You’re stalling,” said Grogar.

“Yeah? So?” Was her playfully insolent answer.

Grogar’s reply was to swat her on the rump with a hoof in the direction of the farm-pony.

The filly yipped and at a gallop quickly neared Applejack. The farmer’s head turned away from her tree inspection when she heard the noise of quickly approaching hooves. Her face lit up at seeing the yellow filly so soon after her departure.

“Apple Bloom!” the mare shouted in excitement while holding out her hooves to receive a tackling hug. Her face and hooves fell when the filly slowed down and stopped a couple of meters away. “Apple Bloom?” Applejack said again, this time as a question.

“Applejack. I don’t have long, seeing as me and Grogar are just passing through on our way to Zecora’s.”

The mare nodded cautiously in reply.

“That being the case,” the filly continued, “we don’t have time to get into things right now like we need to.”

Applejack’s coat paled.

"I’m sure you had your reasons for lying to me and everybody else. That don’t make it right, though.”

“I’m so sorry-” the mare started, only to be cut off by the filly.

“Lemme finish. It ain’t right and we’re gonna have a long talk about it the next time we get some sit-down time together but I wanted to let you know...that I forgive you for lying to me.”

Applejack remained silent as tears started.

“Also, I ain’t gonna start calling you ‘mom’. That’s just weird,” said the filly as she cautiously approached within hug range. “I love you sis.”

“I love you too, AB,” Applejack replied as she pulled her filly into a rib-crushing hug and wept in relief.

Both mares heard a low-pitched snuffle In the distance. Looking up they saw that a magma tear was burning a smoking path down Grogar’s face. Apple Bloom smirked.

“Orchard, tree pollen, allergies,” the god lied - badly.

----------------------------------

Spike hadn’t expected an answer within the next day, let alone within the next few minutes. The belch of fire took him by surprise, incinerating the comic book he was reading. In the comic’s place was now a scroll bearing the solar seal.

“Gimmigimmigimmi,” Twilight exclaimed as she galloped headlong down the stairs while dripping water everywhere.

Spike wisely stepped away from the letter and out of the line of the mare’s charge.

Gripping the letter in her aura, Twilight cracked the seal and read. “Oh,” Twilight said as she finished the letter. She read it again and one more time afterwards to make certain she hadn’t misinterpreted anything. She released her telekinetic hold on the paper and let the scroll drop to the floor. Without a word or look to Spike, she climbed the stairs leading to her bedroom, tail dragging along the floor behind her.

Spike stared after her for a moment and after she passed from view he took up the opened letter. His young features scrunched in consternation as he read the text. He looked upwards, as if he could see through the living wood to his almost-mother’s bedroom. Resigning himself to duty, he placed the letter in the file cabinet where Twilight kept her correspondence with the solar diarch and then headed out of the library to let the others know that their presence was needed tomorrow.

Twilight heard the door to the library open and close and welcomed her own solitude. She contemplated emulating Luna and taking her own “leave of absence” but immediately dismissed the thought as irresponsible. She had commitments here: her studies, her job, Spike, and her friends. The unicorn threw herself onto her bed as a flash of anger passed through her. Part of her envied Luna’s ability to just drop everything at a moment’s notice. Another part thought it highly irresponsible to the point of being uncharacteristic for the diarch. The anger was immediately followed by guilt as Twilight postulated that her poor behavior must have deeply wounded the alicorn, to the point where she no longer cared about her so recently resumed duties.

After spending several minutes in a funk oscillating between anger and guilt, Twilight reached out with her aura and pulled one of the large collection of planners from the shelf above her bed. The one she gripped was embossed with a thin crescent moon. In the empty space within the arc the images of a fork, knife, and spoon were crossed. As it floated over into her line of sight, she flipped the book open and looked for today's entry.

She read the entry in a sad and wistful tone. “Dulse.”

Author's Notes:

Ok, here's the ending for Ghosts! For those of you following along at home, "Keep Calm and Flutter On" starts the next morning. I know some folks are going to call for my execution for not allowing Twi and Luna to get back together in this story. The bribe that I offer to you in exchange for my live is that this pretty much guarantees a sequel since *I* want to see them back together.

I know the ending of my previous story was pretty rough and I admit to having a tough time getting all the pieces to fit together in this conclusion. So, while this story is technically complete, I'm gonna keep a firm eye on the comments and change stuff if this doesn't work.

Hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I enjoyed writing it.

PS: Just changed some of the Celestia/Luna stuff in this chapter as of 6/8/15.