Triptych

by Estee

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Original Character, Mystery, Spike, Adventure, Twilight Sparkle, Main 6
Length: 505408

When a new mission for the Element-Bearers (from an unexpected source) arrives three weeks after Twilight's ascension, she finds herself forced to confront a pair of questions: what truly makes an alicorn? And what happens if it goes wrong?

For a thousand years, there was just Celestia. Then Cadance appeared, Luna returned -- and now Twilight has ascended. There are ponies who are very curious about just what happened, why -- and how. Especially the how. Twilight herself is on that list, a freshly-minted princess with far more questions than answers, about to face a brand new one: what truly makes an alicorn?

And what happens if it goes wrong?

(Part of the Triptych Continuum, which has its own TVTropes page and FIMFiction group. New members and trope edits welcome.)

Now with author Patreon, SubscribeStar, and Ko-Fi pages.

Cover art by Harwick.

Published 2013-05-05 07:20:03 UTC
Last updated 2018-12-01 04:07:05 UTC

Outlines

They watched, and they grew steadily more excited as they continued to stalk their prey.

This has to be said: most Diamond Dogs do not eat ponies -- immediately. They like to think of themselves as a slaver race, and catching something simply to consume it is a waste of valuable resources. It's far better to let the pony work itself to the point of death over several years and then -- once the labor pool loses a drop on its own -- see what the marinade of sweat and despair has done for the flavor. Even then, it's a rare treat. Even in their strongest days, before the hated Diarchy, they did not allow their slaves to breed: the cries of infants were too painful for them, and allowing adults time to raise the children was a loss they could not bear. (Diamond Dogs can typically plan into the next hour and some of the brightest can make it to next week, but seeing forward to Next Generation requires a genius not seen in their species for several decades. It's part of why they keep trying to kidnap ponies: the Diarchy surely won't respond by afternoon and they probably won't be here by tomorrow -- and anything after that is of no concern. In fact, once the response does come, anything left capable of feeling concern tends to be minimal.) They did not stockade future feasts while attempting to see how combining coat colors improved the flavor. They simply waited through their eternal near-now -- and then waited some more. No easy feat for a race historically so bad at waiting that their future exists in two states: immediately is not soon enough and hurry up already! But ponies were so hard to catch and keep that waiting was actually easier. There's a Diamond Dog saying which few outside their packs have ever heard: it will be done when the mane falls off, representing a time period slightly shorter than forever which the suffering canine must still endure. So they wait. Only a few of their breed in any generation claim to know the taste of pony meat (and most may be liars): joining that honored pack is worth facing the endless chasm of time.

But these Diamond Dogs -- there were five of them, outcast from the mines together for an act of theft which had seemed more brilliant than the targeted gems for the hour they had planned through -- were at that point of considering a meal without gaining a slave first. They were hungry: they had been away from their caves for an immense duration (eight days), they couldn't burrow back in without facing the threat of exile becoming death, and they had been thrown out without maps to other warren-runs -- not that they were able to read such witchery. They had not seen a mole or rabbit for that entire pressing weight of virtual forevers. None of the local creatures were within their catching lore, and there were few dead-end fully-enclosed corners to chase things into. They hated this thing called weather, hated even more the parts named rain and wind -- especially the latter, forever stealing scents and misleading them. (It was windy today, and becoming steadily more so as they stalked: they had been lucky to see the pony rather than smelling her out.) They had no place of their own for the pony to dig through: at best, they would be trying to keep it on the surface, the pony's world -- an invitation to disaster, letting one stay under the watchful and loathed eyes of Sun and Moon. The pony was there, it was meat --

-- and it was hurt.

Female, the most intelligent of the dogs knew that much. (He had seen ponies once, from a great distance. It made him the expert.) Winged, and that made them soak trails of drool into their bare vests (stripped of gems as part of the exile: steal from the pack, lose what the pack had granted). Winged and on the ground, whimpering slightly as it picked a path through the forest. They had learned to hate the green place, learned quickly, but the pony seemed as uncomfortable here as they were, and hadn't spotted them behind the hard brown things which they could not dig through.

Female, winged -- but not flying. Perhaps not able to fly. The winged ones were the stuff of legend for Diamond Dogs: nearly impossible to catch, just as hard to keep. Those with horns could do things to them which weren't understood and those with neither wings nor horns -- no, those legends weren't something any of the five wanted to think about, especially since it didn't apply here. But the other two were on the ground, and the winged ones -- couldn't be reached. They stood on clouds and laughed at Diamond Dogs, sent rain and lightning down as the punchlines to their private jests. The canines resented those who did what they could not and few more than the winged ones, who danced with Sun and Moon far above the places where Diamond Dogs lurked and, just every so often, wondered what they were missing.

Her coat was the soft tan of dried-out surface dirt (garnet ground) with a short blue mane and tail (sapphire, low grade, good only for buckles) and deep purple eyes (finest amethyst). They noticed the mark on its flank, but it meant nothing to them: it was just a shape, and since it wasn't the shape of a weapon, it was of no concern. The colors, the twisting -- meaningless.

The wings were -- off. The tips had some of that purple hue, visible because the pony kept shaking them out from its body, moaning softly as it did so. Even to the Diamond Dogs' eyes, the feathers seemed to be misaligned, not quite right, although that could have been due to the wind shaking them: the hated gusts were still increasing in speed, and now the green leafy things were whipping into them where they hid. The expert thought she was a bit larger than the females he'd seen before -- but it did not matter. For those large eyes were squinched in pain (or against the wind, which was really bad now), and the sounds said agony came whenever those wings moved, wherever hoof contacted ground. Alone. Hurt. And there were five of them: no amount of air movement or scent confusion could change that fact.

Wasn't flying. Couldn't fly. Easy prey.

Exile didn't pay for the honor they were about to receive, but the honor would take some of the sting away -- at least for an hour.

So they stalked, pushing forward against the wind which would not stop getting stronger, almost seeming to shove them back -- but the brown things were also good for clinging to, and the pony still hadn't noticed them. She was lost in her private torture: plant a hoof, moan, move a wing, whimper, repeat. The wings were moving a little faster now, and the smallest Diamond Dog wondered if she might be about to fly. He was quieted quickly to keep the pony from hearing them over the wind, which would have been difficult: there was a hunting howl coming from the air itself, inspirational. It told the exiles this strange world approved of their plan. Perhaps they were welcome here. Perhaps they could even carve out a warren open to the once-fearful sky.

They stalked, they got into position to surround -- and then they sprung out.

The pony bucked, wings fully unfurled -- but did not fly. Helpless, grounded, screaming something which they all dismissed. Of course it wanted them to stay back. Naturally it didn't desire them to come any closer. Meat wanted to survive: it was only to be expected. Meat was always wrong. They closed in.

The expert was watching the wings, still thinking about the concerns of the smallest. It had seen a pony fly that one time, and it knew how the wings moved. These were moving -- but not enough to get the pony into the air. And it might have been the wind moving them, the wind that now howled like a Diamond Dog in its moment of greatest triumph, a Diamond Dog about to take down a winged one --

-- and then they received an even greater honor.

The expert saw it first as it took shape: the narrow funnel at the bottom, the wide mouth at the top. The planner of the theft, on the pony's other side, spotted the second one forming, no more than five dig-scoops tall. They tried to call to each other, ask the pack for help to figure out what was going on, but they could no longer hear anything but the movement of the air as it screamed at them, shook the brown things and tore away green things and sent all the little bits of meat running away. The pony was saying something, and those words were taken by the wind as well -- but not the tears flowing from her eyes. Her coat, her mane and tail, her pain was untouched.

Just before they were hurled away, a split-second before two of the pack suffered the impacts which would eventually kill them, the exiled Diamond Dogs became the first members of their species ever to see wind.

And the last thought of the expert just before he went into the largest of the brown things was a memory of his former pack's eldest telling him the best thing he could ever know about hunting ponies: it just wasn't worth it.

In time, these would be the last words she saw before the world went white.

A cutie mark cannot be spontaneously created. She had known that. There was no magic which would force a permanent one to appear from nothing. Even if the caster knew what the recipient's talent was and made a mark to suit, all it would buy them was the same result: a second of visibility, hours of exhaustion, and a night spent with a splitting headache.

A cutie mark can be temporarily concealed, albeit with great effort. Another well-established fact. Spells existed to briefly return the target to their youthful blank flank status, some more powerful than others. The best offensive one blocked the victimized pony's access to their special talent for a few precious seconds -- and made the splitting headache of the forced appearance spell into a fond longing, for the time when you only wanted to crawl into a hole and die was about to look like the best part of your life. Mundane disguises tended to -- wear away. Quickly, as if vaporized by the mark's resentment. Paints, dyes, fur-blending potions -- a day at best. Only clothing worked long-term, and most mares and stallions outside of Canterlot and Manehattan didn't treat their wardrobe as an everyday thing: without the matching accent, constant coverage would seem quirky at best and at worst, extremely deliberate -- especially if the pony in question was fully dressed in the privacy of their own home with no one to show their latest style off to.

(There had been a time in Equestrian history where the surest sign of a criminal -- or spy -- was any outfit which fully covered the flanks. Stop-and-search challenges had been hotly debated in the courts of the time. Fashion had, according to some, suffered accordingly, although the resulting peek-a-boo string-pull windows had apparently settled in for other uses.)

A cutie mark can be transferred, but only the mark itself moves: not the talent it represents. Something only a few ponies in the world were supposed to know. A fact which wasn't supposed to spread.

A cutie mark can be delayed, sometimes indefinitely. (And the colors had begun to leach out of her vision's edges.) Sheerest abuse, to see what somepony's talent would be and prevent them from practicing it, block them from accessing their deepest self, convinced it was better for them to remain blank-flanked their entire lives rather than be themselves -- but it happened. Parents angry that their child wouldn't be following in their footsteps, desperate to stop the branch before it spit from the main trunk. Always during the trials, they would say it was for the child's own good, that destiny didn't know as much as a loving mother or father, and she would see the Princess' eyes narrow as her mane flowed faster and the faint sparks threatened to flare into something more. None of those ponies ever saw their children again. Some of them never saw Equestria again.

And then the ones which had made it all falsely go away, masked out the horrors of a life in a wash of purest scream, with the last things understood before that flashpoint the joy and exuberance which went into the bold letters, and that the stains on the parchment had come from tears of joy.

A cutie mark can be manipulated...

Twilight Sparkle was flying.

Sort of.

What she was mostly doing was feeling like the biggest idiot the alicorn sub-species (currently, to the best of her knowledge, numbering at four) had ever produced -- a state she had spent most of her post-transformation time in. Here's Twilight Sparkle, Princess Of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. That's right: we have a Princess each for the Sun, Moon, Love, and now for unknown reasons, the universe has decided we need somepony to exemplify the need to get up at three in the morning and make sure the one a.m. reshelving is still intact. Behold her as she does not even remotely majestically soar above the clouds, probably making sure each one has been molded to a regulation shape and trimming off the edges of whatever doesn't fit. She was sure somepony in the Canterlot Courts was having that particular conversation, possibly even printing it under the name Gabby Gums Junior. She'd had it a number of times, mostly with herself and twice with a very patient owl who had, to his credit, done his best to present "Hoo?" as a counterargument in all the right places, none of which had convinced her of anything.

Twilight flew --

-- to be fair, she was in the air and she was moving, but it would be hard to call it flight. Certainly not in front of Rainbow Dash, who would have been falling out of clouds, trees, and whatever else was handy with I'll-care-about-your-feelings-later -- maybe -- laughter at the sight. Twilight didn't understand flight.

This mystified her.

She understand aerodynamics better than most pegasi (which inevitably offended them should she happen to bring it up. Again) and had more of a grasp on telekinetic levitation, pun intended should one happen to exist, than ninety-nine percent of the unicorn race. Shortly before her transformation, she had been researching self-levitation, a trick accomplished by very few unicorns. (She blamed the educational system. Unicorns were taught to let their natural magical field flow forward and fully surround the object they wanted to lift. Letting it go backwards then became a twist of thinking most were unable to surmount. Only the youngest, who didn't know any better and had low body weight to move anyway, did it naturally: anypony with even the most basic training wound up having a giant fundamental to unlearn.) Somehow, none of that added up to wing movement resulting in smooth passage through the atmosphere. She had flown once, immediately after her coronation, when the joy had suffused her to the point where it had to be expressed -- and that had resulted in her taking an aerial tour of the land around Canterlot while happily singing to herself about how everything was going to be fine. She had done it without planning, without a checklist, without thought, and told herself (once she had landed) that she was going to be repeating the experience whenever she liked.

She had been wrong. And she was not flying. She was --

-- well, call it 'randomly flailing at the air with wings which seemed ready to part from her body, somehow resulting in semi-coherent short bursts of movement in any given direction, occasionally including 'down'.' It's a lot kinder than what Twilight was calling it.

And now here she was at five in the morning (chosen under the certain knowledge that there was no way under Luna's waxing Moon that Rainbow Dash would be awake to witness anything), over Ponyville -- all over Ponyville -- trying to keep a quasi-straight course. Trying to go around the nighttime clouds (which Rainbow Dash was supposed to have cleared before the previous sunset) from fear of going into them --

-- and when she did make inevitable tumbling contact (collision), finding herself going through.

She was an alicorn. The best of the three main races -- she wasn't sure how crystal ponies worked into it and hadn't found a way to ask the Princess yet -- put together. Clouds were supposed to be solid for her. She was supposed to be able to manipulate the weather at her command. And she had tried. She'd reached out to them with her magic, found herself able to move them -- but that was nothing: Rarity had been able to do as much under the influence of Star Swirl's spell. She couldn't trigger rain and lightning on command any more than Rarity had been able to (although some of the results from her fumbles had gone into the Everfree and earned her a stinging twenty-minute lecture from Zecora, all in iambic pentameter). She couldn't physically touch the clouds without her standard vapor-walking spell. She could try to control her levitation vector, balance off the pressure she put on herself against the ground below her and use her field for last-minute saves before crashing into Berry Punch's re-relocated home. She could consider everything she knew about physics and thaumaturgy and throw it all together --

-- but she couldn't fly. Not more than once. And she didn't know how she'd done it then, hadn't been paying enough attention to analyze and replicate...

Something else she hadn't been able to ask the Princess about, one more question on an ever-increasing list. Pardon me, but exactly how do you keep from plummeting through every cloud you land on? Any hints, maybe a, oh, I don't know, manual, or is this something that takes a thousand years to master?

Her mind noted the last sentence --

-- and her body went into City Hall.

To wit, the bell at the very top.

Her head rang. The bell chorused nicely. Lights began to come on all over Ponyville as its citizens decided to take a quick look at the latest disaster before running away from it.

Those who peeked outside found a softly vibrating bell humming to itself in a fast-fading night as the first of Celestia's twice-daily command performances sent a hint of glow across the horizon. None of them saw the shaken purple alicorn making her unsteady way back towards the library. On hoof.

She needed to figure out how to fly. That was the least of it. A symptom -- or rather, the first thing on the checklist. Once she got that right, everything else would fall into place. It had to.

Everything was not fine. And she had no idea how to fix it.

Quiet Presence had been reading for most of the night. A new couch -- full-length to allow his body to spread out -- none of this 'sitting' fad some of the fillies were crowing about -- beautifully padded, imported by pegasi couriers at great expense and nearly dropped into his koi pond, came with a dozen sample quills for Luna-knew what reason -- had proved immediately addictive, and he had luxuriously stretched across its length, levitated his chosen tract into the built-in holder, and allowed his field to flick across the pages at need.

The tract was a mere three hundred years old. Quiet Presence liked to think of himself as somepony who was open to newfangled ideas.

If you were to describe Quiet Presence... well, there's the challenge, really. There are ponies whose coats and marks display bright colors and shapes, energetic ponies whose presence seems barely ground-bound (and a third who simply aren't). You have everyday citizens who stand out in their way, to the point where you almost seem to be spotting them everywhere you go. And then you had Quiet Presence, who is -- and that's about all you could say for him. Ponies generally looked at him as if something very interesting was on the other side and after a few seconds, most of them started to see it. About all most ponies managed to retain was 'I think there was a unicorn...' And that was accurate, of course: his family was proud of their unicorn heritage, generation after generation without openly mixing their blood, he was honored by his horn and all it represented, the purity of it...

...the visible purity, anyway...

...but to say what he looked like, physically? He was the second-newest thing in the room after the couch (and there had been a tremendous fight with his spouse over buying something made in this century), he had a horn of standard issue, certainly he was a stallion even if his build didn't fully reflect his gender, his coat seemed to blend against the grey stone walls of the family castle and rendered him into a blinking part of the landscape if he stood still long enough (which he frequently did) and his cutie mark -- was barely there. The subconscious would register that he had one, but making out the exact shape of it required a long inspection and several go-overs to make sure nothing had moved while you weren't looking. Which was ridiculous, of course, cutie marks didn't move -- but it gave off the same impression he did, on the rare occasion he made any at all: that the whole thing could just fade away at any moment and nopony would care.

Even his field was colorless, the only indication of its presence being tiny twinkles at the corner of each page.

He flipped the parchment over, read another paragraph, took a moment to ponder the words he had been over dozens of times before. They still confused him. Warnings about the powerless... well, the author was widely believed to be mad, but that was all the more reason to examine her words. Insanity had a way of finding insights where the sane did not dare to glimpse. Clearly not this particular passage, but -- here and there. Just not here and now. Another page.

There was a knocking sound, perilously close to his right ear.

He did not jump: he was not in a position for it and jumping showed a certain lack of reserve. Instead, he turned his head slowly to the right until he was looking directly at the table lantern, brought in to banish the shadows which would otherwise accumulate near a book's spine. It was now hovering a precise three inches over the marble surface, surrounded by a steady silver glow.

It went back to table level: the base knocked against the stone. Up, down. Three times. Returned to hovering.

Quiet Presence took a long, slow look around his study. There were bookshelves, lamps, extra couches for when he had guests, serving tables for snacks and books which had yet to be reshelved. What there was not: a single window, in part because they were rather pointless when your favorite reading space happened to be underground. When your rulers had control of the sky and some of your personal library could be considered a bit -- controversial -- you got into the habit of building enclosed spaces. His ancestors had spent centuries perfecting the craft. Decorating had been most of it, and thus the "this century" tiff.

Back to the lantern. The silver glow held it without even a hair's worth of shift. There wasn't a sparkle in it.

Carefully, so as not to pull any fragile muscles, Quiet Presence got off the couch and slowly trotted up the passageway back towards the main castle, making sure to nudge all the proper things with his field along the way. The lantern remained behind, still glowing. Every so often, it knocked again.

Eventually, he reached the door, opened it, and let a sincerely impressed politeness serve as his immediate ambassador. "With no line of sight," he told his honored guest, "over more than eighty paces on the most direct angle, based purely off your memory of where I would place a lantern if I was in the room at this hour. If I could just learn that trick --"

-- and his visitor's muzzle hit Quiet Presence's shoulder. Soot was dislodged on impact.

The rest of his greeting was put aside indefinitely.

It took time and care to bring the older stallion through the castle's open passages without being seen. They were able to move somewhat faster once they reached the concealed travelways, but they were still restricted by that hobbled movement, that horrible dragging right hind leg, and by Quiet Presence's weakness of body. He could barely take the weight of his companion, could barely withstand his own most days.

"Not broken," his visitor rasped out, coughing more black dust with each word. "Just -- pulled. Pulled through the fire and forged..."

"Easy, first friend," the younger stallion told his guest, trying to keep his burdened voice steady. "We're almost there. I can have help here within the hour." Private help, those who would speak of this to no pony except each other. If the injured stallion had come here instead of a hospital...

A head shake: more black cloud staining the stone. "I need -- rest more than anything else." A sigh. "She is not here, I know that now. I told her to come to you should anything happen, but..."

Quiet Presence blinked: for a moment, there seemed to be but a single stallion in the dim passage, leaning against nothing. "I haven't seen her." He had seen her all of once. He hadn't enjoyed it. He had understood, certainly, shared the pain and regret, but...

"No. You would have called to me. But I had to be sure..." A few more paces. "I think -- she teleported. I couldn't stay behind, not for more than a few minutes, and even that was a risk, but the tang in the air -- no time to analyze, but it had to be a teleport..."

Quiet Presence moved -- but considerately, bracing the older stallion so that his injured elder would not fall at the loss of his support before switching position to face him directly. He had to be eye-to-eye for this, had to be. "A teleport? You're sure --" cut himself off. "Of course you're sure, you wouldn't be here if you weren't..." Each word more excited than the last: still soft, but only the need for secrecy keeping them from becoming full shouts, the sheer rapture threatening to erupt in a storm of decibels. "It worked?"

And the older stallion said "No -- and yes." It was a statement. Most of the things he ever said were statements. Few questions which weren't rhetorical, the self-doubt over the teleport was as much as he'd ever expressed. Simple plain words: I have said this, therefore it is true, even if you don't understand it. Maybe it's even true because you don't understand it. It was stated and for him, it was done.

The younger blinked again: gone, back. "I -- don't understand."

"I will," came the reply. Another statement. "With rest. We are closer -- so much closer... we may even be there... but I need rest."

And Quiet Presence understood that nothing more would come without that rest, took some of his elder's weight again, helped him move towards the hidden bed nestled among the emergency supplies.

But he was wrong. Three more words came, all tinged with amazement, awe -- and perhaps, just a hint of weary satisfaction.

"It was beautiful..."

Stated. Therefore true.

It wasn't as if Twilight was the only one awake at this hour, of course. Some denizens of Ponyville rose earlier than others, but most of those in town stayed within their homes or workplaces until the sun had fully risen. Of her friends -- Applejack rose when the need to work overcame the last lingering desire for sleep. Or rather, she slept when her body's need for rest finally overwhelmed the drive to work: even after acknowledging her inability to do everything by herself, the mare often greeted Luna and Celestia in turn for several days before somepony finally stopped her, typically by placing something too solid to push in front of the hard head and waiting for the exhausted effort to slip into snoring on the spot.

Fluttershy had to deal with her current flock and at any given moment, a good part of it would be nocturnal. Twilight had suspected the real reason the pegasus allowed her mane to obscure her eyes was so that nopony could tell when she was catching an emergency nap: she was up at all hours on any given day, and night, and often beyond. It had to catch up with her eventually -- but Twilight had never heard so much as a yawn, and getting a word of complaint was a complete loss. Fluttershy being so very sorry, I'm so weak for needing sleep, please don't hate me for it? Considerably more likely.

Rarity's inspirations frequently would not allow her the comfort of a bed (sleep mask: silk, mattress: down, sheets: thread count reaching for five digits) until every last one was at least sketched into less tenuous existence -- or patterned, or sewn, occasionally a dozen times before she was satisfied. Or collapsed with horn against sewing machine, whichever came first. Twilight had walked in on her one morning to find her in that state -- with the machine surrounded by her signature soft blue glow, still running. Dream-casting: a sign that a unicorn had pushed herself past her limits to the point where the subconscious took over and started implementing designs of its own. From all evidence, Rarity had been dreaming of spirals. None of those designs had ever seen the light of the Boutique's windows.

Rainbow Dash could be counted on for sleep. Any hour, any day, any occasion -- and the more important said occasion was, the better it was for napping through. How does one develop the skill to clear the sky in ten seconds flat? By never doing it in the originally-allotted two hours. It was an open secret around Ponyville that there were pillows hidden in strategic locations just about everywhere, although never too close to the rubber balls and eyepatches.

As for the last...

...there was a light on within the back room of Sugarcube Corner. (Which Twilight was slinking behind, still trying to stay out of sight. Because it wasn't as if there were any other purple alicorns about at this hour.) This was hardly an unusual event: ponies expect to get their baked goods within minutes of venturing outside and any establishment not willing to serve during every hour of the day was begging for a short lifespan and a former owner seeking a job in weather manipulation. Manehattan, notorious for never sleeping (Applejack had snorted "At least they do somethin' right!"), had pioneered the twenty-four hour waft of fresh bread, and other cities had followed suit. Ponyville didn't have enough night traffic to justify that kind of business yet, so the Cakes went with the small town pattern: the bread rises with Celestia. Or else.

There was a view of pink through the glass. It caught Twilight's eye, mostly because it had been a view. Not a glimpse or a sudden flash: this had lasted long enough to not only register, but get filed under Unusual Events, Better Check This Out Before Something Horrible, Possibly Involving Mirror Pools, Happens. She reluctantly turned -- she never knew what she was going to get here, only that it would leave her either smiling, with a pounding migraine or, in extreme cases, both -- and peeked through the smallest pane.

Pinkie Pie, of course. Alone, which was a bit of surprise: she would have expected the Cakes to be awake and fully immersed in their craft, an art and science which still hadn't reached the PhD stage of getting the frosting even. And -- moving. Carefully. No pronking (the word for that four-hoofed hop Pinkie was often caught in -- Twilight had been surprised to find there was one), no near-rainboom speed sprint from station to station. Instead, the hyperactive earth pony was trotting at a measured pace between her self-given assignments. Ingredients were pressed tightly between front hooves, measuring cups gently lifted by teeth and tipped at calculated angles for exact measures of time. Twilight could easily imagine Pinkie's train of thought -- a prospect that normally left her shaking -- and it went as a simple One, two, three -- and next. Scoop, pour, mix. Stir for one, two, three, four -- and next. Measure, check. Level off contents of tray, excess back to bowl. Move to oven. Pull protective heat covers over mouth (and said covers just came out of bucking nowhere because a weirdly calm Pinkie remains Pinkie) and place new tray in, then remove old tray with teeth. Carry to display plate and shake muffins loose so that they land in a perfect pyramid. One, two, three, and stop and look directly at me --

"Oh, hi, Twilight!" It was a whisper. Not a stage the-town-square-can-hear-me-and-I-mean-in-Fillydelphia whisper: a real one. "You can come in if you promise to be careful. The door's not locked."

We did block the mirror pool properly, right? Well, inside was better for not being spotted than out, and Pinkie had no idea what she'd been up to -- she thought. It was Pinkie: being sure about anything generally wasn't Twilight's best bet. She went in.

Pinkie smiled at her, nodded, and then continued her careful, measured, precise ballet among the ingredients. More smells wafted. Every last one of their sources remained unconsumed. Twilight was beginning to feel somewhat unnerved. "Pinkie?"

"Yes?" Turn, lift, crack eggs between teeth so that none of the shell went into the bowl, mix. Twilight had heard a lot of talk about 'the inherent limitations of mandible dexterity' from her instructors in magic kindergarten. None of it seemed to exist here.

"Where are the Cakes?" Is that something only the real Pinkie would know -- oh, stop it: I blocked that thing with Tom.

"Still asleep," Pinkie softly replied. "It was a bad night with Pumpkin and Pound. She's got a little hoof infection and of course if she's up crying, he's going to cry just to make her feel better. I told them I'd take care of the morning shift." Spin, remix, fold in nuts...

Twilight took the chance. "But aren't you going a little -- slow?"

Pinkie stopped.

Blue eyes focused on purple. Narrowed. Just for a second, it seemed as if the curls of her mane were losing loft -- and then she rolled her eyes and went back to her dance. "Baking is chemistry, Twilight. Do you know what happens when you rush chemistry?" Set down the latest bowl for a second, reared back on her hind legs, spread the front legs out. Softly, "Boom!" And back to four-planted work. "Eat fast, run fast, play fast -- bake slow." Just the smallest head shake. "The Cakes wouldn't let me be here at all if I didn't..." She let the unspoken words finish for her, allowed Twilight to hear the ones Pinkie would never say: Are you going to zap me into a pool any time I do something that doesn't fit what you expect of me?

Twilight went with the ones she had to say. "I'm sorry."

"Okey-dokey-loki!" The dance continued. "And get your magic away from those cupcakes!"

The field-surrounded one (carrot, blood orange filling, cream cheese icing) guiltily slipped back under the display dome. "But -- there were thirteen..."

Pinkie Pie gave her a Look and a smile -- one that Twilight had spent moons on the receiving end of, the combination which said Do I have to write the Princess just because you've been confronted with a prime number?

Twilight lightly blushed and sank onto her haunches, resisting the urge to look outside for a photographer. Yes, the Alicorn Of Obsession. Conqueror of horrors. Part of the team which reverted Luna, battled Discord, freed the crystal ponies. Taken out of herself by the prospect of a number which couldn't be divided by two, three, and six all at the same time. Equestria's newest some-kind-of-royalty. All hail.

She stayed in that humiliated position for a while as Pinkie continued her rhythmic dance. Lift, spin, tuck, fold, mix... there was a certain beauty to it. Yes, it was chemistry: the scientist in her could appreciate that. Add all the essences together in proper proportion, make sure the ratios were just so, and a kind of magic would seem to happen on its own. She'd never seen this kind of delicacy and care from Pinkie Pie, this level of rational straight-line progression while sticking to an assigned checklist of actions. Never expected to have this of all things in common with her friend.

She smiled. No headache came with it.

The gentle silence stretched out as the Sun's rays climbed the door, reached the panes and let the first streams of light through...

"Twilight?" A rare serious tone. This was a day which was going to stick in her memory for a long time. A very long --

-- and stop. "Yes?"

In total sincerity with innocence resplendent on a field of I Felt Like Asking, "Where do alicorns come from?"

Twilight blinked. Several times. None of them did anything to make the question or Pinkie's softly inquiring gaze go away.

Awkwardly, "Well -- when two alicorns love each other very much..."

Pinkie snorted as she placed another fresh tray in the oven, took a finished one out, held her words until the cupcakes had been frosted and sprinkled with a dash of hazelnut. "That's just sex, Twilight. I know all about sex, for Celestia's sake!"

"...you do?" And that had just slipped out.

Pinkie stopped again, looked at her, smiled, said "Sometimes there's only one thing left to make somepony happy," got some more eggs, totally ignored Twilight's front legs collapsing under her in shock as her wings, unbidden, unordered, and completely un-everything, stood straight out. (They didn't do what she wanted, they didn't do what she understood...) And before Twilight could even begin to suppress the internal flood of Who, what, where, when, how many, at the same time? Anypony I know? Everypony I know?, Pinkie chanted, in singsong, "An earth pony and an earth pony make an earth pony, a unicorn with a unicorn is a baby unicorn, pegasus plus pegasus equals pegasus -- but add any other, even once, and even if it takes generations, that other will come again..."

Twilight marshaled every resource she had left, which required dusting into all the corners and gluing together a lot of scraps. "That's foal stuff, Pinkie Pie."

Pinkie nodded. "Sure is! But Twilight -- you weren't born an alicorn. You were made one."

I sort of made myself -- I think... At least, that first burst of magic had seemed to come from inside, and not from her horn... But she'd told the others that, responded to every question in the deluge as best she could. For now, she just nodded. Her wings refused to go down. The right one was perilously close to an open bag of flour.

"And I've never heard of Celestia being with somepony -- ever. Just rumors, but we never see her with a very special somepony, not even once! And Luna hasn't had much of a chance, not with how little time she's been back -- and we'd see if they were with foal, wouldn't we? Unless there's magic which hides that. They probably know that spell. Maybe they invented it. They've had a lot of time to work on it, right?" Completely and utterly innocent of the havoc she was wreaking a few paces away.

Twilight's brain rebelled. She would not picture the Princesses having sex. She would not, she would not -- oh Sun and Moon, she had an image of Luna coming up to a handsome stallion and Canterlot Royal Voicing him into bed and it would not go away...

Pinkie watched her, seemed to become aware that the last question was not going to be answered. "And Cadance is adopted. You said so."

Her mind grasped onto that, heaved her out of the turbulent waters as the last echoes of And Now Thou Shalt Satisfy Thy Princess -- Or Face Her Wrath! were pushed away with fervent hopes that they would drown on the spot. Weakly, "She mentioned it once..." The left wing began to droop.

Pinkie nodded, very enthusiastically. Curls bounced. The bowl pressed between her front hooves never shifted. "But maybe they did have a somepony, once. Or lots of someponies, because of how old they are. But I've never heard of a male alicorn. Not even in stories! -- well, not stories anypony tells twice, or even once if you're just a filly, I had to sneak around until I heard somepony else telling one. But if there was a male alicorn, and a Princess had a foal with him, the baby would be an alicorn, right? Unless maybe Celestia or Luna or Cadence wasn't always an alicorn, like you weren't always. So would the baby be an earth pony, or a pegasus, or a unicorn, because they're kind of all three? Could the foal become an alicorn one day? Do you have to have a Princess as a parent or ancestor before you can become an alicorn? And if Celestia and Luna weren't always alicorns, who made them that way, or did they change themselves? And what were they originally? So what do you think?"

And stop.

She had never raised her voice.

The first intact thought to get through Twilight's incoming migraine was Would zapping her into the mirror pool really be so bad? In a voice that made the prior one sound like it had just taken fifth place in the Equestria Games on sheer raw health, "Pinkie..."

"I've been thinking about this," Pinkie told her in a matter-of-fact tone, as if everypony had been thinking about it and she just happened to be the one elected to let it out. "Ever since you changed."

Twilight's memory lanced back, speared the first target to come into view. "Pinkie, these are foal questions!"

This nod sent pink curls going everywhere. The bowl's level still hadn't shifted. "I know they are, Twilight. I asked them when I was a little bitty Pinkie. You asked them too, I bet! Everypony I know asked a teacher or their parents, and we all got told the same things. Foal questions. Questions so silly you only asked them because you were tiny, and no one older cared what the answer was or even that the question existed. You asked it once and they told you not to think about it. Not to care, because asking it meant you were stupid and if you stopped asking, you were smart! Because they didn't think about it and they never wanted to. I'm thinking about it now. You make me think about it. I don't understand why you're not thinking about it."

I'm not thinking about it because --

-- because I asked my teachers and parents.

Because they're just foal questions. They're silly. You only ask if you don't know anything and it shows you don't know anything and haven't learned, but when you do learn you don't get the answers, you just learn not to ask the questions.

Who made the world?

Why do the Sun and Moon have to be moved by magic?

Were the Princesses always as they are now?

And Pinkie's question. Which had once been hers, which had probably once been everypony's. Which had been dismissed, and forgotten because it had been dismissed as being too silly to ask. But Pinkie didn't care about what other ponies saw as silly. She just wanted an answer.

"Where do alicorns come from?" Pinkie Pie repeated, and waited for her answer.

Twilight was an alicorn, if just barely, if not on any level her mind and body and deaf-to-her-desires wings fully understood. And...

"I don't know."

...maybe that meant it was time to ask again.

Her right wing drooped. The flour tipped over.

She barely registered the sound of Pumpkin and Pound Cake laughing as their tired parents escorted them into the bakery, smiling with weary pride at Pinkie's progress. Letters to write, questions to ask. If she could make herself ask them: just speaking the words to Spike seemed like an impossible task. Perhaps something better said in person -- but to the smiling, reassuring, and suddenly oh-so-intimidating presence of the Princesses?

Where do alicorns come from?

And how did the newest one ask?

Three days' gallop outside Baltimare, a tan pegasus with a blue mane and purple eyes, her flanks bearing the strangest cutie mark Equestria had ever known, stood next to the unconscious body of a canine form which was no longer adorned by a vest. One of the miniature tornadoes had carried the garment away, collected it along with branches and leaves and one of the bodies and so much, so very much of the blood.

Her front hooves pounded on its rib cage. She cried out to it, in surprising sorrow, in distress, pleading for it to wake up, to breathe. It complied with none of this.

She screamed. And then she fled, eyes streaming tears as her pain-wracked hooves repeatedly impacted the ground, as her wings stretched and tried to flap as they grew ever more purple, as her cutie mark burned...

Palette

She sleeps.

Pain, even constant pain, unending cascades of lightning searing across the nerves, can only do so much to combat exhaustion. It is possible to hurt so much that sleep becomes impossible, twisting muscles and sudden fractures of bone proving there's still strength for one more scream. But it's equally possible for the agony to reach a point where it's almost numbing: everything hurts all the time, so you can't isolate any single part. The internal and external horrors slowly shift to background noise. There's nothing left to fight with -- after so many hours, barely anything left to understand why fighting was ever necessary. A perpetual wash becomes the tide which carries a mind too weary for resistance into Luna's lands -- or at least the tiny pocket she'd been given for her own, a place Luna knows nothing of.

In her dream, she goes back to the good days --

-- and on the good days, there were other ponies.

He didn't know everything, he would tell her (although he was always trying to learn). There were things she needed to know which he simply wasn't an expert on. And for some of those things, he would give her books and with others, he would not bring up the subject again for moons before suddenly returning to it with a will and a head full of facts he'd just finished acquiring -- but with a precious few, he would decide that she needed to gain her knowledge directly from a different source. She would have some warning (some anticipation, hours to days and weeks of waiting, barely restrained as she looked ahead to the sheer idea of other, somepony who was not he or she). And then -- there would be somepony new, somepony she would see but once. Those memories were recorded, preserved, kept safe where nothing could touch them, becoming clearer each time she went over them.

There were two performances. Each was rehearsed before the visitor arrived, every time, and he would not give permission for her to see them until he was satisfied that she was perfect on every detail. She always was. He always checked.

The more frequent role: she was one of his. He had been the first for her, as he was the first for so many. She was staying with him for a time, for he had taken an interest in her education: he felt she had great promise. (This was the tale of the summer and winter, the story for holidays, the one which explained why she had time to be on the estate.) As this new pony was an expert on a subject -- and there were so many subjects to study -- would his guest be so very kind as to take a day and teach her? For he knew that this was the pony who would give her the best information, the most thorough experience of the topic, and all the other persuasions which were hardly necessary because the guest had agreed to this long before arrival and was simply going through the necessary etiquette with him before proceeding. (She had learned about etiquette early.) And this role stayed the same as the years passed, with the only change coming from the costume department: as she aged, a simple country dress was added to her wardrobe, and then a pleasant come-calling gown for formal dinners. She knew every hue of both by heart.

But with others -- few enough that their faces took almost no room in her place of memories -- he would introduce her with open pride. Impress upon the visitor just how important this was, how they and they alone had a piece of the puzzle which had to be given to her so that she would, in time, finish The Great Work. Perhaps this would even be the last piece. (It never was.) She would thank those guests for coming herself, gracious and as elegant as she'd been taught to be, so very welcoming and grateful that this pony would give their time to her. And those ponies would --

-- look at her.

She would be looked at when she was playing the first role, of course. But those looks were different. For the most part, they were warm and gentle (she would be sure to remember the eyes in detail later: eyes were important), welcoming her as much as she welcomed them. Not as excited, of course, they could hardly be that and she locked most of it in -- but perfectly content to be in her presence for a day. With the second part --

-- pity and sorrow.

Disgust.

And once...

...that had not been a good day. It has no place in this dream. A memory to replay on a different night, after things have become still worse. For now, let her listen and talk in the protected places, ask questions of those who don't look like her in order to learn about the world she had never walked in, being educated by those who had been brought by the one she loved so much.

She knew she loved him, because he had told her so.

That had been the first lesson.

Mornings in Ponyville shimmer. The pegasi generally don't give them much of a choice.

This was a market day, and the open field was beginning to fill with those vendors who neither required nor wished a full-time shop in town. Some always arrived earlier than others. Applejack would show up in time, of course, but her time was at least two hours ahead, after she checked the fields, examined sick trees for signs of recovery and healthy ones to make sure they hadn't caught anything overnight, searched through her crop for choicest samples of the new harvest, polished and shined and verified that her personal money bag had a single golden bit to start with ("Seed money," she'd told Twilight, and refused to say more), oh, and then there were chores to complete and perhaps a stray animal to round up and Celestia only knew what kind of state Apple Bloom would be in should the youngest of the family have woken up in the middle of the night with a plan for yet another spectacular failure, this time of the Luna-witnessed variety. No, Applejack came when everything was settled at the Acres for a duration of at least one morning, which meant there were days when Big Macintosh was the one who pulled the cart into the field for a day of quiet bit collecting and the occasional piece of soft philosophical debate.

Lyra was already there, of course: it wasn't an official market day unless the mint-green unicorn was frowning at her instrument, making meticulous micro-adjustments to the tension of the strings. There was a price to pay for every gift: Lyra's gift was perfect pitch, the ability to tell exactly which frequency a note was vibrating on -- and the price was the horrific wincing and tooth grinding she went through every time she encountered a tune which wasn't exactly to scale. (Lyra didn't hang out around Pinkie much for fear of jaw fracture -- hers or Pinkie's was almost a moot question.) She wouldn't start a performance unless her lyre was tuned to a level of perfectionism which nearly scared Twilight. And as she worked, she unconsciously adjusted her body into positions which made Twilight's spine ache. There were days when it was genuinely hard to look at Lyra for any real length of time, and many ponies tossed bits with their eyes closed.

Snowflake was pulling at a guide rope with his teeth, allowing the intricate layers of twine within the pile of fabric in front of him to tighten, lift, and eventually tautly shape an open-front tent with a simple sign above the entrance: Day And Night Labor: No Job Too Big Or Too Heavy. The huge pegasus had trouble keeping a steady job: not many ponies wanted to be on the receiving end of his special talent for long (strength training: done with precision and enthusiasm in a way which guaranteed results -- with the first one being two days spent shivering in an aching fetal position, wishing you'd never met him), which left him with long periods of bit-free time to fill before a new generation of unsuspecting athletes decided they needed that last crucial push before the Games. So he hired himself out for any acts of raw musclepower which might be needed and, to save time, let the employers come to him. Twilight had brought him in once herself when she'd had a sudden appointment in Canterlot hit on the day she'd been expecting a shipment of books. Thousands of pounds of books arriving on a day when the weather bureau had scheduled an afternoon downpour and Rainbow Dash couldn't be found to reschedule, all of them sitting helpless in front of the library and growing wetter by the second, defenseless ink blurring as pages began to soften towards disintegration... The thought had been unbearable: one maddened run to the market later, she'd had Snowflake heading towards the tree to move the huge bundles to safety, watching him fly away with relief, trying not to listen to the laws of physics as they wept.

Flower Wishes ('Daisy' to her friends and acquaintances, 'By Celestia's tail, would you stop panicking?' to everypony who had known her for more than a week) almost had her booth ready: flower arrangements were displayed on every possible surface, suitable for decoration, presentation to a very special somepony or, if business was slow, a pleasant light snack. The last also came into play when Daisy became bored or distracted. Twilight had never seen her consuming her own merchandise to get the energy for a phobia attack, but it was just a matter of time...

(Rainbow Dash, on one particularly insensitive day -- about a week before they'd climbed the peak to face the red dragon -- had proposed a fear-off contest between the friends known around Ponyville as the Flower Trio (or 'I swear on Celestia's mane, you three have no reason to be freaking out like this!' to anypony who had known them for more than a moon) and Fluttershy: last one to faint wins. Rarity had angrily declared the absent Fluttershy as the preemptive victor, pointing out that "Those three run from whatever's scaring them: Fluttershy would stand in place and tremble until she figured out how to deal with it -- which can certainly be more practical than just mindlessly charging at the world head-on and hoping to beat your problems out of the sky!" Rainbow Dash had looked surprised, about a tenth of a second's worth of something which might have vaguely approached a tiny semblance of guilt, then had hastily changed the subject to the Wonderbolts and kept it there until the others wanted to sit on her, which Applejack finally had.)

Those two seemed to be new... Twilight took note of them: one pale-pink unicorn with a somewhat oversized horn, a mane so deeply brown as to approach black and a field to match her eyes: deep grey. She was carefully arranging sculpture samples along a long table while nervously glancing from side to side as if expecting her selling rights to be challenged from every angle -- or worse, having a stranger approach who might have to be talked into buying something. A tall pearl pegasus with vibrant blue eyes and a pure white mane followed her, gently adjusting sculpture positions and rubbing against her nervous companion's flank. Cutie marks were -- the silhouette of a regal form for the pegasus and a flaming old-fashioned torch for the unicorn. Yes, definitely new in town, and Twilight had a moment of sympathy for the shy unicorn: it was hard to be socially retiring in a town with a Pinkie Pie. The poor mare had, at best, until the mid-morning break before she was Partied, whether she liked it or not.

Then again, it might be weeks before the actual party was thrown, even if the Countdown To Pinkification had less than two hours to run. Pinkie Pie's social calendar was starting to look like one of Twilight's more comprehensive checklists: there were a lot of new ponies in town these days -- and most of the current arrivals were Twilight's fault.

Like this one --

"HEY!"

-- and her field pulled the unicorn mare out of the bushes, lifted her one and a half standard Celests (an old measure of height: distance from the ground to the Princess' front left shoulder) straight up, and then rotated her until she was upside-down. Twilight was careful to let the field deliberately exclude the camera, which fell away from the mare's neck and thudded to the ground with a total lack of ceremony. She was getting really good at excluding the camera. There had been far too much practice.

The other most recent arrivals in town stared. A few ponies began to trot closer. Most of the merchants (and now, the majority of the earliest shoppers) ignored the whole thing. They had seen this particular play before and it always ended the same way. Two, with some anticipation, headed towards the nearest sound of propelled water.

"PUT ME DOWN! I KNOW MY RIGHTS! I CAN --"

"-- and I know mine," Twilight declared, trying not to let the frustration turn it into a growl. "Recite the law, please."

"I WAS JUST MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS WHEN YOU --!"

Twilight let a second bubble of field envelop the camera, levitated it to rest in front of the mare's inverted eyes before deliberately dropping it again. "Recite the law. Please." Three more ponies inched closer.

The green and brown unicorn groaned. In a tone which made it clear she considered everything bad in the world to be Twilight's fault and might just spend the rest of her life falsifying the proof, she rushed through "Any pony who finds somepony taking a picture of them without the subject pony's express permission may dispose of the picture and discipline the photographer in any way they desire as long as the photographer is not injured and any damage to the camera is paid for and that is a very expensive unit which you are going to compensate me for in full right --"

"It's a Bell & Hooffall, it is twenty-eight years old, it was the second cheapest model they made at the time, and the years have been slightly less kind to it on the secondary marketplace than a Jacked Chicklet tract." Twilight resisted the urge to spit as a recently-arrived Time Turner chuckled somewhere behind her. "There are more ponies willing to pay a tenth of a bit to read all about how Princess Celestia intends to bathe the world in eternal sunshine until we all catch fire than want this camera. Luna's shoes, has Murdocks ever spent a single second's income to outfit any of you?" A flicker of field opened the camera, exposed the film. "Better hope he's willing to hand over the smallest change he has, because I've been sending nearly all my compensations directly to him for distribution --" once a week by courier was just easier than carrying all those tiny coins "-- and before you ask how I knew, all eight of you have the same basic cutie mark. Does he hire anypony who doesn't show those broken scales?" One end would hold an image representing the pony's talent and the other would be empty, fallen, and rusty from neglect.

The mare either chose to ignore most of this or had been overwhelmed by the sheer flow of information. (The later wasn't exactly uncommon when dealing with Twilight.) She went with a simple, semi-stunned "...how do you know so much about cameras?"

Because after the first week, I thought I could save some time by just memorizing all the prices. Not that she had to go very deep into the catalog for Murdock's lackeys... But she didn't say a word, just watched the unicorn --

-- who was now starting to look a little dizzy: only pegasi were designed to deal with blood rushing to their heads. "Um... could you put me down now?"

"Will you leave town?"

"Look, I'm just trying to make a living..."

"I know. Off me."

The unicorn gave up on insistence and had never come anywhere near politeness: her next reply was half a species away from a hiss. "Everypony knows the Diarchy passed that stupid law just to protect you, Princess," and the last word was spat: Twilight's field caught the glob as it emerged. And she could feel the photographer's own field exert, pushing back, trying to get free -- but it was like trying to pollute a freshwater lake with a droplet of ocean: the visitor had just enough strength to carry her gear. Trixie could have turned her to powder without the amulet --

(her own field flickered, very slightly)

-- and Twilight's lack of sleep had been temporarily compensated for by muffins and long bread done in the Prance style. Keeping the restraint in place required about as much effort as blinking.

"You can't spot all of us --"

I can as long as I keep automatically probing every bush in town. Twilight raised the photographer by another Celest and added a rapid leftward rotation at the same instant Snowflake decided to take a personal interest, hovering -- somehow -- in front of one changing section of the twisting unicorn. He made a sound. It wasn't a happy declaration of support. It was more like an Ursa Minor who had just run out of milk.

"-- OKAY, FINE! I'll LEAVE!"

"Then I'll put you down." And before the photographer could say anything else, Twilight added "Fountain or compost heap?"

"WHAT? I --"

"Fountain it is!" Mostly because she wasn't sure of a location for the nearest compost heap.

Her field carried the photographer out of sight, the screams trailing away as her latest nuisance was carried with regretfully memorized precision. Twilight had a telekinetic route to the fountain from any outdoor site in Ponyville. Plus one for Sweet Apple Acres, where there had been a camera-carrier lurking in the trees.

She was so sick of this.

"Are you all right, Princess?" Daisy. Timidly. Of course. There was a splashing sound in the distance.

"I'm fine, Daisy." And that was just the eighth one from Murdocks. When she added the other so-called news agencies, independents, a few solo operators with a printing press and far too much time on their hands... "And it's Twilight, you know that --" Another splash.

"I'm sorry, Princess!" The earth pony pulled back slightly, nervously pawed at the ground with her front right hoof. "It won't happen again!"

Noteworthy now, sounding as if he'd just been launched out of a manual on courtly etiquette, somewhere towards the index, and Twilight knew which one because he'd checked it out of the library last week. "Princess, if we but knew she was within yonder greenery..." Ancient courtly etiquette.

"It's okay. It's over." Although the splashing wasn't. Valiantly, already knowing what the result would be, "And could you not call me --"

Pokey, who had just trotted over from his carnival stand: Pop The Balloons With A Thrown Dart (field or mouth-operated slingshot with a molded mounting) And Win A Stuffed Discord! "Don't worry, Princess. We'll get the next one for you."

"That's very nice of you, but could everypony --"

But they wouldn't. The small crowd just kept on apologizing for something they didn't know about, couldn't control, and they were so sorry their Princess had been bothered, that the Princess had to waste part of her morning on such things, they were just glad the Princess was all right now and could get back to doing whatever a Princess required of the first hour after sunrise before the Princess moved on to the rest of her Princessly schedule...

...and then they were blinking the dazzle out of their eyes, wondering what was so important that the Princess had to teleport off to it.

Some distance away, another scream broke the air as the photographer was dunked for the sixth and final time.

Under kinder circumstances, Grape Indulgence would not have been the first pony to see her. Grape Indulgence saw lots of things. Depending on what he'd been consuming at the time, roughly seventy percent of them didn't exist at all, twenty percent weren't what he thought they were, and the remainder would be asked if they could spare a few bits for a drink, which left him hitting up a lot of fenceposts for loans. (He had gotten a bit out of a stile once, fallen under the little bridge between pastures, and his subconscious had since decided the rest of the inanimate world was just holding out on him.) But he was the first, and after multiple attempts to refresh his memory -- it turned out his memory needed a lot of refreshment, all of it liquid -- what eventually emerged from him was this:

Heading home after a long day of work.

His job? Drinking. No, really! An expert wine taster, with an exquisite sense of taste which could identify every ingredient in a fifty-element blend after only one sip -- no, two sips -- eight -- give him another bottle: he wanted to be sure. Almost been certain where home was, at least that time. And surely would have gotten there on the fifth attempt instead somewhere -- somewhere -- well, just call it somewhere and leave it at that for now, okay? They'd get there, right?

Why had he been anywhere near the area in the first place?

Silly question. Local wine-maker. Wanted an unofficial review of the product before he sent it to market. Little sneak preview of what the experts were going to say about it. Invited over with a payment of some bits and a few bottles. Been cheated out of the bottles. Must have been. Knew hadn't signed on for empties. Get that guy later, and get more bottles, which would be full until they mysteriously turned empty too, guy wasn't even a unicorn and he was magicking bottles empty from feet -- gallops -- fields -- something or other away, away, away down south...

What was the question?

Oh, what had he seen.

How about seeing that bottle again first?

Very gracious. Anyway... been -- somewhere -- and it could have been a farm, you know, one of those Apple family outposts you get all over Equestria. Make excellent cider. Most excellent cider. Did you read the review on their crop from two autumns back? No? Pity. Saved a barrel, but some unicorn jerk made the contents of that one go away too. Anyway, there were apple trees. Lots of them. Big and healthy, that's how you knew an Apple family orchard, plus might have tried to get a handout from the No Trespassing Sign once, which was really mean two autumns back. Come to think of it, there weren't any signs around this one: maybe they were wild trees. Which the Apples would claim soon enough for cider. And not give him any more free samples. Jerks. Market-monopolizing bastards --

-- hey, why are you so upset? Just said --

-- really?

Got any of the stuff on you?

Fine. Just have some more of this.

Okay. So --

-- there was this mare.

Absolutely sure about no cider, right?

What about her? Oh, her. She was -- tall. Sure of that. Been some distance away, behind a bush and don't ask about things done back there and don't go and step in it either. But measuring her against what a drinking contest would need, she sure looked tall. Could take lots of pints before falling behind and down, easy. Oh, and her coat was blue, her eyes were tan, and her horn was purple. Remembered that for sure because it was so unusual. A unicorn with a horn that didn't match her coat?

Did that mean she had the power to make liquid vanish out of barrels? Did anypony know?

Really?

Then why was this bottle empty?

Cutie mark? She -- had one. Can't describe it. Been trying to describe it for -- can't. Maybe later. Maybe never. Hard to look at. The center...

...

...anyway... she wasn't moving well. Looked tired. Sort of like she was hurting. Made a few little noises, kind of stuff you get from somepony who's had more than they can take when their stomach starts fighting the rest of them. Yeah, definitely hurting.

What was that? Why hadn't he helped her?

Look, she was all the way over there, all right? Across some -- distance -- which was -- distance -- and --

-- hey, did they want to know what was seen or not?

So there she was, and she was looking at the apples hanging off this big old tree. Really old tree, takes five, six ponies to stand around the trunk. Looked hungry. And she looked kind of like she was trying to --

-- you know when maybe you've had a few, and you get this really brilliant idea that's going to change the world, but you don't have anything to write it down on, nopony can understand what you're saying and you can't keep a quill steady in your mouth anyway plus it blocks the drink? And then maybe later, two, three, five days, you wake up and you want to get that idea back, but most of it went out with the, you know what the stuff is, you're mares of the world, and you sit there and maybe you pace back and forth and you just know that somewhere in your brain is this great idea, if you think about it long enough it'll come to you, but it just doesn't happen, and no matter how much more you drink, none of the liquid ever washes it to the front?

She looked like she was trying to remember something she never knew.

And there she is, twitching a little, hurting, and staring at the apples.

There's this glow. You know the one. Yeah, that one. Good glow you've got going there. Real prime glow stuff. Keep it away from the bottle. Only it's a really shaky glow, okay? Throwing off lots of sparks. Like a filly who's working on that very first spell. Got a cousin, really cute, remember when she was just starting, prettiest copper cascades of lights... And it sort of reaches forward from her horn and then it goes around one of the apples. Just like that first real spell. Little weak, little uncertain, but maybe it'll get the job done, you know? And she's pulling at the apple, but she can't quite get it down. Wasn't one of those silver apples either, the ones that go rainbow if you find them at the right time. Just a really weak pull. Or -- like she didn't know how hard to pull. You there, you got any fillies? Too young for that? Sister, then. Yeah, figured you for something with that look on your face. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Some of them get so excited just to grip and then they're not sure how the next part works. How much force they have to use. They don't have the feel yet. Old as she was --

What? Maybe a couple of years older than you.

-- she didn't have it.

So she doesn't know how hard to pull and the apple's just kind of trembling at the end of the stem, same way her knees were shaking. So naturally she must have --

-- one more, okay? Last one, promise.

No. Now.

You need this. Need... need this ship to sail. And it doesn't want to. Just got to have one because this has to get some tide behind it. It wants to stay in dock. It...

...please.

Okay. So naturally, she must have decided she wasn't pulling enough, right? First thing anypony's gonna think. And the glow gets stronger. Thicker around the apple. Applying more force, right? You two know how that works. Feels. Wishing for that feel, sometimes. Never going to wish that again.

Glow gets stronger. Thicker. And then, kind of all at once, it goes up the branch and all around the other apples and down the trunk, this rush of glow, don't know if she even realized it was happening, it was too fast, and she's still pulling and --

-- the whole tree breaks in half.

...

...said that would be the last one, right?

Horse apples.

Time passes during a teleport. Not much -- a tiny fraction of what it would take to cross the same distance on hoof -- but time.

Time enough, in the place between, to remember.

The party was drawing near its end. It might have even been past it. Any party which saw Pinkie Pie asleep in a corner (on top of two other ponies) was probably due for an official closing ceremony. Any party which had Luna openly staggering about and yawning needed induction into some sort of Hall Of Fame for parties which had gone above and beyond the call of partyhood. She'd lost track of Princess Celestia, who was probably off to raise the Sun, potentially for the second time.

And yet Twilight was still wide awake. Still felt like she might never sleep again. Still as happy (and confused, just a little -- then) as she'd been in her entire life. She had pioneered the official Yes! Yes! Yes! royal dance earlier in the evening. It must have been a pioneering effort, for everypony had copied it.

An alicorn. Wings. A princess.

What did it all mean?

How much joy would there be in finding out, her friends beside her to share in every wondrous discovery?

She pronked in place, just a little, and hummed to herself in delight.

"We -- I do not know if I said it to you." The soft voice, the one she liked best from all of Luna's many tones, the one she privately thought of as a new moon timidly considering whether it could wax. Twilight pronk-spun for a direct look. Bleary dark eyes were gazing at a spot somewhere above her horn. Dipped, focused on her. Went off-target. Focused again. "But I am happy for you. I truly am. At first, I was..." The Princess of the Night trailed off. Made an effort. "...afraid."

Which stopped both pronking and humming on the spot.

Afraid -- of me?

It had reached Twilight's face: Luna shook her head. "Afraid -- for you." A long pause. Too long, long enough for Luna's large eyes to blink several times, for tiny bits of moisture to accumulate at the corners. "Promise me something, Twilight Sparkle. As a -- friend."

Twilight waited, saying nothing. She had known how to respond to Luna's pain on Nightmare Night, seen how to deal with a single darkness' worth of rejection. But the only way she could currently think to answer a thousand years worth of isolation contained in a single mid-sentence break was -- to wait.

"Promise me," Luna whispered, "that if the time comes -- you will not be me."

Her left front hoof came up, the silver shoe touched Twilight's shoulder. Slowly, each word forced past a millennium of weight, "The voices come, you do not listen. The temptations are offered, you laugh. They hold out everything you had ever wished for, and you say you have all you will ever need. That you yourself, and those around you, those who love you -- are enough. Forever." She leaned forward, eyes closed, touched horn to horn. "Promise me, Twilight Sparkle -- to be Twilight Sparkle, and be content."

Slowly, so very carefully, Twilight tried to raise her right front hoof to touch the alicorn's -- the other alicorn's shoulder. It wasn't easy: Luna was taller than she was, she had gained no height in the transformation (and was that right? Cadance was taller, Celestia a giant among ponies...), and the length of the day and night and possibly day again had just caught up to her in a flood of royal anguish.

To her knowledge, Luna had never talked about what had happened. Would never talk about it. This was as close as she'd ever come. A 'they' somewhere in the world, an offer...

What would they offer Twilight?

Nothing. I have everything I need. And everypony.

"I promise, Luna. I promise..."

They remained in that position for some time, long enough for Twilight to realize that, factoring out those asleep, unconscious, or dozing in chandeliers, they were the last of the party. Finally, Luna dropped her hoof, pulled back, managed a tiny (and sleepy) smile. "I will believe you," she said. The next pause was somewhat less awkward. "'Tia --" and then a hasty recovery to "Celestia is sending you back tomorrow. Or -- the day after today. Today may be tomorrow. I am -- not quite --" A long blink. "What time is it? Should I be lowering...?"

Twilight was only too happy with the relief from the resulting giggle. "I think Princess Celestia has it. She must have wanted to let you stay at the party. You were having so much fun --" and then it penetrated. "Tomorrow? But -- I have to ask so many questions! All we did today was celebrate! I need to learn about how to be a princess! You two --"

Luna shook her head: the stars in her mane twinkled. "She feels the transition will be easier for you -- if you do it at home. Among friends instead of isolated in a castle. And I -- did not feel like arguing." And with that, the younger of the Diarchy looked at her --

-- and Twilight dropped it. Because she knew that look. Luna had not felt like arguing because Luna did not see a need to argue. Princess Celestia had come to a decision, both thrones had passed the newest of laws, and the ruling held for Sun and Moon. Twilight was going home. Without lessons. Possibly even without books, although that was just Twilight kidding herself, surely there would be a whole new shelf waiting in the library for her private study and every last word in them written by one of the three...

Really, how hard could it be, being a Princess? Just being? She was a good student. She would learn.

She changed the subject. "It's been so strange today, just having all these ponies -- well -- obey me," she told Luna. "Even with the ones who just wanted my attention before this because I was her student -- they wouldn't treat everything I said as an order. It's been hard not to see it as a game, having everypony give me what I want." She had, in a moment of weakness, ordered fruit that was half a year out of season. It had arrived five minutes later. She had no idea where it had come from.

Luna smiled -- but this bit of mirth carried a touch of sadness around the corners, and her voice sounded like she was quoting another.

"'They will give royalty anything desired,'" she said, "'except the desire not to be royalty...'"

And Twilight hadn't understood.

She did now.

Twilight opened her eyes.

The teleport had brought her in under the library, in the room she used for research (and had spent far too little time in lately -- so much dust, meters which were no longer calibrated, mixtures which had to be thrown out before they changed to that last, brief new hue on their own. Spike outright refused to clean this section, citing a very strong dragon code dedicated to Not Dying). She was standing in the circular track Spike had suggested she dig out here instead of wearing away the wood of the tree's ground floor. Twilight's Pacing Place, used for when she really had to think. Or, more realistically, for when her thoughts were going around in a tighter and somewhat more inescapable circle than the one she was about to walk in.

She had made herself head into the market rather than coming home immediately -- why?

Maybe -- because she'd needed a distraction. She'd been thinking about Pinkie's question. (Everypony's question, and now hers again.) She still hadn't completely wanted to. Had she been looking for a reminder of her other problems instead, going back to the most recent emotional turmoil rather than failing to wrestle a new storm from the sky? Was she that desperate?

...actually, that sounded like her all over. New crisis arrives while others are still in progress. First response: check schedule of all current crises, see when they have a free moment, ask Spike to send a few messages and arrange for a group outing in order to save time and effort. Find out if any crisis would be interested in solving another. Tell the compatible ones to consider dating. Going to the marketplace had been a way of not thinking about Pinkie's question, an attempt to remind herself of how much else she had to think about.

Well, this was the place she used for thinking about things she couldn't solve or get away from...

Twilight started walking.

Dear Princess Celestia,

Today, Pinkie Pie asked me about how alicorns breed and whether they -- we -- give birth to other alicorns or a unicorn, earth pony, or pegasus who might one day become an alicorn. I think we need to set up an experiment. As there are four of us, two will become the experimental group while the others become the control. The experimental pair will have sex with members of all three races (and possibly the crystal ponies, depending on how they fit in) in order to become pregnant. Should the foals not be alicorns at birth, they will be typed for the frequency of how often each race emerges and followed throughout their lives to see what percentage, if any, achieve alicorn status. Naturally, I will need a list of all your past sexual partners, a comprehensive breakdown of your family tree from three generations before your birth, whenever that was, to the present day, along with all previous data you might possess, so I can see how our current study compares to the historical record. (Incidentally, if Cadance is any kind of twentieth cousin to you, this would be the time to mention it, plus this would be a great time to explain Blueblood so I can pass it on to Rarity and watch her laugh. And yes, I understand my brother is going to complain about this. Tell him that if he wants me to consider his feelings, he shouldn't tell me he's getting married and to whom just before the wedding.) Of course, in order to work with a proper sample size, the two mares in the experimental group should expect to be pregnant at every possible moment over several decades. The needs of science insist. Now, you may be wondering what the control group is supposed to do. It may come as some surprise to learn that I know all about The Most Special Spell in the Adult Mares Only! section of the library because I snuck in there in my third year and read it, even if I didn't understand it until my seventh. So as the experimental pair breeds with a carefully-selected pool of volunteers, the control group -- and by the way, this would be a really good time to tell me if I'm on your family tree, how many generations are between the two of us, and similar details relating to Cadance -- will of course be --

No. Just -- no.

More circling.

Dear Princess Celestia,

I just wanted to thank you for throwing me back into Ponyville after my transformation without so much as a By My Own Royal Leave and with absolutely no information on how to be a Princess. It's been three weeks and I have no idea how my alicorn powers, if I even have any, work. My unicorn magic feels no stronger than usual. I can't access a single pegasus ability and my flying, to borrow a word I'm certain Rainbow Dash has been just dying to use during all the 'flying buddy' excursions I keep putting off, bucks. It bucks, you will forgive the term which I'm halfway certain I'm now entitled to use, royally. I do not think any of this has been helped by the fact that you conveniently forgot to tell me what I'm a Princess of. I suppose 'friendship' would be the expected answer, but this begs a certain number of questions about how you, Luna, and Cadance became alicorns (presuming you weren't such to start with) because you said Star Swirl didn't transform due to not understanding friendship like I do and you can't all three be Princesses of the same thing, right, especially when I know you're all Princesses of other things? What would he have been an alicorn of, had he changed, since you pretty much implied it can happen to males? Or does friendship just power the change, in which case, see previous parenthetical statement and who helped you three with the Elements the previous times? -- and I think I'd better save some of this for another letter. The point is that you pushed me out here with absolutely no idea of what I'm supposed to do or how to go about doing it, and I am, I believe, understandably irritated by this. On the other hand, you originally threw me into Ponyville with instructions to go out and make some friends while giving me absolutely no information on how to do that either, so at least you're consistent...

Not for the first time, it occurred to Twilight that she became sarcastic when she was tired.

The circle groove seemed to be getting deeper.

Try again.

Dear Princess Celestia,

In the days when you were a unicorn...

No.

A pegasus...

Still no.

Dear Princess Celestia,

When I first came here, the other ponies in town understood that I was present as your royal representative, and some of them treated me the way I was often treated in school -- as somepony to be sucked up to, because I was a gateway to you. But my future friends didn't. And once I moved here and became town librarian -- after that, even with all the things you kept giving us to do, all the things we accomplished, most of the ponies here still treated me as just that: the town librarian. Because they'd gotten to know me, which admittedly didn't always wind up with a good reflection on me. (I know you remember the Smarty Pants incident. I still kind of wish I didn't.) But on the whole, they accepted me as a pony. Not a key turned in a door to unlock the palace. A sometimes-neurotic unicorn with obsessive tendencies and what I still too often feel are limited social skills. And somehow, those citizens accepted me anyway. And my friends -- were my friends.

But now I'm a Princess.

My friends, thankfully, remain my friends. Nearly everypony else seems to think they're my subjects.

Ponies keep trying to do me favors. I have a hard time paying for anything anywhere in town except the bakery and at the quills & sofas shop: the Cakes seem to understand and Davenport will only be happy when he has every bit I've ever possessed. (He has instituted the Royal Price Increase: I think he's decided that royalty must be rich. I am two additional percent over margin away from ordering under an assumed name.) And I know some of those ponies are doing so because they feel it's their duty: you can't charge royalty, right? Others feel that if they do me favors, I will return them and more using royal authority which I'm completely certain I don't have. You offer me the first pick of your garden and I have seeds from the royal private greenhouse brought in. A free lunch today and I rezone the town to get rid of the competition across the street tomorrow, or at least so Mister Flankington has firmly convinced himself, possibly because that's the only way he'll ever sell any of the week-old fungus-spotted grass he keeps trying to pass off as a gourmet appetizer, Saddle Arabian delicacy, please recommend it to all the friends you will no longer have after you force them to eat the horrible stuff too.

I know you're aware of the newspapers sending ponies to stalk me: the new law proves that, and thank you for passing it. There's a lot of other grateful celebriponies out there too, and I know you and Luna may gain more than a little incidental benefit -- although unleashing Luna with nothing more than a 'not injured' as a guideline might be a license for entertainment more than anything else. But the press is still free, and giving me the power to legally stop unwanted photography neither keeps ponies from trying nor halts the flood of stories about how I keep stopping unwanted photography and What Does Equestria's Newest Princess Have To Hide?

(They're going to find out about the Smarty Pants incident, I just know it...)

Ponies come from cities away to use the library -- no, to get my autograph on the book when I sign it out. (Incidentally, I am losing books at a frightful rate and would welcome suggestions on stopping it. Research into an automatic teleport spell which will recover any book that has become overdue began last week.) Ponies ask to have their picture taken with me. Some are moving here because they believe Ponyville will become the next Canterlot and they want to get in on it early before the land boom really hits and home prices begin to soar. Ponies think I have wisdom they need to hear and ask so many questions hoping that somehow, I can solve all their problems with a single answer. All I have is a collection of letters I've sent to you over the last few years and the lessons they contained -- lessons I learned so much later than many, simple things which I'm proud to say I now understand and embarrassed by the amount of time I needed to realize their truth. Surely most of those ponies already know those basics, learned them as fillies and colts. I don't know what I can say to them. Most of the time, I just come up with something from Bark Leaves' Book Of Quotations: the ones who don't recognize the source seem happy, while those who visibly do think I'm dismissing them, pushing them away because they were wasting my time.

They were knocking on my door at all hours. After the first week, I used a shield spell as soon as the library closed. You probably saw the story about Elitist Princess Feels She's Too Good For Common Ponies, Locks Out World. I did.

I could go on, but I think you have the essence of it. I might never have been a normal pony, not really: not with being your student, and an Element-Bearer, and with all that my friends and I did. Sometimes, just what they did, with me playing a small part or none. But once I left Canterlot, Ponyville treated me as if I was, with all the good and the bad which came with it. (It took me moons to live down Want It, Need It. Three days to personally apologize to everypony by name, with Pinkie Pie following me because she had them all memorized.)

But now I'm a Princess. I am not normal.

And with every day that passes, I wonder more and more if what I gained can ever replace what I've lost.

I'm starting to wonder if there's a way to go back. I'm starting to want to go back.

I don't know what to do.

Please help me.

Your faithful and increasingly shaken student,

Twilight Sparkle

It was a nearly true letter. It wasn't everything she was feeling, but it contained enough that the Princess might guess at what had been unsaid and gently bring those subjects up on her own. The words were some of the ones she needed to say, things which had been haunting her. It might start the dialogue which brought her to some kind of solution --

-- or told her that across a thousand years and more of experience, there had been none to be found.

To send the letter and learn the only answer was no answer at all...

She had originally been sent to Ponyville -- to deal with things. With her friends (but how could they help her?) and sometimes briefly alone (and how could she help herself?). And she had, some with more success than others, some as crashing failures where others had to save her from herself... but was she expected to keep going in the same way? She and her friends, trying to find solutions where none might exist? And given enough time...

She stopped. Looked at the last composed letter in her head, the nearly true one. Realized she wouldn't be sending it. She didn't know if she was strong enough to send it. Because when she stripped away the careful phrasing and reports of minor incidents and little jokes, it all came down to one basic statement.

Dear Princess Celestia,

I'm scared.

The fire had been out for hours.

Firefighting in Equestria tends to be a team sport. Pegasi bring in every water-bearing cloud they can find (plus a few more made on the spot by those with enough talent) and dump their contents over the external portion of the blaze. Unicorns catch some of the deluge in their fields and direct it to the interior sections. Earth ponies wearing special full-body suits bring out any victims. It's one of the professions which doesn't work anywhere near as well when done by a single race: unicorns typically can't conjure the water (and never in large quantities), pegasi are unable to precision-direct it, and earth pony bucket brigades sometimes do more damage to the brigadiers than the fire. There are emergency measure available, but -- those tend to make the fire look like the better option.

(High-pressure hoses exist, but given the typical strength of mouths and the average field, generally turn into exercises in extremely unintentional comedy.)

This particular fire had been put out fairly quickly by the nine-pony team, largely because there wasn't that much left to burn. The house in question was so far away from the rest of the town that the smoke hadn't been sighted for what the firefighters were guessing had been just a little too long, and most of the initial plumes had been shrouded by the suddenly-too-frequent trees which hid most of the property from above -- thankfully, few of those had even come close to catching ablaze.

The isolation was only geographic. Ponies went out there all the time, of course, and at all hours: the owner's occupation guaranteed traffic which knew no temporal ties to the patterns of Sun and Moon. His clients had been temporarily linked to Right Now, Oh Dear, Oh Please, Oh Celestia, It's Happening Right Now!, and that's the sort of thing no pony can schedule in advance. So they all ran there, or flew -- or in one extreme and frequently recounted case, had teleported in while inadvertently dragging a small portion of their bedroom, outer wall, and rock garden along -- because he was the one they needed, the one who would make things all right when no other pony could. Of course, they were doing so in the belief that he was actually at home and not helping somepony far away -- but even when that happened, he would somehow get back in time. He was legendary for being there just in time.

So it came as no surprise (and a welcome, heart-saving relief) to the firefighters that there was no body to remove from the ashes. Somewhere, somepony had been going through that forever-dawning emergency, and he had gone to make things go as best they could. He was all right, wherever he was --

-- but the house was mostly gone.

Some of the team openly wept at that, stallions and mares alike, started forming plans for a community building project to make the replacement. Not that the occupant couldn't afford to do it himself, of course, but -- they owed it to him. Some of them owed everything to him, the ponies who could say the same were all over Equestria and once they all heard about this, there would be more hoofpower gathered in one place than anypony knew what to do with.

A few of them started planning the routes for pegasi couriers. Others drew up replacement home designs in their heads (every one of which started with a larger waiting room). Several citizens of the somewhat-nearby town were sent out to try and find him, tell him what had happened to his home and comfort him in his newest hour of grief. And three bored ponies waited for the arson investigator to arrive and confirm that this was clearly an accident and not any kind of arson at all, because no sane pony would have ever tried to burn this house down, the resident certainly wouldn't have done it (and the thought itself went right past sarcastic and came perilously close to heresy) -- but there were rules. Arson had to be definitively crossed off the list and the sooner that impossible ugliness was eliminated, the better.

(Arson is rare in Equestria, but it does happen -- and there's only so many times a criminal can straight-faced claim 'previously unknown dragon migration patterns' before the authorities facehoof themselves into real injury. Burning down one's own home for purposes of insurance fraud is unknown, partially because the concept of 'insurance agency' lasted about fifteen moons before repeated claims from Ponyville residents bankrupted the fledgling industry while throwing the basic idea into the 'You knew that would happen, right?' cabinet under Idiots, Equestria's History Of. Princess Celestia currently maintains a public disaster relief fund which is roughly estimated to use eight percent of the national budget. In a slow year.)

So they waited for hours while the specialist was notified and flown in via emergency carriage from Manehattan, and then prepared to wait for more as she performed her exacting task: check for the telltale chemical traces of dragonfire (because it did happen every few years, although mostly when some idiot with a fast-approaching file didn't bother wondering why the land he'd just purchased along the trail of mile-wide scorch marks had been so cheap), check for more common incendiary agents, check for magic --

-- and her field flared as the spell picked up the traces of power, changed color to reflect intent.

But not from her own steady pink to the typical angry red displayed by a dedicated arsonist. Shimmering gold, slightly metallic with just hints of sparkles around the edges, nearly invisible in the warm gleam of soft yellow. A color she'd never personally seen before, one she didn't associate with a deliberate burn.

She searched. Now that she had the flavor of the spell, finding the actual source was a matter of minutes -- especially since the spell was still active. Head for the harshest part of the fire, pick her way through settled ashes while using spot castings to detect and avoid the last of the danger zones, and then --

-- well, after she finally nudged the fallen paneling aside to reveal what lay beneath, it wasn't as if it could have been any more visible.

She tried to analyze it, failed. Called other ponies in (more hours, and now the firefighters were desperate to get home), and they failed. Tried to find other ways in: the pattern maintained. The spell was somewhat transparent, she could see there were no survivors waiting for rescue or bodies awaiting removal -- but for the sake of the former home's owner, it had to come down eventually. And if that one had been the origin of the spell (and who knew he was capable of this?), then he still had to be found. In fact, if he'd cast it, then when had it happened? And what had happened to him afterwards?

More search parties were sent out, this time with extra urgency. Word was passed from pony to pony, the express route moving at the speed of rumor. Inevitably, the news began to spread across the continent, heading directly for Canterlot --

-- with a stop and reroute to Ponyville.

Shading

Does he move himself within the world, or does he move the world to where he is? He would laugh at you if asked, and not kindly. He laughs at a lot of things.

It has been some hours since he last laughed, almost to the point of a personal (active) record. He is uncertain as to whether this particular jest of the universe is on him, and that's not something he deals with very well. Some pranksters can't stand being targets themselves, comedians refuse to be the butt of someone else's joke, and those who violate --

-- not him now, he would say. How could you possibly accuse? And there would be a pause before the laughter came forth.

There are many emotions which he still doesn't quite have a grasp on, or ways of relating to the feelings of others which are so new and raw that to exercise them for long threatens to become a strain. A weak grip has been placed around the whole empathy concept and it hasn't been dropped yet, but it's so very hard to hold onto. Fear... yes, but mostly just his own, and that was always rare: to be afraid of something, you have to believe it can hurt you in some way.

He's afraid of empathy. Just a little.

But anger...

...he knows anger.

This is the third site he has come to. The first one was where he raged. At the second, he plotted. And now... he is starting to move past anger. Much to his own surprise, he is approaching the outer borders of Thoughtful, and he had believed himself to be well on the way to a charming little city called Vengeance, where the weather runs to falling acid pelting against slowly regenerating skin. He was making plans for that at the second site, something he hardly ever engages in. Let things happen and eventually the screams will come, he would have said, although to whom would have been a question of some entertainment. The idea of drawing up an extended plan with detailed outlines and pre-scripted breaks for questions to which he would of course laugh at the answers before heading into the next designated stage -- well. Certain entities just must be rubbing off on him. He's not sure he likes that. At all.

But --

-- not him now.

Maybe.

He looks around. There is faint approval in his gaze. Branches everywhere, broken by the sheer random force brought to the scene. A dead dog -- well. To be frank (although you would probably never get it out of him), those? Were not one of his better ideas. If you like to dig in the dirt so much, then go ahead and live there. He could have put a lot more work into the actual execution of that one, but it wasn't his style. Let things happen as they happen, or as they're triggered, and eventually lots of things come. He does not think about how many they came to and what became of them, and would not on his own. He has too much present to deal with first, and he likes present second-best. Past cannot be changed, and that which is frozen is seldom of long-term interest, hardly seems worth bothering with unless someone presents a truly compelling reason. (The concept of that 'someone' -- or 'somepony' -- is one of the newest.)

Future, where anything could happen...

A dead dog, and broken branches, and animals which have retreated again. They still will not come near him, not most of the time, not without additional company. Something in the blood remembers.

The blood...

He looks closer.

There has been some trouble in tracking this. He can taste his own, of course: find the remnants everywhere he looks, no matter how much time has passed. The delightful sweetness of prior delights wrought and jokes played. (How many were truly funny? He does not think about that. He will not.) But he's always had trouble getting the sense of The Other. Opposing charges should not, sometimes can not touch, and while he can make contact if he absolutely needs to, he doesn't understand what he's touching and then you have the sheer burn of it, the wave which picks a single option before forcing all others to cease any existence they might have ever achieved, the calcification...

...never for long.

Once for too long.

...track his own. Trouble with The Other. This, where one of the tastes seems as if it should be stronger, but he's still having so much trouble connecting these hot spots with a trail... Is it because there's a mixture? Might there even be something in it which almost feels new?

Ah. There. Right against the wood, and would you just look at those fracture lines? Such beauty along the jagged edges (although it's a false beauty: natural fault lines are just that). Yes, that was where the dog hit. Such force. Such total lack of deliberate intent -- or was there?

Well, time to find out. He points at the dried brown crust, curls in a beckoning talon, and says "Show me."

And as the little animals retreat still more, the crust liquifies, peels off the bark in a glistening layer and spins itself into a red sphere which then obediently comes to him, hovering over a paw. He puts an eye on it. Then in it. Watches it drift around for a few seconds, battered by truly random currents. And when his moment of approval passes, draws it back out.

"Well," he tells the part of the world he has come to (or which has come to him). It's a thoughtful sound, yes, perhaps surprisingly so. "Well..."

One eye blinks. The other drips blood. Light hits the liquid fall, makes it twinkle. His light. The Sun has been blocked here, just for a time. There remains a certain need for -- privacy.

He examines the plans he had made. They are, he feels, good plans. They are detailed. They account for variables and contingencies. They are in no way, shape, or form, him.

A wave of his paw returns all the blood to where it had been, restores it to the crusted film. Can't go destroying or distorting the evidence, after all. Certainly can't have that, which reminds him to put the ground an inch lower and allow his tracks to wipe themselves out.

"Shall we try this -- a different way?" he asks the air.

A babble of voices answer him, cheering, applauding. Yes, he absolutely should. Because a different way isn't what anyone's expecting, is it? And that -- is the point. Or at least part of it. And as far as establishing the city of Vengeance and using his governmental authority for permanently moving a certain party to the intersection of Payback and Bitch goes --

-- the mayoralty does not entirely belong to him, now does it?

The concept of sharing is still largely foreign. He thinks he has some idea of the meaning, though. This might even be the perfect time to try it out in actual practice. In fact, it might even be --

-- fun.

Although not for everyone.

The joke has to be on someone. Otherwise, where's the comedy?

The applause dies away. He bows low -- and then he leaves, or the world leaves him. In a way, the point was always moot. It's whichever you need it to be, or it's the one you didn't want, or it's both at the same time, or even a third option you haven't thought of and it exists solely because you didn't. But it's in the past now. Should it really matter?

The past has happened. No change.

The present is happening. So change it.

The future -- every bit of it, until the present catches up -- is his.

Quiet Presence knocked. Even within his own home, in those sections of it open to the public, he would often knock before entering a room. There's only so many jumping, spinning, screaming, startled ponies a stallion can take in one day. This private place simply required a very soft knock.

Lightly bemused, "I felt you, Quiet." The older stallion sounded stronger than he had before: rest and good food were starting to do their work. "But your practice was being done elsewhere... you can come in. There is nothing you would be disturbing."

Quiet Presence entered the room -- his property, his territory, and still solidly belonging to his visitor for as long that one chose to stay. The room was small and, of necessity, difficult to reach: the passage which led to it required its own share of careful field-nudges if the traveler was ever going to see the other end. (It was fully possible to hurry and have one's eyes reach this section, but with no promise that they would still be attached.) There was a bed, which his visitor was still resting on -- but now up to knee level, semi-reclining with body having regained the same share of strength as the voice. Two light sources, which had been steadfastly shining on command for six centuries with no signs of slowing down. Food: anything which would keep well and wouldn't need replenishment more than once every six moons. Fresh water from an underground spring, carefully channeled to this level. Several emergency books: field-written copies, essential notes, just the core of what had to be taught. Two passageways which a dedicated searcher might eventually locate, designed to look like routes for getting that information out. And one more, much harder to find, which wasn't immediately fatal.

As a colt, he had often slept here. He liked the privacy, although the lighting was frankly horrible for reading.

"You have news," his visitor noted. "As do I... yours first, or mine? For some reason, I suspect neither of us is about to lift the spirits of the other."

Which told a shocked Quiet Presence just about all of what he was about to hear in results -- and surprised him to the point where the need to get a reason became immediate. "Then you take it," he wryly said. "I think I need to find out just how much larger this burden is about to become before I try carrying any more of it. You know how little I can haul."

"Physically only," the older stallion said, and favored him with a brief smile. "In spirit -- the weight of generations." Followed by a sigh. "I cannot find her."

What Quiet Presence had been expecting (at least for the last few seconds), and now for the "Why?"

"Her essence has changed." His visitor made a move as if to stand, but the injured leg slipped against the soft surface of the mattress: he let the attempt go. "I knew that it would, but -- I did not know how. I thought that once it happened, I would have time to learn her anew, but -- things which have happened but once --" ruefully "-- at least in my presence, do not have much in the way of precedent. I could have found her as she was anywhere in the world, given enough time to spread the spell. Now -- if there is a portion of her left unchanged within the new, I cannot locate it. And with that new, my experience was limited, brief, and -- there were a number of other concerns taking place at the time." A small, equally rueful shrug. "I plead distraction."

"I absolve," Quiet Presence adjudicated -- then, seriously "What are our risks?"

"Extant," the older stallion admitted, "but limited. She will not approach others. She would not speak to anypony who does not know about The Great Work -- if we should only be so fortunate as to have that encounter happen. She is -- faithful."

"And -- if somepony saw her?"

A long pause. "We would know. If it had truly worked, we would know within hours. The news certainly spread quickly enough the last time, and nearly arrived here before the royal proclamation. The fact that we have heard nothing means that she has either stayed hidden, been lucky enough to encounter nopony -- or that we are merely closer instead of there." A deeper sigh. "I know what I saw and I know what she did. It was a teleport, and that means we achieved something. But without her here, or being able to reach the site..."

Quiet Presence nodded: they were closer to his news, but there were a few more things which needed to be said. "Continue forward from the teleport. She did not come here afterwards. Why -- and what will she do?"

His visitor's response was not long in coming: something which had been worked out before he arrived. "The first teleport -- was not planned. The effort simply manifested in that form. But knowing how something works does not tell somepony how to achieve it." He smiled gently upon seeing Quiet Presence's look of confusion. "I can take any game the foals play and tell you all the rules and every move in it, Quiet, then place you on the field -- and you will still have no experience of deflecting the ball as it approaches. Theory has to turn into skill through practice. So -- she would first try to establish where she was: she knows teleportation without a full frame of reference for both departure and arrival is too risky..." He stopped. It took him a few seconds to get going again. "And for that, she is limited. The same problem: she knows the cities and towns, but not of them, and would need a major landmark for the lands between. She has no real experience of distance. But she would try to orient herself. When she succeeded, she would attempt to reach you or me, staying hidden as best she could. If she should master the teleport -- and that will bring us to you, in a minute -- one or the other. She would not risk flight. Otherwise, hoof -- and we have no idea how far she has gone." A long pause. "Stay concealed, stay safe, come to me if at all possible, come to you as the secondary option, come home. That is her plan."

"My news, then," Quiet Presence carefully checked, and received a nod. "The most important thing: her place is safe. I was able to get in and out through the emergency passage. There was no damage from the fire in that section --"

He had not quite been able to keep the lingering surprise from his face: the older stallion responded to it. "-- because it did not start there. We were -- outside when it happened." And that surprise must have really stood out, because it got an immediate "Not very far, and still in the protected places. But the seal would have blocked the fire and most of the heat. So -- they have not found it, and she has somewhere familiar to return to. The first crisis averted." Another inspection of Quiet Presence's expression. "And now your bad news, my young one."

"Your home -- is gone."

A sad nod. "I guessed as much. And accepted. Go on."

A deep breath: his weak ribs ached. "As per procedure, an arson investigator was summoned. She must have felt something was amiss, because they have sealed the area with a shield spell. I could see part of what was going on within it, but that was mostly just ponies standing around, seeming as if they were arguing with each other. I don't know about what: the barrier distorts the sound too badly. And I had to be careful: there are a large number of ponies along the border of the bubble. Some of the townsponies. More than a few of yours, and some more arrived while I was there." He forced a smile of his own, one with more than a little reality to it. "You are missed, first friend. A good portion of Equestria may be considering the fastest routes to get here, and the longer you stay out of sight, the more of them will be combing the countryside from here to the Empire and beyond. At some point, we have to consider when you're going back out there."

"We will," he was assured -- but he could hear the older stallion's concern. An ongoing investigation... "No hints as to what they were looking into?"

"We don't have anypony in the fire department --"

"A natural oversight. Don't waste any time regretting it."

"-- and all the crowd had was gossip. The usual rubbish, none of which reflected badly on you. Hidden treasure was the typical guess, and for any pony of your breeding, it's a logical one. But while I was there, the investigators remained within the field. I couldn't try to create a hole: the caster was present. And I have no magic to become intangible, or change my form into one of theirs and request entry, and my authority in this matter is limited to being another one of yours who desperately needs an update -- which would just get me assigned to a search party. And there are a lot of search parties." He gestured with his front right hoof. "I think this means we start considering whether and when they are going to find what they're looking for."

His visitor nodded. It was clear he'd been considering the answer during the last part of Quiet Presence's report. "Coming out gets me access to the site and allows me to see what's being investigated. But I would prefer to know what I'm walking into rather than having to create excuses and stories on the spot. Let us take a little more time and see if we can harvest any actual information from the rumor fields. A day, perhaps, or a bit longer. And then I will pick up the pieces of my life and begin to rebuild --" his head dipped: the horn nearly touched the bed's railing "-- for the second time."

Quiet Presence saw the old sorrow and immediately knew how to deal with it: he laughed, and the pain in his sides was a welcome sacrifice. "You'll have to shove a hundred fields and a few dozen wings out of the way first! Let me tell you about some of the architectural fantasies ponies were tossing around on your behalf..."

If it worked, it only did so for a moment. The older stallion smiled -- and then simply looked at him. "We will find her." A statement.

"We have to," Quiet Presence replied. A fact.

A pony's nose is not as sensitive as it could be: something which applies to all three of the main races. For most ponies, the brain prioritizes in this order: what can I see coming, what can I hear, what can I feel (the exact 'feel' depends on the race and doesn't apply with every individual) before finally getting to what can I scent? But it's still more acute than that for some of Equestria's other sentient species -- griffons in particular, who have very good olfactory detection for blood, fresh meat, and just about nothing else until it's either directly under or actually within their nostrils. You can get sneezing powder within two inches of a griffon before they start to realize there just might be a problem, and their chefs tend to work beak-to-griddle. For the male cooks, cultivating and keeping facial hair is a mark of skill: they can tell exactly what they've created without burning their decoration off. Older griffons tend to mutter darkly about younger generations who won't do their own hunting before pounding on the table and demanding to know why such a talented chef didn't have the entree ready twenty minutes ago.

Twilight's sense of smell was a little below average -- 'feel' will soon be coming along nicely -- but it was still enough to, with her lightly snoozing deep within a protective cocoon of blankets, still pick up on the following, in turn.

Sheets. Cotton. Warm. Nice warm sheets. Don't want to get up. Been up. I buck at 'up'. Was up, left, right, down, and then tried for up again and hit a bell. No more up. Sleep.

Pancakes. Lovely velvet pancakes. With maple syrup. Don't care. Ate already. Was having this horrible dream where I was an alicorn and didn't know what to do. Maybe had it because I ate too many pancakes. Pancakes are evil. Wanna sleep some more.

Ink. Open bottle. Should seal it before it all dries out. Should write a letter to the Princess. With another bottle of ink 'cause that one can die and I can always get more ink. Davenport doesn't sell ink. Free ink for me. Too much free ink. Not. Getting. Up.

Singed hair. No -- burning hair. Smelly. Somepony's hair is on fire. Smells like a tail. Scorched special tail conditioner, like that one time Rarity was in the spa way too long and then Spike had the hiccups and they ran into each other when she was coming out and oh dear Celestia it took five hours before he'd stop apologizing and then he cried himself to sleep for a week. And there's shrieking. Female shrieking. So there's a mare shrieking because her tail, which had way too much conditioner in it, is on fire. Figured it out and never even had to get up. Gonna go and slee --

-- as it turned out, one of the few things her wings were good for was standing straight out from her body as she flew (with a regrettable lack of literalness) into a panic, the new limbs exploding the cocoon from within. After that, it was a matter of dashing down the stairs (perilously close to the edge because her wings would once again not fold back down and the tip of the left one kept scraping against the wall), closing in on not the scent, the source of which was already out the door with the scream of anger just behind it, but rather the cause...

"Spike! The law said no injury! You're not allowed to hurt anypony just because they're taking a picture of me!"

The little dragon spun on a single claw and stared up at her, eyes defiant. It was a familiar pose, the one which said I May Only Be Your Little Brother, But I'm Not As Little As You Think. "Photograph, yes, I know what to do with that, Twilight: I burn the camera and nothing else, they yell, I throw them out of the library, and we just do it again two hours later! Steal is something else entirely! She was trying to get your notebooks, Twilight. Your personal spell research! And when I caught her, she just started ranting about how information wants to be free and all data belongs to the people, she wouldn't drop them and just tried to run with them instead -- so I made her drop them." He pulled himself up to his full height, which meant a lot less than he thought it did. "Your notebooks are safe. She's gone. I'm not sorry. And -- maybe you'd better look around?"

Twilight blinked as her still quarter-dozing brain considered whether or not it really wanted to catch all the way up with reality -- then slowly, slowly rotated her gaze.

The library was full.

Again.

Ponies with piles of books they wanted checked out -- but only by her. (The shelves were, at best, two-thirds full. At the current rate, she had less than a moon before it was just her and that lonely eight-pound economic fable no pony ever got past the first two paragraphs of. And she wasn't sure about that last part, because it could still be signed out, if for the very first and possibly last time.) Ponies who had been waiting for an audience with her. Ponies who were staring at her in startled wonder now that they were in the presence of a Princess. Luna's mane, possibly even ponies who had been watching her sleep...

...and a butter-yellow presence cowering in a corner near the atlases, trying to hide behind a coral-pink mane with absolutely no success. It was very clear that horrifying things had been happening to her, and those things were known as Other Ponies, Immediate Presence Of. One stallion with a craned neck still had a camera pointed in that direction, must have been eager to get his very own personal picture of the former supermodel, and Twilight knew what would have happened there. The law said you had to state your desire not to be captured on film. And other ponies had to hear you.

Twilight sighed.

"It was only the tail -- right, Spike?"

"Dragon's honor!" her reptilian assistant -- familiar -- newly self-assigned bodyguard -- and, let's face it, Little Brother From Another Very Large Mother -- huffed.

And what a very frequently challenged honor it had been over the last three weeks. "Then thank you, Spike -- again." He beamed.

She had, at best, seconds before the crowd found its mental footing. "And now I think I'd better start seeing to all these patrons." Most of whom are going to be on the receiving end of my automatic recovery spell in a week or so. I hope. It should be a lot easier since I don't have to recreate all the notes... "Starting with --"

-- and she headed directly for Fluttershy, passing a box full of temporarily confiscated cameras on the way. Missed one, Spike. Of course, there was every chance the stallion had gotten his back by sincerely promising to photograph Fluttershy and only Fluttershy, on pain of flaming mane.

But she had to walk: no room near the pegasus for a teleport arrival, still couldn't fly, and her friend wouldn't try to come to her, not cornered as she was. It meant she had to pass through some of the false patrons. And that in turn led to --

"-- Princess! Princess, I need a few minutes of your time..."

"-- for my fashion column, that dress you wore at that Gala --"

"-- get a look at the Elements?"

"-- picture for my family --"

"-- needs to be in a museum!"

"-- and it's my yard, it's been in my family for generations and she --"

"EVERYPONY STOP!" The roar (which was starting to get some real volume behind it) was punctuated by a little burst of green fire. Given the incident Twilight had just missed, the crowd's attention collectively decided to consider itself as gotten and swiveled towards the little dragon.

In his best Hearth's Warming Host voice, "The Princess --" (and she knew he had just done that for her benefit, would apologize later) "-- has made a royal decision to consult with an Element-Bearer. If one of Equestria's valiant defenders --" and dear Celestia, Fluttershy was shrinking into her own withers, but there was no other way to do this "-- requires the attention of the throne -- " virtual throne, anyway "-- she naturally has priority." Spike paused, looked as if he was searching for one more theatrical flourish, found one. "For who knows what trouble might have visited our fair land at this hour?"

Twilight wanted to applaud.

"-- errr..."

"...she's an Element-Bearer?"

"-- I guess if something might be happening..."

"-- run away!" She hadn't even seen Roseluck over there.

Spike nodded, rather imperiously. "Right. So everypony clear out, leave your books where they are, I'll push the camera box outside and you can all sort it out from there, the library will be open again once Equestria is well and truly safe from the dangers within and without and sometimes underneath and above or..." Twilight lost the rest of this under the sound of many dropped tomes and shifting hooves, but the end result was on its way out the door. All of it. Including, naturally...

Twilight sighed and let her field gently tug on a single yellow feather. "You stay."

"...okay," Fluttershy whispered. Even more softly, "But I don't want to bother you... you have so little time to yourself right now and really, I can get what I need on my own..."

Luckily, this had been too soft for the departing crowd to hear (which included one vaguely depressed stallion). Twilight picked up her own volume. "Yes, that sounds if it's going to be crucial to national security. You can tell me the details once we're alone."

Spike hustled, pushed on a few flanks here and there, ponies yelped and grumbled and shuffled towards the exit --

-- and then, with the sound of a clicking lock, they were alone. Twilight's wings finally went down.

Fluttershy blinked a single visible eye at her. "...sorry..."

"Fluttershy, what do you have to be sorry about? How could any of this possibly be your fault? You haven't done anything wrong!"

"...I could have asked some of them to leave..."

No. You couldn't. And I am not going to take any of my life's turmoil out on you. Twilight put on the gentlest smile she had, the one which said everything was all right, had been all right forever, and there wasn't an event which could take place anywhere in the world which could be blamed on a shy pegasus who had come calling. It was almost enough to make Fluttershy's wings stop trembling.

And it never worked before, either. "Come on, Fluttershy -- we'll talk away from the door."

"...right here is fine, thanks."

I can't get her to move now? Very carefully (not that it was probably going to matter), "Why?"

"...the atlases are what I need. I just don't know -- which one. Or the best flight routes. Rainbow Dash has a collection of air paths with labeled streams and currents, but she's not home and I know you have a collection, so I thought... but your time is so important right now..."

And this she could say with complete sincerity: "Fluttershy, right now, nothing is more important for spending my time on than you."

The rose-tingled blush got deeper. "...okay."

Silence.

A longer silence.

The exact amount of silence required for Twilight to realize the pegasus, with approval for the meeting finally understood, still needed permission to begin it. "So where are you trying to get to?"

"Umm... it's a town called Trotter's Falls. I have a friend out there -- a really old friend... and I think he might be in trouble. I wanted to go there... and see... if there was... anything I could maybe... do?"

Twilight searched her memory. Geography wasn't her strongest suit (although it had at least gotten a couple of cards into the deck), but that name sounded vaguely familiar. Trotter's Falls, Trotter's Falls... hadn't there been some kind of big discovery made out there within the last generation? Something medical, she was fairly sure of it, but how far... "Well, that shouldn't be a problem!" she cheerily declared. An easy problem to solve for once: one map, one flight path with labeled air currents, check-earning in progress! "Let me just start looking that up for you..." Her field exerted: the thick volumes of maps began to march in order, earning a startled eep! from Fluttershy as one passed above her head. "I'm sure your friend will be thankful to have you there, no matter what the problem is." And she would be down one pony from the small circle she could still deal with normally, but Fluttershy had her own life to live and that life...

...stop. "This looks promising..."

Fluttershy moved closer to get a look at the flipping pages, seemed to consider whether there was a personal space rule she was on the verge of violating, backed off, realized she didn’t have a sight angle from her retreat point, flew a couple of feet up and hovered there so as not to be in anypony's way. "You think so?" Her voice was beginning to brighten with hope. That particular crisis over, then. Or at least postponed.

"Yes, there it is in the index. Now we just need the right page..." Skimming, careful around the corners, she didn't want any creases... "And there it --" The blink was hard enough to almost hurt. "Fluttershy, that's a fifteen-day gallop and three by train! Even if you fly, it'll take..." She stopped herself right there: even after Fluttershy had won some praise from the water transfer operation, the pegasus' normally slow flying speed remained an especially weak spot in her forever-fraying confidence. Although it was more than Twilight could manage. As was the hovering...

She's prettier than me, she deals with the wild better than I do, any flying she pulls off is superior to my aerial flailing. And she is my friend and I love her for all of it and more. I am not jealous.

Twilight resolved to say it a few more times in private until it sunk all the way in. "How did one of your animal friends get all the way out there?"

The sound from above was exactly halfway between a whisper and a squeak.

Twilight kept the sigh internal. "Sorry, didn't catch that."

"...pony friend."

"You have --"

The overhead eep! told her she'd gone too far. Again. Yes, Twilight, she has a pony friend who is not you or one of the other Bearers. Fluttershy's existence did not begin the day I came up behind her while she was rehearsing with her bird chorus. Somehow, the single most shy and retiring pony I've ever seen steeled herself to the point of making a friend without my having to be a direct witness to it, I hope it happens again someday, and I truly hope things stop slipping out of my mouth really soon now.

Pick up the shattered pieces of the fragile conversation. Examine edges for possible fit. Apply adhesive and hope to the Princesses (hope to herself?) not to wind up with even smaller pieces. "So -- a pony friend outside of Ponyville?" She was trying to keep it casual, might have been within a kingdom of it. "Mare or stallion?"

After far too long a version of 'eventually', she finally got "...stallion... but not like that." Just the smallest emphasis on the last word. "...he's an old friend, really... I've known him forever. He used to come to Cloudsdale to see me every year or so, just to make sure I was okay. Made the trip just for me. He's so nice to everypony, and he always has so many ponies who need him, but he would take the time for me..." Twilight automatically looked up: sure enough, the blush was deeper than ever as Fluttershy struggled with the idea that anypony would consider her worth the effort to cross a street. "And it wasn't easy for him to come there, either... but he would... for me..." She stopped, looked directly at Twilight. With that firmness which surprised the others almost every time it emerged, "If he's in trouble, I have to go help him. No matter how far it is. Even if I have to go all the way there on hoof."

An old fillyhood friend. Somepony who clearly cared about Fluttershy (and Twilight was guessing unicorn or earth pony if just getting to Cloudsdale was a problem). A pony who had managed to win her trust to the point where she would drop everything at a moment's notice just to go and see if he was in trouble...

Twilight wanted to meet this pony, and one of the first things she wanted to do after pressing his hoof was ask him how he'd done it. "He sounds very special, Fluttershy."

"...he is. But... I might have to... I'm so sorry, but my bits... the train all the way out there... I don't know if I can really... my stipend hasn't..."

"I can loan you a few if you need it to make up the difference," Twilight assured her, and waited for --

-- sure enough. "...I'm sorry for being so poor..."

Applejack was forever worrying about the farm, but the family survived and even threatened to thrive during the weeks when they didn't have to rebuild any barns. Rarity had to anticipate (or create) the tides of fashion or drown in a sea of debt. Rainbow Dash spent freely and frivolously, generally on herself. Pinkie Pie had very little money, but somehow managed to make what she had stretch to fit one pony, one alligator, and fifteen tons of party supplies, some of which Twilight was sure hadn't existed until the moment they were pulled out. For her own part, she had her research grant plus a small award from the Equestrian Magic Society every time she improved a spell and got to add her librarian's salary to that: if she kept the little boosts in casting efficiency coming and didn't let Davenport rake her over the coals, she was typically able to get by. (She had yet to recalculate for 'royally free', a factor Davenport hadn't wiped out -- yet.)

But Fluttershy... a little agreement with the Cakes for her extra eggs, some pet grooming plus kennel hosting services when ponies had to travel away, a small stipend with associated tax break from the Weather Bureau that she'd never quite explained in detail, some under-the-bridle veterinary services from those ponies who trusted her more than the official vet in town (and no wonder when it was a choice between her and somepony who couldn't recognize a dragon) -- and most moons, that was about it. Given the amount of animal feed she needed to buy, the frequent repairs to the cottage after a new animal visitor hadn't quite calmed down immediately, and the few ponies who tried walking out on their bill in the certain knowledge that Fluttershy wouldn't want the stress of dragging anypony into small claims court, some of whom had kept coming back for more freebies because they were equally sure she'd be too skittish to send them away...

(That part had mostly stopped after Iron Will: in addition to no longer being walked over quite so badly in the marketplace, Fluttershy could now manage the occasional "You never paid me the first time" -- and would then sneak onto the pony's property to treat the animal in secret and for free, because "I just can't leave the poor thing to suffer." In the event that the creature needed home care, she would heed the lesson of Philomena -- by leaving a note. Possibly signed with the animal's name.)

Fluttershy generally teetered along the absolute edge of an economic chaos curve with bankruptcy on every side. Having to travel so far for so long would be a financial hardship she might not be able to endure. She had to know that. And she was still going to throw her entire life into a holding pattern in order to go help her friend.

Twilight really had to meet this stallion. And before she did that, she had to speak to the others about a sudden need for a full round of pet grooming. Although getting Fluttershy to charge very much for friends was difficult, and a full bill on Tank was just about impossible. ("...I cleaned his feet, I polished his shell... and there was still fifty-seven minutes left...")

"You'll pay me back," Twilight told her. And I will forget the debt. The problem: you won't. But that was an old problem, something else she couldn't find a solution for and incidentally, one more thing where being an alicorn meant nothing. "So what's your friend's name? Anypony I might know?"

Surprisingly, she got a shy nod. "...you might... so many ponies do... he's --"

Lock. Click. Door flying open. Spike running in, any chance of having Fluttershy finish her sentence shredded under the pressure of pounding clawed feet. Holding a scroll, an official scroll which was crackling with fast-fading flame -- and an odd underlayer of energy, almost gone. (There would be times Twilight wished she had taken a closer look at that vanishing field, and there would be many of them.)

"We're needed in Canterlot!" Spike gasped. "All of us! Right now!"

And all the crises had to be pushed aside to make room for a new one...

It had begun to rain, and every drop had been like a little hammer slammed into her skin.

She had found a hollow of sorts. This was the base of a hill (her first hill), one covered with greenery and thin trails she was unable to use. But there was also a boulder, about two Celests higher than her mane, protruding from the side of the hill. She knew it was a tiny part of the internal structure, pushed out over the course of centuries by tremendous unseen pressures. (She did not question how she knew that. The knowing had very little pain associated with it, and most of that could have been misdirected nerve firings.) She could see that the rock had not been anywhere close to complete extrusion and collapse to ground level yesterday, and she knew it would not fall today or tomorrow or the day after or for many days and nights to come. It was shelter. So she huddled under it and trusted it more than she trusted anything else in her environment, including herself.

The hunger was still with her. When she had run from the wreck of the apple tree, a single fruit had trailed in her wake: it had not been enough. She had been taught about which things grew and where, but she couldn't find any more of them. And then there was the grass. She knew a pony could live on grass if they were desperate enough. But there wasn't much nutrition to it: tremendous amounts were needed for more than make it to tomorrow, and she was using far more energy than that. Chewing the grass, swallowing the grass -- her jaw trembled and lost half the mouthful, her throat ached and tried to push it back up. It had been that way for the apple too, but at least the taste had been normal. There was still that. Her senses worked, even if new ones pushed in, faded out, gave her information she couldn't always interpret. She knew the rock -- because she always would have known the rock. Nearly everything else was a blur of synesthesia, and most of it was twisted by the pain.

But that pain was just physical. Agonizing, fire and lighting and cold and sources she had no names for, all searing her without respite -- the least of her hurt. The one which would never heal lay within her soul, and the wound wept words in endless litany.

I wasn't the One.

I didn't finish The Great Work.

I failed.

I failed everypony.

I failed him.

The pain was building again. Soon, she would start to lose her feel for the rock. She would try to hold onto it, use it as an anchor to keep her from being lost. She knew she would fail at that too.

I wasn't the One.

I didn't finish The Great Work.

I failed.

I failed everypony.

I failed him.

It felt as if her ribs were trying to shift under her muscles. And soon they would, and the muscles would tear to let new bones through, the skin distorting but never quite breaking -- at least, not the first time. This would be the second pass coming, at least this way. And maybe it would tear this time, let the blood rush out, end the litany of her failures in a single liquid cascade --

-- or maybe it would simply stretch.

Over and over and over.

I wasn't the One.

I didn't finish The Great Work.

I failed.

I failed everypony.

I failed him.

Please let me die.

Angles

There are a lot of things 'right now' is not, and the most typical is right now.

First thing on the checklist: gather everypony and make sure we're all set up to be away for a while. There was no telling what might result from an emergency summons to Canterlot, not to mention how long that summons (and the results thereof) might last. So given that, Twilight had to start with --

"-- Spike, you too?" The little dragon nodded. Definition of 'all' confirmed. Okay, so much for her first choice for substitute librarian. "Do we have any time? Apparently so. "Can I see the letter?" He held it out: she enveloped the scroll in her field and unfurled it. (For a moment, there seemed to be a strange lingering feel to it -- but then it was just the scroll's texture: she decided it had been nerves.) All right -- typical -- a little time to play with -- that's kind of unusual, but fine -- and here we go, I have no idea if I'm even remotely ready for this, no I do, I am not, but it's the Princess so here we go again... "Fluttershy, you know the drill. Let's get to the market: we can pick up Applejack there and you can see who's available to take over for your animals -- Snowflake had his tent up today: maybe he hasn't been completely booked yet..." If only: the huge pegasus was incredibly gentle with anything smaller than he was (which meant just about everything) -- and almost as much to the point, he was one of the few creatures in the world Angel Bunny wouldn't try to pull too much with, just in case Snowflake decided to make one exception.

"...but I can't afford..."

"Fluttershy. Royal. Summons."

"Oh!" The yellow pegasus briefly beamed. "That's right! Let's get going before he's all taken! Oh, I hope he still has time free..."

Good enough. "Spike, clear a path, then start putting my emergency saddlebag together!" He threw the door open, roared something about a Royal Extreme Emergency, Element-Bearers only, everypony get out of the way!, and managed to get enough of the waiting crowd moving for Twilight to gallop out (hoping no pony would think about why she wasn't flying), Fluttershy a little ahead of her, heading directly for the market field. And other than Twilight stumbling a little as she failed to completely vault a freshly-fainted Lily Valley, they were smoothly on their way...

...a state which typically lasted until she found the next Bearer.

"Did she say anythin' 'bout why she needs all of us? Twi, y'know Ah love the Princess and Ah'm proud ta serve her in any way Ah can, but Ah need t' know how long Ah'm gonna be gone."

Twilight shook her head. "Just that we've got to get going. Fast. I'm sorry, Applejack, but she wouldn't send for us if it wasn't important..."

"Ah know," the farmer grumbled through a mouthful of brass latch: she had started to close the stand the instant she'd seen the other two rushing towards her. (There's common sense, there's Pinkie Sense, and then there's the internal voice of repeatedly battered experience.) "But sometimes Ah swear, Twi, it's like we're the only six mares in all of Equestria..." Her tail swished with badly-repressed frustration as she eyed the baskets of apples which were going to go unsold. "At least there's The Fund now."

(The Fund had arguably sprung directly from Applejack, who had approached Princess Celestia just before they'd originally left for the Crystal Empire and had a few private words with her -- words so important that her hat had actually been draped over the end of her tail as she spoke. Twilight hadn't eavesdropped, but had gotten the essence from the results: they were six ponies without much in the way of personal wealth and while being the kingdom's apparent continual first resort was well and good and necessary, it didn't pay anything and every one of these trips left them with bills piling up at home and no way of earning the bits to pay them. The Princess had looked surprised, then embarrassed -- and knelt down in front of Applejack to whisper gently into the earth pony's ear. They had returned home from the Empire to each find a bag full of bits in their homes, compensation for the funds they had lost and spent on previous missions along with the most recent one --

-- and ever since, any official summons opened The Fund: a royal exchequer which paid for replacement labor at Sweet Apple Acres (and lots of it: it took at least three ponies to replace one Applejack), multiple substitutes for Fluttershy (or one Snowflake), a typical week of sales at the Boutique, got a student baker into Sugarcube Corner, put overtime in for one of Rainbow Dash's fellows, supplies needed, expenses incurred, and now had to cover somepony who could hopefully tell one end of a week from the other and not take any guff on late fees. At best, the six of them broke even -- but it beat the alternative.)

"I've got to line up somepony myself: Spike's coming along again," Twilight told her. "How does Fluttershy look like she's doing?" She could have gotten a viewing angle herself if she could have moved five feet -- straight up.

"Ah think she's got him... yeah, he looks all happy. Oh, Angel's gonna hate this..." Applejack managed a chuckle, and her tail slowed down a little. "An' she'll get back t' find every last bag o' feed stacked exactly where she needs it. Stallion doesn't stop workin'." A strong note of approval in her voice: it was no secret that Applejack liked the huge pegasus -- in a distant admiration sort of way. "Okay, Ah'll see who's available. Would have liked t' get him --" and again, only in that laborer way "-- but she needs him more. Jus' let me close up here, take some ponies on, get Apple Bloom back from wherever she ran off to, an' tell Big Mac an' Granny Smith 'bout the incomin'. Don't s'pose y'saw her when y'ran in?"

"No, we didn't pass her --"

There was a crash somewhere off in the distance.

Applejack closed her eyes, tilted her head so that her hat slid forward to shade them. "Y'wanna bet...?"

Twilight repressed the urge to groan (again) and went with a simple "It'll be over soon." Oh, if only. From all reports, there were now two cities under siege, and the movement was threatening to spread. Cluelessness bred in every junior schoolhouse and, before Pinkie Pie asked, was known to produce exactly two things: more cluelessness and a very large trail of wreckage.

"Ah hope so. Ah truly do." The earth pony sighed. "But some days, Twi, Ah swear, Ah think there's a cutie mark for causin' disasters. An' Ah think it's invisible..."

"To Canterlot? Now? But I haven't gotten to read the latest trades! What is in fashion? It's been three whole weeks, Twilight! You don't understand the pressure! There's every chance my onsom from your coronation has -- completely slipped off the map!" The last five words came perilously close to a Fluttershy level of squeak. "And even if it hasn't, I would be wearing the same thing -- twice!" The mere concept nearly forced Rarity into a swoon: she settled for leaning on a stack of convenient fabric rolls. Rolls she had been next to at the exact moment her familiar mode of panic had brought her to the time she might consider swooning. (Common sense, Pinkie Sense, experience, and drama.) "Even an extra two hours, I could throw a little something together..."

"No."

"One hour?" The white unicorn forced open one falsely-lashed eye, visibly summoned all her strength to bat it at Twilight. "I can have some basics packed in an hour -- some works in progress I could throw together on the way..."

Along with half the contents of the shop, every single seasonal piece you own, a few things you were hoping to parade around in on the streets to gauge public reaction, possibly Sweetie Belle to serve as an assistant if Applejack can get the tar off her and the other two in time and if I give you sixty-one minutes, the actual Boutique. Twilight put her hoof down. "No."

"Forty-five minutes, Twilight, just forty-five tiny little insignificant minutes... there's something I want you to have and I'm so very sorry for springing it on you like this, it was going to be your complementary outfit for when the Princesses are flanking you, something to highlight your coat and set off theirs the next time you were at the palace, it was going to be a surprise, it's not quite ready yet and that next time is today..."

"No."

"But -- Twilight...! ...thirty minutes? The train doesn't leave for at least thirty minutes."

"We're not taking the train," Twilight told her. She wasn't sure what they were taking: she just knew the train wasn't it. She was expecting a royal express air carriage pulled by the Solar Guards. She was dearly hoping she wouldn't be asked to help.

"We're not? Well, I can leave my train hat at home -- fifteen minutes?"

"N -- fine."

(Twilight had budgeted twenty.)

"Yes! The Heroes Of Equestria are summoned!" Rainbow Dash hoof-uppercut her napping cloud: it shattered. (The pillow fell. Twilight dodged. The pegasus didn't notice.) "Enough of this boring weather plan and just waiting for the next round of academy lessons -- hey, you think we'll be back before the next round of academy lessons? Because it's like totally okay if we aren't because we're just going to be doing spinouts again and I've done more than enough spinouts myself. I mean, you've seen me spin out all the time -- but not on purpose! Just for, you know, practice. Lots and lots of -- practice. Yeah. So -- no idea on how long?" Magenta eyes blinked at her in anticipation of an answer which the pegasus was almost certainly going to talk over.

"No, it just said --"

"That's cool. Because the longer we're out there, the better the chance we're gonna get another window pane! We should really each have one of our own, you know. I've been writing up some designs to show the Princess the next time we get there. I can't draw, but I can sure describe the awesome colors they can put in mine, and Pinkie told me about some crystals they can use for my mane and tail -- which reminds me: those crystals are kind of on the pricy side, I want a full-sized version to use as a window in my place, and I sort of just got an autographed Daring Do hat, signed by the author -- I'm going home! I am so totally gonna wear that on our adventure! Rainbow Dash And The Heroes Of Equestria, Volume Four!"

"...Volume -- Four?"

"Oh, yeah --- that's right... I could -- kind of use an editor on Volume One. The whole -- paragraphs thing. And -- sentences. And -- those fiddly little bits you're supposed to put at the ends of sentences. Those rules are just weird. When we get back -- won't take more than two or three moons of your time, I swear, maybe I'll bring the first batch with me and you can start on it on the way... why do you look so down, Twilight? We're on an adventure again! Wanna race back to my place?"

"I still have to go get --"

"Cool! And after I beat you there, you can tell me all about that stupid asp-asked-trophy thing. I have no idea where those bucking things are supposed to go. See you there, flying buddy! Bring my pillow! In three, two, one --!"

"It's nice to see you, Twilight, but --"

"Pinkie."

"-- I'm kind of in the middle of packing right now because --"

"Pinkie."

"-- I have someplace really really important to go and --"

"Pinkie!"

Three was normally the target number -- but this time, the prime hadn't hit the mark: Pinkie Pie was still racing back and forth around her attic room at Sugarcube Corner, grabbing things in her mouth and throwing them halfway across the space towards the saddlebags on her bed. Some of them went in. Most didn't. Several were draped over Gummy, who blinked, yawned, showed off the interior of his toothless mouth, and patiently put up with it. And one had just been field-flicked away from Twilight's horn. None of this had been noticed by the earth pony, who was still determined to get everything together for wherever it was she needed to go -- something she couldn't pause long enough to explain to anypony: according to the Cakes, she had stopped in the middle of talking to a customer, thanked her, apologized to them, and run upstairs. This hurricane of packing was the result, and precious little of it seemed to be streamers.

"-- I'm sorry, but you don't know how important this is, this is just about the most important thing ever and there's only one or two things which could interrupt it so I really really have to go and I'll see you when I get back in a few -- bird! Bird made out of paper in front of my face! Hey, did you know birds could be made out of -- wait. Is this a scroll? -- oh."

And she stopped. Collapsed to her knees, stared at the words which were still hovering, adjusted to remain in front of her. Her expression had fallen ahead of her body. She read, quietly, sad eyes going from beginning to end and back again.

"...Pinkie?"

"It's okay, Twilight," she was falsely assured. "I mean -- this is one of those one or two things which could interrupt it, right? It's maybe even more important. And besides, I'm probably not needed anyway. I just really wanted to go. The Princess needs us and she needs all of us. So we'll get my Element out of the vault and do what she needs us to. That's what we're supposed to do. And maybe I'll even be back in time to go anyway."

I thought... What? That the mysterious, untestable, ungraphable, and frequently-targeting-her-future-injuries Pinkie Sense had told Pinkie she was going on a long journey before Twilight ever arrived -- but not that the journey was being done with the group? And all she was doing by showing Pinkie the scroll was giving her confirmation of the premonition and a direction to move in? No, Pinkie had been on the way to somewhere else. She was interfering with her friend's life, something important was going on and she was stealing some more of Pinkie's time...

...stop. It was a royal summons. The Princess needed them. No matter how much some of them occasionally groused about it in public (and all of them, even her, had at least had the thoughts once in private), they had been called and they would come. Every time, Fund or no Fund, no matter what the reason. It was the Princess. That was enough.

"And I'm already mostly packed," Pinkie told her. Glanced at the bed. "Sort of. Maybe. Anyway, I can be in front of the library in a few minutes. I just have to get somepony in for me plus a backup babysitter and I'm set." Perking up a little, "Say, my Element is okay, right? I mean, we never tested it after it hit you. Or after the colors got switched. Not that we usually play around with them or anything, but maybe we'd better be sure they're working right before we head off. I don't want to go firing off a Honesty beam when nopony's expecting it!"

"We're not taking them," Twilight told her. That had been spelled out in the letter: the Elements stay in the vault. It had to mean the problem wasn't at the worst end of the scale. "Pinkie, where were you going?"

Either Pinkie hadn't heard her, decided to ignore it, or it didn't matter to her now: she let that one rest where it landed, a new foal question delivered solely by adults. They were going to Canterlot. Issue over and dropped. "Oh... well, we should really test them sometime anyway. Just to be safe. Why are you carrying a pillow?"

And they were gathered.

So was the audience.

It was something else Twilight wasn't used to considering full-time in the days following her transformation: ponies listened to her now. Listened for words of wisdom, inadvertent gossip, anything which might be turned into a newspaper story by ponies forbidden to photograph, but still perfectly free to write. Words she had said to Fluttershy on the way had been recorded by twitching ears and repeated into eagerly-turned ones. Repeated into a lot of ears.

The instructions in the letter had been clear: get everypony together in front of the library, and you will be picked up there. It was just that 'everypony' now numbered more than eighty ponies.

Rainbow Dash was basking in it. Fluttershy had just about vanished -- behind Spike, which really counted as an achievement. Rarity tried to pass out fliers (she had packed fliers, Twilight had gotten her down to a mere two balanced saddlebags through threat of force, apocalypse and ultimately, not wearing the new outfit, and Rarity had still found room for fliers...), Applejack was busy with a near-endless verbal track running along the lines of "An' you put that hay-twisted camera away, too! An' you! The one over there with the stupid-lookin' scales on your flank, don't think Ah don't see you! Yer gonna find out just how well Ah can reach you inna minute!" with regular threatened stops at Clobbering and Beatdown, and Pinkie Pie had stepped into Fluttershy's usual role: apologies. Lots of them.

"...and I'm sorry, but it's going to be at least a day and that means I can't throw your welcoming party on time, or yours if it's two days, or one for the two of you if it's more than a week, but I talked to three of the local fillies, you don't know them, but they're very interested in getting their cutie marks in party throwing so they kind of made me promise that if I was gone that long they could throw yours for me and if that happens? I'm really, really sorry..."

None of this did anything to stop the questions, from established locals, press, and new arrivals alike. Where were they going? What was so important? Did the Princess have any news? Did the Princess have anything she needed to tell the public so they wouldn't panic? Was the Princess aware that three mares had been found fainted dead away together an hour ago and it was all her fault?

"Twilight, dear?" Rarity shouted to her over the babble. "The next time I tell you I want to be surrounded by ponies everywhere I go, please be certain I'm leaving the word 'entourage' out?"

"What's wrong with you guys?" Rainbow Dash gleefully questioned at the top of her lungs. "This is awesome! We've deserved this since Nightmare Moon! The world is finally playing catch-up -- let it give you everything you want! Okay, who wants my autograph?" And that got her an immediate flood of you're-not-the-Princess, who-are-you-anyways, and one what-for-opening-another-jar? "Jerks... hey, Twilight! Get up here and take a look down the street! I think there's more coming!"

Spike groaned. "Twilight, I don't want you to worry or anything, but dragon flame? I can't do it forever. If I don't get some gems pretty soon, I'm going to run out..."

"Do not even look at my saddlebags, Spike!" Rarity called out. "At least not until you're down to twenty percent or so! And then start with the spicule emerald!"

"-- an' you over there? Fine!" There was a very loud splat. "One cheap camera, one free apple! We're even!"

"...oh, where's the carriage?" Fluttershy whimpered. "Please, please tell me the carriage is coming..."

"Can't see it from here!" Rainbow Dash called down. "Twilight, what time did the Princess give you for pickup?"

"She didn't!" Twilight yelled up. "Just that we all had to be in front of the library, and then --"

As it turned out, and then was right now.

It was Twilight's first night back, and she had a 'flying buddy' appointment in the morning. Rainbow Dash wanted to see what kind of 'moves' she had come into her wings with, along with "Showing you some things -- you know, just rookie stuff, pure filly food, nothing I won't teach Scootaloo once she gets up and going, except that she's got all that midair experience on her scooter and you don't, so maybe a little below that... or more... But we've got to get you up there for more than a little sightseeing! Besides, you've never seen me work from close up -- if you can keep up with me -- which you can't, but we'll work something out..."

Twilight knew what this was about, of course -- the same thing it was so often about.

Books could be written about Rainbow Dash's ego. (Twilight had thought about it. Four volumes' worth of 'about it', which would come back to haunt her about three weeks later. She had finally dismissed the idea as insulting to her friend.) Dash had to be the best at the most important things there were -- speed, racing, coolness, awesomeness, radicalness, and presumably being able to tell those last three apart. Having the top position in her chosen fields was an absolute. And as for everything else? Ponies could outrank her for skill in anything -- as long as that thing was 'lame'. How did something become 'lame'? In Twilight's view, it happened by having anypony be better at it than Rainbow Dash.

Fluttershy could do things with animals which Twilight had never seen matched and might even be a better herder than Applejack if she could just force herself to do something so forceful as group direction -- so hanging around with critters? Was 'lame'. Rarity -- and to some degree, Pinkie Pie, although it didn't manifest as openly or often -- could work out the social dynamics of a group just by walking in and listening for a few minutes: who ranked and where, sometimes who owed what to whom and how desperately. 'Lame': just impose your own personality on the place instead of reading everypony else's! Dresses? Slowed you down in the air: lame. Apple farming? Any job where you couldn't sleep in (even when you shouldn't) was lame. Parties? Not lame, but geez, Pinkie, get a few new themes, I could do this better than you if I really wanted to! And Twilight, sure, you've got magic, but where does that magic come from? Books. And books? Are lame. Do I need to say more? And then she would. For hours. It was easy to get sick of, and Twilight often thought that the Mare Do-Well hoax had truly come about because five ponies had collectively, almost silently decided they needed to show the sixth what it was like to be on the receiving end of the 'lame' for a change by forcing her to come in second.

But...

...shortly after it had happened, she had watched Rainbow Dash flying back home. The cyan pegasus had been moving more slowly than usual, looking down at the passing ponies below. As if looking for somepony to glance up and declare joy at her presence -- while knowing it wouldn't happen. Might never happen again. And then she'd put on a burst of speed and vanished before anypony could catch her checking -- anypony she knew about.

Twilight had watched that, and thought about how she'd been in school shortly before Nightmare Moon. When her studies were all. When she'd shifted much more towards treating Spike as live-in labor than the little brother she'd helped raise for years. When nothing was as important as the next book -- in fact, nothing else was important at all. When the mere concept of making friends was stupid, pointless, a total waste of her time, absolute frivolity which could never have a purpose to it and only hurt the real thing in her life. If you had pressed that particular Twilight for the lowest-level vocabulary she could use on the topic, that unicorn would have ultimately said that friendship was --

-- lame.

And if you looked under all the protests and excuses, she would have said that for one and only one true reason: because she was terrified she would have failed. Known she'd be no good at it. That any attempt would have ended in laughter directed at her, and she would have earned every peal.

She had been Dash's friend for over a year at that time. She hadn't started to understand the pegasus until she'd seen that rainbow trail vanishing across the sky. And she still wondered what had happened in Dash's life to make her treat everything as a case of first place or no point. Another question unasked -- this time on purpose.

Rainbow Dash had changed, slowly. Books had entered her life (although non-fiction was so totally lame -- oooh, wait, is that a book about pegasus military tactics across the ages? Maybe there's some awesome maneuvers in there which everypony else forgot about! Any way I could maybe have that for two weeks?), and suddenly writing wasn't lame. She had opened her heart to Tank, and now animals were sort of not lame and there was one tortoise who was so totally cool that only she could properly appreciate (and see) it. Is that outfit really going to cut down on my wind resistance? Awesome! And so on down the line. And Twilight had changed, too -- she had learned that there were times when she should let Rainbow Dash show her up a little. At least on one or two subjects. (The placement of the asp-asked-trophy would not be one of them.) Twilight had acquired wings. Rainbow Dash had to be better at using her own. So it would go.

But it didn't mean she was above a little late-night practice in the name of giving the expert a little 'yes, and I took fifth place that time too' surprise...

Twilight had unfurled her wings, flapped a few experimental times, and calmly stepped off her porch.

Once the pain had died down to a background Day Of The Pinkie Sense level, she had forced herself to go back up and try it again.

And again.

By morning, she was sending Owlowiscious up with a note saying she couldn't make it, had to postpone, Princess stuff, they'd reschedule for later, and she hadn't been sure when 'later' would manifest. All she knew was that --

-- she was in trouble.

A single whimper. A lone shout. Two exclamations of delight: Pinkie and Rarity. Spike sitting down heavily, with a few of his scales smoking. And a moan from Applejack. "Ah think -- oh, Celestia, Ah think Ah'm gonna be sick and Ah can't do it here..."

Typically, Rainbow Dash had recovered faster than anypony. "Twilight, that was actually cool! -- just don't get into the habit because couriers need jobs, okay? Wow! All seven of us over that distance? I thought you might get a few extra tricks when the wings showed up, but I didn't think any of your old ones were gonna get a boost!" She paused halfway past a brilliant rock crystal mounting, one which was adding extra rainbows to her coat. "Did anypony else have any weird memories in that middle there? I was at that one lunch... hey, see that blank spot over there? That? Is where my picture's gonna be! I'm going to go measure it out!" And she did, having some visible trouble keeping her hat in place.

Fluttershy had managed to uncurl and immediately flew over to Applejack. "...is there anything I can do?"

The farmer shook her head, looked even more queasy after the motion. Applejack cautiously brought a hoof up, made sure her hat was still there. Its presence seemed to reassure her. "No, it's okay, Fluttershy. Ah just -- Ah can't explain it, but Ah'm better now. Or Ah will be if Ah can jus' stay still... Twilight, Ah appreciate that y'can do that now and y'kind of want to, Ah can even understand it with that crowd an' all, but some warnin' first would have been nice..."

"It wasn't me."

Rarity froze in the middle of what was going to be a congratulatory pose. "...it wasn't? But the teleport is your trick. And darling, not to be unkind, but you've done it without entirely meaning to before."

"I'm not the only pony who can do it. I've seen Princess Celestia do it, I've heard of plenty of others -- and I've never tried to move that kind of mass over that much distance," Twilight insisted. "And I always try not to teleport with Spike unless I absolutely have to: something between doesn't react well with his scales and if I don't remember to shield him first -- well..." Her horn inclined towards the little dragon, who still had little curls of black vapor coming off his shoulders. "Plus I know when I've cast a spell. That -- wasn't me."

"So the Princess brought us in?" Spike asked. "This must be really important."

"No, she didn't." -- and the words came from Rarity and Twilight at the same moment. They looked at each other, decided to postpone the jinx.

Fluttershy, of all ponies: "...but... how do you know?"

Another awkward look between the unicorns (one current, one sort of former): the white one took it. "It didn't -- feel like her," Rarity said. "There's a certain -- feeling... I'm sorry, Fluttershy, I don't mean to sound insensitive by talking about an ability you lack, but there's a sense you get with a horn, at least with some of us. I'm hardly anywhere near the best with it, but I've been near Celestia a few times when she's been working magic, and she's so powerful that I can't help but feel her. And she feels like nothing else in the world. I thought it was Twilight bringing us because she'd never done anything on that scale before and what with becoming an alicorn, I thought her -- feel had changed."

"...I'm not offended..."

Twilight was looking around. "There are times I've known it's about to be morning just because I can feel her raising the Sun. Mostly when we're in Canterlot overnight. I attended one Celebration when I was young, and I've always been able to pick the Princess out when she's working, ever since... This wasn't her." There had been this strange -- underlayer...

"Luna, then?" Rarity proposed.

"It's possible -- I'm not as familiar with her work and the one time I felt her teleport, she was -- you know -- wasn't Luna yet. But it still didn't feel like her..."

"So..." Rarity cautiously asked, "where are they?"

"I don't know..."

Pinkie was pronking about. "Look! There's the first one of us, and -- that's you, Twilight! And we're with you! Kind of small, though..."

Guess who heard that. "What? Twilight has one almost all to herself? That's it: I'm going to demand some equal time! What's hers showing, The Invention Of Eggheading?"

Pinkie didn't bother answering that: she'd already moved further down. (Although Spike did, shouting out, "No, but there's one of you after that trick you tried three moons ago. It's The Invention Of Traction!") It was left to the others to close in on the newest stained glass portrait in the Hall Of Legends.

Me. Me in the middle of them and yes, noticeably larger than they are. I'm being hit with rays of light from them, and my wings are unfurling. Transformation. Change. Ascension. Mistake --

"And here's the one with Discord," Pinkie cheerfully called down the Hall with its portraits of heroes and horrors, events which had changed Equestria, some now known only by those portraits to the casual viewer, a few which Twilight had never gotten the chance to research and kept meaning to catch up on, giving every figure in the Hall its rightful name. "And here's the other one with Discord..."

"You have no idea how annoying that is. It's like being released from prison and stepping out into a room full of Wanted posters. Oh, you may have changed, you may have reformed, but here's every reminder of what we consider to be your crimes, and they get shoved in my newly-innocent face every time I enter this Hall. It's the permanent record. It never goes away. And yet there is no portrait showing my reform, and I? Have to question why that is, I really do. Is it because no pony thinks it's going to be -- permanent?"

Six of them froze.

No...

"Oh, yes," Discord said, "Welcome, welcome, welcome -- to you and you and you -- and most especially you, Fluttershy." The stained glass peeled off the window, gained dimension and weight as the sunlight streamed away from it... "The only pony here who moves towards me. Everypony else has their muscles and wings and horns and all three for you completely lock up, but the one among you whom you see as the weakest comes directly to me..." He reached out a now-solid talon, scritched the coral mane. "...without fear. There's a lesson in that, if anypony has the courage to write a letter about it."

Fluttershy looked up at him, eyes welcoming -- but a little uncertain. "Did you..."

"Oh, yes." Sounding amused. He so often sounded amused, and the joke was always on them... "That was me: I brought you here. Really, I'd think you'd have enough experience with my style of magic to have the feel of it -- but then, it's always hard, getting a sense of The Other, isn't it, Twilight? I can create a scroll without issue and the little loops a certain Sun-raising killjoy puts into some of her letters are no trouble at all, but I'd think you would have learned to tell when I make something -- or apparently not. Well, you'll have time to work on that, I suppose. Potentially lots of time... oh, don't give me that look, Fluttershy. This is a perfectly acceptable means of gathering. It's a tradition. A letter gets sent from the palace and you all? Come. And here you are. My good and only friend, Fluttershy. Twilight Sparkle, new limbs and all -- how do those feel, by the way? Any cramps in new muscles? Rarity, looking stunningly underdressed for the occasion. Pinkie Pie, who has yet to throw me a welcoming party. Applejack, who wouldn't dream of catering it. Rainbow Dash, so upset that I get more picture space than she does. And -- the other Rainbow Dash. Don't get greedy for my attention, young one: we all know how that works out. Welcome to all of you, whether you want to believe it -- or not."

Spike was bristling: his normally even-lying scales were beginning to angle up just enough for Twilight to see. Rainbow Dash was angry enough to be searching for a target. Twilight herself was trying to remember every offensive spell she knew at once. And he made us leave the Elements behind! Rarity's visible tension would have normally resulted in a six-hour spa visit with the option to overnight. Applejack had been caught searching for something she could kick: right behind Rainbow Dash on that option and with no thought to clamping the other's tail. Pinkie Pie didn't have a laugh in her. And Fluttershy --

-- was patient. Not completely trusting? Arguably -- but trust was there.

She believed in Discord. More than anypony. And she had been the one he had attacked directly, gone into her head, Applejack had used the lasso because Fluttershy (or Flutterbitch, as they'd joked later -- painfully) had attacked them, sent her animal friends in a wave which the farmer had been unable to herd away, too many targets for Twilight to field-effect at once, she had nearly taken them out before Applejack had gotten the rope through the swirling mass of birds and pulled her out of the air. The effect had gone so deep...

She trusted him.

Celestia trusted him enough to let him stay loose.

Twilight didn't understand why. And frankly, didn't want to. "You have no authority to summon us!" she yelled. (Her own volume surprised her: it echoed off the stone, the glass, touched her own portrait and changed to a deeper note.) "You counterfeited a royal sending, and you are not royalty!"

"I used to be," Discord calmly replied. A crown flickered into existence on his head, took on a rakish angle across the antler. "Ruler of all ponies, and so much else besides. What -- no great-great-great-don't-bother-counting grandfather clause for the old prince?"

"We took you out once!" Rainbow Dash declared. "We can do it again if we have to!"

Fluttershy glanced back, and her eyes were hurt. "...Rainbow Dash, he just called us -- and... um..." She looked up at Discord again, then back at her friends. "Would any of you have come -- if you knew he was calling you? Even after Celestia said he's okay?"

The other six stopped. Looked at each other. Almost tried to look anywhere that wasn't the Celestia-freed and declared-reformed Discord.

No. Fluttershy would have. They would not.

"And they say Twilight's the smart one," Discord groused. (The grouse in question was rather surprised to find itself existing, took a second for evaluating the matter, and then took off down the hall at its best possible speed before its creator changed his mind.) "All the things she can't figure out, they still say she's the smart one -- and yet Fluttershy beats her to it again. I say let this one wear two Elements: see how that works out for the group. Twilight's so busy, anyway... Yes, I tricked you. I'm Discord: hello! A harmless jest through the infinite between space, I knew it, Element-Bearers. And here you all are -- unhurt, in a place you know, with your precious rulers a yell for help away. If I had wanted to, I could have pulled you to much more interesting places. This land has volcanoes, you know. The heat -- nothing to me. I can have a meeting on top of lava if I want to. You? Well, I suspect Rainbow Dash Number Two would rather enjoy the soak under normal circumstances, but swimming through your ashes might put a certain taint -- on the experience?"

"So yer expectin' us t' thank you -- for not killin' us?" Applejack got out with significant effort. Her teeth were clenched, her fur raised, tail lashing in all directions...

"A little appreciation for the common courtesies is of course welcome," Discord replied. A small gold star attached itself to Applejack's hat: she angrily hoof-scraped it off. "And I will take that as thanks regardless of whether it was meant as such. I know your limits, earth pony -- but does anypony else?"

Applejack's nostrils were fully flared now, all legs spread, ready to kick or charge. Pony tails were flicking all over the Hall. All but one.

"...he wouldn't have called us without a really good reason... not just for a joke... not with what the Princesses would do..."

And Discord -- nodded.

Just nodded.

Nothing appeared. Nothing vanished. Nothing changed.

A simple nod.

"Yes."

Twilight had no response. Five others found no words of their own.

Fluttershy looked up at him again. Back to the others.

"...I think... we at least have to listen."

More sunlight streamed through the hall. It never quite reached Discord, moving away from him in visible rays to break up into rainbows of shadow and sound. And yet there was still light.

He was standing. Still. None of the mismatched parts were moving. He wasn't talking. The red eyes gazed at Twilight, the blinks coming normally. No staring contest here, just --

-- Discord.

Waiting.

"Let's say -- just for the bucking Tartarus of it..." It felt good to curse. Twilight had never cursed in the palace. She was a Princess: she had to at least get that from the word. "...that I'm willing to give you a few seconds before I do yell for the Princesses and they summon the Elements here before you can get a single chocolate milk cloud going." (Pinkie softly moaned.) "If the others agree."

Rarity. "I had to put up with Blueblood for hours. I can give him two minutes. Possibly three."

Fluttershy. "Yes."

Applejack. "Only, and Ah mean only, if the stone option is back on the board!"

Pinkie Pie. "I..." Her effect had gone nearly as deep as Fluttershy's. "I... not for long."

Spike. "Say the word and I'll burn him, Twilight. I swear I will..." His voice was shaking, his knees and spines and everything was shaking, he knew it would do no good and he was still holding his ground...

Rainbow Dash. "Fine, but I get to blast him first."

"It seems," Twilight said slowly, "that we have a consensus. So why, Discord? Why did you summon us?"

"For the same reason she would summon you," Discord told her. "I have a mission for you."

"No. You. Do. NOT!"

And the fear broke, the tension began to drain away, they were saved, everything would be all right, they had held out for long enough...

Discord sighed, looked as put-upon as his features possibly could have managed, manifested a KICK ME. KICK ME HARD! sign on his back, front, and sides. "Of course," he sighed again. "Naturally. Perfect timing. I finally get them to the point where they're willing to listen to me for a few precious seconds and what do I get? The namby-pamby Grimcess. Well -- one of them. The pambier. Dear sweet you, Celestia, do you have any idea how hard it is to get through those skulls? Especially with the orange and blue ones? You could have given me two more minutes, but no, you just had to come in and ruin the party just when it was truly about to get started. I'm learning new habits: a thousand years and you haven't even picked up one. Can we just rename 'Equestria' to 'Dullsville'? Here, let's try it out..."

A glowing sign appeared over Celestia's head: PRINCESS OF DULLSVILLE: POPULATION: YOU.

It caught fire. Turned to ash. The flames didn't even last long enough for anypony to feel the heat. The Princess glared at Discord. That raised the temperature of the Hall. "I gave you a lot of freedom, Discord --"

"You gave me a very long leash. I am perfectly aware of who's holding the other end."

"-- but you have no authority in this matter. None."

"I have not gone where I wasn't invited. Oh, I'm sure there was a lovely coronation which I completely missed, with lots of musical numbers and something vaguely approaching dancing..."

A long pause.

He stared at her. "You let me come out -- for a reason. You gave me a chance -- for a reason."

"Yes," Celestia agreed. "I did." Her left front hoof came down: the marble underneath discolored. "And is this it?"

The fallen prince and ruling Princess looked at each other across a millennium and more.

"...no. It is not."

Furiously, "Then --"

Softly, oh so very still. "It is -- important."

The Hall went silent.

"Important to you," Celestia said after several long seconds, "is not necessarily important to Equestria. If you wish to talk to me about this --"

"-- no." And that was petulant. "Important to me. My mission. It is for the good of Equestria, it is necessary, but -- mine. You have no part in this. You cannot have a part in this. You don't understand..."

"What I understand," Celestia told him, her voice molten fire, "is that you have no authority over any pony, and even less over the Element-Bearers. I am sorely tempted to put you back where you came from, Discord. You do not rule here, and I will not let you hurt them. You cannot assign missions. You will not put them at risk. I will not let you send them into danger. And I can stop you..."

"No, sister."

As one -- Discord included -- they all turned to face the other end of the Hall.

Luna's arrival had been silent. Nothing else about her was. "You are wrong. There is a way he can do this, and you are not thinking of it. Perhaps you do not wish to."

The glow which had been building around Celestia's horn dimmed, the flowing colors of her mane twisted against their borders. "Luna, this is not the time --"

"This? Is the perfect time, sister." The other ponies might as well not have been there. Even Discord seemed to be ignored, which might have been the reason he momentarily doubled his size just to see if anypony would notice and, when no pony responded, shrank back down again. "I hold half the throne. I am the night: you are the day and the day alone once again. I have more than a right to be heard: I have a duty. He did bring them here where we would see and hear what was done. Everything out in the open, and we both picked up on every word. You simply waited until you decided you could stand no more. I waited until I had something to say."

Discord spread out his mismatched arms towards her. "Ah, Luna -- listening to the voice of reason instead of the other --"

"Shut up."

He shut up.

Luna looked down the long Hall at her older sister. Dozens of yards separated them, and that was the least of it. "If I had called them -- would you be here, supervising to make certain I said or assigned nothing you would see as wrong?"

"Luna --"

"Would you?"

They all heard the lightning, high overhead and still seemingly only inches away, saw Luna's eyes go white.

Celestia's tail was flowing faster now as well. Her voice gave no answer. The eyes seemed to plead.

(Discord was inches high, pretending to hide behind Fluttershy's mane.)

"A matter for another time," Luna softly said as the dark blue returned to her gaze. "You are right, sister -- and you are wrong. Discord has no authority over the Element-Bearers or any other pony, not until you let the last of the leash go. He cannot assign them a mission, certainly not with conjured scrolls and faked words. But he has a way. He can ask them -- as a friend. And if he does, and they should say yes -- how could you stop them? It goes against everything you believe, everything you teach. All he has to do is ask. They can listen and say yes or no as they like. Or you could order them not to listen, or send them away before they could hear a word -- and then what would you be?"

There were no words for the silence which descended on the Hall. It was the not-sound of thought, of a logic trap snapping shut with jaws which would never be pried open, of a very old mare looking back at the philosophy which had ruled her life and considering whether it was time to violate it.

"Discord." He took his full size back, looked at Celestia. "Speak. Quickly."

The draconequus turned to face Fluttershy, dropped to one knee, took her left front hoof in his paw. Looked at her soft blue-green eyes and nothing else.

"I -- need your help," he said. "There is something -- which needs to be done. You are the ones -- who can do it. Will you?"

She trembled. She shook. Wings half-unfurled, vibrated, curled back in towards her body.

"...yes."

He looked back at the rest of the group. Luna's wings spread, covered them in protective shadow. "And will you," he asked softly, "leave her to do it alone?"

Twilight wondered if her mane was on fire. Oh, he learned about friendship, all right! He learned how to grab one link in the chain and use it to pull all the rest along! If we had her alone, we might be able to talk her out of it, get some sense into her, get out of this, but she's going to go for him, she's going to risk everything and this stallion she's missing out on seeing, he probably bucks just as much, Fluttershy has the worst taste in friends ever and I am one of her friends and I am going to stop this train of thought right here.

The Element-Bearers, caught without Elements, caught without a response -- five ponies caught, in fact, by the short hairs plus one small dragon by the smallest scales -- looked at each other. Looked for a way out.

Found nothing.

"We go?" Twilight asked the others. Saw what she needed to see. Everything she wished she hadn't. "We -- go."

"Excellent!" And Discord was back on his uneven feet, beaming, light coming off him in waves. "So Celestia, Luna -- I believe this would now be my show. Feel free to keep listening -- in fact, even if you should for some unimaginable reason leave, I think you'll find a very nice transcript going on right in front of your eyes. I've gotten so good at your writing: it's a shame not to keep it up... Now, let's see -- the rules. Since we're doing this the pony way, there have to be rules. And here's the first one -- the one I already gave you: no Elements. -- oh, wipe that look off your face, Celestia: consider it advice if it'll give you any comfort. They will not solve this. They would, in fact, only make it worse."

"How can you be sure?" Rarity just barely managed to demand.

"Again: hello! I'm Discord!" He laughed. It was not kind. "I'm the living embodiment of chaos and you're the unicorn with the rock and hoof fetishes along with an accent more put-on than your eyelashes! And now that we know each other again -- no Elements, ladies -- and gent. Oh, and that brings us to Rule Two, which I also already gave you, generous deposed prince that I am. It's the seven of you this time. The poor little lad hasn't gotten out much: I think it's well past time to change that." Spike was still trembling, still trying to draw himself up to his full height. It still wasn't doing much. "Rule Three: it is just the seven of you -- to start. You may recruit any help you like when you get there from anypony you choose. In fact, you may recruit any help you can. But you think locally to act globally. You do not call back to Canterlot. Lady Light Of The No-Party and The Darkness Which Dares Not Brush Its Mane are staying home." He looked to each sister in turn. "Because you would never interfere in the missions you gave, would you? So for the favor I have asked as a friend -- one which was granted -- you will kindly keep your wings and horns out of it. This is a one-alicorn operation."

"Discord," Luna said, her voice now too soft for anypony's comfort, "you presume."

"No," he replied. "I ask. Because -- it is necessary. And besides, I am playing this your way. You do not interfere when you do this. I have not interfered since I was -- 'freed' -- now have I? Shall we pretend to consistency?"

The Princesses looked at each other. "Continue," Celestia said, and more of the marble discolored around her.

"Oh, Celestia, so gracious of you. Of course, judging by what happened during that whole changeling fiasco, you could use the rest, seriously, beaten by a bug with a codependency complex..."

Blasphemy, he speaks blasphemy in front of them and they allow it...

"Well," Discord said, rubbing paw and talon together. "That would be all the rules! See? That didn't take long. Now -- shall we get started?"

"...um... Discord?" He looked down at the yellow pegasus. "...you didn't say -- what we're supposed... to do."

"Oh, right! Silly of me! Well, we're doing this the pony way, so..." He leaned in, his size increasing as he did so until his head was large enough to loom over all of them at once, allowing a true group false whisper. "You're going to go do something that I, with all my power, could seemingly accomplish all by myself with practically no effort on my part. But instead, I'm sending a bunch of considerably lesser strengths out there for reasons which I will not explain and allowing my quasi-omnipotent self to take a nap while everypony else deals with all the trouble." He glanced back at Celestia, adjusted the lampshade resting on his head. "That's about right, isn't it?"

The Solar Princess said nothing. There was no white marble left within a radius of ten feet.

Luna's wings spread wider: darkness and stars began to swirl around her horn. "There are many things my sister is which I am not, Discord. Such as -- patient. Reach your point."

"Oh, the point..." He returned to his normal size and snapped his talons: no white light bloomed. "The point of arrival! Very well. I will not send you to the beginning. You'll get there at the start of the middle. It will be your job to find the beginning on your own and then use it to help reach the end. Everypony's clear on that?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Good! Now, mission supplies... one earth pony, one pegasus, one unicorn, one dragon. Also one Pinkie Pie, one Fluttershy, and the one and only, thank goodness, Twilight Sparkle. That should about do it. So if we're all ready to be on your merry ways..."

"...we're not... getting anything?" Fluttershy's eyes seemed larger than usual: the moisture from the tears served as a magnifying lens. "That's all you're going to tell us, isn't it? You're not giving us any help, or any information, or anything at all -- not even for a friend..."

He knelt again, took her left front hoof in his paw a second time. "I can't," he said simply. "This is the instruction, dear Fluttershy: there is something wrong, and you will go and do your best to fix it. You will know something is wrong. It may take more looking for some than others, but in time -- you'll all see it. I can't give you anything more than that. Not if we're playing it this way."

"...you're -- sure?"

"Certain..." And then he blinked. "But! Wait! Yes, let's try the reverse of it! I will give you nothing, Fluttershy, nothing for any of you -- but I will take one thing away."

And that brought back a flood of horrible memories to join the ocean already washing about the Hall.

"Don't even think about grabbing my wings again, freakface!"

"My horn..."

My -- and Twilight found herself wondering if she would try to stop him should he reach for her wings.

"Again, because it doesn't seem to have sunk in: reformed! Seriously, Princesses, do you see how hard these skulls are?" The KICK ME signs came back. "No, this is something -- different." The talons snapped against each other.

A tiny blue bubble appeared just over the claws. Drifted like the most fragile soap film down through the air, came to rest against the nape of Fluttershy's neck.

"That," Discord told her, "will be invisible in a few seconds, and no power known to unicorns will detect it once it fades. It can't be seen, felt, or confiscated. But it will stay where it is until you decide to use it. And when you do, you may make one thing --- go away, never to return. Any one thing of your choosing. I'll know when you want it, and I will make it so -- or unmake it so. Your decision, Fluttershy. I trust you to make the right one."

"...but... if I made a pony go away..."

"Is that something you would do?" Another look at the others as Fluttershy began to tremble again, the shivering beginning to approach the point of spasm. "Oh, you would, I know... you would hate yourself all your days for it, you would cry yourself to sleep on those rare nights you could sleep at all. If it was the one thing you needed to do in order to save somepony, you would do it..."

"You're hurting her!" Pinkie Pie, breaking her own personal silence record. "You know she can't --!"

"-- she can. She will. The responsibility is hers alone."

And not even the Princesses could speak.

"Something has happened," Discord softly said. "More things will happen. Unless the seven of you stop it. That is the mission. Now go do something about it."

The talons stretched out, raised up.

"Good luck -- my little ponies..."

Two of them made contact.

Landscape

there is no ground

there is no earth

there is no ground

there is no earth

no rock below me

no foundation holding up the sky

there is only nothing

and it is everywhere

and everything

there is no ground

there is no earth

and ah am lost

Twilight never heard the snap. Never heard anything in the between. The next sound she was aware of came from a friend, and it was that of a mare being very noisily sick all over the --

-- where are we?

Other priorities came first. "APPLEJACK!", and that was echoed from Rarity (who had been closest) and Fluttershy (although much softer). Twilight took it from there. "Did Discord do something to you?" She ignored the resulting squeak from Fluttershy. "What's wrong?"

"Ah... oh, no..." Another heave: this one brought up nothing but extra stomach cramps. "Ah... don't think Ah do well with teleports, Twi... really don't think that at'tall..."

Twilight immediately looked around, gave up a few seconds for checking the others. Spike was -- yes, as expected: he would be sending up plumes for at least a minute and this time, even his elbows were involved. Pinkie Pie was rocking a bit from side to side as if trying to work out which was which -- but it stopped almost as soon as Twilight saw it. The others were fine. "Based on how long we were between, this one was a greater distance..." Actually, lectures weren't really going to help anypony right now. "Applejack, is there anything we can do?"

"Jus' time, Twi... and promise y'won't do that t' me unless you've absolutely gotta..."

"I won't," Twilight immediately promised. She'd never seen a reaction like that! Was Applejack somehow allergic to between, similar to the way Spike was -- just something internal? "Rest for a few minutes."

"Take all the time you like," Rainbow Dash said. "I don't think four of us are going anywhere without being carried."

And that was her cue to look around again.

The ravine cut deep through grey and brown stone. It was easily ten Celests to the top edge on either side, those sides slanted down harshly: a sixty-degree angle at least -- and the walls displayed little in the way of the wide, closely staggered, and frequent ledges which would make them suitable for climbing -- as in 'nothing'. (Ponies are horrible at climbing. Their legs don't orient naturally for wrap-and-shimmy, won't push if the position is forced. Rope-and-pulley arrangements require the equipment and somepony at the top. Hoofs don't fit in narrow cracks where claws might find purchase. Pegasi seldom have to consider the issue and the other two races generally wind up hoping never to encounter it. A unicorn -- one who can't self-levitate or teleport -- stuck in a hole too wide to brace opposing legs against is in variable-depth trouble.) What ledges there were tended to be too narrow for hooves and sharp-looking besides. There was tight-packed earth at the very top, with a few tree roots -- a very few -- poking out the sides. Amazingly few, really, given that the trees at that level were so thick: there barely seemed room to squeeze a pony body through, although Spike would have had less trouble. Pines: Twilight could see that from here, all tilted away on an odd angle, as if they could not stand to face the crack in the land. There was very little else in the way of tree species.

The place certainly knew water, though. They were on a bank about fourteen feet wide, an abrupt leveling out at the bottom of the slide -- and then came a river, forty feet across at least, rushing forward at a speed Twilight had never seen level water moving in. The water radiated cold, smelled of nothing except itself. Turn around, and the source vanished into the rock about fifty feet behind them. Look across, and there was a second bank, slightly more narrow. (Fortunately, all of them had arrived on the same side -- and not quite in the positions relative to each other they'd started in.) Forward -- more of the ravine. An easy hundred feet, maybe a hundred and ten or more, and then the water vanished into the stone again just before the shadows clustered off to the right. That shading gave her some indication of the Sun's relative position, and she looked up...

"A much greater distance," Twilight softly said. "I'm pretty sure we're still in Equestria, but unless Discord moved us in time --" oh, please tell me he can't do that... "-- we went east. Really far east. We might be a few days' gallop from the coast."

"Ah've -- if you're thinkin' about it, ah've seen the ocean, Twi. It's not all it's cracked up t' be." Applejack took a step, tested her footing, looked around at the ravine's walls. She seemed less ill than she had on arrival -- but not by much. The farmer still appeared to be deeply shaken. "Too much movin' around..." A longer survey. Another step. "Ah want -- Ah want out of here. Somethin' --" and visibly stopped herself. Backed up, both physically and verbally. "Why would Discord put us here?"

"Comedy," Twilight darkly proposed. "Fluttershy, I know you trust him and I know you're trying to help -- what's wrong?" Because with Applejack's crisis seeming to have mostly passed (although there was a residual tension to her which wasn't going away), the yellow pegasus was trembling on the ground, small tears running down her cheeks. What isn't wrong, Twilight? She's just been wrenched across whole gallops of land, you've been speaking against someone -- not and never 'somepony' -- she considers to be a friend, she was just given the ability to erase a pony from the world and guess how well she's probably dealing with that, and by the way, there's also this mission which she got us into and if I start blaming her for it...

Twilight stopped and tried to back up emotionally before everything went too far, with very limited success. (Almost none.) More softly, "Fluttershy?"

"...they were fighting... the Princesses... I know it was Luna, it was just Luna, but they were fighting..." Genuinely upset, latching onto that for a source of sadness out of so many possible choices. "..I know they don't hate each other, but I just wanted everything to be fixed..."

"It was a long time, dear," Rarity gently said, coming closer and rubbing against Fluttershy's shivering flank. "There's -- rather a lot to fix. A single rainbow can do a lot, but it can't do everything."

Twilight, with far too much Discord to think about at the time, had almost lost it in the flood of events. The Princesses -- fighting. It was a blow against an already-shaken psyche. More Luna than Celestia, certainly, Celestia had pretty much just been on the receiving end, but -- fighting. Not like rulers, not as Sun and Moon. As --

-- sisters.

She took a deep breath. It did nothing. She took two more. They voted the same way as the original.

"Everypony, just take a few minutes," she told the group. "Rainbow Dash is right -- we're not going anywhere just yet. Since there's no visible crisis here at the moment, we can afford the time. The start of the middle..." She hadn't expected to suddenly figure out what it meant just by repeating it and as expected, it didn't happen. Her first right call of the mission.

"I can start evacuating right now, Twilight!" Rainbow Dash called down: she was about a third of the way up the left wall. Judging by the way she kept adjusting her new hat into ever-jauntier poses, she might have been inspecting for traps. "If you, me, and Fluttershy kick in, it's two trips! One if Spike rides one of us on the way up!"

Spike, for his part, had finally stopped smoking. "Fluttershy, are you okay to fly?" And then what Twilight had dreaded: a look at her, with the same question clearly forming on the reptile tongue. Oh Celestia, she had been keeping that secret from everypony -- and one dragon. He thought she could fly...

Fluttershy bought her a few seconds. "...yes... it's just... hard to see them like that."

Twilight purchased the opportunity with every bit she had. "I know," cutting off Spike before her sibling could begin. "We get so used to thinking of them as -- the Princesses -- that..." And the next words tasted like a personal flavor of blasphemy. "...we don't think of them as ponies..."

...just like what's happening to me. The wrong thoughts, given a portal, began to crowd through while bringing three weeks' worth of friends.

Pinkie Pie shook her head. "Sisters fight! That's all. I fought with mine! Well -- they fought with me. A lot. Sometimes a lot a lot. So Luna got a little angry. Everypony's backside is ungobbled! Twilight -- are you okay? You still look kind of -- well -- mad."

"Mad?"

A straw doesn't have to be the last one. It just has to land on the right sore spot of a back that's already far too burdened with weight.

"Yes, I'm mad! Fluttershy, please don't take this personally, I know you think of him as a friend, but Discord just put us out here in the middle of nowhere, we're in a ravine for Luna's sake, we don't know where we are and before anypony asks, I don't know any where-am-I spells because I usually don't get teleported into unknown places by jerkass entities of chaos, we don't know what we're supposed to do except that it's Discord and my first instinct is to find out whatever he thinks is wrong and make it worse! We're on a bucking mission from Discord and dear Celestia, Pinkie, why are you wearing sunglasses?"

"Because there's Sun in my --"

"I don't even care! I still don't know what we're supposed to do and the sunglasses aren't helping! I don't have a place to start! I have a middle! We're stuck here because --" and she couldn't stop it "-- Fluttershy apparently needs two minotaurs in order to say 'Why?' or 'I don't have enough information' or maybe, how about this for an idea, 'No' when the other bucking option just stands a chance of getting everypony killed and I don't want to --"

The water soaked every inch of her, matted down her mane, left her tail drooping, worked into her wings and refused to leave. Her bangs were in her eyes. So was water. Steam was coming off her horn.

Five long horrible seconds of silence (broken only by the soft sound of Fluttershy sobbing) passed before she could force herself to look up.

Rainbow Dash was standing on top of the hastily-grabbed small cloud, glaring at her. The same way she had glared at Discord. "Are we done, Princess?" the cyan pegasus demanded. "Got all of that out of your system? All Canterlot Royal Voiced for now? Anypony else you'd like to make cry today?"

Oh no. Oh no, oh please Celestia, Luna, no, please don't let them, Applejack looks so angry and Pinkie Pie won't move, Fluttershy's crying so hard and Rarity is furious, Spike won't even look at me...

...please don't let them hate me...

...they're all I have left...

Her face was so wet.

Her eyes were so --

-- and then she was on the ground next to Fluttershy, front legs over the pegasus' shoulders, openly weeping into the soft coral mane. "I'm sorry I'm sorry oh Celestia Fluttershy I'm so sorry I don't want you hurt any of you I just don't know what we're doing and I'm scared --"

Warm yellow wings unfurled, reached forward as best they could, wrapped her in the warmth of a friendship unbroken.

And then there was a pile of ponies (and dragon) on the bottom of the ravine, huddled together against the unknown.

It equaled the most pony voices she had ever heard at one time: three. And on this occasion, none of those voices were her own.

They were pegasi: there was no doubt about that. They were standing on a low-resting grey cloud which was just barely visible above the treeline. She could not see them through it, and they would not have seen her had they poked their heads through the vapor's bottom edge: she was too well-concealed. But there were voices, and they were talking about things. Topics which were not subjects. There were no lessons being taught overhead: just discussions of -- life.

They spoke of sports. (She knew of a few, knew their rules and in a couple of cases, old players and records, only in those areas where talents might have figured in.) Which teams were placing where, who was going to play next week and consideration of the playoffs next moon. There was a brief verbal tussle over the food they had brought with them, who had packed the jam and not brought enough for three. A quick game was played to determine who would go without: the loser fumed and used words she had been told only to bring out on special occasions for direct attention-gathering emphasis -- if at all. This was followed by another argument, this time about how the loser deserved the short end of a wheat stalk once in a while because he always got all the mares and it was only fair that he should not get something for a change. There was laughter at the end of that, and it came from all three.

She listened to every word, and it was almost enough to make the pain feel like something lesser. She would not have moved without a direct threat of discovery. There were ponies in this world, and they were talking. She knew there were, of course, that was beyond basic, had been taught so much about them and some of the things which concerned them in their lives, but -- right overhead. Directly overhead. And she could hear them.

She could have stayed there for hours and fallen asleep to the gentle babble of conversation.

And then --

-- they mentioned him.

This was but a rest stop: they were flying to Cloudsdale. (Was she near that? How far out were they? Hours, days? How many gallops, how long for them by flight?) Keeping their energy up was important (and she knew few pegasi had much in the way of marathon endurance). But now they were recharged, and they had to go and see if he was among the vapors of their home. One of his might have needed help. If only that were so, they hoped, they hoped so strongly. If they could but find him, all would be well. And perhaps they would be the ones to send back the good news...

...they were gone.

They --

-- were searching --

-- for him.

Not her, of course, never her, she had been careful (a lingering lesson, yes, but more strongly practiced in self-loathing and shame). But -- she had --

-- what had she done?

The memories -- if she could just capture them, get them out, but she had nowhere to put them and nothing to capture them with, not in this forest. She could only do it at home, and home was --

-- did she even have one any more? Would he take her back after she had failed so horrifically?

No. No, he won't. Nopony would. Nopony should. I'm --

She thought -- she had protected him. The event was a blur and just trying to look at it too closely without her memories around brought a deeper kind of hurt. But it had felt like protection. She hadn't known what she was doing or how on any real level, theory forced to exist in solid form without any real thought -- but on some level, she had been aware of -- heat? Heat beyond the edge of the event. (She could not call it what he had. It had not worked. She had failed.)

...she thought she had protected him. He and her memories. And still they were looking for him.

She had failed at everything when it happened. Everything they had done, everything that was The Great Work. And now they were saying she had failed to save him.

Had she --

-- did it kill --

-- did I kill --

She spread the wings, bit back the scream as she flapped them. The ground and her hooves parted company, just by a few inches. Dropped back down, let the moan come. Yes, at this stage, she could probably take off now, at least a little. Perhaps go straight up, get to that cloud level if she was lucky. Let the wings go back against her twisting body.

Drop straight down. Headfirst.

But the last time...

...she couldn't be sure it would work. And -- she also couldn't be sure that he was truly gone, or that she had done it. There had been rules. If there had been heat, had been fire --

(her memories, oh her memories, and she hated herself for thinking of that at all when she should have been thinking of him and him alone)

-- it might have meant attention. Attention meant other ponies. And other ponies meant hide.

He could -- he could, if it had happened that way, be hiding. With the other one, the Emergency Only pony. There was a chance she had not failed, at least for that one thing. But she did not know where she was. How to reach that place from this one. And he would not take her back. Should not.

She looked up at the cloud again. Measured the prospective drop...

...no. Not yet. It didn't matter that he would never (and should never) take her back, at least not right now. She had to know there was a he still in this huge world. Had to find out if she'd accidentally done a single thing right while wasting years of his life and invalidating her entire existence. That came first. So --

-- a fresh spasm hit as the wings purpled, the cloud overhead seemed to shiver with her --

-- she needed more information.

And the only way to get information -- was from other ponies.

A simple and wry, "Well, I must say, this is an improvement."

The warm voice, where even the sound seemed to be tinged with soft pink. "What do you mean, Rarity?"

Dryly, "Well, normally we'd be fighting over a doll by now."

Twilight giggled. Then did it again, harder, as Fluttershy softly laughed and the pony pile turned into a wriggle of mirth. "Applejack, did you ever find out --"

"Ah don't know where he's keepin' it and Ah don't want t' know! Y'could just ask!"

"But... he seems to love her so much... How could you ask me to break up Ponyville's happiest couple?"

More giggling.

"There's nothing wrong with a stallion getting in touch with his mare side," Rarity opinionated. "As long as he knows exactly where he's touching..."

Pinkie Pie, in a perfect deadpan. "He hasn't asked me for any advice yet."

And in the last possible moment before the group could react to that one, Spike timidly said "...is this stuff I should be hearing about?"

That did it. The pile broke apart into six ponies rolling on the ground with laughter and one very confused dragon watching them. "Oh, come on, guys!" Spike grumbled. "Is anypony going to tell me if I'm too young for this talk or not?" Which didn't help anything, and he finally just sank down into a squat and grumbled it out until the ponies had all staggered to their hooves.

"Oh dear," Rarity giggled. "Oh dear, and me without a wedding dress plan on me..."

Back down they went. And they had almost recovered when Fluttershy said, all quiet innocence, "...but who's going to tell Cheerilee?"

Finally, after Take Three had succeeded, Twilight faced the others. "I'm sorry. And I'm addressing everypony." Her voice was normal now, at least: they had given her that much back and a little more. "Just because I'm scared of what we're potentially facing doesn't give me the right to take it out on everypony here. It's my fear: I shouldn't try to deal with it by turning it into anger and throwing it in everypony's face. And Fluttershy... if you see something worth trusting in him, I can take a chance." One. "It's just -- we all remember the first time, and -- I don't know if I'm completely past it yet. No, scratch that: I know I'm not. You got further than I did, and --" She couldn't make herself lift the weight of the last words.

And somehow, this time, Fluttershy could. "...and he did more to me. I think... that's why I know him a little better. Why the Princess asked me to try. He went in, and -- I think we sort of touched. He didn't mean to, I know, but... nothing left behind, I asked the Princess once, but we touched, and -- I don't understand anything I felt, really, but... sometimes I feel like I understand him, just a little. Not as much as I understand any of my animal friends, not even ones I've just met... but enough that we can sort of meet somewhere between us. I don't think he understands what he touched with me, either, but he's trying, I know he is... and this is important to him. He took a risk. If the Princesses had been any madder..."

Which stopped them all dead in their mental tracks.

"...they would have summoned the Elements," Rarity breathed.

"We would have had him back to stone in seconds!" Rainbow Dash declared -- but there was a little thought inside the bravado. "And -- he had to know it -- didn't he?"

Spike was a little more dubious. "He can work fast, guys -- really fast. Maybe he could have gotten away first or --" the little dragon hesitated before risking "-- done something..." and Twilight wondered if he was thinking of the lava. "...but with Celestia and Luna there..." One buying time, one teleporting. It was still a race, but the ponies would have had a chance, and Twilight was seeing it as a fairly strong one.

Pinkie Pie nodded. "It's a big chance to take for a joke."

"So -- this really could be important to him," Twilight slowly reconciled. Although I'm still not placing any bits on 'for the good of Equestria'. She would remain cautious. For all they knew, they had been sent to look for the world's most powerful magic leash cutters. "All right, everypony -- let's --" and it was still hard to keep the next words from being bitter "-- take him at his word for a little while. This is what he called the start of the middle. Presume this ravine is important. Why?"

"It's pretty new, for starters!" Pinkie pronked in place as the others stared at her (and for a split-second, Applejack's gaze seemed simultaneously frustrated, worried, and -- no, that couldn't be anger...) "...why are you all looking at me like that?"

"Pinkie, dear," Rarity carefully asked, "how can you possibly know that?"

"I used to be a rock farmer, silly!" (Applejack was tensing, just out of Twilight's redirected line of sight.) "Look up, everypony!" They did. "See those ridges? They're sharp! The wind and rain haven't really hit them yet! They haven't been worn down even a little. So this place has to be fairly new! One century or less, maybe two, could be three at the outside I guess but that would really be pushing it..." (The farmer relaxed. No pony or dragon caught it.) "...what?"

"That's -- interesting, Pinkie," Twilight lied, "but I'm not sure it helps us very much." The apprentice baker stuck out her tongue. Pinkie knows geology. Why didn't I find that out before the mirror pool? "Okay -- everypony keep looking. Use everything you've got!"

And for the better part of an hour, they did, starting by moving to the absolute back of the ravine and then inching their way forward. Slowly. Twilight continually checked for traces of magic, but all she won herself was an interesting display of pinkish reflections off wet stone (it had rained recently) and that familiar feeling of tangling as her mane and tail dried out the wrong way. The two pegasi scouted overhead and came back to report "It's just forest for a ways out, really thick. You can barely see anything looking down. We're going to be grounded --" openly disgusted "-- while we're in there: I can' t track all of you on the ground and there's barely any room between trees to fly. I didn't want to go too far just in case there's a monster somewhere in this thing."

"...monster?"

"Yeah! Maybe in the river!"

"Oh, please!" Rarity grumbled distractedly: she seemed to be concentrating hard on something. "If we were only so lucky as to run into such a polite gentleman as our last so-called river monster! There is no living thing in that river except some horridly pale fish which completely forget to pack their eyes." It had taken two minutes for the unicorn to stop shuddering. "Take them out, if you would please, and all there is would be some exceptionally fast, clear, cold, and pure water." They'd all had a drink before starting the slow comb-through. "I wish I could bring some home with me." Muttering to herself now at a much softer level, one which not everypony caught. "Rock fetish, hoof fetish... I should have given him a taste of a future horn-spearing fetish to see if he liked it, and he probably would have too..."

Rainbow Dash had only heard up through the water part. "Want me to use some for making mud and try it on your face?" the pegasus asked with just a little too much innocence.

The white unicorn missed it. "Not -- just --- yet..." Rarity frowned. "Wait... I think I'm getting..." She angled her horn forward, turned her head from side to side.

Twilight blinked: her eyelashes seemed to tangle. ...ahead of me?

And the white horn lit from base to tip with that soft blue glow. "Yes! I'm sure -- oh, what is that? I've never felt anything like this!" She was moving along the absolute edge of the riverbank now, galloping forward as the glow intensified. "It's -- oh my, I can't even begin to guess! I'm sure -- yes!"

There was no time for staring at each other (although several managed to work it in on the way): they galloped behind her, Spike grabbing a position on Pinkie Pie's back. "Rarity -- are you okay?" the little dragon worriedly inquired, looking as if he was resisting the urge to wring his tail.

"Okay? I think I might be about to achieve absolutely fabulous!" She had stopped about two-thirds of the way up the ravine, her horn glowing brighter than Twilight had ever seen it shine. "Yes, right -- oh, dear, this will be a bother... Twilight? Could you possibly do me the smallest of favors?"

Mindful of a Discord-level 'small favor', "...yes?"

"If this goes rather towards the wrong side, please haul my body out of here if you can? Thanks ever so."

Rarity's horn ignited. It lit up in a way Twilight typically saw in mirrors (and then only briefly before her vision was blurred by white), the blue glow becoming more intense around the horn itself before a second layer of incandescence (something Rarity had never achieved in her sight) appeared around that, the inner core moving to more of a blue-white as sweat broke out all over the unicorn's body, as shine reflected off every wet surface in the entire ravine and glinted in the water, as Spike shouted in alarm...

"RARITY!" Twilight chorused -- but the unicorn kept right on going. What is she doing? Twilight had never seen Rarity put everything she had into a spell like this! (The layering wasn't a sign of power, it was effort, reaching deep into reserves. Nearly any unicorn can manage a double corona, especially if they're desperate enough.) The others were leaning back, not sure what to do or if anything they could try would only hurt whatever was going on, Applejack was trying to restrain Spike and not doing all that well... "What are you doing? It's taking too much! You can't --"

Gasping, words comprehensible but not for much longer, "It's just a tiny differentiation problem, darling... nothing to worry about..."

"Differentiation?" Applejack yelled. "What the hay does that mean? -- Twilight?" For Twilight's eyes had gone wide with horror.

"She's trying to move something inside something else!"

Differentiation: the third-year lesson that made students who were getting a little too full of themselves turn into spark-generating preschoolers. It was supposed to be so simple. There was a box. The lock was on the inner surface and the outer edge of the keyhole was blocked. The key itself was inside the box. And all you had to do was unlock it. Twilight's teacher had watched the lesson patiently, mostly for signs of students who were about to overcommit into the hospital.

A unicorn's field would surround an object, coat the exterior surface. You could adjust the strength around different portions, if you had the practice: flex a joint, twist a rope. But you couldn't reach inside. For all intents and purposes, anything within the box was considered to be part of the box: you could hear keys rattle as fields tossed containers about, and sometimes an especially lucky student would have the right end temporarily land in the keyhole just on momentum -- but the magic never actually touched the key, much less turned it. It couldn't --

Trotter's Falls, why am I thinking of Trotter's Falls

-- be done. And that was the lesson: that there were things which were impossible and you shouldn't hurt yourself trying to prove otherwise. Star Swirl had failed, and it was something Twilight had never been able to correct the long-ago caster on. And still, years after they all graduated, generations of professional magical researchers had collapsed in their workshops trying to do it. Rumors and legends claimed some had hurt themselves more badly than that. And the darkest whispers murmured about a few...

"You've got to stop!" Twilight screamed as the sweat became a froth coating nearly every inch of the delicate white coat, Spike sounded like he was thinking about flaming his way free, he knew what could happen, had been the one to catch Twilight in her dorm room as she'd collapsed...

Labored breathing. Ribs heaving. Eyes unfocused. Knees starting to buckle. "...just.... just water, dear... just trying to move through water... it's just a little on the deep side..."

"That much liquid is virtually the same thing as a solid! You're trying to move the river!" You've got to stop! Rarity!"

...and now that terrifying third layer appeared as the base moved to hot white, Rarity committing every reserve she had...

The other ponies were frozen with fear: they didn't understand magic that well, only knew something horrible was happening. And Twilight, who knew exactly what was happening, was even more helpless than they were. Too late in the spell to try and weld her strength to Rarity's, a ridiculously advanced technique which both unicorns had to know if there was any chance of reconciling their disparate fields, and Rarity had never advanced that far in her studies anyway. To physically hit her horn at this stage would guarantee backlash, and the nightmares of having that happen now would have Luna cradling a screaming dreamer for moons and beyond.

Spike's struggles had stopped. He knew how far it had gone, knew it was too late. Touches of the blue glow (all so close to white now, too close) were on the surface of the water as it rippled and heaved, the ravine had turned into a private lightshow, the likes of which Twilight had never seen from the outside and never wanted to see again. Rarity had two choices. She had already picked one. All they could do was watch as the first of Twilight's own nightmares, the one she had shielded from the younger Princess, threatened to erupt into horrid waking day --

-- and then a gleaming green stone, slightly smaller in diameter than the bottom of one of Rarity's hooves, erupted from the water instead. Landed at the unicorn's front hooves.

The glow vanished, all at once, and Rarity collapsed against the fine layer of dirt on riverbank stone. Horn steaming. Skin steaming.

She doesn't know how to cooldown, she needed to let go in stages, she never got that far in school, oh Luna, help me... "Everypony!", and the others were all too eager to jump. Spike, bless him, was already heading for what Rarity needed most. "Water, now! Splash her, wet her down, we've got to get her cooled off!" She was already moving herself. "Don't stop! No matter what happens, don't stop until all that froth is off her and she's breathing normally! Then get her up and walk her around!"

Just the smallest of whispers from Rarity. "...fine... just fine... see? Nothing to worry about..."

They ignored her. They worked, Fluttershy finding an immediate expertise in making sure the water was splashed where it most needed to go, Rainbow Dash bringing down every cloud she could find. They worked until the unicorn's breathing slowed, until she could pick her head up by a few vital inches and smile at them. "You all -- make too much -- of a fuss sometimes, you know. And I speak -- as one -- who knows fussing..."

Twilight wrestled with the urge to ponypile Rarity. Sent it to fight the urge to kill Rarity. The two desires battled to a draw. "Rarity -- look at me." She did. "I'm the stronger one, right?" A nod. "Then why didn't you leave it to me?!"

"You -- wouldn't have found it, darling..."

"It's a stupid gem," Rainbow Dash growled. "It's not worth your life, you facet-obsessed..."

"I know -- you're all upset," Rarity breathed, a little more strongly. "And I forgive all of you for anything you have said or might say, and I am so sorry for making you all worry like that, I could have said something a bit less -- dramatic, I suppose... but this is a discovery, and that? Is worth so very much..."

"I know your gem-finding spell." Twilight was trying very hard not to yell again. After feeling as if she'd nearly lost her friends once today, she wound up watching the single (or second) most stubborn unicorn in the world nearly cast herself into a faint or worse... "You taught it to me. I. Could have. Gotten. It."

Spike was simply brushing through Rarity's mane, silently restoring it to pristine beauty, something he hadn't done for Twilight yet. Fluttershy had gotten a compress out of her saddlebags, soaked it and was now wrapping it around the horn with delicate mouth movements.

"No... no, you couldn't. I'm sorry again, Twilight, but -- you copied my spell. There's something to be said -- for being the original. Try -- try detecting it now, please?"

This surprised Twilight enough for her to make the attempt on reflex: she turned her energies towards the stupid topaz disc which Rarity had risked so much for, reached back into her memory for the slightly dusty feel of Rarity's personal magic, managed to wrestle her own field into shape and let it visibly flow towards what was definitely the world's single most worthless gem, not worth a pony's life, not even a second of it...

...and there was nothing there.

She could see the topaz stone. She could surround and lift it. But she couldn't detect it -- and the look in Rarity's eyes said the unicorn knew it.

"A cutie mark -- has meaning, darling. You're a wonderful caster, the best of your generation -- but there is only one Rarity. I barely found it, almost didn't recognize it as a gem. You did say to search with everything we had, and you can copy my spell, spread it farther and find more at once -- but the fine touch -- remains mine." Another smile. "Forgive a mare her pride."

'Kill her' was being pressed back into the corner of the arena. "But for a stupid topaz disc --"

"-- topaz?" A tiny laugh. "Look closer."

They looked.

It was ruby.

And then as they stared, it became diamond. Then opal: white, followed by black. Garnet. Amethyst...

Pinkie moved closer, watched as the disc slowly shifted to emerald again before phasing to a deep sapphire which matched Rarity's eyes, gave the find an identity in a single awed breath.

"It's a deathstone..."

Five of them pulled back by inches. Rarity just sighed. "Well, that rather takes something out of it. Are you naming it, Pinkie, or recognizing? Because if it's the latter, I would like a moment to feel like a silly filly now. I truly thought I had discovered something new..."

"Recognizing," Pinkie apologized. "But just from words. I've never seen one. My grandma told me about them once. They're really rare. Hardly anypony's ever seen one. My grandma hadn't, or her parents, or their parents, or mine. The Princesses might have one -- maybe between them..."

Rarity managed a smile. "Half a loaf, then. All right -- I can certainly settle for such a rarity among gems." The others got her up, forced her to start walking. "But -- why 'deathstone'? Why such a horrid name for such a wonderful thing?"

"Because you're only supposed to find them where really bad things have happened."

They all stopped.

Seven thought about the mission. Spike hugged Rarity's right front leg.

"And that?" Rarity sighed. "Is most of the rest. Very well, but I refuse to judge it on superstition. And Spike?" She looked down at him, smiling. "Thank you for caring -- and please don't eat it!"

"No way!" He disengaged, stepped back and waved his arms wide, shaking his head so hard as to turn his spines into a blur. "I'm never putting that in my mouth! Not with that smell!"

"...smell?" Rarity asked, inadvertently coming close to imitating a Diamond Dog. "I can't smell anything coming off it, Spike!"

"Well, I can," the dragon insisted. "Every gem smells different, and the better it smells, the better it tastes. This one -- just don't keep it too close, please? I can stand it, but I'd rather not put up with it for long."

"I'll wrap it?" Twilight offered. Rarity nodded, and the field began to go to work.

Rarity looked around at the group as they continued to walk her in a small, tight circle. "Now: are you all quite convinced that I'm all right after my sterling effort and will not die on the spot if you stop tending to me?"

Rainbow Dash managed a smile. "Pretty much, yeah."

Applejack chuckled. "Takes a unicorn t' overwork all in one minute..."

"Good," Rarity declared. "So in that case -- I'm going to faint."

Once Rarity had (eventually) been revived and given more of the pure water (with Rainbow Dash making sure to ask if she was picking up any hints of fish) along with more than a little food, they finished searching the canyon, this time concentrating more on signs of disaster: bloodshed, heavy magic use for dark purposes, anything which Pinkie's grandmother claimed might cause a deathstone to appear. Nothing came of it except Rarity finally protesting the name, telling them giving a beautiful thing such an awful name was inherently prejudicial for anypony who came across it and she was going to call it a shiftstone, insisting the others do the same immediately.

They did not dive in the river: ponies aren't bad swimmers in shallow water, but going very far under is a bad idea, they aren't meant to do much more than paddle and make slow progress, and the current was simply too fast. Twilight simply field-probed it as best she could while Rarity -- once the post-faint headache finally started to wear off -- completely failed to detect any other gems. Inch by inch, plodding along, hooves and tails and claws sifting the thin layer of uneven dirt. The only results were a tidying of her mane and tail by a slightly-embarassed Spike and a near-successful infliction of insanity on Rainbow Dash, who first declared that she was bored, then awesomely bored, followed by heroically bored, and finally saw her assigned to a part-time lookout (and possibly napping) cloud so she could stop driving everypony nuts with her efforts to find an effective description beyond 'heroically'.

With Rarity's faint break included, it took them more than three hours to fully search a hundred and sixty feet of ravine -- and they didn't start thinking about throwing things at Dash's cloud until the last twenty.

"Stairs? You somehow neglected to mention stairs?"

A prankster's grin. "It's your own fault for going so slow! If you'd done the complete flyover like I did, Twilight, you would have seen them from above!" And Fluttershy had scouted the other end before they'd both gone off together... "I just thought it would be a nice -- surprise for you guys, getting to climb out on your own after all that work! We'll just have to save you helping me carry ponies out for another time. I still want a few paybacks on all the times I got you."

...no. I will not get mad. I already nearly lost friends today. Twice. And it may get so much worse before it's over... Twilight simply sighed and let this one fall upon herself. She had been the one who'd insisted on the finest-toothed comb approach, because every step had to be checked off before moving to another step. With pegasi ferries across the river every fifteen feet, so they could compare and contrast both sides of a section without losing impressions by going too far upstream. Her very own exact, cautious, completely neurotic design which, after Rarity's actions, had slowed down still more because she was simply that afraid one of them would rush ahead and do something else which was the term immediately after 'heroically stupid'. And the others might not have challenged her method because of --

-- everything.

She couldn't complain about the stairs, anyway: only about Dash's style of reveal. Anything which kept her from having to fly herself (and, Celestia forbid, passengers) out was a small miracle in itself.

They weren't real stairs, of course. The shadows at the far end (which had only deepened as the day passed, while Rarity's display found them focused on her) had hidden a natural rockfall formation, smaller pieces staged off between a slide of boulders, all collapsed onto each other in such a way as to look just stable enough to risk -- and given the varying heights of mineral deposits scattered up the gradual slope, provided a fairly steep-but-possible hoof climb back to ground level. With Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy watching carefully and Twilight and Rarity keeping their fields ready, Spike took the lead, testing footing and poking at anything suspicious-seeming with his claws, occasionally giving things light taps to see if they would dislodge. There were moments when Twilight envied the little dragon, with his ability to carefully prod with feet and claws alike. Her field substituted, and just about every unicorn could say the same -- but there were still times when she imagined what it was like to hold things that way, and wondered how the earth ponies and pegasi felt while watching. How much envy they had for his simple ability to grasp. For her magic. For wings which wouldn't work.

But that was just her mind trying to distract itself, and she knew it.

Still, she managed to at least keep the pretense up through the careful exit, always with at least three watching one and her emerging last under what felt like too intense a scrutiny from Rainbow Dash. She had been making her excuses ready all the way up. She hadn't come up with a good one. The best she had was that she wanted to inspect the happily-convenient natural formation for signs of prior passage. After all, the deat -- shiftstone had to have gotten down there somehow, even if the most likely explanation was that somepony had once dropped it into a river far away and had it rush down the current until finally lodging against some small projection at the bottom of this section. She knew why Rarity appreciated the special beauty of the stone, even if the designer had already begun to complain about how difficult it would be to coordinate an outfit with so many colors. ("And I am not selling it. The Princesses may borrow it for a time...") It would take some hours before she could personally make that attempt, and perhaps much more.

Finally, they were all at the top. Pines everywhere. Narrow gaps between them. A long, probably slow, and hard squeeze ahead, almost guaranteed to scuff and possibly tear saddlebags. And no real sign of a path or trail to follow.

"Y'know what I think?" Rainbow Dash asked without particularly worrying about whether anypony's answer counted, "I think that if Discord is playing this by what he thinks is the pony way, we should start moving up here by playing it his way."

"...randomly?" Fluttershy asked.

Rainbow Dash grinned. "Randomly."

Twilight had what she felt was the natural reaction: "Are you kidding? Just pick a direction and go? No searching? No careful checking for clues and Pinkie, I don't need the hat right now, thank you -- close our eyes, spin, and point a hoof?"

"Exactly! We just spent hours down there and what did we get? One sort of cool stone which would look awesome on me --" and just like that, jewelry was no longer lame "-- an exhausted fashionista, a whole lot of wasted time, a lesson for me to never tell you to take as much as you like, and? Not one trap for me to try disarming after all the books I've read where it happens! Come on, Twilight -- I saw some of this from above, and I know how thick it is. It's going to take forever for us to make any progress even if we stick to one direction! If this is about a pony or just about anything else on land, then this is where anypony who wasn't a pegasus would have gone in or out -- and we can't track a flyer anyway! I don't mind trying to scout the perimeter for a few minutes, but we've got to try and find other ponies! Or monsters! Or anything! We're supposed to be looking for something and this is just the start of that middle thing. I say we go find some more!"

Twilight opened her mouth. Closed it. And after everything that had happened, found no words which could emerge from it except "Okay." Which got her surprised expressions and startled blinks, with Spike's reaction the strongest of all. "We'll try it for now." Once. There was a lot of 'once' being thrown around today.

They moved out, Twilight taking the lead as they squeezed past the tilted pines into the shadowed forest, her head full of long thoughts. Nearly lost all. Could have lost one. And we're just beginning... or middling -- and I still don't know why or what or where... and I was right there with both Princesses and never asked a thing, not with everypony and him there, we can't even write to Canterlot... The others followed single-file: Fluttershy close by to check for animals and worse, then Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Spike walking as close to being alongside Rarity as he could manage in order to keep an eye (if not nose) on her, and finally Applejack.

The farmer had put herself at the back on purpose. She'd told them it was to keep an eye out for threats from the rear, and that had been the truth. But it also gave her the chance to take a long look back at the ravine, up and down the full length, and finally stopping on the path out.

She adjusted her hat to shade her eyes again before following her friends, and her thoughts were longer than Twilight's.

Layering

Of course, as Discord would very carefully not tell you, the best way to destroy a marching order is having one in the first place.

The group initially stayed in single file as they forced their way through the dense forest, which a grumbling Rainbow Dash finally described as "Somepony trying to save room by cramming two acres of trees into one acre of stupid ground..." (Her temper was visibly soaring in the way she could not: being forced to stay on one level was always stressful for her, and the feeling of being enclosed wasn't helping. Claustrophobia is the second-most common fear among pegasi, right behind the terror of permanently losing the sky.) She was not in a position to see Applejack's face when she said it, and might not have wondered about the resulting expression if she had.

Every so often, somepony would move forward or drop back for a quick question or private talk: they're generally a social species (with a few exceptions) and long periods of silence are difficult for them -- difficult enough to build sporting events around. As they continued to encounter no threats beyond flank scrapes, saddlebag damage (producing small sobs from Rarity), and grumbling young dragons worried about where their next gem was coming from, gathering into temporary knots became more natural and inevitable, especially as there was so little else to do beyond moving forward.

No other ponies or signs of their passage. Certainly no trails showing where they might be found. No food, and that was worrying more than a single dragon. There seemed to be nothing about but grass, and that was a last resort no one wanted to touch just yet. Discord had teleported them with just the supplies they had planned on bringing to Canterlot -- and those had been chosen with the thought that they would receive anything truly needed before leaving the capital. There were some snacks for the expected carriage ride in (down one apple before they'd ever left), a couple of canteens to go with them, a few gemstones Rarity had been planning on using to finish outfits on the way, and an emergency ration packed in Twilight's bag for Spike. But as for fruits, grain stalks, anything they could use growing naturally beyond the sparse grass poking up between fallen leaves -- no. This was a wild zone, and not a fruitful one.

The Everfree is the best-known, perhaps because it's thought of as the worst -- and there are legends which claim it's the first, some of which go darker than others, more than a few blaming Nightmare Moon for the whole thing. But origins are of no concern here -- just results. In truth, ponies hold their country -- but control relatively little of it. Each city, town, and settlement represents a zone of relative safety, with weather and land tamed to their needs. Look at Equestria from above, spread the spell to detect all of the magics, and the continent will be sprinkled with sparse dots of shimmer, with the most frequently-traveled roads providing ley lines in the dark. Total all the surface area and it won't come out to more than six percent of the land (only reaching that with the most recent desert settlements) and a little more of the sky: their population doesn't add up to that of the other two races combined, but pegasi feel free to spread out.

Everything else is a wild zone.

Weather which can be controlled -- but it'll move itself when you're not looking and often tries to encroach on pony territory: part of the Weather Bureau's job is making sure pony areas only get the storms on the calendar. Plants which grow as they will wherever the climate and wars within the soil say that they should. The other sentient species, not all of which are known to the average pony, each carving out a parcel of territory in places they're sure the Princesses won't have call for, or with very little fear of pony intrusion on what they see as their lands. And -- monsters. There are monsters out there, and even Celestia may not know all of them.

For the most part, ponies stay inside the havens, thinking of everything else as 'unnatural'. Those who travel generally stick to the roads, land or above: the pegasi air paths exist for reasons beyond mere favorable winds. Very few wander the wild zones, and those who do rely on luck as much as skill. On the luckiest of days, they're no more dangerous than your average park. You can have a quiet trip with no disturbance other than the odd feel of natural mulch beneath your hooves, even when going through the worst places. It all depends on what's around at the time, and how hungry it might be. Some potential opponents have even learned to avoid Equestria's three pony races as a matter of standard policy -- after all, it's just not worth it. But you never know. Where ponies gather and take space for their own, there is an assurance that tomorrow at least has a chance to be much like today, and that still allows for Ursas of all sizes, parasprites, full-sized dragons traveling overhead, the previously mentioned invasions of bugs with codependency complexes, and other things which have yet to receive their own tales. The wild zones promise only one thing: that those who expect safety and control as a birthright will find only -- discord.

There are legends which blame him as well. He doesn't see them as being worth the effort to answer. After all, who would believe him?

But the more time which passes without an encounter, the more ponies will revert towards acting as if they were in a safe place, even those with experience. They want to talk and in this stressful situation, they almost have to. So as the spaces between trees finally began to open up a little, once they could walk next to each other, the conversations really began. Still attentive to the wild zone around them, still alert for trouble -- but there had been too much trotting ahead in near-silence to stand any more.

The shuffling began, continued -- and after a time, the six ponies found themselves temporarily grouped by (original) race: three pairs traveling together (and one of those with a dragon), with enough space between each discussion to let them speak without the others overhearing. Casual, considerate, automatic respect for privacy.

They could not hear each other. They might have been better off if they had.

"I said I was sorry, dear. I've said it several times already, and you can see I'm fine. I went far enough in school to hear the same stories you did, and no pony's ever proven anything beyond a unicorn taking a rather abrupt nap. Again, I'm sorry for moving towards the dramatic in my speech, but..."

"But that's just you." A sigh. "There's a reason you dig them out of the dirt, you know... or why you have Spike do it... Why did you drop out after fifth year? Some of your test scores were amazing."

Surprised, perhaps a little affronted. "...how do you know what my test scores were?"

Without picking up on a hint of the above, "I wrote the school and the traveling tutors on your circuit to ask --" and a little too late, "What?"

Ladylike irritation. "Doesn't that feel rather like snooping to you?"

Now just a little embarrassed, "I was curious. Rarity, I know your field strength is pretty -- average --"

"Better than the below, Twilight."

"-- but your field dexterity scores are just about off the charts." Sincerely impressed. "Sure, I can move a hundred items at once -- if they're all the same kind of item and they're all moving in roughly the same formation or for the same purpose. A hundred books reshelving, a hundred scrolls curling up. But once you start mixing sizes and types, I get in trouble. That trick I was trying to do with some of Fluttershy's animal friends? A dozen or so smaller species with their weights not too far off from each other looping in an infinity symbol? I did it. Combined, they didn't weigh a thousandth of what the Ursa Minor did. And just the practice nearly put me in bed early. A dozen assorted animals instead of one big one and a water tower, and the weight didn't matter -- just that the coverage didn't match. I wasn't exactly in great shape when Trixie showed up again, but -- she would have clobbered me anyway, with that -- amulet. But you -- I've seen you affecting needles, patterns, cloth, ribbons, buttons -- more than a hundred things in your field at the same time, different shapes and sizes, and sometimes with multiple movement patterns. I can't do that. Not one unicorn in a thousand or more can. You could have gone farther than fifth year just based on that. So -- why didn't you?"

After several more steps, "There's more to magic that just being able to lay out stitch guidelines while keeping the stitches coming behind them, Twilight: you of all ponies know that. My strength is -- average. There are tricks I simply cannot do and frankly, had no use for learning. The one trick I've picked up since leaving is one I should arguably never use again. Honestly, when was I ever going to require some of your more spectacular spells? I was going into fashion: there's only so much I needed to learn of magic. In that sense, even five years was too deep in. I would have been better off at an art academy in their clothing design school, if only..." A brief stop, and then, "Why study offensive spells or defensive measures or any of the rest of it? I was going to have a spectacularly exciting life -- in the fashion sense. And for that? I had all I needed. I never expected..." Hoofsteps slowed for a moment, were forcibly accelerated back to normal.

Softly, "...you never expected your life to be like this."

A sigh. "Rather not. But Twilight? Please don't blame yourself for it, or the Princess, or anypony else. Maybe we were all connected from the moment of that first sonic rainboom on -- or even before -- but we didn't know. Had I known I had an Element coming, I might have pushed on for a class or two, certainly. But none of us knew. I hardly mind giving the Princess my service: it is my duty. And if I see any sign of you taking that on yourself..."

Hastily, "I don't blame myself." No reply -- and harder, faster, "I don't." Before any answer could arrive, "But -- Rarity... as long as we're the Element-Bearers, and that's potentially something for -- life... we are going to be away from the spectacularly exciting field of fashion every so often. There's a technique which lets unicorns try to combine their fields and merge strength for a spell. I know it. You don't. And if we both did, you could have found that gem and we both would have pulled it from the river."

"I've heard of it," came the careful admission. "It's frightfully advanced, Twilight. And as you said, my strength is -- average."

"But you can manipulate your field more finely than anypony I've ever met outside the Princess," came the response. "You could match another unicorn, and -- probably more easily than I can. It's not always a question of strength, Rarity -- it's control. You have control. It's just a question of what you know how to do with it." A carefully premeasured pause. "I want to start teaching you some more advanced magic. Offense, defense, and that combination spell."

The frown was audible. "Unicorns like me usually don't go that far along no matter what our educational paths are, Twilight, not unless we're going for research duties or becoming one of the Guards -- and I'm not strong enough for either. I admit it might be good for all of us if I was a little more handy in a fight with something other than words and a touch of hoofticuffs, but... sixth and seventh year spells?"

"Maybe even a little past that."

"I'm sorry, dear, but again, a unicorn -- like me..."

And the sincere words of a young dragon, "Rarity, you're the one and only Element Of Generosity. There is no other unicorn like you."

Which got an amused giggle. "I suppose I can't really argue with that, now can I, Spike? Oh, very well... I suppose a private tutoring session or three won't particularly hurt, at least not after I get that headache remedy from Zecora again. But Twilight -- please don't expect too much of me. Not every unicorn reaches those spells -- and some of us simply can't handle them. I'm willing to try, but I cannot promise to succeed."

"I think you could do more than you believe you can."

"Yes, of course. But generally with tail loft patterns. Dear Celestia, Fluttershy is more work than any three other ponies put together... So when do we begin?"

"Now."

"...are you sure?"

"I'm sure. I know when somepony's avoiding me. Twilight's been dodging me ever since we got back from Canterlot. She doesn't want to see me, she doesn't want to hang around with me -- her coming out to get me for the summons? That was the longest talk we've had since she -- got her wings. Whenever I came by the library, or ran into her in town, or anything -- any chance to make a new appointment -- she dodged. She's been pushing me off, Fluttershy. She doesn't want to go flying with me. Every time I try to get her up in the air, she has an excuse. Even today. I kept giving her all these chances to take off, and it never happens."

"...so... why don't you ask her why?"

"How am I supposed to do that?"

"...by -- going up to her and asking?"

"Like it's that easy -- what's wrong?"

"...I was just thinking. That... it's kind of the one thing we all have in common."

"What's that?"

"...none of us are very good at talking to other ponies about our problems."

"I'm talking to you!"

"...but I'm not the pony you have a problem with."

"So? It still shows I can do it! And if you think that's a problem everypony else has, including you, then --"

"...I know I'm afraid -- of a lot of things. I know what all of them are. I even know why I'm afraid -- for some of them." Almost a whisper, "...and I'm still afraid. We're all friends. We all talk to each other. But not always about... the important things. We put the lesson in the letter... but we're still learning it..."

"-- look, this is about me and Twilight for now, okay?"

A waft of a sigh. "...all right."

"She won't fly with me." A tiny drop in volume. "I think -- maybe -- I know why."

In a tone that gently suggested getting the 'maybe' was the rarer event, "Why?"

"Because..." A long pause, time enough to gather every last bit of strength. "Because she's an alicorn now, and -- it makes her better than me."

Surprised, "...Twilight doesn't think of herself as better than anypony... sometimes it's just the opposite..."

"No. Not thinks of herself as being better. Is better. She's a Princess, Fluttershy! You know how strong they are! For unicorn magic, they're the strongest there is! And they have wings. So why shouldn't they be stronger fliers than anypony else, too? Maybe --" hesitant, the words pulled away from layers of Crusader-scraped tar. "-- they can do a Rainboom whenever they want to, and they just don't because -- they don't want to make everypony else feel like there's nothing left to try for. Or they can do the quintuple helix, you know I've never managed more than a triple. Or even a shadowfount."

"...that's just an old pony's tale, Rainbow. And --"

"-- yeah, right. It's an old pony's tale because they did it hundreds of years ago in front of a really old pony and she told somepony about it. Twilight can probably do everything now, and she doesn't want to go up there with me because she's afraid I'll see it and..." Her friend gave her the silence, let the little ear flicks and tail swishes finish the sentence. "I just wanted -- to break her feathers in. Flying's the greatest thing in the world, Fluttershy. I could never imagine anything better for any story. I was so happy that another one of my friends got to really do it. No spell tricks and worrying about magic evaporating if you went up too high -- just wings. Real ones. And -- she doesn't hang out any more. She doesn't come and see me." Volume cut by half, "She won't fly with me."

"...she has so much new in her life right now... the press, all those ponies coming to her for advice or just trying to meet her..."

"So why doesn't she stick with us? Do things with us? Do things with me?"

"...she has a lot of stress... I can see how much stress she's under, Rainbow..."

"Flying makes stress die."

Silence.

"...you should talk to her."

Even more quietly, "I don't know if I want to hear her say it... or the other thing."

Which explained that elusive 'maybe'. "...what's that?"

"That --" A slow breath. "-- we're drifting apart."

"Y'know how close y'came back there? Do y'have any idea what y'nearly did?"

"I don't understand --"

"Tartarus, y'don't understand! 'This ravine is new!' Ah know it's new! Ah could feel how 'new' it was from the second mah head stopped spinnin'! An' there y'go an' jus' say it in front of her! What were y'thinkin'? Were y'thinkin' at'tall?"

"I -- I didn't..."

"Y'didn't what, Pinkie? 'cause Ah was right there an' Ah heard every word --"

"...I didn't feel it."

"...what?"

"You know -- you know how weak it is, Applejack. You know -- I can hardly ever feel anything. I didn't feel it. I saw it. I saw how new it was. I tried to get away from it as soon as I saw your face, you know I did..."

A long pause, and then, with all the anger gone, "Pinkie -- Ah'm sorry. Ah forgot that y'can't..."

"I'm used to it." Bitterness under the sugar. "I'm really really used to it. So you're right, Applejack. I wasn't thinking about what you felt because I can't. So I didn't think about what I could or should say in front of the others. In front of Twilight and Rarity. And guess what? I still want to go say it to Twilight!"

Tightly controlled danger under a thin veneer of civilization. "...y'wanna run that by me again?"

"It's a mission!"

"Yeah. For Discord."

"Which doesn't mean something isn't really happening! We all talked about that back there! And Twilight's our friend, you know she is, and she's kind of the leader most of the time, so if this is connected to whatever the mission is, she has to know!"

"No, she doesn't! She doesn't have t' know anythin'!"

Slowly -- and now there was a second undercurrent of danger, just a trickle of water below a pebble, "She's our friend."

"She's a unicorn."

"She's an alicorn! And she's still our friend!"

"Yeah? Y'wanna hear the stories again, Pinkie? Stories 'bout earth ponies who thought unicorns an' even some of the pegasi were their friends? Ponies who decided they could tell their friends anythin'? Ah grew up on those stories an' Ah know y'did too. Remember how they all ended? Twi's got wings now, but she's a unicorn still, all the way down t' her heart. The one chance she had t' act like an earth pony at that first Wrap-Up, she cheated inside a minute. An' even worse? She writes things down. She sends letters. Y'know the best thing 'bout havin' an oral history? Bein' able t' decide who y'don't tell it to. Sure, maybe there's this tiny chance y'could tell her. And she'd be all surprised an' amazed an' jus' thrilled t' learn an' guess what happens then? She writes it down. An' maybe she never tells a pony or shows anypony the book. Jus' maybe. Maybe somepony has t' steal the book, or grabs the letter, an' then it's all out there..."

"She's an alicorn. You think the Princesses don't know?"

"...'course they know. No way they couldn't know. Doesn't mean Twilight knows. An' Ah'm bettin' they haven't told her. We weren't there hardly near long enough -- an' she would have been all full of questions for us, y'know that. 'What's it like?' No, she doesn't know. An' Ah'm not gonna be the one who breaks the code and does it. They wanna tell her, let 'em. Ain't gonna be me."

The trickle had been joined by a few raindrops. "Maybe I will. I think she needs to know. The Princesses can't write us now, you know that. How are they supposed to tell her?"

"Ah'm sure they've got ways..."

"Not this time, they don't!" There was a dam behind the pebble. It wasn't particularly solid. "No interference, we both heard that! They can't tell her! It's you or it's me, and this is important! What if not telling her is what makes things go wrong? What if not telling her is what's wrong?"

"Ain't like that --"

"-- how do you know?"

"Doesn't matter. If that's it, we'll solve it, you an' me. We can keep it quiet. You know that's how it's done."

"Maybe not this time."

"Pinkie, don't you dare --"

"Is Twilight your friend or not?"

"...she's mah friend. Y'know that."

"No, she's more than that. You told her she was family. You told all of us we were family. What if one of your family wasn't an earth pony, Applejack? Would you tell them?"

"Doesn't happen. We've married pure from before the time the first Apple planted a tree."

"That's not the point! You said she was family, Applejack! All of us were family! You told me that once before we ever met Twilight at all, when you found out I -- could barely feel. You told me I was still family anyway. And --" oh so slowly "-- you know what that meant to me, because -- it was you who was saying it. Because -- nopony else had said it for a long time. And now you're saying Twilight isn't family, because you would tell family anything -- and so every time you told her that, you were lying."

Taken aback, scrambling to recover, "Ah wasn't --"

"Liar."

"Y'know Ah care 'bout --"

"Lies!"

And now there was a second dam cracking. "Don't -- you -- say -- that -- again."

"Why not? I'm telling the truth!"

They had stopped moving. The others hadn't noticed yet, had never heard a word.

"Twilight -- is mah friend. Ah love her like kin. An' y'know what, Pinkie? Ah can answer yer question. She's mah family, all right. Mah unicorn family. An' Ah am not gonna be the earth pony who talks 'bout it t' a unicorn -- family or no. Y'wanna be the next name in the stories? Y'wanna go betray your entire race? An' that's not figurin' for the one who gossips. Want t' go with the other two? One who brags too much an' the other you could pressure with one of her own feathers?"

"I understand."

"Ah'm glad t' see yer comin' t' yer senses --"

"I understand that you never thought of four of us as friends at all -- no, five. Because you don't trust my judgment. You don't trust family. Not without blood. And without that, we're nothing to you. Nothing at all."

The dams had vanished and taken their water with them.. Now there was just a line in the dirt.

"...y'take that back."

"Make me."

And a pair of hooves reaching towards it, one from each side.

"Pinkie, y'know how Ah feel 'bout all of you, y'know yer all mah -- Pinkie, don't walk away... Pinkie -- please..."

"Why? I'm not Loyalty. I was going to betray our race, remember?" Pink tail curls beating at the trees.

"Look -- jus' give me some time..."

"Time for what? Getting your lasso out to pull me back if I try to say anything? Maybe catch me by the neck? Or did your grandpa leave that part of the story out?"

"...t' find other earth ponies. Discord said -- we could ask for help. Gotta be other ponies where we're goin', right? Somewhere, sometime. So when we find some, we'll go t' them an' ask 'bout the ravine. Maybe somethin' happened out there with them, got nothin' t' do with this. Let's jus' -- make sure first, okay? And then we could work with kin, y'know that's the right way..."

Without a trace of mirth, "You're stalling."

"Ah'm investigatin' -- why aren't you givin' me that hat?"

"Because you're also stalling. If the Princesses haven't told her yet, then they will sometime."

"Let them decide, then! She doesn't know -- she didn't feel it -- Pinkie, don't look at me like that, Ah didn't mean t' -- Ah jus' need some time."

"...fine."

"Thank you."

"But if we don't find anypony -- or this turns out to be the problem and they're not enough -- I will tell her, Applejack. I swear I will. Twilight's my family -- no matter what she is to you."

"Pinkie? Come on, Pinkie, please don't -- y'gotta understand -- it was so strong, an' it was -- off..."

Hoofsteps moving away over soft ground, nearly covering the final protest.

Nearly.

"She's a unicorn..."

The foal would not arrive.

He is dreaming now, resting in that safe haven. He wrote down everything he could remember, wrote down everything he could formulate, state, or put together through conjecture. Theories, so many theories -- none of which can be verified without her. It was an exhaustive effort and in time, that's exactly what it did: exhaust. He sleeps so that his body can heal a little more and slips into his own protected place. In dream, he goes to the past --

-- and the foal would not arrive.

A common theme for his nightscapes, too common. His memories hold many such occasions, sometimes far too many, and not all with happy endings. The very first -- he has gone back to the first many times, but never in dream. A simple spell cast just before sleeping keeps that away, and he has cast it every night for years, starting long before Luna returned. He thinks of it, yes. He will not relive it, not unless it is absolutely necessary. That is an absolute -- statement.

This was the second. And it was also the first, the first of something new.

He remembers very little of the parents. Parents tend to blend into each other after a while: they all have the same worries, all act as if they're the first ponies in all of Equestria to go through this. But he remembers every single foal. All of them, every name, every color and race and birthplace and situation. Because this one was a new first, he remembers her so very clearly, and often goes back to her on those nights when there is so very much on his mind and he cannot return to the true beginning.

The mother was a pegasus, as was the father. They had been traveling -- because they had to travel, even so late in her term. He does not remember why, for it is not important to the dream. But they had been forced down. Labor had forced them down. Given any choice, all pegasi will invariably give birth on the ground.

He remembers two unicorns bringing the mother to him.

She had been in labor for hours. Too many hours. Her water had broken long ago: the foal was dry in the womb. She strained and pushed and screamed in her agony, but she had no strength left, none at all. The foal had to emerge or the foal would die before it could ever see the Sun. Crisis. The point of decision. Nopony else to help. Just him. And this was only his second -- and his first. He had just received the license, hung out the sign and placed a somewhat larger one on his roof. The parents knew nothing of him. They had come down some distance from the town, been found, been brought here because he was the only pony available.

He had told no pony of what he had discovered. There had been no demonstration: there had been no opportunity. In that sense, this was a true first, the trial of the foal's life.

And if he did not succeed, the foal was going to die.

Might have already been damaged by all the dry time in the womb. The mother was weak, so very weak, hardly had any more pushes in her and those she had managed even at the start hadn't done the job. Even if he succeeded, there was no telling what the foal's health might be, if it could survive long enough for that first breath. If it was even breathing now.

It was time.

"I'm going to try something," he had told the mother. "This is magic. It's -- a new magic, untested. I am going to bring the foal out for you if I can. You'll have to help as much as you're able. I'll do everything I can, I promise that -- no matter what."

"Magic?" she had gasped, froth sliding down her distended belly. "What -- kind..."

"The last kind we have left to try," he'd told her. Gently, "Please -- for your child..."

"Yes," she had said. What else could she have said?

He had concentrated. The second corona had come within seconds, and the mother had gasped again when she saw it -- which, as another contraction hit, turned into a scream.

"Push!" he called to her, squinting against vision that was blurring as it tried to take in close and distant shadows. "I'm trying -- push!"

He cannot. He cannot. He was failing. Once again, he was --

-- there was a wing.

He could feel a wing, and a tiny hoof, and a mane, a full mane already, and --

For the first time in two years, he almost laughed. "She's a filly!" he told the mother. "I can -- I can feel -- I --"

The words reached her within the pain, forced her eyes wide with hope. Made her push harder --

(a double corona, only a double corona and it was happening, the filly needed her chance, she would be so weak, he reached deeper and for the first time ever, channeled, the rush going through his spine and down his horn and into the womb)

-- as he pulled.

Pulled.

It was happening --

-- and then it had happened.

He had cleaned off the tiny filly, gently separated and preened every miniature feather with his field. Did all the tests. Weak -- but not as weak as she should have been after all that time. Breathing steadily. Would live.

Alive.

Alive.

And that was when he did laugh, when he placed the world's newest resident in front of her mother.

He cannot remember the mother's face. Only the filly, so small and perfect and alive, the tiny yellow wings stretching for the first time, a tentative flap which turned into more of a small vibration, and the blue-green eyes looking at them both, not understanding this new world or her place in it. Not yet.

"She didn't want to come out!" he had laughed at long last -- and then smiled at her. "Hello, little one. This is your mother..." he said before the words emerged, the words he would say so many times over the following years. They were always said, for they were always meant. "...and I am your very first friend."

The mother had smiled weakly, crying with relief as she watched the wing movement, saw the filly struggle to stand up for the first time. Watched her succeed.

"Hello," she had whispered. "Hello, my little Fluttershy..."

Vanishing Point

The yellow pegasus was looking at the damage to the tree.

She backed up slightly, tilted her head so that her mane fell away from one eye, surveyed it a second time. Her default public expression -- a perpetual aura of concern that something bad had happened which was almost certainly her fault and even if it wasn't, she was going to take all the blame for it without protest because arguing almost never worked out -- deepened.

After some thought, she moved up the procession to where two of her friends were talking. "...Twilight? I'm so sorry to bother you, but..." No good: they were deep in conversation, something about field border spikes and synchronicity tuning added to a dash of Belmont's Law with a touch of Mint's Julepian flux on the side. Rarity looked somewhat dazed, and seemed as if she had been for some time.

Twilight had just picked up on it. "Some of these things are basic concepts, Rarity..."

"Really? For whom?"

"...Twilight, I don't mean to interrupt, but there's something in the trees back there, and..."

"For -- post-graduate students." Twilight looked abashed. "I'm -- going too fast again, aren't I?"

"A tad..."

"...Twilight?" The pressure of her breath was just barely enough to shift a single hair of the striped mane.

Sometimes that was enough. "Fluttershy? Is something wrong?"

"...I think you need to see this."

Within a minute, they were all gathered around the tree. "Okay, Fluttershy," Twilight said, giving her the lead position. This was her subject: there was a fair chance that the pegasus could manage to get all the way through the news. She was always a little stronger on what she saw as her own ground, where her cutie mark trumped that of all the others and her knowledge was what could get them through. A little. "Go ahead."

"...all right... see these gouges?" They all looked. Divots in the bark, about five inches across, bleeding sap. Some punctures to the left, not so deep, cone-shaped with the tree's outer layer pushed in towards the center. "...I think we have -- Flebian rams in the area. And close by. These are fresh -- a few hours old, no more."

"Okay, Fluttershy," Applejack said, her voice serious. "Not domestic, Ah know that... got no tenants with that tag on 'em..." Which meant she would defer. "Let's hear the straight skinny. Do they have brains?"

Fluttershy shook her head. "...not sentient. Just -- mean." Her voice was naturally less hesitant when she was talking about her field, but no less soft. "Picture a sheep, make it about forty percent bigger, blue-grey, and three times as strong. Very good sense of smell. Cloven hooves, sharp at the front. Straighten the wool, move the ears all the way to the absolute top of the skull, like an insect's antennae. Give it two horns on the sides of its head where ears would normally go, which they usually keep curled into a tight spiral about a foot and a half across -- they project out about five inches ahead of the muzzle that way. Sharp teeth. Omnivores. They -- they can move their horns, change the shape. Straight out like spears to puncture, curled for battering. Sometimes out to the sides to catch something charging them that way. And they're nasty. Hyper-territorial. Anything living they see, unless it's at least six times their size, they'll treat one of two ways. Try to fight it to establish that this is their place -- or kill it for food."

Twilight had the picture and wished she didn't. She hated having to ask the next questions, especially of Fluttershy, but there was no other choice. "Do they eat ponies? Can you use the Stare on them if you have to? And what's the best way to fight them?" A little more softly, "If it does come to a fight, do we have to kill?"

Fluttershy shivered. "We're not -- their first choice of diet. They go for smaller animals first -- lower their heads and spear-scoop. And they -- play with their food. But if they could kill us, they would. And there's a few of them. They travel in packs called charges to bring larger animals down. Judging from the differences in the gouges --" she tilted her head to indicate other trees with similar wounds: her mane shifted back again "-- at least four in this one. The Stare -- would feel like a dominance challenge to them. They'd just charge -- and if I didn't do it, they'd charge anyway. They charge rocks when they're in a bad mood, and you can see what they did to the trees, they can knock down small ones if they hit them right... Fighting them... very hard heads and their bodies are designed to take impact from the front: you can't charge them or hit them head-on and expect to do much. Hit them from behind. Not from the sides. When their horns are spiraled, they can't see to the sides -- but they listen in those directions and if you charge them, they point a horn that way and..." A full shudder. "No defenses against magic. They can rotate their horns straight up, so if you swoop them, you have to watch for how far they can reach -- and uncurled, that's almost all the way to their tails. Move that straight up, and..."

Rainbow Dash nodded. She too was taking this seriously -- although that didn't prevent her from using the information to plan out a little showboating. "But I could come in really low from the back and knock out their feet, right? Or carry them straight up and drop them?"

"...maybe... if you were really careful about the approach angle... the horns twist very fast... They always paw at the ground before they charge, so there's a little warning. Our best chance is to avoid them if we can, but their sense of smell is so good... Depending on the wind, they may catch us first -- and if they don't want to eat, they will want to fight." She took a deep breath. "They can be forced to back off: they'd turn around and pretend they never met us. But we'd at least have to hurt them first -- they're hard to scare. They're too angry to frighten most of the time. If it was a fight..." She let the trail-off and shudder speak for her: yes, there was a chance they would have to kill. "And if we don't meet them, don't make them remember us -- then the next pony they find..." She forced herself to take a breath. It required more than one attempt. "Because they're wild, they can be spooked by fire sometimes..." A look at Spike. "But since you're smallest, they'll -- see you as prey before they'll think of you as a challenge. They'll charge low to spear..."

The little dragon nodded, looking solemn. "I'm faster than you think, Fluttershy."

Which did nothing to ease her concern -- but then, hardly anything ever did. "...I hope so -- but if we start a fire -- the trees aren't as thick as they were, but there's all these old leaves on the ground -- it's a little damp after the rain, but we could still wind up in the middle of a blaze..."

"I'll be careful," Spike promised. "Twilight, I know it's part of our rations, but -- I think I'd better have a gem now." Twilight nodded, opened her left saddlebag with a flicker of field and began removing contents one by one.

"...we'll hear them before we see them," Fluttershy promised. "They can't not batter things, not with all these trees around. Just -- keep rotating your ears. I don't know what they smell like, though..." Embarrassed by that. "This is all from books..."

Books Fluttershy had read very carefully: she took it as her responsibility to know all about what they might run into in the wild zones, ever since their first meeting with Zecora -- animals first and foremost, of course, but with a new secondary focus on the more dangerous plants. Not knowing about the Poison Joke had left a long-term mark. "All right, everypony -- you heard her," Twilight said. "Fluttershy, do you want us close together or spread out?" The former, but with the option to break as soon a ram saw them, presenting multiple targets: the creatures worked in narrow focus and, once an opponent was picked, were unlikely to switch. Two-on-one or worse against them was almost a foreign concept, so as long as ponies outnumbered attackers... A few more possible tactics were discussed, and then, "Got it. No talking for a while, everypony: keep your ears to the compass and look for more of those gouges."

They moved on as a tight knot of sentience against the random malevolence of the wild zone.

Not sentient. Twilight hated that. Intelligence was double-edged here: a sentient species was better able to plan against you, but there was also a chance to talk them out of things. Creatures which were four-footed and around pony size were at least a little self-aware more often than not, and the majority of Equestria's talking races were quadrupeds. Mindlessly charging animals looking to dominate everything around them on instinct... there was almost nothing they could do with that. Avoid or fight: no other choices. Given any option at all, Twilight wanted 'avoid'. But Fluttershy was right: the animals could be a danger to any other ponies who came in here -- and the mere fact that Fluttershy had brought it up (if semi-indirectly) showed how much of a threat she considered these animals to be. Part of the pegasus didn't want the rams hurt -- but the majority didn't want any ponies hurt. And it still tore her up inside every time.

Don't start fights: end them. A lesson from before Twilight's time in Ponyville, one her father had given to her before she'd started school. And like most parental advice, it didn't always work. Her brother had been more accurate: "There are times when the only way to end things is by being the one who kicks first, Twily -- but you'd better be sure.'' And he had talked to her about ponies who would try to pick fights to get her in trouble, about ponies who would lie and say she'd started everything, and all the other dangers of being in a group of social-climbing students who saw the fastest route to the top as being through stepping on everypony else. It had not been a reassuring lesson to head into her entrance examination with, and at least a little of the blame for her stress that day could be laid at his hooves.

He'd been right, of course. She'd seen those kinds of ponies in school. Lots of them. But most of them hadn't wanted to climb over her. They'd seen it as easier to attach a rope and let her haul them along. In retrospect, she had often wished for the fights...

...a squeal. Pained, agonized, a high-pitched scream of animal agony -- and then, a few seconds later, a collision, something hard against wood...

Fluttershy repressed the audible part of the gasp: it was only visible as a single shuddering breath. Her ears rotated a little, twitched to the same direction everypony else was orienting on: left. "...I can't smell anything," she whispered. "the air is too still... but that sounded close..." More collisions, two this time. Another squeal. The first one hadn't died away. It sounded as if it would go on for the rest of the animal's life, and it sounded as if that wasn't going to be very long. Fluttershy shivered. "...they're too close... maybe they were eating and just started hunting again for extras -- or fun..."

Twilight automatically looked around. Nothing visible. Their current area was still heavily forested, but there was enough room to twist and dodge. Some old trees which were large enough to hide behind if facing them directly -- nothing was wide enough to conceal a perpendicular pony form -- a few saplings straining upwards towards the remaining canopy gaps to make their own claim of Sun. Said canopy still too thick overhead for aerial evacuation (and for that, she would have at least tried as the last resort), branches not particularly trustworthy if it came down to the pegasus-assisted desperation hijinks known as Ponies Up A Tree. No clouds within easy reach for drenchings or lightning scares. Not ideal fighting ground. Which didn't matter to Rainbow Dash, who was visibly already thinking about it and had been since Fluttershy had first begun her description. After all, what would Daring Do have done?

Count on the author to get her out of it. Not an option here. "Okay, everypony..." she whispered to the group. "Easy..."

And the breeze hit them, moved towards the sounds...

There were bleats of surprise. Anger. Challenge.

"Aw, horse apples," Applejack muttered.

And that was the last thing anypony said before the charge of rams erupted from the woods.

Five of them: they did outnumber their opponents. But the rams (teeth bared in challenge, teeth bloody, more blood dripping from the horns of two, a pair had those spirals and the others were in spear formation) were choosing who they would take on, looking for the weakest among them to dominate and the strongest to knock out all at the same time --

-- the pegasi did as they'd planned. "Over here, ugly!" Rainbow Dash yelled. "All the more meat to chew on: six servings instead of four! Come on, over here! The more colors, the more flavors!"

Fluttershy, fears pushed back for a little while so that they could overwhelm when there was more time, was doing the same -- if at lesser volume. "Me! Don't you want me?" And they were peeling off from the group while staying on the ground, moving in front of the biggest trees they could find...

Rarity was getting her saddlebag open, speed-sifting through the contents. Twilight let her field flow forward, reaching towards the largest, the one Fluttershy said would be the leader. Applejack had the lasso out. Pinkie Pie -- she couldn't see what Pinkie Pie was doing and wasn't sure she wanted to...

...the rams charged. Two picked a pegasus each, their horns uncurling into spears as they charged. One headed for Twilight, one for Applejack and the last, one with no blood anywhere in the filthy matted and tangled coat, the smallest and hungriest, went directly for Spike.

She was aware of a sudden downdraft, heard the impacts as the rams went into the trees, the pegasi suddenly overhead --

-- and then she had her own to worry about.

Her field had surrounded it: she lifted, heard the bleat of surprise, threw it backwards towards the first thing in the way: one of the taller, thinnest saplings. The ram twisted around within the field before she could tighten her grip, went into the wood headfirst, there was a crack, the wood splitting up and down and across, the tree tilting forward, coming down towards her --

-- no time to think, no time to fully release her field and choose the tree as a new target. No time to get a better orientation on what was going on around her. No time. In the fresh chaos of combat already starting to break away from the plan, Twilight violated the first rule of teleportation and went between without a full understanding of her arrival point, her ears only distantly aware of the sound of flame, the bleat of anger and yet another impact, what could have been a branch breaking off from the channeled force --

-- came out four body lengths away.

In the space that plummeting broken branch had just begun to pass through.

And then she had exactly enough time to realize she was screwed.

Oh Celestia, please don't let this hurt too much --

-- the recoil hit.

She could teleport into a gaseous medium without trouble. Arriving in liquid would displace her own volume: Archineighdes Principle. (It wasn't pleasant, but it could be done.) Small objects -- blades of grass, specks of dust -- would be pushed aside harmlessly. A particularly thin and fragile solid -- anything of less than a twentieth of her own density and a few ounces in weight at best -- stood some chance of breaking around her as she arrived: it was how she'd popped the Crusaders' ball just before the heart of the Smarty Pants Incident had begun. But anything larger and more dense than that would not permit her entry. She could not disrupt its structure and it thankfully would not merge with hers: two solids refused to occupy the same space. The arriving teleporter would be displaced, sent moving in a completely random direction until they found enough open space for their body to arrive in. And the farther they had to go, the faster they would wind up moving. It was one of the reasons those unicorns who could teleport tended to be obsessive about keeping their arrival points clear: move a table three feet to the right and send a pony two and a half Celests into the ceiling. You didn't teleport to a site you couldn't see or didn't know by heart, not unless there was, just for example, a pack of angry teenage dragons after you, your younger brother and two friends, and you were too freaked out to think and needed to get some distance immediately between the group and enemies who could fly faster than two could gallop, and she'd been lucky that time, all arrived safely with a correct guess at the height of the ground ahead.

This time, the recoil took her, instantly accelerated her body to a half-gallop as it tossed her diagonally to the right and up, she tried to get her field ahead of her to push off anything ahead, even opened her wings in the desperate hopes that it would do something, but --

-- the right side of her head went into the wood, and she fell two Celests to the forest floor, vision spinning. Her eyes wouldn't focus. Her field wouldn't focus. But she could still hear, and there was an angry bleat, pounding cloven hooves moving closer, she couldn't get a spell going, couldn't get up, couldn't fly, couldn't --

-- at least I don't have to see --

-- and there was a roar of "NO!", moving just ahead of the flame.

The ram's bleat turned into a scream of mindless agony: it veered off, barely missed her to the right, charged off into the trees...

Spike's head swiveled back towards his own ram, the one he had initially dodged rather than take on directly and allow his sister to be hurt. Twilight's blurred vision could just make it out, starting to turn for a second charge, pawing at the ground. She was distantly aware of a new sound, rope cutting through air, another bleat as Applejack snared some part of her foe, but Spike needed a few seconds to get a second burst and he might not have it --

-- six double-vision twinkles of blue glow shot past her, and there was a new animal scream in the woods.

Twilight barely managed to get her head up, turned to see Rarity with her portable pincushion (the non-reptilian one) within her field, twelve -- six? -- more long pins held as separate miniature missiles ready for the launch. "Dreadfully sorry!' she called out to the ram. "I would use much finer ones, but I don't know where the nearest shop is for a resupply! And normally I'd let you keep them, but I'm going to need those back for that same reason, thanks ever so...!" And the original shots went past going in the opposite direction.

A pink blur moved into Twilight's vision, stopped just off to her right. "We are not playing Pin The Horns On The Pony!" Pinkie declared. "Come and get me, smelly! Phew -- do you charge your mother with that coat? Rarity, what's the spa rate for Never Had A Bath In Your Life? Nyah-nyah!" To Twilight's dazed eyes, it looked as if Pinkie had a sparkler at each corner of her mouth. The earth pony probably did. Some party supplies always made it into the saddlebags. "Over here, Sir Odoriferous of Stinkville!" And she moved, luring one off, the one which was getting sick of charging into Fluttershy's chosen trees -- which just let a rainbow trail swoop past and come in from behind before a bleat of purest outrage exploded through the air...

...and within seconds, it was over.

Fluttershy landed next to her. "Talk to me." No hesitation here, not when the situation was medical in nature. "Full name, location, last thing you remember."

Twilight groaned. "Twilight Sparkle of House Twinkle. I did something stupid. I can't tell you where I am because none of us know. Oh, my head..."

A gentle hoof softly touched the impact area, triggering a fresh round of fireworks in her vision. "Nothing broken," Fluttershy told her. "But you're going to have a nasty bruise for a while. You're lucky you hit so close to the horn: that's where your skull is thickest. Any concussion symptoms?"

"Some double vision, but it's starting to clear..." Twilight shook her head in an attempt to get rid of the last bits, immediately regretted it. "OW! Fluttershy, did you pack any --"

"...sorry, Twilight." With the worst of it over, the forcefulness had vanished. "...I thought -- it was just a ride into Canterlot..."

Twilight sighed. No surprise, no blame. Fluttershy normally kept a few animal remedies in her saddlebags as a perpetual just-in-case, but she had made the same assumption on pony medical supplies as everypony else had on everything else: that they would have gotten it before leaving the palace. If I'd just looked at that underlayer a little closer, if I'd just wondered about it... "I understand."

"...I should just start carrying stuff anyway, shouldn't I? I'm so sorry..."

The others gathered around her, helped her up. Twilight blearily checked for other injuries -- nothing: she was the only one who'd gotten hurt. None of the forest was ablaze. There were no ram bodies on the ground: they'd been frustrated, injured, and in one case, mega-goosed into departure. They wouldn't be taking on ponies any more --

-- no, wait: one ram on the ground. Alive and uninjured, tied up with Applejack's lasso. And -- two other animals. Woodchucks. Gored, bleeding, soft squeals coming out of broken bodies --

-- Twilight turned away.

Fluttershy didn't. "...I..." Her voice broke. She took several slow breaths. "...I need -- some time."

The other six looked away from her, headed for the lassoed ram.

Applejack looked down at the snorting, twisting animal, matted coat scraping leaves and rot from the forest floor as it writhed on the ground, unable to work itself free. They weren't standing too close: the horns were curling and uncurling, rotating in all directions as it tried to hurt the ones who had captured it -- but it couldn't think, not on their level, and the idea of using a horn on the rope binding its legs would never come. "So -- what are we gonna do with it?"

"I still," Rarity harshly declared, "have all my pins. I left the other with one eye after it went for Spike." The anger was high in her voice, her tail lashing enough to briefly straighten the elaborate curling. "Do you think this one has learned enough of a lesson to keep both? Will it remember, or is it going to head for the first little dragon it sees should we let it go?"

Spike was staring at Rarity. So were the others -- but for Fluttershy, too far away to see the rage. "I'm okay, Rarity --"

"-- you almost weren't! I will not let these things hurt you, any more than you would have allowed them to hurt me. Twilight, if you sent it to the ravine..."

Twilight shook her head. Things spun. "I'd have to go with it -- and I shouldn't try too much of anything until the headache clears." Side of her head: she'd actually been lucky. If it had been horn-first -- no risk of fracture, the horn itself was pretty much impossible to break with impact, but she'd been trying to use her field at the time... recoil with a chance of backlash, one after the other. Decidedly not one of her better days, and that was before she factored everything else in.

"I understand," Rarity consoled her -- but then the unicorn's gaze returned to the ram, and it was no less furious for the brief interruption. "I am still very open to ideas."

The fury was no surprise to any of them. Rarity's natural inclinations did not go towards violence -- but Spike's temporary growth spurt had nearly turned into horrible consequences. Several self-important authorities claiming to work for Canterlot, who had accompanied the ones distributing the latest round of building supplies and relief funds two days after, had taken it upon themselves to try and 'confiscate' the dragon, declaring him a threat, a menace, and an animal who had to be caged -- and 'caged' was only the word they were using in public. They had claimed authority directly from the Princesses, and that any pony who tried to stop them would wind up in exile, no matter who they were or what their relationship to Princess Celestia was. They had been lying. They were kidnappers working under an air of false legitimacy, and Rarity had been the one who stalled them long enough for a teary-eyed Twilight to write the letter which uncovered the lies. But she had initially stalled the three with words, and then with a physical block -- and finally by turning into the first to physically and magically take them on. It hadn't taken long for the others to join her.

Twilight had been expecting consequences. Expecting the Princess -- to take Spike away. Blame her for not learning about the thankfully-temporary growth spurt which could overcome a dragon of Spike's age. She had initially believed the kidnappers had that authority, hadn't challenged them, seen their arrival as confirmation of her terrors. Rarity hadn't. She had bought them time, turned the others (who'd had similar fears) around, and led the charge. The Princess had arrived minutes later -- but not the Princess they had been expecting. Spike, who had himself been waiting for the fourth horseshoe to drop, unable to sleep, crying into Twilight's coat for hours in shame and regret, had, in his fear and lingering self-hatred, fumbled a letter for the first time in his life. Luna had received the scroll.

Luna had not been happy.

She had not been happy all over the town square, which was where she kept the false officials in casual high-speed orbit for an hour before bothering to notify her sister.

After a long talk with all non-criminal parties involved, Celestia had told an assembled Ponyville that a dragon's life cycle was little understood: Spike was one of the first to spend so much time among ponies, the first raised from the hatching of his egg. That Zecora had lore they did not. And now that they knew what had happened, the warning signs, and the cure, Spike would remain in Ponyville, and it would take a town to help raise, love, and forgive a young dragon who hadn't known what was happening to him, who would have given anything to make it stop. Who had made it stop. And then the Princesses had left, taking the kidnappers with them.

In time, Ponyville had forgiven Spike, the same way they had eventually forgiven Twilight for a certain doll: they now understood what had happened with the little dragon and simply took extra precautions around his birthday, which was now an event where Spike received far more than a single book, getting gifts from many of the townsponies -- and for each gift he received, giving out two.

(Ultimately, the largest post-incident problem had come from the press. It had been Twilight's first real introduction to Murdocks' muckraking and mud-stirring corps: they had followed Spike for weeks, throwing questions at him in attempts to induce rage or tearful breakdowns and when that hadn't worked, switched to giving him things, trying to bring on the initial stage of a second outbreak which they could photograph for their stories -- a little something to accompany all the articles about Princess Celestia's ignorance and how it made her unfit to rule, she should turn the government over to the Day and Night Courts immediately and of course Luna had to be deposed as well because any real ruler would have caught up on those basic unknown facts by now. A furious Spike had donated every item to charity, and the reporters had wound up in court on charges of Attempting To Induce A Dragon To Riot. The resulting fine had been massive (and had also gone to charity), with the sheer breathtaking number of bits involved keeping Ponyville free of virtually any reporter who wasn't school-based until Gabby Gums began publishing, at which point they decided the gossip flow was worth the risk and began to slowly return in a sludgelike flow of unstoppable sewage.)

But Rarity had not forgotten any of it, especially the reason Spike had found himself within the beast -- and none of her testimony at the kidnappers' trial had shown a single hint of forgiveness towards them. No pony tried to hurt Spike on her watch, and the normally peaceful unicorn could turn into a white blaze of field-slinging fury at the mere suggestion of a scratch to any scale. Her anger at the absent ram she had needle-speared was being transferred to the captured one. No pony was surprised --

-- but no pony was going to let her take it out on the helpless animal, either. "I can just grab the rope and go drop it off somewhere, " Rainbow Dash proposed. "From low altitude, Rarity. The fight's over -- it's beaten." The pegasus tended to be a gracious victor after the initial boasting celebration wore off.

"And how do you know it won't attack another dragon or pony? Is a rope enough to stick in its mind?"

"It's angry," Applejack considered. "Ah think it will charge if we let it go here..." She gave the lasso a long look. "Had t' use a lot of rope to get it hogtied, an' Ah had to back off when it got too short..." Checked the end of the lasso, which was far too close to the rotating horns. "Rarity, I hate t' ask --" and her face showed it: she would take help from friends now, but virtually any loss of self-sufficiency still rankled the farmer "-- but when we decide, would you unwrap that for me? Ah don't think Ah can get that close right now, an' Ah don't want t' lose it."

"Of course, Applejack... but we have to decide first."

And they were all looking at Twilight.

They would have been looking at me before the wings, too. She tried to clear her head again. Nothing helped. "I think -- we move back a good distance, and Rarity unwraps it from there, but keeps one loop around a leg. If it charges for us or Fluttershy, she yanks it back..." With average field strength. So actually, "Rarity -- can you?"

The white unicorn eyed the writhing ram. "Not quite -- but how about tying one end to a tree and then still keeping the loop on? All I need is a trick knot or two. Once we see how it wants to move --" reluctant, distaste still present and wanting to get a vote in "-- we can let it go -- if it's learned enough to run away."

"That could work," Twilight decided.

"Good. Now all I need is the right trick knot -- Applejack, would you teach me one, please? Mine are rather meant to stay together."

A few fast lessons practiced on a twisted fabric sample later, they had their setup. "And if it moves towards us," Rarity cautioned, "are you ready, Spike?"

"Ready."

Her field surrounded the rope, moved it. The ram realized something was happening almost immediately, regained its feet as they were freed, tried to bite at the remaining tie while ponies and dragon backed away -- then looked at them. Seemed to be thinking about how tight that last loop was. Pawed at the ground. Charged.

Spike, whose aim had been prealigned, breathed out. Just a little. And one very loud bleat later, a ram with a lightly singed and quickly respiraling right horn was crashing through the trees, trying to get back to its charge and find anything to hunt which wasn't a pony and didn't come with scales and fire. There had to be plenty of those around -- somewhere else. Somewhere far away, where it and its fellows could begin the process of pretending nothing which smelled and looked like what they hadn't ever fought existed and would take great pains to make sure nothing like what had never happened in the first place ever happened again.

Spike shrugged. "Slow learners," he opinionated -- then looked at Rarity. With that familiar, slightly dopey smile which he only got around the unicorn, "You saved my life again."

"And you've saved mine. Are we keeping a running tally?"

He laughed. "Twilight made me take the count out of the Code." But the smile didn't fade.

Fluttershy slowly trotted up. "...I'm ready." She looked up at the canopy, noted the colors visible in the specks of sky as the fast-dropping Sun began the final portion of its descent. "...we need a clearing... we'll need to make camp soon..."

They continued through the forest. No sounds followed them.

And Twilight thought about the other part of Fluttershy's tending to her flock and the beloved pets of Ponyville, the part no pony talked about, the bit everypony seemed aware of and never discussed. How Fluttershy understood the natural cycle best of them all, and there were ponies whose cherished companions were sick beyond help or injured past recovery, ponies who would bring their loved ones to Fluttershy knowing that the fragile pegasus would take them in. Would cool them with water and ice, would give them the medicines to take their pain away in the final hours, would gently stroke a wing against their heads as she whispered words of comfort to them. Words which would be the last ones the animals ever heard. She understood predator and prey, knew the necessity, but she mourned regardless -- and when either one could no longer continue, or a cherished friend was about to take the final gallop, Fluttershy would be there. She never let any animal who had been a friend go alone into the dark.

They had not watched her as she went to the woodchucks. Not listened. Tried not to notice when the squealing stopped.

Rainbow Dash, already moving close to her friend, suddenly pressed tighter, their feathers touching, cyan brushing into yellow. They walked together that way, with one pegasus carefully not paying attention to the tears in the other's eyes.

For Fluttershy would leave no poor thing to suffer.

"So who's got a story?" Rainbow Dash asked. "Mine -- might need a little work." One of the traveling conversations had turned into a flank-blistering lesson regarding wanton cruelty to the common comma. (In retrospect, bringing half the first draft of Volume One? Not a great idea. Especially for Twilight, who had read as much as she could stand with her headache before beginning the harsh edits. To wit, three paragraphs. Or something which was meant to be paragraphs without ever quite making it.)

"I've got a new one!" Pinkie happily declared. "Cranky taught me some donkey legends! Have any of you ever heard about the travels of Donkey Hote?"

"Aw, no," Applejack groaned. "Not a donkey story..."

Pinkie fixed Applejack with a sudden hard stare, which had to cross the full fire circle -- they were on opposite sides -- and picked up extra heat along the way. "And what have you got against donkeys?"

A fast, defensive, "Nothin'! It's jus' that -- all their stories always end the same way. Badly. Everypony dies, or everypony was jus' dreamin' the whole time an' their real lives are miserable, or the lovers find each other an' then one of them dies out of nowhere, or they both do, or there's that stinker where one killed his fool self thinkin' the other was dead, an' then she wakes up an' sees he's dead, so she lies down an' dies next t' him, then both their families get mad an' they all kill each other. It ain't a donkey story unless there's a pile of bodies in the middle of the last page an' every survivin' character is so depressed, they're fixin' t' join 'em."

"But this one's really funny! It's got all sorts of comedy in it! And -- I don't want to ruin the best part, but just wait until you hear the bit with the windmill...."

"Yeah? How's it end?"

"Um..."

And that ended the longest exchange Twilight had seen Pinkie and Applejack have since they'd made camp. The earth ponies had worked hard to help clean the ground in the small clearing, ring a fire pit with rocks, and Applejack had rigged an earth pony firestarter stick to get the actual blaze going with. (They were already working to conserve Spike's reserves. Twilight had watched the process with some interest, making a number of mental notes which managed to find their proper filing area in her somewhat-less aching head. Not as effective as magic, certainly, but -- workable.) But they weren't talking.

It had been a long day for everypony, though -- and threatened to be a longer night. They were on short rations and would remain so until they found a source of food. Water hadn't been a problem and wouldn't be as long as Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy could find and wrestle down clouds -- although that usually just meant Dash. But no food had appeared, and they'd carefully divided out a third of what they had between them before sharing it among the group. The rest had been grass. Twilight hadn't eaten wild grass in years, and it had grown no tastier during the long abeyance. The others had wound up with similar reactions, starting from Rainbow Dash openly wiping off her tongue on her removed saddlebag through Rarity repeatedly asking for "Just a little more water, please -- I swear, Applejack, I'd sooner have a mug of Flim-Flam cider than this rot..." and Fluttershy finally deciding the real reason the herbivorous part of her flock stayed around was just to avoid this experience.

"I've had good grass, truly I have," Rarity assured them. "Hentucky Blue -- there's nothing finer for a light snack when a lady is watching her figure before everypony else can get a peek. But this? Is not it. This is enough to make one think about meat." She -- and several other ponies -- shuddered. "I believe something marked territory on this. Several times."

"Starting a fire is marking territory," Spike pointed out. "At least for some of us... Twilight, how's your head?"

She sighed. "Getting there. I can --" she checked: yes, she could surround and lift one of the waiting firewood branches "-- handle the basics. But..." Her head twinged, and it moved up the scale from there. "...that's it: basics. I'm sorry, but -- I can't manage a shield spell tonight. They're always harder without a structure to anchor on, and the way I'm feeling..."

"Just rest up," Spike said. "I've seen you try to do too many things when you're not in the right condition before, remember?"

Twilight managed a small chuckle. "There's no dorm nurse to pull me to any more, either."

Rainbow Dash looked briefly curious. "Wait -- Twilight's gotten hurt trying new tricks?"

"Exhausted, usually," Spike explained. "She'd try too much, or for too long, before she was really ready, and --" a quick look at his big sister: the smile told him to continue "-- was too stubborn to stop. There were a lot of nights in the dorm when she'd just keep pushing until she passed out." A side glance to Rarity (after another check with Twilight). "And one of them was after the differentiation lesson."

Twilight sighed. "I was just so sure I was overlooking something really basic..."

Rarity was intrigued. "So -- over your full school terms, how many times did you...?"

Brother and sister together, "Nine." Spike laughed, then added "And she's heavier than she looks, and the nurse was two floors down, and I had to bring the patient to the office when it was drain because it was supposed to be a lesson to me, so I'd stop her the next time -- but have you ever tried stopping Twilight when she gets a problem she wants to solve?"

Twilight managed a smile. "I've gotten better."

"Yeah. Now you usually stagger to bed on your own."

Twilight ruefully nodded. "And I know better than to try a shield spell when I'm like this -- so I'm sorry, everypony, but we'll have to stand watches tonight."

"...I can take the first one," Fluttershy volunteered. "...and maybe the last. I'm not tired, really... I can stay up for a few hours and let everypony rest..."

"Ah can stand the first one," Applejack gently offered. "It was a long day for you, sugarcube."

"...but really... I'm not tired..."

"Well -- if yer sure..."

"...I'm fine."

"Okay. But Ah'll get second."

Pinkie Pie volunteered for the third -- "I would have been up anyway" -- and that brought them back to the original problem. "So -- no donkey stories because some ponies don't want to risk a sad ending, at least in a story." A long, clearly miffed look at Applejack. "Anypony else got a new one, then?"

"I know one about Star Swirl --" Twilight began, and stopped as the usual result manifested at the instant she hit the name: five ponies and one dragon simultaneously pretending to fall asleep. "Oh, come on! One night, I'm going to tell this!"

"But not tonight!" Rainbow Dash chortled. "Oh, and --" suddenly quieter, just a little "-- it is night, and -- we're on a mission, and -- you know, Fluttershy had a really long day... I don't mind if anypony wants to -- say it." The looks passed around the fire circle, picked up no heat. "The one for wanderers. I'll even lead, okay?"

Another circle of glances, this time with Dash excluded -- and then they all nodded.

Rainbow Dash got up, stood on all four hooves, looked up at the star-filled night sky.

Softly, with the voices of the others behind her, "Luna watch over us, for we know not where we are. Luna guide us, for we know not where we travel. Luna protect us, for we know not who we will meet. Luna keep us under your wings under blessed night until waking day, when Celestia will stand her watch. Luna watch over us -- and know we love..."

She sank back down, ruffled her wings a few times. "It's funny," she said quietly. "My dad taught me that one when I was a filly, and I thought -- it was just another name for Moon. Maybe everypony did when they were that young. And they still made sure we learned it... Pinkie?"

The earth pony's right ear had just gone back. Then forward. Wriggled twice. Repeated the cycle.

Pinkie looked directly at Twilight, raised a hoof to her mouth as if wiping away grass stains, blocked her lip movements from casual side view, mouthed the confirming words.

They were being watched.

She heard the voices at the same moment she saw the light. And then she moved closer, as close as she dared, for these were other ponies -- and they might have information.

And there she had stayed.

There were six of them: the voices told her that much. Six. She'd set a personal record. (Plus one, seven altogether, but that one almost did not seem to be a pony at all -- improbability upon strangeness.) She could see three of them from this angle, her body crouched low in tall grass, hidden in the shadows of thick trees. The pain was very much with her, would never leave, and the urge to vocalize it kept crashing against the barrier of her clenched jaw -- but she had not uttered a sound since reaching this position. She would not.

Three ponies. In her sight. At the same time.

Two were pegasi. One was cyan, and her mane and tail flowed with all the colors of a prism. Her voice was brash, and she had trouble staying still: little shifts of the hooves, vibrations of the wings. A sense of flight temporarily postponed and ready to be instantly resumed. She looked at the world as if deciding which parts of it she might want to own. The cutie mark -- a tri-color lighting bolt, plus a cloud. Possibly worked in weather manipulation. The second -- a classic beauty, she knew that much from some of the books and a few memories kept towards the back. A lovely shade of yellow, the long mane and tail a hue of pink she desperately wanted to remember in full detail later (if a normal 'later' had still existed), shy eyes and a retiring posture. There was also a sense of movement waiting to resume with that one, but of a different kind: she flinched at the cracks and pops from the fire, seemed ready to flee at any harsher noise. The mark -- three butterflies, and that almost sent a signal all the way through her agony, nearly made a new thought come. Put together with the names, and it felt as if she should know them. Something mentioned -- something overheard...

The third was orange. Three apples on the flank. Muscular, strong. A blonde mane and the thickest tail she'd ever seen, one which needed a loop of thin rope at the very end just to keep the hairs from going everywhere. A hat -- the second one with a hat: the cyan pegasus was wearing one in a strange style, but she clearly wasn't comfortable with it, had been distractedly adjusting it for much of the watching time. But this orange mare, the one with the freckled face, almost seemed to have hers as an extension of her body. It hardly shifted when she moved, only changing position when she wanted it to. Why hide the horn that way? The hat would forever be in the way of a field, an initial obstacle to be overcome for every spell. A strange fashion choice at best.

Two of the hidden others were definitely unicorns: there had been talk of spells. One was talented -- a shield spell had been part of the discussion: even if she could not cast it now, just being able to manage it normally raised her in the ranks. She couldn't begin to take a guess at the sixth, a voice which ranged from enthusiastic to happy through overjoyed with occasional stops at deeper, harsher emotions. One of the hidden unicorns had a faint Canterlot accent overlaid with something else: time spent in the city, but not a lifetime. For the rest of them -- none had accents she could place, or ones where she had been told the origins. The other unseen unicorn had an accent she wasn't sure existed.

But there was no shield spell. And the orange mare's saddlebags were resting on the ground, one was open --

-- and she could see food within.

They had not spoken about him. They sounded as if they were lost. No help to follow them from a distance --

-- but I could listen, I could hear them talking if I stayed far enough back, I could just --

-- no. Following those who didn't know where they were or where they were going was begging to make things worse. Company for a night, company who would never know she had been there.

Company with food in an open saddlebag.

She was so hungry.

It was their food. They seemed to have very little.

But --

-- she was so hungry...

Twilight had never learned any spells for communication without sound. She had heard legends of them: castings which allowed ponies to speak mind-to-mind (although never for long or too closely: the legends claimed thoughts would leak, ones meant not to be sent crossing the gap, incidental memories following along), but had never found one in the library. Spells existed to replicate sound at a short distance, but the sound had to be made first. Being hit by a spell would sometimes let the target experience some of the caster's emotional resonance, but -- that meant being hit by a spell, and it required a powerful caster along with, typically, a not particularly friendly spell. Not something subtle to be done by firelight. Making plans without tipping off the spy would be difficult -- perhaps impossible.

Pinkie Sense. She had learned to trust it. She had also learned to check the condition and relative proximity of all available medical supplies whenever it started going off. She'd never identified a pattern to its manifestations (other than the one which said 'And I will be aching for hours at the very least') -- except for one: it most typically showed up when Pinkie had been -- well -- not partying for a while. If the baker had strength to spare and no social calendar dates to cross off for the day, that was when Pinkie Sense was likely to appear. Not guaranteed -- just more probable. All this told her was that it took a certain amount of energy to work. Every other detail remained a mystery, and one she had almost given up on trying to solve.

It was going off now, and it said they were being watched. Twilight had faith in that. And she knew their medical supply situation was horrible.

"My father taught it to me too," she admitted. Raised a hoof to her own mouth to wipe away her own imaginary grass remnants, mouthed Pony? Pinkie nodded and made a point of blinking a single time: just one. "Maybe they're words for fathers to pass on..."

"It is funny, really," Rarity smoothly acted, stretching her legs and arching her back: just loosening up, nothing to worry about, surely wasn't going to leave the fire and go check anything. "Mine too -- and he's not exactly a stallion much concerned with words." She very carefully did not look at the surrounding shadows.

"Mine didn't," Pinkie said. "But my family was -- different that way." Her right front hoof casually flicked a non-existent bug away -- then another. Both in the same direction.

Twilight judged the angle. Somewhere behind me and off to the left... Well, there was only so much grass to wipe away without...

Reluctantly, she captured some more in her field, forced herself to take a very messy bite just so she could get rid of the excess. She wished she had left more excess. Hostile? her lips asked while her tongue vowed to hate her forever.

Pinkie gave her a mildly dirty look, because of course she had to do the same. A frustrated, disgusted chew, and then she mouthed Can't tell...

All right. A single pony, somewhere in the dark, watching them. Possibly lost. Potentially a spy. Maybe even -- could they be this lucky? -- the mission, and that would wrap things up in a single night and get them home, which meant it was completely impossible. One pony, if it came down to hostilities, against six Element-Bearers with a dragon on the side. But a pony who had made no offensive move.

They all knew what was going on now, had enough experience with Pinkie Sense to have some of the more common sequences memorized -- and given the number of poorly-hidden photographers around Ponyville, 'we're being watched' was currently as common as it got -- but they didn't have a plan yet. And there were reasons for a single pony to be hiding in the dark which weren't bad for them, although Twilight was having trouble thinking of any. A reporter out here? How many bushes did she need to probe? Was she in any condition to try a blind circle-sweep and see what she could identify, especially with a tree right behind her to disrupt and so many others out in the forest --

-- and then she felt it, a split-second before seeing it.

Magic. Uncertain. Disorganized. Off. There was something -- misaligned about it, as if it wasn't quite right, like there were other factors trying to find their way into the watcher's field, not so much contamination as a weird blend, and she couldn't pin it down --

-- eyesight took over.

There was a hint of color inside one of Applejack's saddlebags. The open one. The one they'd taken some of their dinner from.

Slowly, the color strengthened. It was gold, oddly metallic for the hue, putting Twilight in mind of Rarity's finest (and hardest to make) capes. There were sparkles there -- but instead of the white points of twinkling light normally seen, they were multihued. Some reds, a few greens. Mostly dark blue. (Had she ever seen that before? Even read about it?) And they all surrounded the food within the bag and cautiously slid it out, scooted it around the edge of the fire circle, staying low...

Twilight was very carefully not watching. They all were. Even Rainbow Dash was cautiously paying a given lack of attention. "I know, Pinkie -- rock farmers," the pegasus continued the conversation. "And you have never told me how it's possible to farm rocks. One of my roommates in flight school said it's just something ponies do to get a subsidy for not growing food."

"It's not!"

"Then what is it?"

"It's -- rock farming!"

A not-particularly-faked groan. "Pinkie..."

The field seemed to hesitate at those words: the pull briefly stopped, then resumed.

A single pony, hungry in the dark. A spy or hostile force would have stolen all the food, left them to their own hunger. This was just a single apple and some hay stalks. Taking just enough to try and live on.

Somepony who was lost.

Twilight risked it without adding the blocking hoof: mouthed the word Lost to the others, gathered several subtle nods in response. But -- why hide? Why not step towards the warmth of the fire and company of ponies who could help protect a lost stranger against the wild zone? Not even Fluttershy would stay back in that situation -- maybe. This one refused to take the chance...

Only one thing to do, then.

She stood up.

"We don't have much," she announced to the night, "but you're welcome to some of what we do have. I wouldn't wish this grass on anypony. Just come out so we can see you?"

A gasp, almost directly behind her, the field yanked on the pitiful ration, the glow and its contents skidded into the dark...

"Wait!" Twilight spun as the others began to get up themselves, took three steps away from the circle and the wide tree trunk she'd been sitting near, leaving her perfectly visible against the background firelight. "My name is Twilight Sparkle --" she couldn't make herself add the 'Princess' "-- and you're welc --"

It all seemed to happen at once, and it would take her hours to sort out the actual order.

Another gasp, somewhere ahead of her, this one startled, shocked, and -- pained. There was loss in that sound, and regret, with despair soaking through. And hatred.

A golden glow, low in tall grass. A purple horn. Dark purple, much darker than her own coat, the shade of Rarity's deepest dyes. Purple reaching towards black.

A flare, the glow rushing outwards.

The wave.

She felt the field before it hit. Felt the raw power, the surge, and even a bit of what was behind it, the taste of the somehow-wrong magic carrying a little of the caster's resonance. For a moment, there was a distant sense of agony -- but not her own. It was as if she had two bodies with the second connected by a single fine thread, and the other end of the silk was on fire. The emotion behind the spell impacted her next, all of the flavors in that single exclamation and something else, something so strong that the empathic residue went into her own thoughts, took over for a single fraction of a second --

-- hate self hate this hate me hate being want to die want to die want to die --

-- and kept her from countering.

The field hit everything. Every tree, every blade of foul grass, every item and everypony behind her. Shoved all of it backwards.

Twilight flew. Not the way she had wanted to, not the way she couldn't. Ten feet straight back. Everything that could be moved went ten feet back, and that included her friends, all their supplies, some of the smaller trees, broken branches, plants torn from the ground and the fire, now scattered and threatening to spread...

Gasps behind her, ponies scrambling to get back up, rolling away from flaming branches and hot cinders. Rainbow Dash had recovered before hitting the ground, was already going up for a dousing cloud. Twilight forced herself to her hooves, tried to shake off the intruding emotions --

-- ran forward again, following the glow which was galloping away in the dark, this time gathering as much magic as she safely could. Magic which wasn't going to be enough if something like that came again, but if she could deflect even a portion... "Please!" she called out. "I -- I know you're scared! We can help you! I'm --" and was this the right time to play that card? "-- a Princess, and --"

The others were fighting the fire behind her, or trying to get reoriented. It was just her and the distant unicorn -- the one who had stopped moving. She froze to match it. All she could see was the glow at ground level, still pulling the food -- and the same around that deep purple horn, with leaves and Luna's shadows hiding everything else.

That was when the voice came, and she wished it hadn't.

It was a broken voice. Every word had been forced through ground glass coating the interior of the throat, a tongue of barbed wire pushed against teeth wet by acid. It was a voice which said the effort required to speak was the worst thing to happen in her life -- but all that was needed to top it was living long enough to hear her own words.

"Princess -- Twilight -- Sparkle..."

There was loathing in that voice.

Twilight fought the urge to shudder, felt her wings vibrate. "Yes!" she tried, forcing herself to continue. "Please -- I can hear you're hurt, and I know you're hungry..."

Silence.

She didn't think about what had happened with the intruder's magic. Tried, with limited success, not to let herself think about it just yet. Concentrated on the sound of that horrible pain, the thought of what it would be like to hurt so much as to make any words sound like that. The urge to fix it. "You were just -- scared." The power in that spell -- the agony... "You can come out. I'm not mad at you, I promise. None of us are. Fluttershy knows some medicine -- if you're wounded, she can do some things for you..."

There was a sound, a single sharp note. It could have been a laugh. She hoped it wasn't. She would have given so much not to hear that laugh (if laugh it was) again.

"Just -- come out..."

More words. Horrible, pressured, agonized, thoughtful words.

""Twilight -- Sparkle. Unicorn. Alicorn. Success. The -- one who -- finished."

Finished -- what? "...please -- we won't hurt you..."

In a tone that made the ground glass into powdered bone, "Hurt..." And that horrible mockery of a laugh. "Don't. Want. To. Hurt..."

Twilight took a step forward. Just a small one. Just enough to notice.

Just enough to scare.

The wave came again, she tried to deflect, got everything into her spell she could manage, trying to shield her friends with what little she had to give. And she did manage to weaken it a bit, enough so that the sweep eventually faded out beyond her hindquarters --

-- but it was still more than enough to pick her up a second time, fling her straight back, and this time her lit horn went into the wood first.

The last word to go through her mind was backlash.

And then that first-stage backlash ripped through her, took all light and pain away, and sent her down into Luna's blessed dark.

Converging Lines

She talks to the rock, and it will not listen to her.

This is not a typical stopping point for her dreams. Memories are incredibly rare, fully coherent storylines only slightly more common. Her nightscape tends to be a chaotic thing, with bits of ideas chasing each other around a twisting land. Pastry and candy will feature prominently, and sometimes make up the land itself. If a concept holds together for a virtual five minutes, it's almost an event, proof that there was something deep on her mind which needed closer examination. Otherwise -- things come, things go, and while it all makes sense to her, it generally leaves Luna with a pounding headache.

But this was a day for being -- reminded. She had been thinking about her first family. About the way somepony she considered to be a friend had acted towards her. About feel. Put it all together and it has sent her back, stabilized the nightscape into a place she still hates, trapped her in a younger body on a grey field under a grey sky with no knowledge that there is an older self coming at all. She is there and then has become now.

In the now of dream, she pushes the rock with her head, as her father taught her. Contact is essential for the youngest, or so the earth pony way teaches. The old earth pony way. Her father is an adherent to the strictest of traditions solidified by age into what he sees as absolute law, imposes them on his family without concern for what they might be thinking, for only his beliefs are the proper ones. He has certain -- standards.

There are no unicorn-enchanted conveniences on the farm. None at all. It is not the old way. Everything is done by hoof and mouth and feel. Any attempt to do otherwise will be punished. Any attempt to discuss otherwise is punished. Her father does not like unicorns. She has his long rants fully memorized, starting with the one about being ripped off on the prices as the most common, and then there's the one about how the Sun and Moon must secretly hate being touched by that filthy horn. He thinks of the Princess as a unicorn and thus he does not like her -- to use the mildest of terms. Every so often, her father will hire a unicorn who's especially desperate for bits, set them to breaking apart rocks which were good for nothing else for hours on end, underpays them horribly, gives them only the leavings from the family meals, tells them to sleep in the fallow fields and then carefully notes the upcoming rain days on the calendar. It cheers him immensely.

He will deal with pegasi, for there are few other ways to get the final product to market in time, especially for the most distant of customers. But he does not like them either. Endless complaints about the cost of moving simple things, how mass shouldn't matter for shipping cost, featherweights with featherbrains, good only for arranging rainstorms on poverty-stricken worthless unicorns who could just conjure bits if they were really so talented. He rants against each in turn, has special rants for taking on both at once when he feels they've been conspiring against him. There was a truly epic rant the previous night, although this was an especially rare specimen: it had cause. A monolithic rock which he had personally been working on for four years, shipped out to a repeat client with a promise of payment after delivery, had been dropped. Somewhere. The pegasi had been apologetic, refunded his bits, but it did not matter. They could not find it and, after he had finished screaming at them, were no longer so willing to look again. She had been in her bed during that fight, huddled under the blankets, wondering if he would be calm in the morning. He had not been.

He does not like most other earth ponies. They have grown weak, he will yell, they take the magic of those lessers for granted and it's all just a conspiracy to hurt their race, perhaps even drive them to extinction should the other two ever learn certain truths and perhaps figure out how to duplicate them. Any true earth pony who works with one who does not follow the oldest of ways, or one of the others for any reasons other than strict business (while ripping them off as much as possible in the process), is a fool, a traitor, or both.

Her father likes very little, and loves even less.

She is pushing the rock. She has been pushing this same rock for half a day. It is the first one on the West Field. She was taken off the North Field after it became clear she was making no progress. (Again. Always.) The rocks she speaks to do not revert for her efforts: she at least does not make things worse when she tries. The fields she is set to do not become fallow -- just frozen, locked into Tartarus-chained stability until she leaves.

Her head hurts. It hurts from the uneven pressure of the stone against it. (She must develop callouses, she has been told. She cannot seem to make one form on her heart.) It hurts from the effort of trying to talk to the rock. It aches from the silence which has been her only answer for all her life. She longs to hear something, tries so hard every time no matter what her father says. He claims she doesn't make any effort, that all their line has had the feel and she has it too, she just doesn't care and would sooner see her family starve than try. He cannot hear her efforts. He will not listen to her protests. He takes her crying as a sign of weakness.

She is trying not to cry now. She is begging. She has been begging the rock to respond for hours, wants nothing more than just a single whisper. Never receives it. The only thing which has happened is that one of her ears is now twisting, without her consent or ability to stop. This and similar uncontrolled movements happen sometimes, starting over the last two moons. The family has seen it. They feel it makes her defective. Another thing which makes her defective.

Her sisters yell at her because her father does, and in that way win an extra share of his approval. Her mother barely acknowledges her, gives her no more attention than telling her to set the table or, if it's a good day, one where the rest of the family has done so well that her own failures can be overlooked after no more than twenty minutes of yelling, to help prepare dinner. She feels a little better in the kitchen, where the things she does work like they're supposed to. She would be happy to simply cook for the rest of her childhood and never return to the fields -- but there is always another morning, always the call to go and speak. Always another failure.

She does not attend school. Her mother educates her on writing, reading, and some math: just enough to know when a bill is written properly and if the ripping off is being done to standards. Her father tells her who she should hate. Those are all the lessons they feel she needs, especially since she can't do the single most basic thing. There are almost no books to read in the house anyway, none of interest beyond a few cookbooks and a single precious baking guide. The others are about different types of rock. (She has them all memorized anyway.) Anything else might present dangerous ideas. There are stories told, of course -- mostly about other ponies. And what happens if you talk to them.

She is not allowed to meet other ponies. She is supposed to stay out of the way on the scant occasions when those of other races are present. She is not permitted to speak with them. There is a single exception, but it is rare.

She has never been so much as a single hoofstep beyond the border of the fields.

Five nights ago, her father had yelled at her mother about other ponies. About her. About whether one of those others was her true father, because surely any child of his would have the feel and that meant her mother must have...

She had heard it all. She is sure she was meant to.

She has been working this field for hours. She will work it until sunset, and then perhaps beyond, skipping meals, staying out here as long as she can stall before her father calls another failure upon her and the yelling begins again. And this will continue for what she sees as the rest of her life, a road ahead going nowhere and still so very long.

There is a sigh, behind and above her. "You are the saddest little pony I've ever seen, Pinkamena."

She jumps a little in the furrow of her own weary trail. It is -- him. She had not known he would be coming today -- but then, they seldom get warning. He just -- comes. He is the only unicorn permitted to be on the farm when he does not have business with her father and even then, he is something much less than welcome.

He comes to see her. This makes her father very angry, and he will yell at her afterwards. Sometimes -- more. But he still permits the visits, perhaps because he is not entirely sure how to stop them. And -- he owes this unicorn a debt. This makes him very angry, especially as part of that debt seems to concern her, with the rest being about her mother. He cannot repay it. He rants to the fields about an angry world which will not let him shake this horned intruder from their lives. He tries to supervise every visit.

The rest of the family is inside having a meal. She is trying to work through it, if her endless failure could ever be called 'work'. There is no supervision.

Another sigh. "They never trim your mane," he says. "I know it's supposed to be a tradition that the mane is never cut until the cutie mark comes, but yours grows so fast..." A gentle hoof reaches out, brushes a little of the straight fall away from her face. She did not turn to look at him after that little jump. She is still trying to talk to the rock. "I wish you would tell me what was wrong. I wish you would talk to me about anything. I worry about you."

She does not answer. Neither does the rock.

"I was just in the area," he tells her. "Another one of mine is in flight camp." She does not know what that is, will not ask. He continues anyway. "She's a year older than you. She's been having trouble, too." More softly, "I wish you could meet her. I wish you could meet all of them. So many..." He stops himself.

A silver glow surrounds the unresponsive rock. She pushes against it. No movement. None at all.

"I'm working." A whisper of protest.

"You push rocks up and down the field all day and your father calls it work," he says. "And then he screams at me about how bad you are at it. And then he screams at me because he screamed at me about that. And he never tells me... well, I don't expect him to. He follows the oldest ways. It's a miracle he didn't throw me out the night you came, Pinkamena."

"...please don't call me that," she whispers.

"What?" Confused, but sincere in wanting to know.

"That -- name. I hate my name. It's stupid." Because Pinkamena is the name of a failure. If she had another name -- if she was another pony...

The hoof makes the gentlest of contact with her mane again, brushes it back a second time. "Names can mean too much," he calmly tells her.

The glow will not release. She cannot push the rock. The only thing she can do with it and he will not let her. But she pushes anyway.

"You'll hurt yourself," he tells her.

"...don't care."

He sighs again. "I want to help you," he tells her. "But I can't. Not unless I know what's wrong. And you won't talk to me. If you said anything at all, even once, the smallest hint..."

She does as she has been taught. She says nothing.

The glow releases. She pushes the rock. He walks alongside her for a minute or two.

Finally, he says "I'll be back another day. Maybe I'll finally find one where you're ready to speak. But... I will come back. Until we know what's wrong. Until it's fixed."

A hoof goes under her chin, tilts her head to face him. Lets her look at the only warm smile she ever sees.

"I'm not giving up on you."

And then he is gone. She goes back to pushing the rock. Pleading with it. Delaying the time until -- after. The after which keeps getting worse.

It is four days before the blast of color will explode across the sky. It is three moons before the last time her father will ever yell at her. Three moons and a sunset before she steps off the fields, never to return. Another moon spent running through a wild zone before he finds her again and takes her to something infinitely wondrous called a town, where a newly-married couple has just opened a bakery and doesn't mind a little live-in help during the hours when she is not trying to catch up with her new studies, learning how to play as a child long after everypony else did. But in the dream, she knows none of this. It is simply now, the same now it has always been and will always be, with a small filly in a field, pushing a rock which will not listen to her. The now she is waiting through.

She spends most of her time waiting to die.

The horn is the seat of a unicorn's magic. Backlash comes when somepony knocks them off the perch.

Untold generations of unicorns -- typically the most egocentric ones -- have complained about this. Those few who believe their race was set above the other two simply for having magic have always treated it as an especially sore point. All the power (more for some than others), all the potential (ibid), and all it can take to ruin them is a simple moment of hard contact. And armor does no good: anything placed over a horn beyond a simple fall of mane represents a barrier to outgoing spells. Wear a helmet into battle if you so desire, but place steel over what's not quite bone and take away most of your prowess. The horn must stay exposed if the field is to be used. It's one of the many factors which has kept unicorns who were a little too full of themselves from taking over. Because with the horn exposed, backlash is an ever-present risk. They'll even use it against each other in battle: any edge over your foe, after all, and many unicorn combats come down to a series of maneuvers designed to get around the other's guard and land that physical blow. It can end the fight. It can do a lot more.

There are four stages of backlash.

The first is known as Stage Zero (much to Twilight's perpetual annoyance). This is the stage the typical unicorn deals with in their everyday life, when a field is being used for nothing more than simple manipulation of a small lightweight item or three. To make sharp contact with a horn while it's channeling the energy of the field in this fashion will disrupt the flow of magic. The field winks out, the objects fall, and the unicorn is probably rather annoyed with her little sister. Talented casters can usually ignore S0 if they see it coming and keep their field going regardless, but it takes a skilled unicorn and a lot of very discomforting practice.

Stage One comes when a unicorn is using more energy, something beyond basic everyday impact on the world around them. At that point, disrupting the field will cause it to briefly flow against the unicorn. Typical results include headaches, bruising, a moderate weakening of the field which makes everything more difficult for a few hours, and mild nosebleeds. A unicorn who's already weakened or injured (as Twilight had been) can be knocked out by a particularly bad S1 -- and the more powerful the unicorn, the more severe an S1 tends to be: there's that much more energy moving the wrong way. A very good, braced caster can stay on their hooves and keep going, but at this stage, the spell is pretty much always disrupted, and multiple S1s are cumulative in their effect on the unicorn's body.

By Stage Two, bracing does no good except to perhaps keep the unicorn conscious -- which at this point isn't always a favorable result. Star Swirl, Celestia, Luna -- legends say they could keep working through an S2 and even ignore some of the worst effects. (But then, legends say Star Swirl could consistently work through a hat -- and wore one just so everypony would know it.) Everypony else will have the spell disrupted, perhaps because it's rather hard to focus on your magic when two of your ribs just fractured themselves. Unicorns unlucky enough to have this level of backlash hit them can look forward to torn muscles, deep hoof clefts, bleeding from ears and eyes, weakened senses for a few days, and a potential addiction to the painkillers they are assuredly going to need. And at this stage, the pony who started the backlash may want to be some distance away, because some of the disrupted field will move out -- and from there, things might happen, depending on the backlashed unicorn's overall strength. Nothing as harsh as what the target's going through, but minor to moderate random magical effects can appear as the field burns off energy on the surrounding environment. (Ducking is generally recommended.) But whereas every unicorn in the world has run into an S0 (in part because they're deliberately inflicted in school: how else will they learn to deal with them?) and many have had the misfortune of an S1 even in peacetime, very few personally know what an S2 feels like. Because for this stage to hit, the unicorn must be channeling enough of their personal reserves to achieve a double corona, and that's hardly an everyday event. (Twilight herself went through a single S2 in her fourth year of school. It's not something she likes to talk about.) Cumulative S2s typically don't happen because after the first one hits, most unicorns won't be doing any more magic for a while. Or moving.

Stage Three is talked about around unicorn campfires when the storyteller wants nopony to sleep through the night.

Stage Three requires a triple corona.

Stage Three kills.

Her first thought as consciousness reluctantly began to flow back: Well, it happened again. Pinkie Sense goes off, and? I get hurt...

Voices filtered into her awareness next. "...is she going to be all right?" Fluttershy was worried about her. Of course she was. Fluttershy always had to be worried about something or her worry muscles would start to lose tone.

"I told you, dear, she'll be fine... just a little touch of backlash from that falling branch. Bad luck to have that windstorm when we did." Rarity -- making excuses? But...

And a new voice, male: "I'll agree with Miss Rarity. The Princess already slept through the worst of it -- and see, she's starting to wake up."

Twilight opened her eyes.

The first thing she saw was a stallion's reassuring expression. Look past that: dark blue with copper mane. Middle-aged unicorn. Glance down the side -- the common sort of red cross for a cutie mark. He smiled at her. "Good morning, Princess Twilight. How do you feel?"

She searched her memories. Put several of them aside for later before going with a sincere "Surprised... how long was I out?"

"The whole night," Applejack said, looking somewhat concerned herself. (Twilight looked up. She was on her right side: twisting her head let her catch the first glimpse of rising Sun. It looked to be a clear, warm day.) "Ah knew you took a hard hit in that fight, but Ah didn't think you'd be in that much trouble from a second one..."

"It was just backlash," Twilight automatically insisted (even though she wasn't sure Applejack knew what backlash was) as she looked around a little more. There were two other newcomers in camp. Both unicorns: a second stallion, younger than her medical attendant, dark green with a gold-and-black mane and the familiar compass rose for a cutie mark, with the other a young mare, very light blue with a white mane, mark showing a loop of rope. "I... think I missed something." She tried to stand. All four hooves seemed to be there, and the medic allowed her to get up.

"We found you a few hours ago," the new mare said. Looking shy, blinking large silver eyes. "I'm Helping Hooves, Princess. These are Traveler and Heartbeat," indicating the medic with the later. "We're one of the search parties."

Twilight blinked several times. "Searching -- for us?" Had the Princesses located them and found some way to send help from afar after all?

Heartbeat ruined her brand-new day: he shook his head. "Pure random coincidence," he said. "There's search parties all over the area. Ours ran into yours. I just hope somepony's run into him by now." His face twisted into concern, and he took a deep breath before shoving most of it away. "We spotted your fire in the middle of the night. The Element-Bearers explained about the storm." He sighed. "Unnatural weather in unnatural places... as Miss Rarity said, just bad luck. We were waiting for you to wake up before we brought you back to town. You're not that far out -- a quarter-day's gallop. But you know backlash -- if at all possible, you don't move the patient until she's up and talking and can tell you how she feels. You were sleeping normally anyway and all the signs said a bad Stage One tops, so we decided to wait for the Sun to get the word from your mouth." Grinning, "And it's more than my life's worth to take chances with the health of a Princess."

Windstorm? But it was... no, they've got some reason for lying: just play along... "Thank you, but please, it's just Twilight Sparkle..." More survey of the area: the damage from the wave was still present: broken saplings, damaged trees, fallen branches, torn-up dirt where plants had been ripped away. There were some scorched portions of earth about: the fire. Everypony seemed to be okay, although Rarity was surely longing for a bath and Spike seemed to have put most of the fire out by rolling on it.

Typically, a frustrating "You're quite welcome, Princess."

And I'm still missing something. No, a lot of things. Her checklist had been torn at the middle, leaving a huge gap of ignorance. Discord had probably done it. He thinks we're a search party... why are the others -- minus Applejack, who just looks really uncomfortable -- lying? Actually, maybe we are a search party. We could be anything, so why not that? They'd certainly found something...

...no. If the others weren't talking about it, then she wouldn't either. Not yet.

Rarity gave her a little more help. "We've been having quite the discussion, they and we. About our problems with the rams, the raccoons stealing most of our supplies while we were fighting... I'm afraid it's made us all look rather bad."

Traveler immediately protested. "It would be hard to make you look bad, Miss Rarity." (Spike glared at him.) "There's a lot of ponies who wouldn't have done so well in a wild zone. Flebian rams -- the three of us would be lucky if we were still breathing. Getting a raccoon pack just then while your backs were turned -- just more bad luck. I swear, it sounds as if the seven of you have had Discord breathing down your flanks since the moment you got here."

"You have no idea," Twilight darkly said. Keep it going, but don't risk adding too much... "Unfortunately, the automatic recovery spell I've been working on is for books."

Rainbow Dash laughed at that, and probably would have laughed regardless of the situation. "They're going to lead us in so we can restock. The town merchants will just bill the Princess later." Her expression suggested she'd been thinking of potential ways to abuse that for at least an hour -- and failing. "We can get back to the hunt after we're in shape to stay out here for more than one night."

Helping Hooves blushed. "And we're honored by your presence, Princess -- you and all the Bearers, and your companion as well. To think that all of you would come for him..."

And out of a (verbal) nowhere, Pinkie Pie: "We wanted to. I really wanted to, and so did Fluttershy. The others really came along to help us. We go together, you know. Can't have two Elements out in the woods by themselves!"

"...yes," Fluttershy softly added.

"Can't have that!" Applejack declared, possibly because it seemed safe to say.

Heartbeat beamed -- then bowed low, bending his front legs until his chin was almost against the damaged ground. "We're honored regardless, Princess," he told Twilight. "Honored that you would care so much as to help, even when you're not one of his." And Luna's mane, now the other two were doing it...

Heartily embarrassed, "Please get up." They did. "I do feel all right to travel, so -- if you would lead the way, kind mare and stallions? The sooner we're resupplied, the sooner we can go back to the search. And I promise we'll all keep a closer eye out for masks."

The search party laughed at that, a little too loudly: the sound which said it wasn't all that funny, but a Princess had made the semi-joke and therefore laughter had better be happening. Once that horrible sound had stopped, they did their best to help pack up the last of the Royal Camp, and then took the lead on walking the other (Royal) search party out of the wild zone: close enough to be easily seen, far enough away to let the Element-Bearers talk. Pony courtesy again -- and besides, only a certain class of people would presume to eavesdrop on a Princess and her entourage.

Twilight still allowed much of the projected quarter-gallop to pass before risking it and kept her voice low anyway. "Anypony want to fill me in...?"

Rarity took it. "It seems one of their own has gone missing after a fire," she told Twilight. "There are ponies combing the countryside -- searching all the way across the continent, in fact: it's just more intense locally. Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie knew the name, and we built the story from there. Remember, the press saw us depart, darling -- sooner or later, that story is going to arrive here. Being another search party gave us a reason to be in the area without telling them what our mission really is, especially as we're not sure ourselves."

Twilight slowly nodded. "But -- why not tell them the truth?"

Rainbow Dash snorted. "Because I've read more than enough Daring Do stories to know that when you tell a bunch of completely random strangers about a secret mission, they're either evil henchponies working for the bad guys or they turn into your closest allies -- and in that case, Chapter Fifteen comes along and boom!, they're dead. I didn't know if they were the enemy and if they're not, then they're too nice to bump off in the middle of the book. Just because we're allowed to look for help doesn't mean we should be grabbing Granny Smith's loudspeaker and rounding up a pony posse every three steps! We've -- got to be careful."

O-kay... Well, she'd always wanted Dash to get some book learning under her wings. Twilight was almost certain this wasn't what she had meant, but... "It's kind of a restrictive cover story, though. What if we need to hang around this town?"

Applejack sighed. "What if we ain't s'posed t'? The problem with not knowin' what we're s'posed t' do is not knowin' what t' include or exclude. One of the problems. Ah mostly just stood around an' kept mah mouth shut. Besides, we had time t' talk before those three showed up an' right now, most of us think it might be 'bout -- her."

The group slowed at that word.

"Her," Spike said softly.

"Miss Gold Field," Pinkie tried out before shaking her head. "No, that doesn't work..."

Unnoticed by everypony, the group's spoken volume was dropping. It was slightly more difficult to pick out on Fluttershy. "...Twilight? That -- push... the one which hit everything... could you have done that?"

She's asking if this one's stronger than I am. It was a question Twilight had been asking herself throughout the breakdown of what remained of their damaged Royal Camp. Softly, "No. Not against that wide an area and that many objects with that kind of force. A narrow cone, maybe. As a wave -- I couldn't. It may not make her stronger than me, though -- just powerful in a different way." Was she lying to herself? "Maybe that's a spell I could learn." Twice? "But she does have strength."

Rarity looked as if she really didn't want to ask her next question. "When it hit -- did you feel --"

Twilight searched her memory, continued sorting. "-- like it was wrong? There was something to that magic... something I haven't felt before..."

"No," and that was Pinkie Pie. "The hurt."

Twilight blinked. Then she did it again. Turned to stare at Pinkie, completely missing a startled Applejack. "You got that? The spell was that strong?" For an earth pony to pick up on resonance... she'd never heard of that happening.

"We both did," Rarity told her. "Pinkie and I were right behind you before that first push hit. You got the initial brunt and we got the rest. Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Spike, and Applejack -- they didn't pick up on it. But both of us -- we felt it. Maybe we absorbed it. How much pain was there. And..." She couldn't finish, looked to Pinkie for help.

"Hatred," Pinkie gently concluded, worry in every syllable. "But -- not at us. Not completely, anyway. Self-hatred." And deep regret, sorrow in knowing there was somepony out there who desperately needed laughter, somepony she couldn't currently help. "It's -- easy to tell the difference."

"I knew it was a her," Rarity made herself resume. "Something in it just came across that way. But we didn't have a chance to follow you: we were rather busy with keeping the forest from going up. There was only so much Spike could roll over in a hurry. And then you ran off -- and when we went to find you... I could see it was backlash, especially after I spotted where your horn had hit the tree." Concern increasing with each word. "I had to explain it to the others. If she had gotten the best of you in a fight, then... We had to tend to you, and chasing her through the dark was a bad idea to begin with..."

"It -- wasn't a fight," Twilight told them. "Not really." Embarrassed, "A fight would have meant I at least got a spell off. I weakened that second push a little, but..." More sorting: she was fairly sure she had it all together in the right order. "This is what I remember happening."

They all trotted along in silence for a while after the story was complete.

"...she sounds like she's in horrible pain," Fluttershy whispered. "...anypony's voice -- sounding like that... why wouldn't she accept our help?"

"I don't know," Twilight sighed. "She's scared -- I know she's terrified of something -- but... not what. And there was something about the way she said my name... like she knows me."

"...everypony knows you now, Twilight... oh. I'm sorry... I didn't mean to ruin your clue..."

"No -- it's not that. Maybe not knowing me. More like it was something --" she hesitated "-- personal. I've been trying to remember all morning if I ever saw that combination of colors: dark purple horn, gold glow, multicolored sparkles. I'm sure I've never seen that. I don't have your memory, Pinkie, but something like that would stand out -- especially having sparkles of anything other than white. I don't know her, not by her magic -- even if she knows me."

"Twilight?" This voice came from a lower level: she looked down at Spike. "I've been thinking -- about her. About why Discord would send us out here, just in case it was her he was sending us for. She was really strong, I know that. I've been around enough really strong unicorns to know, even if I can't pick up the feel. And -- all you saw was her horn. Do you think -- maybe..." He put his arms out to the sides, bent them back towards his body at the elbows, flapped them.

Twilight laughed, and it was a relief. "An alicorn? Another one? Come on, Spike! There's been unicorns on my level in the world. Some of the legends say stronger. A lot stronger, if you believe everything they say Star Swirl could do and don't pretend to fall asleep. It's a lot more likely that this is somepony who's --" and now the thought started to sink in "-- strong -- and can do things I can't -- who doesn't like me..." Uh-oh. "But -- why would Discord be concerned about that?"

Applejack had a ready rejoinder for that one. "Why would Discord be concerned 'bout anythin'?"

Not even Fluttershy could answer that.

Twilight shook her head. "Occlop's Tail Trimmer: the most likely explanation is usually the truth. She's a strong unicorn with a weird field and something -- odd to it. I'm not going to go seeing alicorns everywhere without some proof."

"I know you didn't see wings," Spike pointed out. "But just because you didn't see them doesn't mean they weren't there."

Another laugh, this time slightly forced. "And if I see them, I'll believe them. Not before. There's three -- four alicorns in the world. I'm not placing a tenth of a bit on getting to five within one moon. No, I didn't see wings." And she didn't (wouldn't) expect to. "All I saw was the horn, and her glow, and..." Thinking hard. "...height. She could have been standing on higher ground or had her front hooves elevated on a tree root -- but if we were both on level ground, then judging by how high up her horn was -- and I didn't hear flapping or feel a downdraft, Spike -- she was tall. Maybe a little shorter than Luna. And we've seen regular ponies that tall before -- remember that one mare coming out of the bowling alley?" Pinkie automatically supplied the name in the background: Allie Way. "Just -- something to remember. One more identifier." Name, cutie mark, race, colors of mane and tail -- height wasn't a common feature to pick somepony out by, although it was somewhat more reliable than luggage. Still more than they'd had.

"But she could be the mission," Rainbow Dash considered. "Or part of it. Or none. Or..." Disgruntled, "This is where Daring Do gets another clue, by the way." She looked up at the sky as if expecting one to fall onto her back. Nothing happened.

Twilight had decided to think about something other than a dramatic twenty-five percent increase in the alicorn population. "Fluttershy -- you knew the name of the pony they were looking for?" (Pinkie Pie knew thousands of names. Many of them were associated with parties.) The pegasus nodded. "That's lucky." Was that a hint of field hue ahead, or just a weird tint in the cloudless sky?

"...not really... not if they haven't found him yet..." She sounded even more worried than usual, which took some real work. "...oh, I hope he's okay... I'm glad we're in the area, I was thinking about him for all of yesterday, but..." A glance at Pinkie. "...it's funny. I was in so much of a hurry, I didn't think about your going too..."

"I know!" Pinkie laughed. (Twilight wasn't really paying full attention: she was squinting ahead, having just caught a definite glimpse of non-gold field as they climbed a small slope on a trail which was starting to become a road, with the upcoming magic manifesting as a smooth pinkish surface moving up in a hemisphere.) "I was going to come get you at first, but then I just thought you'd be on the train and if I went out to find you, I'd miss the first one, or we'd both get stuck packing up your stuff and arranging help so we'd miss two trains, or three if Angel decided to make a fuss, and it was just faster to see if you were in the passenger car -- I'm sorry, I know that kind of sounds like I wasn't thinking of you at all..."

"...no, that's okay... we both had the same reaction... we had to go..."

"Wait," Twilight distractedly said, still trying to make out the shape of the stable spell ahead. (The ground evened out still more beneath her hooves, and there was a scent of burnt wood and scorched stone.) A shield out here? And the non-Royal search party was heading for it without a trace of concern? Maybe they were evil henchponies. Rainbow Dash would be gloating for days. "You both know this pony?" In more than a party way for Pinkie and for Fluttershy, at all?

"Well, of course we do!" Pinkie indignantly said. "He's only the most important pony in the world -- for us, anyway! Without him --"

-- and the view opened up all at once as they crested the little rise.

A shield spell. Covering a burnout. And ponies. So very many ponies...

Sort it out. First, the burn. The foundation of the home -- and foundation was almost all that was left, a few partial walls and the arch of a doorway, some husks that might have been the most durable of furniture plus touches of soot-blackened metal -- indicated it had been bordering on estate before it had been destroyed. Seventy body lengths across at what Twilight was sure had been the front, perhaps fifty deep. Many rooms could have been contained in that kind of area, and that was assuming it had been one story in height. There were no hints of the remains for gardens around the perimeter. Trees, a few of which had taken their own damage, a path leading up to what was now definitely the front door, the remains of a sign near the entrance. Something which might have been a foal recreation area off to the right side: she could see the remnants of what she was fairly certain had once been been playground equipment. No secondary structures. Just what had once been somepony's home, and her first look at it made her wonder how anypony could have survived being inside when the fire hit. No pony could have come through that without magic, and there were few spells which would have done the job. And the home had been so large, would have held so many ponies...

Second: the spell. Standard -- no, actually, it was flickering a bit around the edges and near the peak (about twelve Celests up). Substandard. She could have broken it within a minute without the additional pressure of repeated changeling impacts, and Shining Armor would have had a good laugh spotting the flaws, followed by a good lecture correcting the caster. Or it simply might have been up too long without reinforcement -- or the repeated small collisions along the lower edge were taking their toll.

And that brought her to the ponies. Within the shield -- four. She couldn't quite tell what they were doing beyond a continued inspection of something at the back left corner. Outside -- not counting her own group and the search party who had led them in -- at least a hundred. Virtually all young adults. Ponies from everywhere. She had never heard so many different accents in her life, nearly every possible tone to a pony voice gathered and with the arrival of Rarity, the assembly was probably complete. (No other pony sounded like Rarity. Nopony ever did.) The majority were unicorns, followed by pegasi and some extremely outnumbered earth ponies -- only four, clustered in a tight knot. Several unicorns and two pegasi wearing official-looking vests were calling to those ponies who were milling about the border. Trying to get their attention.

"Okay, everypony, here's what we need now! Do we have any teleporters? Any teleporters who can try to handle a jump to San Dineighgo? No? Wasn't expecting it, kind of an ultimate longshot, but had to ask. All right, then I need three pegasi willing to make that trip. All right, you -- you -- and you with the map on your flank. Good map, by the way. Say hello to each other, get your names right, then head over to Coordinator -- he's the one with the red tape, can't miss him -- and get your party and destination registered. Unicorns next: I need four unicorns..."

Fluttershy was staring at the remains of the home. Weeping. "...I... never thought it would be so bad..."

"Maybe everypony's okay!" Rainbow Dash tried to reassure her. "I mean, if they're sending out search parties, then they didn't find -- anything -- inside there, right? Maybe everypony got out in time!"

"...but -- why hasn't he come back yet? What could have happened?"

Twilight was trying to breathe steadily. How many ponies in a home that size...? "What could have happened here?" she softly echoed, feeling as if she was asking the air as much as her friends. Was that metal in the one corner? Was it melted? How hot could the fire have been?

Pinkie, right next to her on the left, and Twilight knew there would be tears in the blue eyes. "No... oh no, oh please --" and she broke for the downside of the little road, galloping towards the shield. There was a rush of wings, and Fluttershy was directly behind her, one moving at the speed she only achieved when truly upset and the other keeping up with a rush Twilight had only seen once before, when they had been closing in on a greyed-out Rainbow Dash, trying to restore the final Element...

"Pinkie Pie? Fluttershy?" No answer: they were focused on something more important than her words. "Oh Celestia, what happened --" and then she was racing down behind them, the others trailing in her wake. Heads turned at the sound of a fresh approach, eager, hopeful faces desperate for news --

-- every one of which saw a slightly-built purple figure with a single pink stripe in her mane, one with a horn and wings pressed tightly against her sides.

Identification was something beyond immediate, and it was already starting as she passed the ponies who had led them in.

"Princess!"

"It's the new Princess!"

"Behold the approach of our royal savior, for Canterlot has come to our aid!" Apparently the local library had a copy of Noteworthy's reading material.

"Princess, can you find him with a spell? Do you know where he is?"

"Are those -- the Element-Bearers?" (Above her, Rainbow Dash took what little she could get.)

"Princess, we didn't know you were coming! We should have laid something out for you! I can go get something right now! -- do you like Hentucky Blue? It's imported!"

"Princess..."

There were dozens of variations, every one of which hit her like a field-propelled pin and took its share of virtual blood. And that was before some unsung genius, possibly the same pony who had turned his speech back centuries at the sight of her, decided to dip his chartreuse head towards the ground as his front legs sank into a low bow. Other ponies saw that. Wondered why they hadn't thought of it. Then wondered why they hadn't done it already, followed by a quick concern as to whether they should be doing it now, and --

-- there were a hundred ponies bowed down in front of her. All the pegasi had landed just to make it a complete count.

Dear Princess Celestia,

About all those times my friends performed an Official Royal Greeting Stance upon your arrival:

I think we owe you an apology.

Probably several.

P.S. I did not have the single most embarrassing moment of my life today, but I am putting it into the top ten with exact rank to be determined later.

Your faithful student whose face is currently on fire,

Twilight Sparkle

"Please get up..." The too-soft tones of mortal embarrassment. Top eight, definitely. (Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy were still moving ahead of her, the former now having a much easier time of it. The others had stopped behind her, (actual) search party included. She couldn't see them. She was so glad for that, because there was a chance they couldn't see her face.) A little louder, "Please get up, everypony. I'm just here to help with the search, the same as everypony else..."

One of the ponies lifted her head a little. There were tears in her brown eyes. "Princess..." Twilight waited. That seemed to be all she could say, because she said it again just to get her point across. "Princess..."

Twilight couldn't tell if Rainbow Dash's forever-short patience had chosen that moment to run out or whether the opportunity to boss that many ponies around in one shot was just too tempting: the results were the same either way. From overhead at top volume, "Hey, listen up! The Princess is very pleased with your greeting, but taking a timeout on the ground like this is keeping you from getting anything done, so she requests that you all get up now and get back to what you were doing before she got here! Because it's not like she could have you sent to the Moon or anything --" (a lot of ponies looked up at that point) "-- and she's really not that kind of pony anyway, but you're all just wasting --"

There were now a lot of ponies who were not bowing down. In fact, there were a lot of ponies who seemed extremely eager to get back to whatever they had been doing so the Princess could have some space, and the phenomenon was spreading across the land faster than a sonic rainboom. Within seconds, the crowd was back to what it had been doing before their arrival, only with the addition of an invisible bubble around Twilight which nopony dared to cross.

"Rainbow Dash!"

Which got her a smug "What? It worked, didn't it?"

There is a game some older ponies play called Buck, Marry, Kill. Twilight went through a quick twenty mental rounds without ever getting Dash out of the Kill position. She finally gave up when she found herself creating a new ranking known as Kill Twice. "...let's just go see if there's anything we can do. And where we can resupply." That was their cover story and she was sticking to it. "Let's just look for the pony with the red tape... Coordinator -- now why does that sound familiar...?"

(Several curious ponies did follow in their wake. At a distance.)

He didn't take long to find, especially since Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie had found him first, making out lists on the far side of the shield bubble. The dazed brown-and-white unicorn stallion was already being questioned, mostly by Pinkie Pie. If you could call it questioning. "-- but if you've already covered that area, then why not spread a few ponies over to this section? And I can cross a few things off the map for you! For starters, he is not in Ponyville. Some ponies checked before we left. He's also not in the Hall Of Legends in Canterlot, although I'm not sure why he would have been because he's not that kind of legend, at least not just yet but I'm sure he could get in there if he wanted to, and it's not as if the Princesses need him, although there might be a spell to hide it, we're still looking into that, I never got the chance to ask --"

"-- I'm sorry --" he clearly wasn't "-- but who are you?" And just like that, Twilight knew him. The voice hadn't changed. However, the air of self-importance radiating from his speckled coat had gotten five feet wider.

"Pinkie Pie!"

He looked Pinkie over. He didn't seem all that happy with the result. "And -- what does that mean to me, exactly?"

"It's what it means to me! And him!"

"Oh -- one of his. Yet another one." He looked her over again, and it seemed to the approaching Twilight that he took a little too long in doing so. "A fifth... Well, there must be a search party which will have you. Somewhere. Go look around until you find one. I believe there are four others you might be comfortable with and if you keep your mouth shut long enough, they might even get you away from here."

Pinkie, to what might have been her credit for patience or just another sign of how little attention she was paying to the exact wording, continued with "But I'm already part of a search party! Only another search party found us and brought us here, even though they weren't searching for us, because we got a little off track, wherever the track was supposed to be -- the railroad station is pretty close, right? Maybe we should have looked for the tracks. Anyway, I just really really need an update --"

"-- you were in a search party. And you. Got. Lost." The unicorn had gone from dazed to annoyed and was now heading for I do not care with no other planned stops along the route. "Then get back to them. I have no updates for you. I'm not sure you would listen if I did."

From just over Pinkie's head, "...sir, we just wanted to know if there's been any news..."

"So does everypony. You two are part of the same group? Then please rejoin it immediately and refrain from wasting my time, which I assure you is much more important than yours..."

Which was all Twilight could take.

"Yes," she said as she stepped forward, letting just a touch of anger go into her voice. She knew this type. She knew him. Put him in Canterlot and he would immediately place himself in front of the Princess so he could pretend to have her authority when the crown wasn't looking. The Princess always dismissed this kind after a day or two of letting them suffocate in their own self-importance. Twilight didn't have that kind of patience at the moment -- and just as important, this was finally somepony she could take it out on. "They are part of the same group. A group known as the Element-Bearers." Buck it: if she had any weight added from these stupid uncooperative wings, this was the time to throw it around. "She is Kindness, which is why she's still being polite to you." The anger was coming fast -- too fast. Not as quickly or strongly as it had risen at the ravine, but there was still so much looking to emerge and she'd given it an opening for what she thought was a deserving target, Spike was lightly tugging on her tail and she didn't care... "And she is Laughter, which really makes me wonder how she's restraining herself at the sound of you trying to order them around because believe me, that is funny."

(Ponies were backing up in all directions. Several bumped into the shield. A few tried to keep on going.)

He turned to face his accuser, face already flush with a bored sort of fury. His expression fell apart. His dull grey field, which had been holding a clipboard, winked out and dropped the tablet on his own front right hoof. There is nothing more fearsome to petty power than having the actual thing show up, and a slightly-built purple once-unicorn clearly represented more actual than he'd ever had in his sights during his life.

"And I," Twilight continued, trying to ignore the increasingly-hard tail yanks, "should be familiar to you, given the number of times you tried to attach yourself to my flank. But right now, I would like you to think of me as Magic, which gives me a very long list of options for the next thing I might want to do and should give you a very short one for how you might want to consider answering their question: has there been any news?"

She was being petty herself. So what? She was two hoofsteps away from Blueblood. It didn't matter. Ponies like this were a reason to be angry, and she doubted anything else would have gotten the job done. Didn't care if anything else would have worked.

"I -- I --" he stammered.

"Yes, that is very helpful," Twilight nearly spat. It felt as if her tail was about to be yanked out. "I see your talent for obfuscating discussions has suffered over the years. Do you know what's even more helpful than a repeated pronoun? The rest of the sentence. So let's try for that, shall we? You -- you -- what?"

"I -- have no news at this time -- Princess..."

"Thank you," Twilight very nearly hissed. "See? Now your precious time has been saved. Simple, wasn't it?"

The bureaucrat tried to get his field around the clipboard again. It took three attempts before he could grasp it, and he moved away while sliding it along the ground. There was a murmur at the far edges of the crowd.

"Twilight, dear..." Rarity carefully began.

"I don't care. He deserved it." The murmur was getting louder. No doubt this was going to make the papers. Dangerous Princess Abuses Local: Is This The Next Nightmare Moon? So what? They would have said that if she'd dunked another photographer. They already had.

"I know a certain amount of well-placed harmless malice can serve as relief, but this may not have been the ideal time, and malice directed at a pony is never truly harmless..."

Pinkie Pie was looking at her with open concern. "He was just a meanie, Twilight! I know how to deal with meanies. You keep going until they tell you what you want just to make you go away! I would have had him in another minute!"

"...it wasn't -- nice," came from a little ways above. "...but nothing bad happened..." Were those cheers off in the distance? Maybe local law enforcement had been summoned to arrest her.

"Sugarcube, y'ain't been doin' well since we left --"

"-- I'm fine!" Lots of cheers, and now there were ponies flowing away from them. "Some ponies need to be scared a little! There are ponies you can't make friends with, Applejack! Not on first meeting, not at the last, not ever! I know him -- you don't! There are few ponies who deserve that more! You'd have a better chance --" and even she couldn't believe the words were sincere "-- of getting friendship from Discord! And why is everypony cheering?"

They turned. They looked around, ultimately peering through the shield bubble --

-- and then Pinkie and Fluttershy were off again, with a briefly confused group of five following in their wake. Briefly. The cause of the celebration was evident within seconds: it was the confirmation that was the problem -- at least the visual end of it.

It took some time for them to work their way in, and even Rainbow Dash keeping up a stream of "Element-Bearers! Element-Bearers and a Princess coming through! Come on, everypony, move! -- oh, buck it -- Spike, how much flame do you have left?" didn't do much. There was too much happiness taking place, too many tears of joy for any kind of authority to get a word in edgewise, royal or not. The relief was more important, the outpouring of affection and love took over all. Long minutes to even get close, minutes with ponies pressing into their flanks and sides and waving tails in their faces, the Royal Bubble shattered without a thought. Not even Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were safe, as the pegasi in the crowd jostled with each other in the air for better positions. But slowly, the seven worked their way closer (with no flame used). Hoofstep by hoofstep, they continued their pressed-in approach as some of the happiest ponies Twilight had ever seen went by going the other way.

And there he was. The final piece to the little puzzle which had been humming along in the background since the previous morning. Fluttershy needing to travel, Pinkie Pie leaving town as well. Suddenly thinking about Trotter's Falls while watching Rarity battle against differentiation. All these ponies gathered from all over Equestria. All who must have been equally as desperate to come here and finally have their chance to help the one who had helped them.

A unicorn in late middle age, his warm mauve coat starting to grey a little around his muzzle. Limping a little, the right hind leg dragging. Kind orange eyes. An unusually stocky build. Mane and tail of soft red, putting her in mind of a winter fire meant to warm travelers for hours. Cutie mark showing outstretched hooves and a bundle of blankets held in a silver field.

Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy had seen him now, and she had never heard the pegasus call out so loudly, never heard her match the earth pony in open volume. The joy was equal in their voices and they reached him at the same time, both crying out as their own tears began to flow. Twilight lost their words in the babble of the crowd, but she knew what they would be.

Purest relief.

Happiness.

Love.

Pinkie draped her front legs over him, gave him the nuzzle meant for relatives. Fluttershy gently landed, covered him in her wings before doing the same. He nuzzled back, laughing a little. "And you two as well? How much of Equestria has been disrupted because an old stallion doesn't turn up on time? -- no, it's not criticism, Fluttershy, it never could be. But all of you have your own lives, and you two surely had more important things to do than come and check on me..."

"Never!" Fluttershy laughed, and wing-hugged him again. "You're all right, I'm so glad you're all right -- your leg! Has anypony looked at your leg yet?"

"About a hundred ponies and counting," he assured her. "It's not that bad, I promise..."

"Legs heal!" Pinkie declared. "If that's all there is, it doesn't matter! As long as you're okay, my first friend..." Another nuzzle. "You're okay... thank Celestia and Luna you're okay..."

They both seemed to become aware that there were other ponies waiting their turn, withdrew slightly, crying and beaming and as happy as Twilight had ever seen them --

-- but that just gave him space to see Twilight.

His eyes widened --

-- then twinkled. "Now I know you're not one of mine," he said. "I remember them all, young lady. And I'd certainly hope not to have made so much of a fuss around the continent as to bring you here." Looking around, spotting the others. "So I can only assume that all of you followed them in to help, and may the Princesses bless you for that -- although --" with a small laugh "-- given the pony I'm looking at, they might already have. So -- what can I say to our newest member of the royal family?"

But Twilight knew what she could say to him. The only thing there was to say.

She dropped to her front knees, dipped her head low and felt her wings do the proper thing for the first time in weeks as they spread and dipped with her.

"Sir."

She had been following. Not too close -- no, definitely not too close. Once again, she was being careful, and now she had a reason to be more careful than ever.

There were ponies ahead -- their voices told her it was another new record number of ponies, by orders of magnitude -- and she made sure she was hidden, got under full cover again just before several cheering pegasi streaked through the clear skies above her. She could hear the joy in their voices, hear the name. And she knew he was all right.

And before the previous night, it would have been enough. She would have known that she had done a single thing right, if only by accident. That he was well. Still would not (should not) take her back, but he would live and with that knowledge, she would have been content to find some way to die.

But not now.

At first, after her encounter, she had been ashamed of herself for many reasons. Not the least was that she had broken a rule -- one of the most fundamental -- and she had done it the instant she had spoken. But that shame had faded quickly in the face of a simple realization: she had not broken that rule at all.

Should she have found herself on the outside, she was not to speak to anypony who did not know of The Great Work. And that -- had not happened. She had spoken -- to a pony who had completed The Great Work. One of only four in the world to have done so. Delivered here by a providence which suddenly seemed determined to make partial reparations for what had happened.

And with that, hope began to bloom.

Her failure -- was still her failure. Her horror. She could not be fixed. (She would not allow herself to have that hope. She had failed. She did not deserve to hope for that and after a single breath, stopped.) There had been a single moment. It had passed and could not be taken back or changed. The past was frozen: there was no point in wishing for it to be altered.

But -- here was one who had succeeded. The most recent. (In her pain, she had not initially thought about the names as closely as she now felt she should have. Some names repeated, after all -- nearly all did in time -- and she had no memories for this. It had only been sight which told her the final truth.) And if there was anypony in the world who might have the last piece -- who might know where it had all gone wrong -- why would it not be the purple once-unicorn she had seen against the firelight?

She would follow that pony. She would get the information from what was nearly the best of all possible sources. And then, knowing now that there was still a he in the world, would deliver those final truths to him so that he would at last have his answers. It was a new reason to live, at least until she brought those most crucial of facts to him as her final apology.

Twilight Sparkle had to know what had gone wrong. How to make it go right.

And so Twilight Sparkle would tell her.

No matter what she had to do in order to get those answers.

She owed it to him.

Setting

This silence needed some extended taking in to fully appreciate.

The hush had not fallen over the crowd: it had crushed them, obliterating all sound under the weight of disbelief. Ponies were staring. Ponies were caught in between breaths, and some of them needed to move on from that rather quickly. Ponies were wishing for cameras, but -- well, there wasn't exactly much of a press above that school level in this area, and nopony had traveled in to cover the story just yet, with a few relying on the flow of rumor racing through the air paths instead. The events seemed a little too much like actual news: why get involved?

It was a pity, really. All of the reporters and photographers stationed in Ponyville (some still seeking word of the Princess so they could go harass her in a new location, others using the time to find more reliable bushes) would have given so much for this. To capture the sight of a Princess bowed down low in front of a common citizen -- oh, there would have been so many options for association with that image. Cherished secret father figure? Actual father? (Nightlight, one of nature's faster learners, had required a mere two days to stop reading any and all newspapers.) Dare they push for -- older lover? So many stories to spread, and if any of them accidentally happened to be fact -- well, that had to happen eventually, right? Spread enough wild tales and you might hit the truth by mistake. And this time, it wouldn't have even been the standard attempt to kill the battered thing.

Twilight Sparkle. Caught in the position of deepest honor. Holding it for what would have been a respectable amount of time in the presence of Celestia or Luna (and a little over what was universally deemed appropriate for Cadance). Not looking up. Apparently rather intent on the act of inspecting the inside of her eyelids. Waiting to be released by a single word, and seemingly content to wait all day.

Thousands of Murdocks' bits would have been given out for that picture. Most of them would have been counterfeit.

The stallion's voice carried a touch of deep, calm bemusement: no mockery meant and none should be taken. "Royalty is bowing down to me. Something feels deeply wrong with that. Please arise, Princess Twilight. I am honored -- confused, yes, but honored. Now why in Equestria would you feel the need to do that, other than trying to take the weight off my leg by inflating the ego?"

"Sir," Twilight breathed as she straightened back up. "For the discoverer of Doctor Gentle's Differentiation Exception..."

He chuckled. "An honorary doctorate from the Equestrian Magic Society, no more. Technically, I'm a midwife. A stallion midwife, which continues to confuse certain ponies to this day, no matter what kind of title some ponies insist on throwing in front of my name. I am Gentle Arrival, Princess Twilight -- but if you want to use the 'Doctor', I can't really think of a way to stop you. Or any other pony."

Rarity was confused. "Differentiation -- Exception?" And that was the least of it: her expression suggested she was debating between bowing down herself, taking a quick gossip survey of the crowd in order to confirm exactly where she should be placing Doctor Gentle in the social tiers, and perhaps just a tiny touch of inquiry as to whether he was single. "I've never heard of such a thing."

"I have!" Pinkie laughed. "And then some!"

Doctor Gentle nuzzled her again, did the same for a lightly giggling Fluttershy -- then spotted Twilight's expression. "I know that look: somepony who knows all about it to the last degree and is simply waiting to see if I wish to say it first. And possibly one who knocked herself out in school trying to find a second -- yes?" The lightest of teases, and Twilight saw it for just that: she giggled a little herself. "The floor is yours, Princess."

She nodded, still unable to shake the feeling of awe. To meet this pony... "It's a field tuning which allows a unicorn to both feel and move one thing inside another -- but it only works on a single very specific definition for each. An unborn foal inside a mother." With some of that awe in her voice, "He invented obstetrics." And again, because she felt it needed to be said, "Sir." Was three enough?

"He," Doctor Gentle corrected her, "was both too stubborn to quit and lucky enough to find a single key. But one fortunate discovery -- that was enough." He looked at all the young mares and stallions still gathered on what was left of his grounds, ponies nearly all within a few years of Twilight's own age: those old enough to be on their own or simply allowed to travel without supervision. No wonder... "A single moment of fortune, and Equestria becomes so much richer for a little luck. And please don't argue that, my eldest." This to Fluttershy. "The world is better off for having all of you. Every last pony."

"I don't feel the other way any more," Fluttershy softly said. "Not for a long time." (Pinkie adjusted her position, hugged them both.)

"Eldest?" Twilight asked. "Wait -- Fluttershy --?"

He nodded. "My very first." She blushed. "Fluttershy is the oldest pony here: my career truly began the day she was born. A dry birth -- her mother had been in labor for hours, and -- well, I was desperate enough to try and lucky enough to succeed. About a year later, I was traveling and had the fortune to hear screams from across the fields -- and that eventually brought Pinkie to us. She was a breech."

Rainbow Dash had just barely been keeping up before that. "A -- what?"

Pinkie giggled. "I tried to come out tail first."

Twilight couldn't help herself: she laughed, and heard the others doing the same. Pinkie had been Pinkie from before she was born...

Doctor Gentle was considerably more somber. "As close as I have ever come to losing both mother and filly without having that tragedy actually take place," he softly said, gazing at Pinkie with warm eyes. (All the laughter stopped.) "I was able to turn her and bring her out, but by the time I heard them and arrived -- the strain on both..." Sadly, "I have lost the battle, of course: too many years, too many foals and mothers for whom nothing could be done. But Pinkie stood on the absolute border of the shadowlands and made her own decision to walk under Sun. So close..."

The earth pony hugged him again, said nothing.

Another nuzzle, and then "I am truly sorry, my young ladies, but -- there are others waiting their turn, and I wish to send them home before too much more of their lives are given to waiting for me. Will you be heading back to Ponyville today, or do you have a little more time in the vicinity? It's been nearly a year since we saw each other last -- I would enjoy catching up on your news."

Twilight thought fast. The mission was in this area, they knew that, presuming Discord wasn't expecting them to step through a local portal to somewhere else in the world. (It was possible. Too many things were.) They had to stay here (or roughly in the vicinity) until evidence pointed to another location on the map -- so before either pegasus or baker could reply, she said "I allotted several days for this, sir. There's no rush for us to return. Besides, I haven't gotten to travel to this part of Equestria before, and --" she just got the rest out with a straight face "-- it seems I should take the chance to meet ponies wherever I go." The next thought was closer to being sincere. "At some point, we should all take the full tour... but for now, we can stay. And --" this was beyond sincere and heading, with unstoppable force, directly towards the wild pronking gait more appropriate to fanfilly "-- I would love to take a night and talk about magic with you --"

The breeze came back up, carried a bit of soot and smoke residue into her nose while lifting an entire locale's worth of reality and crashing it into her brain.

Oh. Abashed, "-- but you have so many other things to do..."

He shook his head. "Most of my clients come to me, Princess -- and unless I hear of an emergency, I'm not scheduled to travel again for a couple of weeks. I've already asked my young friend here if he'll host me until I have a place of my own again, and he's consented."

Young friend here? Now there was a major category to narrow down. Young friend where?

"I will have the time to talk about magic with Equestria's most talented caster, although --" another twinkle "-- I'm genuinely not certain what I could possibly teach you. Actually -- given the amount of space he has available, he might be able to host you as well. Not that I mean to volunteer on your behalf, Quiet, but -- would you think about it?"

"I already have, Doctor. I would be honored."

Twilight jumped. Not very high or far: a full-body start which echoed from hooves to tail and wings (which didn't seem to know what to do with it), two inches or so in a series of traveling stages. But jump she did, and more than a few other ponies copied the action.

There was a young adult unicorn stallion present, a full body length or so away from the doctor's back left. She hadn't noticed him until he'd spoken. Not as a full presence, not as part of the background -- at all. But he was there, must have always been there: no tang of teleportation in the air, no feel of magic at all. He had just escaped her notice so completely as to not effectively exist, lost in the shadow of the legend's presence.

He was -- grey. The single most grey pony Twilight had ever seen. Hues of grey, yes, fine gradients: his coat one shade, his mane and tail yet another (with what seemed to be fine grey stripes running through that last) and eyes still one more. Small for a full-grown stallion, a little smaller than her, and she'd always thought of herself as being slightly built for a mare. Thin legs, a narrow body, breathing steady but with that seeming to require conscious attention on his part, as if he had to be sure the next one was coming. And the cutie mark was --

-- was...

...it was. Twilight was sure of that. She could make out its presence in the proper location. But it too was grey, and that made it difficult to identify the exact shape. If she just had some more time to look, time where it didn't seem to any spectators as if she was staring...

"Thank you, Quiet," Doctor Gentle said. "Truly and again. Now don't feel the need to follow or wait for me -- there are many ponies waiting their turn, and at some point --" sadly "-- I will be asked to inspect the remains. I can see the investigators waiting from here. And I refuse to believe in arson, so I am truly curious as to what they have to say..."

He kindly disengaged from Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, then limped away, giving Twilight a closer look at the injured leg. Medicine wasn't really in her knowledge comfort zone, but she had seen enough of her former fellow students suffering from backlash aftermath to identify a truly bad muscle pull. It would heal, but the process would not be quick, and very little could be done to hurry it.

The new stallion (had he just arrived while they were talking? Had she overlooked him that completely?) bowed briefly, straightened and smiled at her. "So," he began, sounding more than a little bemused himself. "I want to make sure I have this right -- greetings and welcome to Trotter's Falls for all the Element-Bearers, Defenders Of Harmony, Exemplars Of The Six Pony Virtues, Saviors Of The Land." (Three Celests overhead, Rainbow Dash briefly felt better than she had in two days.) "And a most particular welcome to -- I'd better have this right or it's my head, isn't it? -- The Fair Princess Twilight Sparkle Of House Twinkle, Our Lady Of The Dusk And Dawn, Incarnate Of The Future, And Most Gracious Blessing Of Hope Upon The Land And Sky. Now if you'll all follow me, I will do my best to trust Doctor Gentle will have a sufficient number of stallion-sitters without my being there, and I see six mares -- and a dragon? Truly? -- in need of a good meal and a hot bath. Not necessarily in that order." (Rarity moaned. Just a little.) "So -- this way to the castle, if you're quite ready for either or both..."

The group began to shift forward. Except for Twilight, who had been paying close attention to the light humor which had underlaid her greeting. "A moment first, please." They all stopped. "I didn't get your full name, sir."

"Quiet -- Quiet Presence. And it's hardly a 'sir' --"

"-- and -- you have a castle?"

"Well -- yes. It's inherited, but..."

"Then you must have a title."

A blink. A quick, embarrassed gaze directed towards the crowd (which was pretty much all following the doctor towards the shield border -- and then had to stop as the spell parted to allow him and only him through), then at the ground. His left front hoof scraped a shallow trench into the sooty dirt. "Well... yes, but..."

Teasing, "Then -- shall we hear it?"

He looked around again, visibly seeking escape. And there were plenty of directions to run in, endless amounts of wild zone in which to hide -- but absolutely nowhere that the question would not find him. Reluctantly, "His Most Gracious Lord Quiet Presence, Heir To The House Of Deluge, Bearer Of The Standard, Light Of The Storm's Passing, And Holder Of The Sacred Leg Rings Of Trotter's Falls." (Applejack bit back a giggle.)

"And how do you feel when somepony addresses you that way?"

Without a moment of hesitation, "By the time they finish all that? Bored. -- all right, I get your point. Just Princess Twilight, then?"

She grinned. "Just Twilight, actually."

He nodded. "Twilight." And led the way.

Take a few minutes and have a good look around Trotter's Falls. You're going to be spending quite a bit of time here, so getting the feel of the land -- but not necessarily the feel -- might help you out a little in the future.

Start from overhead as we leave the doctor's estate, where an increasingly-frustrated Rainbow Dash is openly wondering how under the Sun and Moon Daring Do ever manages to do any kind of flying whatsoever and still keep her hat on. (The answer: her author said so, which is not something Dash is about to consider just yet.) You're going to be moving ahead here -- it'll take a while to walk and overfly the long road which leads to the main town.

If you moved above the trees and went a good distance to the east, right up against the town's borders (and close to where Quiet Presence lives), you would find the falls in question: a nine-Celest white foaming drop into a pond full of the clearest, coldest, and best-tasting water most ponies have ever had -- which then exits via a river, forming the eastern border of the original settlement, established a little over six centuries ago. (The anniversary? Just missed it. It was a major celebration: sorry you couldn't be there.) It's about three days' gallop west of Baltimare, which also means we're that far from the coast and giving somepony other than Applejack a theoretical chance to see the ocean.

Should you be expecting another Ponyville -- don't. There are differences. Some of them are immediately visible.

For starters, it's more spread out. The town itself exists in a carefully-hollowed clearing within the forest, and that clearing was made by tearing out trees as each new resident decided they had a need for space. The shopping district is tightly clustered, but that's six streets at the center of the community, and they're not long ones. Residences tend to have quite a bit of space between them. Empty space. There is nothing between homes, but if the occupants have anything to say in the matter, there's going to be a lot of it. Fences aren't common, but borders are everywhere. Most of them exist in the minds of the inhabitants, and the majority are uncrossable.

Look at the buildings for a moment. They're elaborate -- almost too much so. Painting is done with an eye towards the artistic appreciation of the passerby, along with how much attention might be grabbed away from a neighbor. Architectural flourishes breed when you're not looking and raise little columns in the shadows of partially-enclosed porches. There is no exterior surface which cannot have one last touch of texture, hue, angle, or curve tinkered with in order to create a more perfect distraction. Styles have been borrowed from everywhere in the world. Streets tend to stick to a single region, at least until one neighbor goes for a total redesign and winds up either leading the pack or kicking off the first angry fight. There is the distinct sense that this is a community which can not only spell and define 'crenelations', but is carefully watching to see if you get it wrong.

Back to the shopping district. There's a word you're going to want here, and you're going to be wanting it in large quantities: 'imported'. Virtually everything for sale in Trotter's Falls has been brought here from somewhere else, and the distances cross all of Equestria and sometimes go beyond. It's a point of pride for the town that they not only had artwork from the Empire in the windows at nearly the same time Canterlot did, but managed to charge a little more for it. (Several enterprising residents want to have a home in that fashion, but -- well, eventually, the material costs do add up.) A few things are homemade -- note the craft shop over on Suffolk Downs, next to the bar -- but those tend to be minor artisan productions, locals with time on their hooves and some skills they like to demonstrate at no more than a minor loss. For the most part, the town practices the philosophy that intelligence begins at home, standards come from the heart, and a truly impressive purchase starts at least three days' gallop away in any direction. Prices are high here, starting at about eighty percent over what you'd expect to pay in Ponyville at the low end of the scale -- and that's just for the most basic items. (We'll come back to that.) Rarity has sent a few shipments in this direction, and will shortly be proud to see some of her finest creations with a place of prominence in the town's premiere garment shop, identified by designer and point of origin in large letters. She will also be shocked to see some of them commanding three times the bits she ever gets, and will be having a long talk with the shop's owner later. (It will turn out that as soon as she discontinued some of her older styles, the shop decided to market them as collector's items. It's not really working.)

There are several restaurants, all of which specialize in one kind of foreign cuisine each. The grass at one is a Saddle Arabian delicacy and at the bits you're paying for it, may have been carried in blade by blade.

Here's the town square. Note that for the most part, it's empty. There are no open-air vendors here -- after all, who would be caught buying from that kind of establishment? (Well, maybe if they'd traveled here all the way from the far coast...) You buy high-end in Trotter's Falls or you move to an area you can afford. The town square is used for concerts in the spring and summer around the gazebo (once per moon, classical music until the last waltzer drops), public meetings when the mayor calls them (very rare), and hanging around the fountain. It's a very nice fountain, and twin sprays of water emerge from Luna and Celestia's horns. This was the first town in Equestria to have a fountain honoring both sisters once the Return was known, and it's another point of local pride.

There's a government district of a sort -- three whole buildings: a courthouse, a town hall, and a final structure which contains what little exists of the police department and that portion of the local fire squad which is based in the town itself. The crenelations on that last are particularly impressive.

One major bakery -- and 'major' is the right word. A few places to buy non-prepared food: most specialize, one goes for generalities and prices them based on how far they had to travel before getting here. And this is where the budget takes the repeated hits, because the food still starts at that 'eighty percent over Ponyville' mark and goes up from there. If you can afford to eat the basics in Trotter's Falls, you can live like something very close to royalty in most of Equestria's other cities, and if you're eating like a Princess here (the bakery is proud to send Celestia four cakes a year) without holding the actual status, then you are not and never have been worried about where your next bit is coming from. You might think this place would send Fluttershy into bankrupt despair within two days, but you wouldn't believe what the local pet groomer is getting away with.

That's some of what there is -- what you can see at first glance, anyway. But what there isn't may be just as important.

The large stretches of land between homes are decorated with ornamental rocks, small fountains, the occasional koi pond, and frequent eruptions of lawn sculpture. Nothing else. And they rise from paved surfaces, or pebble beds, or even brick for those following the second most-recent trend.

The streets are paved with small flat cobblestones, presenting a fairly smooth surface that's relatively friendly to hooves while covering up the fact that there's nothing but dirt underneath. And that's all there ever was.

There are no local flowers which haven't come from the wild zone, and even those are scant and short-lived. (The flower shop charges at 400% over margin.)

There are a few surviving trees here and there, but it's mostly just the same pines found in the surrounding wild zone. None of them bear fruit.

The homes have color -- lots of it. The stores import still more. The town gets downright festive when it has something to celebrate, and the Sun brings all those hues to life in the same way it does for all of Equestria.

But look away from that --

-- and there is brown, and grey, and black, and the red of those bricks, and pine-needle green, and all the sparkle-filled colors of the fields wielded by the majority of the town's residents. Throw in the variegated coat and mane colors of those residents, plus the occasional shine of a feather. And that's it.

Then again, why would you want to look away? Wouldn't you rather look at the latest addition to that building, or that one over there, and isn't that latest sculpture just magnificent? Pay attention to the things the town considers important: surely they know what they're doing. They have for just over six centuries and truly, it was a spectacular celebration. They had so very much to celebrate in their beautiful town -- and it is a beautiful town, really. Everypony says so. Everypony who lives here. Any other opinion is, well -- imported. And those the residents can have for free -- so they frequently won't take them.

Welcome to Trotter's Falls.

You do feel welcome -- don't you?

The news of their arrival had spread quickly, although it took third place in the local unprinted headlines behind Doctor Gentle Returns Mostly Unhurt and Princess Bows Down To Local: Everypony Deeply Honored. (Twilight had unknowingly made a huge number of, if not new friends, then deeply respectful acquaintances with her instinctive response.) But they were still one of the local stories, and a traveling one -- which meant Rainbow Dash and Spike were spending quite a bit of their time maintaining the integrity of the newly-reestablished Royal Bubble. More than a few locals wanted to get a look at the Princess. Or get a word in. Several words. Complete speeches, which were all the more amazing for being totally spontaneous. And all Twilight wanted to do was get to a bath. Rarity might have been the one with the most sheer desire, but Twilight had been thrown into trees -- twice -- and landed in dirt -- same -- plus there had been a ravine and scrapes against bark and the sheer aftertaste of that horrible grass was still in her mouth. She tried to make it clear that she wouldn't mind talking to everypony later (or at least to create that illusion), but she was feeling dirty and really needed a good meal, so did her friends, and if they would just let this kind stallion get them to the bath, maybe later...

Quiet Presence was the one who finally put an end to it. "-- and once the Princess settles in and gets a day or two to recover from her time in the wilderness, there will be a party!" (Pinkie immediately perked up.) "But until then, can we put a good face on our town by being the first ponies not to bombard her every three seconds? After all, I'm sure that's what they've been doing in Canterlot..."

And somehow, that dropped things down to a level the others could deal with. All except for Applejack, who couldn't shake the feeling that everypony was -- looking at her. Perhaps because so many of them were.

"Ah don't mean t' pry," she cautiously began, "but -- what happened t' yer town? There's so little -- of anythin'..."

Quiet turned slightly to face her, sighed a little. "We're a unicorn town, I'm sorry to say," he told Applejack. "And when I say 'unicorn town', I mean ninety percent of the population: the rest is pegasi. There are earth pony settlements in the desert right now with hardly a horn or pair of wings to be found, yes? Because they're establishing the Cornucopia Effect. In our case, we're the reverse. So the local vegetation takes over -- and for us, that means some impressively foul grass, a few berries for the whole six weeks of their season, and a small natural apple orchard some distance from town, which everypony raids for sport and pretends they don't. It's in the wild zone, Miss Applejack -- healthy and thriving, but untended. And as far as native food goes? That is it." Another sigh. "You would be amazed by what the local stores get away with -- no, perhaps you wouldn't. But without a permanent presence from your people, we are stuck bringing in virtually everything, at least until ponies learn to eat fish."

"Wait -- no earth ponies? None at'tall?" Applejack's tail swished for a few seconds before she got it under control.

"Well -- none who live here. A few members of the fire department are earth ponies, but it's a joint effort with another town and the local pegasi neighborhood -- they bring them in when they're needed. And of course we have them coming and going all the time, bringing food in and getting what I believe are remarkably good prices for it -- which the merchants then mark up still more. But -- this was originally a unicorn settlement. And through time and tide, it's remained so. You're from Ponyville, yes? When did your home fully integrate? And I mean beyond a token family or four."

Applejack briefly paused in her step, gave it some visible thought. "'bout -- forty years ago."

"And I'm willing to bet unicorns were the last in, correct?" She reluctantly nodded. Quiet Presence sighed again. "Believe me, I'd welcome some earth ponies around here. I'd like to have a garden which grew something other than fish -- it's called a koi pond, Miss Applejack: I'll show it to you later. But we're isolated here. Unicorns carved this hollow out of the forest, pegasi came to establish the courier routes -- and your people went to where there weren't so much clearing of the land needed. It's only in the last two centuries that you could take ten steps in this town without hitting a leftover stump. But with so much work to get started -- we'd need a huge influx. And this place is expensive, which makes it hard for large groups to get established -- and then there's the clearing I mentioned -- there was another major attempt two generations ago, but it met the same result as all the others: faded out, and took the Effect with it." Sadly, "My grandmother still talks about the flowers..." Looking directly at Applejack, "Earth ponies establish a town, and in time, the unicorns come. Unicorns set up a place, and in time, the earth ponies come -- except here." He switched to Fluttershy. "And pegasi establish a place -- but everypony else takes one step onto their main street and drops five hundred feet straight down. Sometimes, living together takes quite a bit of work."

The yellow pegasus seemed surprised to be addressed, and needed a few seconds to get an answer going. "...I live on ground level -- it's just easier for everypony. Easier for me... and my friends..."

He smiled. "It's a rare feeling -- wanting to make things easier."

Rarity went along with that. "Not as common as it could be, certainly -- Luna's tail, I have never charged that much for one of my creations in my life! How are they getting away with that? How -- oh. My apologies." She pried her front hooves away from the shop window and dropped back to a standing position, tried to pretend there weren't any spectators staring at her. "I think I will need to have a talk with the proprietor. I already know the subject."

(Unseen by the rest of the group, Applejack and Pinkie Pie were staring at each other. There was a contest in progress to see which was the more worried. Applejack was running away with the title by eight lengths.)

The small stallion laughed at that. "My wife has two of your dresses, Miss Rarity -- both purchased here. Are you suggesting I should order direct?"

"Quite, and thank you so much for honoring me with your taste --" She stopped. "-- you're married? But you're so -- young!" Her eyes were already beginning to widen with anticipation: there was little Rarity enjoyed so much as a story of True Love, especially if it had been Forbidden at any point and a little bit of Star-Crossed did anything but hurt. "You're our age at best! How did you come to be wed already? Was there --" her voice dropped "-- a tale involved?"

"Not much of one," Quiet replied. (Rarity pouted. Meanwhile, Applejack pulled ahead by two extra lengths.) "But yes -- married. Not quite a year yet. We do things a little differently out here, Miss Rarity -- my status isn't unusual. But --" back to Applejack "-- once the Doctor's searchers clear out and the delivery ponies head home -- well, there's a good chance you and Miss Pie will be the only earth ponies in town overnight. And if you had a mind to, you might be able to rent yourselves out for truly astronomical amounts of bits to those who don't understand how the Effect truly works and haven't been taken by traveling con artists before -- the ones who promise a full garden in a week or your bits back, walk around the property twice and move on the next home before vanishing three days later..." A small, shy smile. "I'd be the first giving you money -- but unfortunately, I read."

Applejack and Pinkie Pie managed smiles of their own. But that was all.

(The Cornucopia Effect is what unicorns and pegasi recognize as earth pony magic. Put simply: where earth ponies start to work the land -- bringing in their own seeds, as they do not create from absolutely nothing -- the land will begin to respond. And it will frequently respond whether or not the environment says it should. As long as the pegasi keep a degree of moisture coming every so often, a group of determined earth ponies can get an apple orchard going in the desert. There's some limits to this -- tropical fruit in a tundra at least requires a lot of constant fires going in the area -- but to a large degree, anything at least has the potential to grow anywhere. And the Effect doesn't stay strictly within the land being worked. Get enough earth ponies together and the radius of soil fertility will begin to gradually spread out beyond their immediate territory. It's slow to take hold and there's an absolute limit to how far it can go based in the total number of earth ponies in an area -- but it will spread. An area with a significant earth pony population in place will have the resident unicorns and pegasi finding they're able to maintain small gardens and cultivate a few vegetables of their own. But should the earth ponies leave, the Effect will fade -- quickly. It can take a generation to get a town the size of Ponyville covered with background abundance -- and if every earth pony there happened to simultaneously depart, the place would become a wild zone within two years, leaving the locals stuck with whatever the land would provide on its own. Ponyville could survive for a while that way. Other areas -- can't. Pegasi and unicorn histories alike include major raiding periods, and some have tried -- other solutions.)

The unicorn male managed a light shrug as he walked: the movement seemed to pain him somewhat, and he took a deep breath before continuing. "Frankly, that would have been the only silver lining to having Doctor Gentle go missing. Enough time for more of his to arrive from distant corners of Equestria, and we could have had an actual population of sorts going. But I'll make that sacrifice to have him back."

"You're one of his, aren't you?" Twilight asked.

Quiet nodded. "One of the earliest -- about six moons after Miss Fluttershy."

"Do you know what happened to him?" Softly, "And -- if anypony else survived the fire?"

He blinked. "Anypony -- else? The doctor lives alone, Twilight." Permission to go with an informal address for her hadn't removed the automatic 'Miss' from the others -- along with a calm 'gentledragon' for Spike. "There would have been nopony else to save."

"Oh!" Genuine surprise. "It's just that -- the home was so large... I thought there had to be a lot of ponies living there -- family, servants..."

That got a smile -- but it was a sad one. "Doctor Gentle has his, and that gives him what might be the largest family in Equestria -- but in the sense of blood alone, he has no family of his own. And servants have simply never been part of his lifestyle. Frequent visitors, and some stay for a time, yes. But on the whole -- he lives alone. I know he had no guests that night."

"So you know what happened?"

Another nod. "To him, at least. But it's his story to tell -- and frankly, not a particularly exciting one. Tonight over dinner, perhaps. Now -- accommodations. I'm afraid 'castle' is a bit of an overstatement, at least for somepony who lived with the Princess --"

"-- I didn't," Twilight quickly said. "Not the way most ponies think. I took lessons from her and spent some weekends at the palace, but most of my school time was in the dorms."

"Oh... well, misconception corrected. It's comforting to fix that hole in Coordinator's story, actually... but still, I have some space. With Doctor Gentle staying with me, it's enough formal guest rooms for perhaps four more -- or five, gentledragon. But I also have a guest cottage near the edge of my property. Again, not very large -- two or three more could stay there. But it's the only thing I can offer without asking some of you to sleep on piled blankets on the floor, and I know the hotel has been packing eight or more to a room since this began. If you don't mind splitting up...?" He turned around, checked the group as they exited the shopping district, started through a residential neighborhood which was far too much in love with Trottingham building styles.

"I'm okay with a basket and blankets," Spike assured the unicorn. "I'm not sure I'd know what to do with a bed." (Although his expression suggested he wouldn't have minded finding out. Also possibly that Twilight's mattress wasn't as safe during her travels as she might have thought.)

"Umm..." Rainbow Dash uncertainly began. "I don't like sleeping on -- floors..."

Pinkie Pie shrugged. "It's just a sleepover, Dash! And you sleep on branches, clouds, roofs, hay wagons, moving carts, apple piles, the Crusaders' catapult, some of the market tents, Twilight's porch --"

"But this is a -- floor."

"Wait," came from a suspicious Applejack. "Let's get back t' the catapult. Catapult?"

Rainbow Dash instinctively began flying a little higher. More out of lasso range. "It's not finished or anything -- they've only really got the scoop done, and it's pretty good for curling up in..."

"An' what the hey are they makin' a catapult for? Cutie Mark Crusaders Siege Engine Warfare Experts, yay? Celestia's mane, Dash, who gave 'em that stupid idea? 'cause Ah know they ain't thinkin' of that one on their own. They would have had t' get it from somepony else an' Twilight, Ah see you tryin' t' get ahead there! Ah begged you t' tear up their library privileges! Why can't y'jus' let 'em come up with disasters they can think of instead of ones somepony else already wrecked stuff with? It's bad enough that y'let 'em get away with that love poison book, but now yer lettin' 'em go for weapons?"

Twilight was doing a credible Fluttershy. "...but... they said it was for a history report..."

"They lied! Or -- it was Scootaloo who got it, wasn't it? Oh, the next time Ah see that filly..."

...and Quiet Presence was laughing. Hard, ribs heaving, gasping for breath to the point where he seemed to be in real trouble --

-- and then he was. An intense coughing fit took over, grabbed him in its vise, would not let go.

Fluttershy immediately swooped in, tapped her hooves there and there along the stallion's thin chest.

The coughing eased. Quiet started hard, as if surprised it had passed so quickly -- then saw the pegasus. "Thank you." Calmly, "It's usually much worse than that -- and would have been without you."

"...it's all right... it wasn't anything, really... does that happen a lot?"

"Enough. And no -- before you ask, there's nothing you can do. But -- thank you again, because I know you were about to. And please, no pony apologize -- not for making me laugh, not ever. Fillies looking for their cutie marks, isn't it?" (Twilight tried to make out his again, failed.) "And I'm guessing at least one of them is a sister." A small chuckle: no coughing. "Cherish it, Miss Applejack. It may be chaos -- and for some reason, catapults -- but at least you have that chaos, and the weary happiness that will come on the day they find what they're looking for. They'll live through it. They always seem to. It's just everypony else who suffers... at least until enough time passes to make it a story. And the stories will come -- and you'll love telling every one, especially to her fillies and colts. In time."

Which finally got a real smile from Applejack. "Voice of experience, Mr. Presence?"

A small head shake. "Voice of hope." And before anypony else could speak, he pointed a thin leg down the road. "We're not that far out -- you might want to talk about who's sleeping where before we get there. I promise, the cottage is comfortable and warm. I just want Doctor Gentle in the main residence so I can keep an eye on him. No matter what he says, I don't like the look of that leg..."

He continued to lead the way while the Element-Bearers sorted it out -- a process which didn't take long, as Applejack practically demanded the cottage -- "Me? In a castle? Canterlot, okay, that's the Princess, but..." and verbally dragged a protesting -- just short of kicking and screaming without actually doing either -- Pinkie Pie in with her. "An' you with castle kitchens? Naw, yer better off where Ah can keep an' eye on you, instead of lettin' y'have the run of their pantries an' samplin' every last dish by eatin' every last dish..."

"I don't like splitting up," Rainbow Dash insisted. "If somepony's just willing to take the -- floor..."

"It's jus' a cottage. Y'can come out any time. Or y'could sleep on the floor in there."

"Umm... the castle's fine..."

"Sure y'don't want t' try the branches over the cottage, if we've got any? Or don't y'have any pillows hidden out this far?"

And Equestria's least believable protest in two moons rang across the land: "What pillows?"

They had walked him through the ruin of what had once been his home.

It had been like moving through a mirage. If he tried not to see -- if he let himself peer at past instead of present...

That part was easy. Here: he was moving through his waiting room, where years of fathers and Second Mothers had paced back and forth for endless circuits in the well-established floor groove and complained about the lack of room when what they were really complaining about was their lack of ability to influence the situation. Complaining because pacing and worry were all they could truly do.

Here: the birthing room. Not all of his came here, of course: he always traveled where he was needed and, as with Pinkie, found himself making a few unexpected stops along the way. (He had been surprised to see her and Fluttershy -- and happy. He was so proud of both.) But the majority had their first view of the world here. Endless hours spent decorating to make sure that initial view was a pleasant one.

This space: a study.

This one: the secondary research room.

He moved around where his bed had once been.

But stop trying to see what had been, even for a moment...

...soot. Ash. Remnants. Final bits crunching into smaller pieces under his hooves. A little trail where one leg was still dragging.

Nothing left.

It hurt less than he had expected it to. There were other things on his mind.

And then they showed him the reason the investigator had put the shield up --

-- and he laughed.

"We couldn't break it," the surprised arson investigator said, a sturdy unicorn mare with the slightly unfortunate name of Surefire. "And we tried. I've never seen this kind of shield, sir -- never in my years of visiting sites -- like this one." Which was followed by her third hasty "I'm sorry for your loss," of the short walk. "Not one that was so completely heatproof. We closed the area off to keep other ponies away from it -- guard what little you had left -- and I am so sorry for your loss -- but we couldn't get in, and -- from what I can tell, the fire started right outside this. But everything within looks completely untouched... We couldn't find any magical indications of a fire, or any other signs of an arsonist. But because this is here, and the fire started nearby -- some of us thought there was an attempt to destroy this which failed. And that you cast the shield. But we'd thought you'd been here at the time, and now... well, we'd appreciate an explanation, sir."

He chuckled, smiled at her. "No -- no, you wouldn't have seen anything like this. And I hadn't either. What you're seeing is the result of a purchase I made decades ago. A traveling unicorn salespony who swore he had a security device which would protect my valuables from harm. He was very persuasive, especially for a pony who also swore he couldn't demonstrate it because it took an actual disaster to set off the spell stored within. I finally risked a few bits just as thanks for the pleasure of his fast-talking company. Well, this makes me wonder what became of him... and if I should have invested in his product..."

"It certainly works," one of the pegasi said with awe. "I'd buy three..."

"Yes, it certainly works," he said. "And it will continue to work, because I have no idea how to take it down. There was a command word I had to say and a manual which had it written within -- but that was so many years ago, and the manual is -- part of the ash. I will try to remember, and perhaps call for friends who know how this kind of spell might operate. But for now -- it's doing the job it was meant to do. It has protected --" more softly "-- that which is precious to me." A sigh. "If I had to lose everything else -- at least this is still here."

The oldest of the fire squad -- a local, one of his own generation -- gave him a slow, sad nod. "One blessing, Doctor. Yes -- at least it's this. I never knew you kept --" and stopped himself.

"I couldn't kick them away," he sadly answered, "and I couldn't look at them any more either. No -- this was best. And here they still are... I have a favor to ask." They waited. "Please, if you would -- key your own shield to me and leave it up? It should hold for a while yet. I know no pony would steal this, but -- even if I can remember how to get in and out, I don't want everypony to see. Your shield will give them doubled protection until I get through this one and move them to a fresh safety. It's just that -- it's all that's left..." He let the silence speak for him before continuing with "As for the fire starting near here... I wish I knew. I don't think the spell discharged itself by accident and created heat along the border: no shield works that way, and you said there were no signs of arson... Perhaps it just held all the heat there was outside it and made things that much worse in its vicinity. A small price..."

"I still wish I could find a cause," Surefire said. "I understand what you mean, but..." A quick, sharp shake of her head: her short mane vibrated. "It's not arson, it's not magical discharge from the shield because I would have found that, and it's not chemical or lightning. I don't know what this was. Spontaneous combustion is a myth -- or I thought it was until now. We'll keep looking for a while longer, but... this may go unsolved, sir. I'm so sorry..."

He raised his right front hoof. "Not your fault. Sometimes things just -- happen."

A reluctant nod. She would continue to search, he knew -- and in time, she would give up. "I'll key the shield to you, sir. It won't last more than another week unless I drop by to reinforce it -- but I might be able to come down if you need me. In the meantime, you'll be able to pass through casually. I just hope you have your answer by then."

He looked at the golden shield. Stared at the things within.

"So do I," he told her. "So do I..."

Craquelure

The past is frozen.

It cannot be changed. Nothing he can do will take back a single second of what was, and that alone is cause for hate. But ultimately, there are so many reasons for past to be his least favorite -- and high among them is the clarity of memory. He does not remember everything. He will not. But for what he does choose to remember -- it is too clear. He remembers things at an intensity just a single nerve below having it all happen to him again. Phantom pains are just that -- barely. And there are things which threaten to remove that last barrier, send him far too close to going through it all a second time. Past can be a horror, containing more than a millennium’s worth of --

-- nothing.

And that was not the worst of it.

The past is frozen. And in the past, that which he thinks of now (against his will), so was -- is -- he.

He cannot move.

He cannot change. Not himself, not anything else.

He can still sense -- somewhat. He can feel the world around him. Sight and hearing -- if he strains, concentrates nearly everything he has left in a single effort, he will sometimes get a picture of events taking place at a distance. It is almost all he does, when he can spare the strength. Raging against his prison, pounding his will against the encroaching calcification, hunting for any weakness -- that occupies much of his endless time. Hate takes up most of the rest. Despair... not that he will admit to, not even to himself. And survival -- simply trying to reach the next second, swim across a single droplet of forever's ocean without giving up and letting the stability have his core... there are days, moons, years when that is all he does. All he can do.

Before this was done to him -- so long ago, memories he tries to cling to, something to give him hope for any future -- he had his fun. He did so many things, and at this point in his existence, he still considers every last one of them to have been worthwhile amusement. He was amused: the opinions of everyone else involved do not count. And should he ever get free, he will do all of it again with no regrets or cares for the consequences -- but with two differences. The first is that he has been forming a plan -- an actual plan! -- to avoid being caught a second time. It surprised him when he began to work on it and still continues to as it's refined step by laborious step, the very concept of advance strategy almost anathema to his very being -- but he has so little else to do. And it touches on a secret he has yet to discover: that within the purest chaos always lies a touch of natural order.

The second: he will never trap any entity in stone. Change, distort, twisting of minds and things much worse, things he has been planning -- but not stone. Centuries aware while the world changes and he cannot do the same... no. He will not inflict that on anyone, ever. He has developed a standard. There are some things too cruel for any entity and that, amazingly, includes those who did this to him. If he does not do the same to them, then he is their moral superior, or so he tells himself -- and so much time spent saying it has rendered it locally true. No stone, no calcification, nothing that leaves any other entity frozen. That is his vow and he will keep it until all the possibilities have come true.

(It is, in a way, the beginning of empathy. He does not know that. He would have been horrified.)

He is also planning a vicious campaign of extinction against the cockatrice. One at a time, with each being ended in a completely original way.

But when he is not doing all of that, he is frequently trying to sense, get some idea of what's going on outside, take what little comfort he can from the natural chaos of life, even as the surviving Princess tries to enforce her brand of hated order on it. He needs to know that things still can change. And --

-- he needs to be aware of his environment.

He has to know what's coming.

Just lately (how much time? How much time...), there has been something -- new. And he would have thought that anything new would be automatically welcome, any sensation beyond the endless battle to keep the calcification from reaching his heart and rendering him into a perfect example of order. Where there is perfect order, tomorrow is exactly like today. Exactly. There is no change. There is no possibility of difference. There is only tomorrow, which is today, which was yesterday, and nothing distinguishes them. A future the same as the past. Forever. And a statue sitting in a garden which no longer has knowledge of having once been something more.

That is his terror (although he would never admit it, and there is no one he could admit it to anyway, no means to speak). That is what he struggles against second by eternal second. At this point in his existence, it is the one thing he is truly afraid of --

-- or it was.

Something -- new -- has entered his fears. Something -- recent. Something he tries to keep his senses out for, something he needs to know is coming.

It is change, yes. But...

...and it is coming. Now.

He can feel it. There has never been difficulty in finding his own, not even like this.

It is -- day outside? No, night: he lost time while he tried to focus. Sunset leading into the shadows which the survivor has claimed. So much time and she still isn't completely expert at it. He remembers the half-sense of the lost (displaced, submerged, buried, screaming to get out, trapped in a different kind of stone) one's efforts and she was frankly the superior, had the common sense to at least let the sky's endless variety and change shine through. This one is a forger trying to recreate a lost masterpiece from memory. Casual viewers can't pick up the little touches which show an inferior product. He has had the time to become an expert on her flaws and came to appreciate the casual artistry of the one who was lost. Not on his level, of course, but -- at least she made an effort...

...he is trying not to think about what's coming. He knows that.

This -- could be the last. Any of them could be the last. And it happens again, and again, and again -- unless it reaches the point where it can happen no more. He has so little left, just barely enough to fight and keep the core of himself free, but this...

It's getting closer.

He can sense it. Feel the movement.

...he could --

-- give up.

Let go. Let the calcification have him. There would be nothing left to resist. There would be nothing left at all. It would be a way to defeat this other, stop it from happening because there would be no reason for it to happen. Victory by -- suicide.

...no. He will not. There has to be enough of him left to fight, to stop this if nothing else. If he truly tries this time, gives all his attention and strength to a single effort, if he can only --

-- change...

He is frozen. He cannot move. He cannot change. He is too late.

It has begun.

He tries to fight. He has been trying for -- how long has this been going on? How many times now? Dozens, at least that, could be over a hundred at this point in past. He would know if he thought about it, but he cannot think, not for more than a few seconds before even his thoughts are ripped away from him, torn and shredded into the chaos which is the essence of sentience, pulled out along with the bare scraps of strength he still has for his own, the power which lets him keep that core intact, pulled away and out, never to return. And it goes on and on until the eternal seconds become centuries, millennia, the unbearable time before there was time to keep, until he has been this way forever and there has never been anything different, his entire existence spent as a single atom feeling the electrons being torn from their shells and waiting for the nucleus to shatter. An atom which cannot scream.

It is more than theft. It is violation, reaching all the way to the core he has been so desperate to protect. It takes some of the last strength he has, the energy which allows him to still exist. And every time it happens, he waits for it to become complete. For the final dream of freedom to be rendered into its component energies and pulled away from him like everything else. For the calcification to reach his agonized thoughts and leave behind a perfect statue in a perfect garden, forever.

But -- it never goes that far. Or at least, it hasn't up until now (then). He will be left with just enough to hang on, and in time, his strength will rebuild as much as it can within this prison, bring him back to the state where he can struggle, try to sense and -- dread. Dread the next coming, the thing he cannot stop, that which his original surviving tormentor knows nothing of and in these moments of violation, of rape, he thinks that he would tell her if he could, surely she would stop this, never meant for this to happen, not -- not even to him. But then those thoughts are shredded along with the rest, and he will remember nothing of them until they come again. And they only come when it happens. And it happens again and again and again.

He can feel the calcification moving deeper. Feel what may be the next-to-last pieces of himself going away. And he screams within his prison, screams what he always screams and will continue to scream for years to come, always unheard. For to speak is to potentially change those who hear you, and that was taken from him long ago.

You're killing me!

And then even that is pulled away.

When each of the pony races construct buildings on their own, with no help from the other two...

Pegasus structures tend to be elaborate. After all, the building material is free, plentiful, and can be replaced with virtually no effort. Want a mansion? It's a few hours of extra work, mostly spent in the molding and application of those special touches which make the vapor resistant to future change from anypony except the owner. (Another pegasus can't casually break up somepony's home the way they do other clouds: taking apart an actual structure requires the same amount of demolition effort as it would take for the truly solid buildings on the ground. It's a simple and practical measure for a race which used to spend a lot of time planning siege warfare against everypony else -- and each other.) Even the laziest among them will typically wind up with something of multiple stories featuring vaulting curves and prismatic fountains. Why not spread out? It's not as if anypony charges rent for the sky, and one of the rudest shocks for those who emigrate to the ground is the concept of land ownership and everything that comes with it -- something which has sent a few flying back up, vowing never to return.

Earth ponies, who know all about land ownership (or as they generally think of it, long-term rental with no option to truly possess), are of necessity more practical. Their buildings take longer to construct (although some have rendered barn raising into a two-hour art form) and require much more effort. This sends some of them into practical streaks: you only put together what you're going to need because every nail is going to be hammered in by the tool in your own mouth and you will feel the vibrations in your skull for hours, so it had better be worth it. (Steel shoes for hoof-hammering exist and are used, but never completely came into fashion for those who follow the oldest traditions.) It doesn't mean furnishings tend to be spartan -- just that the structures containing them are typically more basic. If an earth pony goes for a major spin around the world of architecture on their own, it represents an incredible dedication to the final result. Blood, sweat, tears, musclepower, some very complex pulley systems, and a whole lot of headache to create what's yours. Other earth ponies look at such buildings with respect: the builder thought the result was worth it, and they will appreciate the effort -- if not necessarily the art.

Unicorns generally don't like to admit it, but the average strength of a typical field can't move anywhere near as much mass as an earth pony can haul. Oh, they can use earth pony techniques (but not pegasi ones) if they want to and some will supplement their field manipulations with more than a touch of old-fashioned horsepower, but there are always elitists who refuse to get their mouths dirty. For them, it's a magic-channeled build or nothing -- which, given the difficulty in combining strength, gives you a good portrait of the main builder's raw power. Thin wooden planks, small stones, normal bricks -- signs of an average field at work. Those with higher strength tend to -- show off. They won't necessarily go piling up the largest boulders in the area and calling the center hollow a living room, but there will be indications of power somewhere in the structure: heavy beams, major stone columns used as supports, with extreme cases displaying a single huge leveled-off rock turned into the base of the ground floor.

Twilight's first impression of Quiet Presence's castle was that the original builder had constructed a three-story shout of ego -- one which Rainbow Dash would have considered excessive. (And a short distance above her, the pegasus was doing exactly that.)

It was, as the small stallion had said, not particularly large -- for a castle. The entire thing would have fit nicely in the party-hosting center of the Royal Gardens without touching a single border plant, or could be dropped into Luna's favorite (and private) bath without doing more than flooding two neighboring castle wings. But it still had more than a little size to it: the ground floor rang in at roughly a hundred and twenty percent of the dimensions for the base of Doctor Gentle's former residence, and it kept that up without inward slant all the way to the roof -- plus a single conical tower at the back left, which had -- she squinted -- yes! A telescope! But at the base level -- slabs of stone. Thick field-carved planes of rock levitated into place and then forced against each other into natural bracing positions which kept the smaller boulders above them well-supported while simultaneously screaming Look What A Really Big Rock I Can Lift! Can You Match This? I Don't Think So! And By The Way, The Only Reason I Didn't Keep This Up All The Way To The Top Was Because Some Idiot In My Family Really Wanted Some Stupid Windows! Which meant that at second glance, it came across as a castle -- and at the first one, as something sitting on a giant stone pimple. A pimple which had fortifications.

She looked at Quiet. He blushed, a tinge of faint rose within the grey. "I did say it was inherited, right?"

Twilight fought back the giggle. "You mentioned, yes..."

"Oh. Good."

Placidly, "Middle Period Neoclassical Self-Importance, right?"

"Actually, I think he was going for Early Canterlot Look What A Strong Field I've Got. And I know -- it looks as if I should be able to host all of you and your extended families without having to move a single couch, but the problem is that my family's been living here for centuries. And they all added their own touches to the interior -- none of which I'm permitted to throw away because it would disrespect my ancestors, plus Celestia only knows when we're going to need an armory again. Generation after generation of pony shopaholic hoarders. I've kept the corridors clear, but the place is still about one-fourth living space and three-quarters museum." A tiny, fully resigned shrug. "And I swore I wouldn't make it worse for anypony else -- until I discovered I liked furniture."

"An' playgrounds," Applejack grinned. "Ah've never seen so many little rides an' sports fields in mah life -- an' they're all new." She nodded at the extensive array of equipment, roughly a third of which was being used by a wandering tumble of unicorn and pegasi younglings. "That's from you, Mr. Presence?"

He nodded. "Given that we're several hundred years past worrying about needing the space to repel invaders, I thought I could do something a little more practical with it. Since we really can't get a park going -- well, the Doctor entertains those of his who come by and I take everypony else."

The farmer chuckled. "Ah don't even want t' think 'bout how badly yer gonna spoil the first one of yer own..."

The unicorn stallion looked away from her, turned his attention to the children. Listened to their laughter. Wouldn't look at any of the adults. And all of the Elements found themselves bearing a single piece of knowledge.

Applejack's voice was soft. "Ah -- Ah didn't mean --"

The softest of sighs. "No, Miss Applejack -- you didn't, and you had no way of knowing, and you are not going to apologize for anything because there's no reason to. But your guess is correct. I -- have a weakness in my blood. It's the reason I'm a lone foal, and I will not chance passing it to the next generation. But -- there is hope. There is work being done on a cure, and some of it is starting to show promise. I brought children here so there would be fillies and colts laughing on my fields -- but my own may still join them someday. We're closer to that than ever before." He turned back to face her, smiled a little. "Voice of hope."

Solemn, "Ah wish you all the luck there is, Mr. Presence."

Gently, "I'll take it, Miss Applejack, along with your keeping of my semi-secret -- and that is a koi pond. Miss Pie? They will look out of the water to see you. It's really not going to help them if you keep your head dunked..."

It was surprisingly easy to settle in.

There weren't many guest rooms left in the castle. (Quiet showed them a few which had once held that status, now stocked with paintings, sculpture -- and yes, an armory, which included a selection of pegasi tail-mounted razorwhips. Twilight just barely restrained herself from a full immersion in the flow of history, especially after their host offhoofedly mentioned that the collection had never been cataloged.) But the ones which were left were elaborate, with fine old furniture, soft (if slightly musty) beds, and a large number of very old and still functional enchanted conveniences. Rainbow Dash was rather taken with the automatic bookmark, while Fluttershy stared (but didn't Stare) at the timed animal feeder. "...and it drops a new ration every eight hours? Without needing anypony to trigger it...? and it can add a cherry to the top? ...where could I find one? ...oh, but it's probably really expensive..."

"I have no pets," Quiet had told her. "And I need the space more than a conversation piece which has had one pegasus mention it in four centuries, plus I'm sure there must be one ancestor who isn't paying attention. Please take it with you when you go. In fact, if you want to mail it ahead, I'll give you the directions to the post office right now..."

Overall, the place was astonishingly homey, especially given the forbidding exterior at that ground level and the slightly chill-feeling stone which made up virtually all of the walls. The furnishings could be somewhat overbearing, and Rarity pulled Twilight aside to make a slightly unkind remark about somepony who surely wasn't their host, somepony who'd had the sheer lack of grace to bring in anything from the Vorpidi era and not use it as kindling on the spot... (Twilight had spent a good five minutes examining the offending hoofbath before realizing she was never going to find anything wrong with it and moving on.) But the place had a real sense of having been lived in: perhaps it was at best one-quarter residence -- but for that portion, ponies had been doing a lot of residing. It didn't hurt that Twilight's room (towards the back, facing the falls -- their known presence was more a matter of hearing than sight, but she found the sound comforting) had a porch -- one which seemed to have been added a few centuries after the original construction.

The third-floor baths had been set up in the classic dual style: a single large shallow pool for groups (elevated: they had to climb steps to reach the water level) and smaller, partition-shielded miniature grottoes for individuals. (A number of ponies still regard baths as social occasions: get most of the dirt off in private, then join the family in a soak for half an hour or so before retiring behind the partition to rinse.) There was enough hot water available to keep Spike happy, and the seven took an extended time-out, letting the lightly-perfumed plumes of steam do their healing work -- or as much as they could before Twilight found herself on the receiving end of a lecture delivered by, of all ponies, Rainbow Dash. "Seriously, Twilight, your feathers are horrible! I know you just got your wings and it's not like your parents ever showed you proper preening techniques, but you should have come to one of us! If you let that get much worse... you are begging for some nasty parasite to take you on as a permanent lunch date! Get over here: Fluttershy and I are going to be the teachers for a change..." And then she'd had to hunch down low in the water while the two pegasi had systematically shown her how to properly clean her feathers, one at a time, including getting some of them dirty again so they could watch her new and awkward technique at work. Thirty minutes had become eighty before they were satisfied enough with her amateur efforts to release her, and Twilight silently swore at least a little of the lesson had been payback for the oft-repeated definition of an anemometer.

Her wounds had been tended to. The backlash's effect had mainly sent her into unconsciousness, and the extended soak shoved most of the lingering aches into the background. Fluttershy checked the head injury and pronounced it healing, but (pointlessly) advised Twilight to try and avoid having anything hit her for a few days.

There was talk of their host (although not of the mission). "A perfect gentleman," Rarity decided, "although I think I will have to do something about getting him to drop that 'Miss'. I appreciate the proper formalities as much as any lady, but to have him on a strictly casual basis with Twilight and not the rest of us... something may have to be said."

Pinkie was floating on her back at the far end of the pool, occasionally blowing small fountains out of a snorkel which might have been in her bags. Or not. "He's got really great taste in playground stuff! I've never seen a slide that high! You'd have to rig one off the side of the castle to beat it! -- say, do you think if we asked, he'd let me --"

"NO!" -- and after the group shout turned into a group giggle, Fluttershy awkwardly took it from there. "...I wish I knew what was wrong with him... I know how to stop a cough like that, at least until the next time -- but if it's something inherited..."

Applejack sighed. "Takes a big stallion t' hold himself back from makin' things worse for other ponies, even when that stallion is --" she frowned, as if a thought had momentarily slipped the lasso "-- a -- small one? Yeah. But -- Ah don't know. Ah kind of like him, an' Ah appreciate what he's doin', puttin' us up like this -- but Ah don't like bein' here. A town with no earth ponies but me an' Pinkie..." Another sigh, and she sunk lower in the water. "Now that's not natural. Ah heard what he said an' Ah understand it, but -- doesn't feel right. Not at'tall."

Twilight twisted in the water to face Applejack more directly, let the heat work into her withers. "Ponyville only integrated forty years ago, though?"

"Yeah," Applejack reluctantly admitted. "We started as an earth pony town, an' -- well, it's pretty much what he said. Once we were up an' running, the pegasi came in an' started the distance trade routes. After a while, a couple of unicorns showed up. Then we had families, an' -- the population started t' -- balance, Ah guess. It's still an earth pony majority, pretty much. But -- we're a young town, compared t' this place. They would have had lotsa chances t' mix up."

Rarity rolled onto her right side, let her mane stream out in the flow from the waterspout behind her. "But what about places like Appleloosa? Where just about everypony is an earth pony." There was a long pause before she continued with "I -- had some stares when we were there. And part of that was just for the rarity of my presence, and I know Twilight had her share -- but there were a few frontier ponies who..." She looked briefly, oddly awkward, as if the next words were being blocked by a dam of social graces -- and the water within was turning foul.

Applejack didn't take the cue: she simply lowered herself still deeper into the water and let her tail spread across the current.

Twilight finished the sentence instead. "...who looked at us as if we didn't belong there."

And that got Applejack's attention. "Two new unicorns in an earth pony town, y'two, with the Effect still bein' laid down -- of course yer gonna stand out. That's different."

"How?" Pinkie, oddly challenging. "How is that different from us being here as the only two earth ponies in a unicorn town?"

The farmer's increase in volume was small, but sharp. "Just is! Look, can we not compare apples t' oranges here? 'cause Ah ain't bringin' mah Manehattan family inta this. Ah just wanna get the rest of the dirt off an' go have dinner. An' after that, we've got -- other things t' think about."

Rainbow Dash looked up from her own feather preening. "I want to go into that bar we passed."

"Why?" Applejack asked with just a little too much residual challenge.

"Because Daring Do says you're always supposed to go into the bar! Okay, and -- maybe that turns into a fight most of the time, but it's the seven of us! We can handle it!"

"Six," Twilight firmly insisted. "I am not bringing Spike into a watering hole."

The little dragon pushed himself away from the main hot water spout, sputtering. "Twilight!"

"No, Spike. Not a bar. Mom and Dad would be in my mane for moons. You are years away from going in there on your own, and after what happened the last time you got ahold of firewhiskey..."

"Nothing happened!"

"I know. Nothing happened to you. The pony you got into the drinking contest with didn't wake up for two days!"

"But what if you need me? What if you need a little fire, or -- you have to send a letter, or -- Rarity needs to adjust a dress and has to use a backup pincushion, or..." It might have seemed impossible for her brother to reach more than that, but he gave it a try anyway. "...there's a migration coming through here by accident and you need somepony who can give them directions..."

"No. Means. No." Some of the water around the little dragon flashed into steam: she ignored it. "Not a bar. I promised our parents and it's more than my life's worth to get Mom that mad. You're going to hold down the home base. That's it."

"So we're going?" Rainbow Dash enthused. "Cool! I haven't gone bar-crawling with you guys since we closed Doughnut Joe's after the Gala!"

"Yeah," Applejack darkly muttered. "An' there's a reason for that."

"Aw, come on! The Princess got all the charges cleared!"

Twilight sank so low in the water as to nearly have the warm flow washing into her mouth, which at least might have gotten rid of the last lingering bits of aftertaste. "Arrested," she muttered, still feeling the residual humiliation. (Which actually tasted worse than the grass.) "Arrested because some of the Gala attendees called the Lunar Guards and we didn't know about it until they stormed into the bar." The Princess hadn't known about it because she'd been with them through the closing of the doughnut shop -- and had then headed to bed. "And then you resisted..."

"Because all I did was catch a statue!"

"Yes," Rarity dryly agreed. "Badly, Rainbow Dominoes."

"Thanks a lot, Cake Makeup Of The Moon Club." Assorted giggles, including from the insulting parties. "Look, if it'll make anypony feel better, I won't start anything."

"...you said you didn't start it last time either," Fluttershy reminded the other pegasus. "...just that you were finishing..."

The cyan one treated her fellow to a timber wolfish grin which suggested the only thing she personally might have liked more than loops was loopholes. "Let's dry off and go eat, okay? I really want to see what our host is going to do for Element-Bearers and a Princess." Her tone suggested the food would need to be coated with edible gold. "Besides, Twilight has to teach the Doctor all about how his own trick works. Good thing he doesn't have feathers to clean..."

And that did leave a fully sunken Twilight with a snoutful of water. (It did nothing for either aftertaste.)

Dinner was -- interesting.

No servants had worked at Doctor Gentle's residence. Quiet seemed determined to make up for it. Their dinner was cooked by unicorns, with empty plates whisked away by fields within seconds and new courses floated in directly behind. There were foods Twilight had never seen, pastries the Princess might not have gotten to yet, actual Saddle Arabian grass -- oddly light, somewhat flavorful, with a burn which only kicked in ten minutes after you stopped eating it -- and sorbets to cleanse their palettes between dishes, which finally got rid of the lingering wild zone grass. The long low table (which was Neoclassical: they were essentially lying down to eat) was continually being filled and refilled without pause -- or, after the fourth course, mercy. Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie managed to keep up with all of it. Twilight and Spike, who both had experience with Canterlot feasts, saw it coming early and went into portion control mode. Fluttershy politely begged off after the fifth round. Applejack, used to farm meals and the hearty amounts of calories required to keep her roaming across Sweet Apple Acres for far too long at a stretch, spent an awkward minute carefully asking their host about which items within a single course were meant to be eaten first before he cut her off with a smile and freed her to just eat. And Rarity, who was determined to match this new form of courtly table manners, did her best to keep the empty plates flowing away from her -- at least until the whites of her eyes began to flush green.

"You can't always eat like this," she told the thin stallion. Her face briefly assumed the expression of somepony who was assuredly not swallowing back a burp. (There was at least no fear of offending Quiet's spouse, who was in Manehattan and was expected to remain there for the next three days.) "Nopony could without needing even more servants to carry them everywhere they went."

Quiet smiled. "I confess -- I'm showing off. I don't even have this many ponies on my staff, but with the Element-Bearers staying with me and the promise of a Royal Voucher for all my costs -- well, I just had to bring in a temporary or two from town. You're having some of the best of what Trotter's Falls has to offer -- which means the best of Equestria and beyond. You have been enjoying your food, yes?"

"Yes, of course," Rarity quickly admitted. "I just hadn't been expecting to -- enjoy so -- much of it." The expression came and went.

Doctor Gentle smiled down the table at her. "I'm afraid that along with a desire to impress, my young friend is prone to the relaxed sort of jest, my dear. It would not surprise me if he had also wanted to see who could manage to set a pace. And even with my having missed seeing half the dinner --" he had arrived three courses in, citing extended discussions with many of his who had needed to hurry for the train station, needing to get back to their lives but refusing to do so before they spoke with him "-- the part I did witness saw a certain stallion revisiting his youth by smuggling some of the food off his plate when nopony was looking..."

Quiet chuckled a little. "All right, all right -- I owed a certain somepony for making me recite my title. But unfortunately, she's managed to keep up. Canterlot training strikes again... and I understand you're going out after this?"

Twilight nodded. "Just to the local bar."

Rainbow Dash took over. "I saw this vintage in the window which we just don't get in Ponyville. I kind of talked the others into it. Besides -- when else are we going to be hanging around here? I want to see what this town's really got to offer!"

"In the case of the Suffolk Downs Vineyard? Enough foreign tannic acids to change the color of one's coat for days," Quiet dryly said. "But I'm assured the taste is worth it... Well, if that's the kind of local color you're after, you're all grown mares." (Spike pouted.) "And it's not as if I can tell any of you what to do -- but Celestia's shoes, avoid the peanuts and at least half the patrons."

"Only half?" Doctor Gentle calmly asked. "Well, the locals have calmed in my brief absence..."

Twilight smiled at him. "I think that's your cue, sir -- especially since we're on dessert."

The older stallion nodded. "It's not much of a story, Princess. If you're looking for a daring escape from a blaze chasing after my tail, I can't offer it. I wasn't at the house when the fire came. I --" he hesitated, then continued "-- well, it's hardly a secret: I have my own skill at teleportation. It's what helps me arrive in time when I can, although I still have to travel normally to some of my clients and most cities first. You know the procedure."

Twilight wasn't surprised. "Learning the environment and establishing a safe arrival point," she said.

Another nod. "Exactly. And I've still been through recoil, thank you... more than a few times." And a small sigh. "Unfortunately, nesting future mothers have a tendency to rearrange furniture... well, in this case, I had an appointment in Las Pegasus, or at least below it. A friend and actual physician who insisted that I and nopony else attend at the arrival of her first."

Twilight blinked. "You -- can go that far?" She'd never managed that kind of jump -- not even an appreciable fraction of it! "I've barely even read about those kinds of attempts!"

Doctor Gentle shook his head. "Yes -- and no. I have safe points along the way -- some of mine maintain spaces for me so that I can travel in a series of shorter journeys through the between. In stages, it's much more manageable. So I arrived to find that her prediction of her due time had been accurate: she was in labor. And as she had feared after checking her family history, the foal was not in a good presentation. So I invoked the Exception and began to turn her newborn -- a colt, by the way -- but as soon as I'd finished, she..." A long, embarrassed pause. "Well, she was in labor when I arrived. There was no time to get her to the table, so I was unable to strap her hind legs -- and between the moment I finished turning the colt and the one where I would have released the field, the pain hit her and -- she kicked. I think you can guess where her hoof landed."

Rarity and Twilight -- along with a freshly-educated group of friends -- winced. "Oh dear," Rarity breathed. "A Stage One, I take it?"

"And not a kind one," the doctor verified. "It could have been much worse, actually -- when Fluttershy came to us, I needed a double corona just to establish a grip. It's become easier over the years -- but it hasn't been that long since I managed to get it down to a single. As it was, she wound up doing the rest of the work on her own and then had to tend to me immediately after checking on her son. And she kept me in her home until she was sure I'd recovered enough to travel -- which, combined with a new mother's reluctance to leave her foal and my own less than ideal condition, kept us both out of the rumor loops for some time. I didn't know about what happened until her husband was finally released from caring for both of us and ventured outside. But --" looking around at all of them "-- the leg will heal, my home can be rebuilt, and nothing has truly been lost. I am simply sorry to have caused so much of a fuss. It has been wonderful seeing so many in a short time -- but the reason, and the time some of them could not afford to give... I will be a long time making amends."

Pinkie shook her head, and the force behind it sent curls bouncing everywhere. "You gave us our time! All of it! Why can't we give some of it back? Without you -- some of us wouldn't have had any time at all. And me..." More softly, "I had to come."

"...we all had to," Fluttershy softly added. "...all of us. Please, Doctor... you should never feel bad because friends want to help... and you were our first friend..."

He managed a smile. "I understand, my eldest and my most determined. It's just -- the quantity, I suppose."

"You've touched a lot of lives, first friend," Quiet told him. "I think you lost track of just how many until they all began to show up. Remembering every name is one thing -- seeing every pony is a little more overwhelming. And that was still only a fraction of them -- and there are those in transit who won't get the news until they arrive here, and they'll insist on seeing you before they turn around -- your social calendar is going to be busy for some time. If you could just manage a small kickback from the hotel..."

Which got a little laugh. "Yes, some of them did mention the conditions. You can't ask pegasi to sleep in chandeliers..." (Rainbow Dash looked away and tried not to whistle.) "I suppose I can try to think of it as a very intensive reunion. Which reminds me -- tomorrow, could I have time with the two of you, if at all possible? I'll take my own rest tonight while the younger seek out their fun, but hearing about the most recent adventures of the Element-Bearers... I have yet to reach the Empire on my own: I would love a firsthoof account." Fluttershy and Pinkie immediately assented. "Thank you -- and now I believe you all should save some room for drink? And the young dragon will surely need to sleep some of that meal off. I know our local garnets look beautiful, but I have no idea what they do to a dragon metabolism when consumed in bulk."

"They... make you sleepy," Spike yawned, and shot a brief glare at Twilight, who had loaded up his plate herself. "And some ponies know it... fine, I'll get some sleep, Twilight." That with a distinct undertone of I Will Have My Revenge, But It Will Take Some Time To Figure Out What It's Going To Be.

"You do that," said the older sister in the certain confidence that she would see it coming (when her actual record was closer to seventy percent). "Once again, Quiet, thank you for the meal --" and thank goodness the Princess would be hoofing the bill: free food and Dash was a dangerous and expensive combination with normal prices "-- but if you can continue trusting us to take care of ourselves, we should probably be heading out."

"And what could I do if I didn't?" Quiet asked, bemused. "But be careful, even so -- the town is in a celebratory mood, including its visitors -- and celebratory is going to turn into drunk before the night ends."

"We'll manage," Applejack assured him. "So thank y'kindly, an' let's send all these other ponies back t' their own homes..."

Within three minutes, the Element-Bearers had cleared out -- with Twilight levitating a sleepy dragon back to their temporary quarters -- and the servants, both hired and borrowed, had left the room. It was just the two stallions remaining, and they both took their time making sure that was absolutely the case before continuing the conversation.

"So what do you think of them, Quiet?"

"They're -- a strange group, in their way," the younger stallion conceded. "So many backgrounds, so different in their personalities. And yet they all manage to stay together and achieve some form of Harmony. I normally wouldn't believe you could keep that kind of assemblage together for more than a single task at best, but -- there they are. Not what I had expected. I've heard stories of Twilight's skills and of course I remember what you said about yours, but -- in a fashion, they're almost ordinary. Certainly not the egos I would expect from those who've done so much -- well, with the one obvious exception."

The doctor chuckled. "Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie are anything but ordinary. Our new Princess is extraordinary. I've heard of the pegasus and her achievements in flight. I suspect the other two have their hidden talents as well. But yes -- it's an odd collection, but a pleasing one. I suppose I'm simply satisfied to see mine with such good friends. Especially Fluttershy. When last I saw them both, they were full of stories about what they had all done together, but -- I had no time to meet the other four. Well, with them here..." He trailed off, glanced at Quiet. "I will admit -- it was something of a shock to see a success."

"For me as well," Quiet confessed. "She's beautiful -- she truly is. And I'm completely certain she doesn't realize that..." A sigh, and a pained shrug. "But you are the lucky stallion here. All this time when we couldn't approach her, not with her under the wings of the Princess -- all those missed chances to have some of ours speak with her -- and now? She has come to us, arguably right when we need her most of all. And she wants to talk with you about magic. She loves to learn, I can see that -- no matter how Coordinator tried to twist it in his description. And I think she loves to teach just as much. If you ask your questions carefully..."

"I intend to," Doctor Gentle assured him. "It may take some time to find the right phrasing, but -- she is probably used to being quizzed on it, given how new it is: everypony must be asking her. I will just -- take more care." His field surrounded a pastry, brought it up for a touch of sweetness. "If they'd only brought the Elements -- but then, why would they, just to search for me? They have no finding powers -- at least, not that I've ever discovered."

Quiet paused, gathering his slight strength. "My -- condition came up." The older stallion looked at him with open curiosity. "A coughing fit on the way in -- your Fluttershy is quite the skilled emergency medic. And after that, there was an opportunity to disclose -- another part of it. A natural outflow of the conversation."

"And yet a painful one." There was no argument. "How did they react?"

"With sympathy."

"I would have expected no less. Quiet -- do you feel they like you?"

He gave the question some very visible thought before starting to venture around the curve of the punctuation mark. "Casually. The earth pony is reluctant to -- I think it's my title as much as anything else, along with a possible nod towards my horn, but she at least has some respect for me. The others have no objection to my presence, and Twilight --" he smiled "-- does like me. I'm sure of that. You don't put somepony through a title unless you're looking for a war or a friendship. I'm certain it's the latter."

"And you like her." A simple statement.

Quickly, "I'm married. And even if I wasn't, she's an alicorn: so far above even my station as to -- and nearly every stallion or mare she encounters is going to feel that way, aren't they? At least most of the sober ones and those who aren't using romance for climbing to the highest tier or just want to say they spent the night with a Princess without lying... oh, what a mess her dating life is going to be. But yes -- I like her. More than I expected to. She's this delightful blend of eager and awkward added to knowledge and power... an amazing mare."

Doctor Gentle smiled, adjusted his position to let his injured leg have more freedom, took another bite of pastry. "Are you willing to use that connection?"

"You know I am."

"I know." Another statement. "And -- will you?"

"If I can."

"Good."

She was home.

She did not intend to stay for long. She had barely gotten in: the emergency passage had been almost impossible to find from the outside, and had remained so until she had thought (with some embarrassment) to simply ask. And it had still taken hours to reach the place where she could ask, along with working her hidden way around so very many ponies, waiting for the Sun to set and allow her an unimpeded search... one where sight had been no good at any point and only feel had worked in the end. But for now, she had a place to hide where no eyes would find her -- not even his, for she had no intention of allowing him to see her until she had her answers to give.

There was no damage here, at least to the rooms. (The irreparable harm she had done to herself and him did not count.) So she had cleaned herself -- the washing had been still more pain, but so was everything else and at least the scents of the outside were gone for now. The food supplies would last her some time: as he tended to take long absences, there had been care taken to assure she could survive for extended periods without his presence, and she doubted she would need all of it before reaching a conclusion. Her notes were intact and after a time spent reviewing, she began to add new ones.

Her memories were out of reach -- for now.

She had begun to -- experiment. It was necessary. She hated her failure, wanted (almost) nothing more than to reach the end of both it and her wasted life -- but now she had to understand it. There would be a success facing her, and that would have been an intimidating prospect at the best of times. This was anything but. She did not feel she had a single advantage going in, no edges over what she might be confronting -- but the more she knew about her horror, the better she might be able to withstand it long enough to use any edge it might somehow offer.

In a way, she knew more about two of her twistings than most of the ponies who lived in them. But that was just knowledge, studies made with the idea that when The Great Work was complete, she would finally be able to put those facts to use. She had failed. Not been The One, not united into a coherent whole. There were just -- stages. States of being in near-perpetual transition. But she knew those stages and when she was fully in the heart of each, the magic inherent to those states functioned. To that degree, the failure had not been total.

But -- she only understood those magics as knowledge. The practice -- she had learned to grasp, but managing force was so very difficult to master. (The idea that simply getting a grasp that quickly would have been an immense achievement for somepony else never reached her.) Flight... yes, somewhat, but it was as much a matter of getting the atmosphere to stop responding, and that was a problem she continued to have with the here-and-gone-again horn. Things happened, and she controlled very few of them. However -- things were happening, and some of them had been controlled. With time, more control might come.

(She had killed. She knew she had killed, knew what and understood that they were threatening her, would have done the same. They were still deaths. Still unintended. Still her fault.)

As for the third -- she was managing. Somehow, apart from the pain, she was managing. But it seemed as if the feel was everywhere, especially in her place, and there were times when her own voice seemed so very --

-- loud.

She could not stop the changes: nothing she tried had slowed the endless cycle by so much as a single heartbeat. She had wondered about the opposite, and it almost seemed as if it might be possible, but -- it was the agony of the twisting. To accelerate -- would it mean going through all of that at once? She didn't know if it was possible to survive that. As a final means of ending, there was a certain irony to it: as a tactic -- no. Not unless there was no other choice. For now, she would simply have to be very careful about her timing, venturing out when she was closest to each center stage in order to take best advantage before one state began to fade so another could ascend. Literally ascend.

Being seen... that was still a concern. But her appearance was changing. She only appeared as something close to herself in one of the three. (There were some small differences. She could not ignore them. She had tried.) Did it count as being spotted if nopony could recognize her a few hours later? She wasn't sure about that. And she knew she would need to be out there if she was going to have any real chance of making this work. The true core of the rule, she felt, was not being tied to him. That might make it more a matter of caution about words than appearance...

...no. The rules were still the rules, and she would follow them as best she could -- but ultimately, if it came down to somepony other than her target potentially seeing her, with that sighting meaning the difference between solving the puzzle of The Great Work and yet another failure -- then let her be seen. Ultimately, she knew what had to take priority. The goal remained the goal, even if she could no longer achieve it. This was still about everypony else, and her disaster might bring them that much closer to their own successes. She had failed him. She could not do the same for the thousands of unknown others.

(Thousands of ponies. She could almost picture that now.)

So -- if she had to be out in public -- the key might be in keeping other ponies from realizing something was wrong. It wasn't just venturing outside during the (literal) peaks: it would be allowing no signs of her pain to escape. Could she manage that? Was it even possible? If she had the right medicines -- painkillers strong enough to at least coat the sharpest edges in dull earth, turn slicing stabs into grinding bruises... but there was nothing in her place: he had treated her on the rare occasions when she became sick, and she knew better than to trust leftover drugs which had aged far past their prime. Still -- something to be considered for whatever amount of later remained. For now, her next concern was being able to travel. And for travel...

...all she had to do was wait.

She had listened to the ponies from her hidden places, and there had been a second topic roaming through the air. There was him and the relief she shared -- and there was Twilight Sparkle. Who would be staying at the castle for some unknown period of time.

She could find a castle.

Hue

Six Element-Bearers walk into a bar. Everypony else immediately becomes the punchline.

Until recently, most of Equestria's citizens had very little idea of who the Element-Bearers were. After all, some of their more important missions were just a little too much like news for the papers to report -- and a certain Princess might have been trying to keep a slight lid on things for the first two years, giving them a chance to grow closer without having cameras stuck in their faces every few yards: only the rumors claim to know for sure. Everypony knew Luna had returned -- but the parties responsible? Not so much. The majority of citizens had been dimly aware that something called the Elements was involved and there were those who Bore them. More educated ponies knew there were six Elements along with most to all of their Elemental names, and that there was a pony matched to each. Those truly in flow with current events might find out there were two from each race and that the Bearers lived within roughly a gallop of Canterlot, if not the capital itself. Insiders knew one of the Princess' favorites was involved, and those standing near her when letters came and went were aware that one was Twilight. And for pretty much everypony outside Ponyville, which had made a studious practice of ignoring the potential celebrity aspects of their residents (at least for anything pertaining to government work), that was just about it. A very few knew more -- and in one or two cases, much more -- but on the whole, the six remained more or less anonymous, much to Rainbow Dash's perpetual chagrin.

While that status quo had gone through a very slight change after Discord (although not enough for Canterlot's upper class to have any idea who or what a Rarity was), the true shift had begun after the changeling invasion -- or rather, after Shining Armor's wedding to Cadance. While the near-war was news and accordingly got stuck on Page Eight, the marriage was celebrity gossip and took nearly every headline across the continent. Having an Element-Bearer as sister to the groom? Certainly something to keep an eye on. The stories that she'd fought with the bride -- fighting with a Princess! And one who was her former babysitter! -- before the wedding? Never mind stories about the cause: circulate a few about divides in the new royal family, get a few quotes from her on why she hated a Princess so much (which had amounted to "'Get. Out," happily spun a thousand unfavorable ways), and who were those ponies she came in with? See if they have anything to say -- wait, what did the cyan one say they did?

From that point on, the six of them had been on the gossip map. Not a place which required much in the way of tourist traffic, since they hardly did anything real -- but at least worth the occasional peek-in to see if they'd been humiliating themselves lately in a way which would justify an article about having them deposed before blaming the whole thing on the Diarchy and getting rid of the Princesses right after. (Even Rainbow Dash had seen where things were going after the first interview and huffily refused to participate in anything where she couldn't see the final version before it went to press.) But it had meant Equestria was slowly becoming aware of who they were. Ponyville remained Ponyville and continued to studiously ignore the whole thing, at least until Twilight's transformation had overwhelmed the town's weirdness censor and replaced it with royal awe and pride in their homegrown Princess. The rest of the continent gradually realized there were in fact six Element-Bearers (even if the actual Elements got left out of the most recent stories: they only made certain ponies appear to have positive qualities). They were all mares. Every last one was -- well, attractive -- and that was at the minimum.

(Admittedly, they were physically appealing in different ways: Applejack's fans liked raw power in their fantasies, while Twilight's were attracted to the studious type and even more power. Fluttershy got those who were into the classics, Pinkie Pie drew in ponies who thought they could handle that level of energy, Rarity's fanbase ran from high society to those who considered sheet changing to be an unnatural event, and much to Dash's perpetual annoyance, most of her devotees were underage. (Incidentally, there are pinup calendars. Excepting a few leftovers from Fluttershy's modeling days, none of them are authentic, every last one is illegal, and most of the pictures are faked using badly-chosen stand-ins.))

And they were all single.

Oh, there were stories about that too. Endless speculation on who each of the Element-Bearers might regard as their very special somepony. A flood of tales circulated about their having hooked up with each other in pairs or triads or a six-pony group marriage -- all legal, but the last option was so rare as to barely exist. Ponies seemed to enjoy reading about those fantasy matchups, so a cottage industry sprang up in the gossip pages which had the Bearers switching off so often that every last waking moment would have been spent in having sex and every dozing one in sleeptrotting to their next conquest. The Bearers very carefully ignored all of them, with the exception of Rarity saving some of the most fanciful to a well-hidden scrapbook (kept in a cubbyhole behind a Sweetie Belle-proof security spell) for those times when she personally needed a good laugh.

But most ponies believed them to be single -- or at least so open-minded as to still be taking applications for the group. And so when six Element-Bearers walk into a bar... they will find a large number of ponies who suddenly believe that this is their chance at romance, at one night spent doing something other than just standing, taking part in something with a group, or possibly even becoming an emergency substitute Bearer and taking on the role of Rainbow Dash Number Three. Those with enough courage -- natural or liquid -- will then attempt to begin manifesting those fantasies into reality.

From the outside, it can look funny. From the inside...

Like more than a few of their personal disasters (including, unknown to the group, the traveling incurable chaos plague known as the Cutie Mark Crusaders), this one had begun as Dash's idea, grown from the fertile pages of Daring Do's fictional conquests. Where do you find out about local events? The bar. Where do mysterious strangers hang around looking to spill their secrets? The bar. Where do you find the love of your life who happens to be in disguise, the pony you'll meet up with for seven pages in every four hundred before they're whisked off to their own next adventure and all you can do is wait for the sequel? The bar. And slightly less to the immediate point, where are dozens of Trotter's Falls residents going to treat Equestria's heroes to free drinks? Take a wild guess. Twilight had agreed to it because they still weren't completely sure of what they were supposed to be doing and hanging around the local watering hole was as good a way to pick up information as any.

What they got could certainly be filed under 'picking up'.

Look around the Suffolk Downs Vineyard for a moment. It can legally hold eighty ponies at maximum capacity and with that number present, has just enough free floor space to let them all move around each other -- barely: a lot of flanks get rubbed, and not always unintentionally. The tables are set at a bit below shoulder height, and every last one of them is at least four hundred years old and brought in from the oaks in the wild zones around Fillydelphia. Recessed magical lighting tends towards soft blues, mostly to make the extensive wine display behind the main bar look a little more exotic. (It's also flattering lighting for most ponies -- at least for those whose coat doesn't clash and the occasional pony who just goes nearly invisible against the background illumination.) There are a few booths for the patrons who want the illusion of privacy and two side rooms (both currently occupied) taken by those ponies who prefer more of a reality. Two unicorn mares tend the bar: two more wander the floor and take orders. Crystal mugs hang from the ceiling and are fetched by fields. Very few of them have the hoof loops used by pegasi and earth ponies: there's little need. A couple of steel tankards are kept around for those drinks which -- do things to crystal: one to a customer please, and that's one per moon. Ponies talk, ponies drink, the ponies with more bits than sense hand over the former for all-night access to the communal trough and keep it up until they completely lose the latter. (Twilight never goes near those ancient holdovers: in a word, 'backwash'.) The trough holds whatever beer the Vineyard has far too much of: other drinks tend towards the imported, the exotic, the enchanted, and oh dear Celestia, the next-morning hangover which should have stayed chained in Tartarus.

The place legally holds eighty ponies. With so many of the Doctor's still in town and locals spotting the Element-Bearers heading out for the evening, following to see where they were going -- well, the Vineyard was packed from floor to pegasi-crammed ceiling. Many of the occupants were already drunk. Several were trying to get there in a hurry because surely the next drink would provide the ability to approach the former supermodel without fear -- or maybe the next one -- could be the one after that -- well, now there was a choice of three identical pegasi, so go with the one on the left...

Try to trawl for information in that kind of setup, with the group being broken apart by the crush of the crowd, and it's the other ponies who learn things they didn't want to know -- starting with why those six are all still single.

Yes, there were ponies who were drunk, bold, egotistical, or social-climbing enough to try and get their very own night with a Princess. But Twilight had always been skittish about dating: too many fellow students who wanted to attach their tow rope via binding social contract. The years most ponies spend in beginning to explore their sexuality had been used by a once-unicorn for delving ever-deeper into the library and the safe privacy of her own head. A pony who needed to learn lessons about friendship is not going to have a natural talent for relationships. Before her transformation, anypony who tried to pick her up in a bar would have found somepony only too happy to use the chosen small talk subject as either the launch point for her own lecture (because she frequently knew more about the topic than they did) or the start of a precious new lesson with those things she hadn't really learned about yet. (Or, with some of the more blatant drunken skip-the-preliminaries proposals, the other pony would have received free instruction in how long it takes to blink teleport flash away.) She was about as competent in the dating wars as she was at ice skating, random shelf arrangements, and slumber parties without benefit of guidebook: a former self-determined social outcast who had never learned the appropriate cues or responses and was just barely able to spot a few of the more subtle danger signs. And that was before the change had added an extra level of uncertainty to her psyche. Try to pick up Twilight with a line about how dazzling her eyes were in this light and --

"-- because it's the refraction of the light, really. When you have this exact frequency of blue arranged along that kind of grid and directed with just the right angle, you're going to get some degree of dazzle. Plus there's the optics in play with your own lenses, and did you know that different eye colors receive light in slightly different ways? For example, green eyes are better at spotting movement! It's absolutely true! A lot of ponies don't know that. Anyway, back to light studies. This particular frequency of blue is supposed to be calming, although I really don't think it's doing anything --"

-- on the plus side for the hosting bar, ten minutes spent on the receiving end of that will drive most ponies to drink -- more.

Go ahead, try to pick up Fluttershy. Just try it. Oh, there were ways to get into a conversation with her -- for starters, you could bring your pets (although that's not an option at this bar) or just bring them up. If your animal companion happened to be sick, you might even get her to go home with you -- all the way to the front door, where she'd wait patiently for you to bring your pet out so she could look it over and start working on a diagnosis. But any overt attempt to coax her into bed -- or dating -- or any social relationship beyond her typical business ones or a light touch of merchant-customer exchange -- would bring, at best, an "...eep!" and at worst, a full-scale rush for the exit which wasn't particularly concerned about the amount of damage being done along the way. (Blocking is not encouraged: she's stronger than she looks.) For Fluttershy to find a very special somepony would first require her to find the mental strength to

A. look.

B. be looked at.

C. talk.

D. feel she was worth talking to in the first place.

E-Z. forget it: we never even got to A.

And in this overpacked, overloud, and overstimulating environment, where she'd basically inserted herself into the most defensible ceiling corner available and was steadfastly trying to pretend all comers didn't exist, with those blue-green eyes almost squeezed shut?

Good luck.

Of the six, Rarity spent the most time in bars of her own accord. She firmly believed that a single drink -- just one, mind you, carefully chosen for taste, fragrance, point of origin, reputation of the winery, and the elegant contour of the bottle -- helped open the floodgates of creativity. A few sips and ideas begin to flow: too many and the ideas were all about how far it was to the door and how she couldn't possibly make it: would somepony please hold back her mane? (Surprisingly, Rarity was the lightweight in the group: one mug happy, two dizzy, three semi-coherent, and four meant a day of traveling around Ponyville desperately trying to find somepony who would tell her why her tail was now dyed fluorescent green.) And as she did have a certain appeal even for those without scales and was in the right environment more than the others, ponies would try to pick her up. A lot. In fact, it happened so often that she'd become an expert on methodology.

"Yes, I am quite aware of how my mane looks in this light. And if you had truly wished to have a chance, you would have much been better off trying something a little less -- trite. Seriously, dear: there are dozens of mares in this bar and while you were within my hearing, you have spoken to all of them about their manes. So either you are into manes to a degree which some might find a touch frightful or you simply have no other approach to offer. So while I do appreciate the fact that you are making an effort, don't you think you would benefit from some variety in your attempts? There are a thousand disguises in the social wardrobe and you? Are wearing the same outfit to every occasion. And that's without getting into your using a disguise in the first place, Baron... I did see you polishing the fountain on the way in, you know, and you would have been so much better off admitting that to begin with..."

Oh, Rarity still believed in True Love -- or rather, she believed in it again once the Blueblood nausea wore off, which had been two moons after the Gala. And she no longer felt her chosen prince had to be one or come from high society at all: a very special somepony could climb out of a ditch, although that pony had better try to find a bath rather quickly. But she still insisted on manners, the polite approach, romance, being swept off her hooves, and everything else which could be found in the lesser class of romance novels, also known as 'anything where the cover image has the dress strategically ripped over the cutie mark'. And that meant --

"Really. You're being serious. You truly think telling me my hooves look like marshmallows is going to get you somewhere. Let me tell you something: I have had more refined attempts to win my favor from Diamond Dogs. And quite frankly, their breath? Smelled better than yours."

-- she was a little fussy.

Contrary to popular opinion, Rainbow Dash could talk about things other than herself. Or herself and flying. Or herself, flying, the Wonderbolts, adventure novels and just lately, tortoise care. Admittedly, she would tend to drag the topic over to one of those five given any cue and the first was her favorite thing to discuss of all. Rainbow Dash would happily sit down with anypony who wanted to talk about her and provide an epic-level dissertation on the subject with footnotes, references, ponies to check her sources with, and no more than twenty-five percent exaggeration. And she would listen to the other pony -- mostly for those verbal cues which would allow them to get the focus back on her. For the casual pony on the social approach, conversation with Rainbow Dash was actually a lot like being talked at by Twilight, only without the chance to pick up a few incidental school credits along the way. The more determined ones tried to ride out the verbal flow and hoped to reach a calm spot in the rapids which would allow them to drop anchor and hold fast until the current slowed down. It never slowed down. She could talk about herself for hours. She could go for moons without repeating herself, keeping a side glance out in self-defense to see if any of her friends were about to sit on her. And part of it was --

-- a test.

She would never admit it, of course, and the odds were something less than even that she was aware of it. But the test was there regardless: are you so interested in me that you're willing to put up with this? After all, only the truly -- well, loyal -- would stand by her side through all that and still be there when she ultimately decided to finish. If you could stick it out through Dash's barrage of self-interest, then you just might be a pony worth getting to know. Stay by her side, stay interested, nod at all the right places, and pay actual attention because there would be a test later -- that was the way to get the pegasus curious about you.

Nopony ever made it that far.

Seriously, there's only so much talk about shell cleaning anypony can stand.

You'd think Pinkie would be the easiest to pick up: after all, she'd admitted that she has sex. (Discussions of 'with whom?' are not going to take place here.) But most ponies would consider her priorities to be -- skewed. Pinkie didn't think of sex as part of a relationship: she didn't even really see it as working into dating, and one-night stands ("Stand?" she'd giggle. "You think we're supposed to be standing the whole time?") didn't come into it at all. To Pinkie, sex was -- therapeutic. It was something she did when a friend really needed that last possible boost to raise them out of the emotional dumps. It could be for giggles and good times and just having fun, sure -- but she took her role as Laughter seriously and recognized that there were times when there was just that one thing which might make somepony happy -- or rather, pull them out of deep depression. She had sex with no emotional commitment beyond that involved in 'I am your friend and I'm doing this because I care about you'. And with six deep friendships and hundreds of casual ones plus new ponies to meet every day (especially lately) -- well, how much time did a single pony have to use? Especially one who had to bake, host parties, run her greeting schedule, keep up with everypony's birthdays, and so on down the eternal line? Twilight had never recognized it, but Pinkie had a knack for time efficiency which not even certain obsessive once-unicorns could match -- and even then, the baker was perilously close to being overbooked at all times. Pinkie didn't have enough hours in the day or night to have a very special somepony because there were so many ponies who were already special and they all needed her.

(It would not have surprised or offended Pinkie to discover there had been a very small betting pool around Ponyville -- four participants -- wagering whether and when she would finally attempt to befriend Cranky through a last resort. She would have simply (and patiently) explained that it was something to be done for those she already knew and had a strong friendship with. You couldn't make or keep friends through sex. And she would have explained that after getting somepony else to bet on her behalf and walking off with everypony's bits.)

Yes, she was in her element (but not Element), or at least a subset of her cutie mark, which manifested here as the ability to keep up with the best of them. Party with some of the new ponies in the bar? Done. Beat them all at every bar game offered? Easy. Pull out the little tricks and mini-cons which show a drinking crowd that you know all the angles and aren't going to be fooled by anything? Of course. Make new friends? Perhaps. But as for leaving with anypony other than the ones she came in with... not going to happen. Because she didn't know anypony here well enough to understand whether they really needed her and there were much more important things to do anyway. She was listening to the babble of the crowd, subtly reaching in for the social cues and gossip flow which were part of any mass party --

-- but she couldn't attune herself to this group. Not completely. Because while those of the Doctor's were happy to talk to her and she was having a good time with them, most of the locals were avoiding her. Several were ignoring her. Some were acting as if she didn't even exist and as Octavia might tell you, that's the performance of a lifetime. And she wasn't going to be picked up for a one-night not-standing -- not now, and especially not when most of the ponies in the bar didn't care to try.

Pinkie had things other than good times on her mind, and most of them involved frequent checks on the departing-and-returning Applejack.

Ask around Ponyville after Applejack's conquests and you'd get the complete list: none. Applejack generally didn't date. Applejack didn't have time to date. She had an apple farm to run, a sister who kept trying to destroy the town and most of that seemed to be by accident, a grandmother to support and brother to ignore, friends who needed her during moments when all of the previous wasn't happening and sometimes when it was, and every so often a Princess or chaos entity came recruiting. Applejack only had time for a social life when her work life let up a little, and that mostly meant during the winter. Once the snow came in and the Acres were put to bed for a few moons, the farmer might venture into town to see what the local selection had to offer. And the answer to that was 'ponies who'd had the previous misfortune of being approached by Applejack'. She was very much the aggressor in her potential relationships, choosing which ponies she'd go after with exacting standards followed by (should she come up to somepony) an even more exacting quiz. Her standards were well-known: she wanted an earth pony within a few years of her own age, strong, durable, not needing much in the way of sleep -- somepony who was a hard worker and willing to commit hours upon hours to seeing if they could sort things out together, mostly by waiting until spring and then doing that relationship work right beside her on the farm -- while incidentally working on the farm itself. The general opinion around Ponyville was that Applejack wasn't looking for a very special somepony so much as she was after free live-in labor and a way to create the next generation of seriously underpaid help. It was unkind, unfair, and more than slightly accurate.

Applejack hardly had any objections to love and wanted an emotional connection with whoever she wound up with -- but romance would pretty much have to fall on her if it was going to have any hope of getting her attention, and the idea of getting a next generation to keep the farm in Apple hooves was very much on her mind. She didn't trust Apple Bloom to take over for her, mostly because any cutie mark showing a talent for running the place would have surely manifested by now no matter how much the other two tried to distract her sibling from those duties. The youngest Apple was on track for something else: Applejack recognized that and was preparing to deal with it when the time came -- but that meant the farm was going to need a next generation, and getting Big Mac out into the social wars was more difficult than launching Fluttershy into the battle. She had a chance to lasso and drag Fluttershy. Big Mac? Not so much. So she put herself out there -- and found, much to her surprise, that nopony was willing to work a fourteen-hour day alongside her in the name of seeing if they were compatible. At least, not for more than a week's worth of them, and typically much less. Some of them didn't even make it to lunch -- and frankly, she was running out of ponies. Twilight's ascension had done her the favor of a population increase, and she'd been looking forward to winter just to schedule another series of future tryouts.

But Trotter's Falls found her on a different sort of prowl. Relatively few ponies were looking for her (although many were looking at her, especially as she insisted on staying in the rough area despite the increasing number of stares) and none of them fit her standards anyway. But she was still looking for earth ponies. They could be of any age or marital status as long as they were earth ponies. She needed somepony to talk to -- badly. Somepony who wasn't Pinkie Pie. And there were a few -- a very few, and most of them left quickly after grabbing a single drink to nurse on the train. Those who'd come to check on Doctor Gentle had already departed. What remained were the ones Quiet Presence had mentioned: merchants who'd come in to deliver food. They were mostly willing to step outside with her and get to an isolated spot so they could speak earth pony to earth pony. But once they understood the topic (or at least what she was willing to cautiously suggest of it)...

"I'm sorry, Miss Applejack, but -- I don't know about anything odd happening anywhere near these parts. It's a four-day haul for me just to get here, and I only escort my goods because I want the bits to come back with me. I drop off, I get paid, I leave -- and I have a big family to get back to, which is what these trips pay for. Why? Did you hear something?"

And then came the art of lying without lying. "Naw... nothin' I want t' bother y'with... Ah'm sorry, it's jus' stupid stuff. Y'know -- Ah don't want t' spread any rumors. Wanted t' make sure they were stupid an' if y'ain't heard of them, then stupid they've gotta be. Ah won't spread rumors, that's all... Get back t' yer kin. That's what's important."

And that was the best of it.

"Live here? And risk having other ponies come in after me? Too many of us laying the Effect down, they'd have their own food supply and prices would drop. Any pony who moves here is ultimately just betraying those of us with business contracts in the area, and I'm not going to be the first to drop that horseshoe. I need the money: I commute. Besides, who would want to live -- here? Geez, lady -- I don't know where you got that idea, but get rid of it fast before the stupid thing pulls your hat over your head."

"I can get paid here and make a living or I can stay here and not get paid enough to live. Guess which one I picked."

"I don't stay overnight. I have never stayed overnight. I am not going to start staying overnight now. Not for a vaguely dropped half-hint with no details in it. Better luck next pony."

"...oh. I thought you wanted to... well... no, I don't know anything. Sorry. And -- you know, your legs look really strong in this light, I bet you bring down apples like -- um... I'll go now..."

"Right. Me. First earth pony in Hornville. Buck you very much."

Until, finally, "Something weird? Well -- that private room in the back, the one on the left? There's an earth pony in there. Grape something or other. He was trying to get drinks out of the patrons before you came in by offering to tell this story about some mythical super-powerful unicorn to anypony who'd buy him a mug, or just access to the trough -- but only one-on-one. The older bartender finally threw him into the back room just so he'd stop bothering everypony. I think he still might be nursing a drink in there. If you're really looking for something strange, you might want to try washing his lies out of him until he finally passes out and clears the place for somepony else. And now if you'll excuse me, I am getting on that last train out tonight before this crowd goes ugly. They started as happy drunks, but -- that doesn't last. It never lasts. And I have no intention of being here when it inevitably goes the other way. Good luck, Miss Applejack. If I hear about anything strange, I'll send word back -- but I don't expect to. Just take care of yourself. You're a good mare, I can see that -- and I'm not sure this is the best place for a good mare..."

And then she went back into the bar (pushing her way through an increasingly drunk crowd, one which seemed more reluctant to let her in) and told her friends about the earth pony in the back room. Because it was something -- at least, it was something she could tell them. Because they were her friends. No matter what Pinkie Pie said...

...she had to keep an eye on Pinkie.

After Grape Indulgence had finished his story -- collapsing into a snoring single-pony pile almost immediately after -- they waited a few more minutes while Rarity casually checked the location-based details with the bar's staff. After that, the Royal Voucher in the amount of far too many bits was presented to the younger bartender and the group left the Vineyard, wandering down magically-lit streets to try and find a private place to speak. It took some work: several ponies tried to follow them out, and some managed to keep the stagger moving in their general direction for several yards. The town was celebrating. The town was getting drunk, and not all of them had done it in a formal setting. There were some half-understood calls from house windows made in the group's direction. Twilight recognized that some of them were trying to hail her in her status as Princess. Others were too slurred to make out.

Weaving ponies bumped into them. Some of the bumps were on the hard side. Applejack was nearly knocked off her hooves twice, visibly strained not to retaliate. Pinkie, legs and tail twitching to her private beat, dodged them all.

Eventually, they reached the soft white glow of the gazebo in the town square and found nopony there. It was a warm night and any similar structure in Ponyville would have been a temporary home to dating couples and romantically-inclined married pairs (and, very rarely, trios on up) -- but the parties were in bars, and homes, and wandering up and down the streets in search of fresh recruits. For now, the cane-woven walls formed a suitable barrier to intrusion, and a check for eavesdroppers came up empty.

Rarity led the way. "Our hosts for the evening deal with the winemaker in question -- and they said he's a four-day gallop to the north." With very little effort to disguise her distaste, "Mister Indulgence was clearly wandering around in the wild zone for days. Celestia protects children and drunks, indeed... he's lucky to be alive. Unicorns making his liquid payment vanish -- I believe I know where every last drop of it wound up."

Pinkie nodded. "But at least we know what she looks like now! That's weird, isn't it -- having your horn be a different color than your coat?"

Twilight mustered a sigh. "It would be unusual -- and no, I can't think of any other unicorns I've seen with that color differential -- but at the same time, he was drunk. Drunk when he was talking to us, maybe drunk when he saw her -- I know he saw somepony, but it's hard to trust the details."

"I trust him." And that was from a completely sober (in more than one sense) Rainbow Dash, camped out on one of the gazebo's benches, voluntarily staying on their level for a very rare once. "What happened -- it shook him up. Some ponies lose details when they're afraid -- and some focus. When you're going through a triple helix, trying for a quadruple, and things don't -- quite work -- you start paying attention to everything. When I -- hurt my wing that one time, went to the hospital -- I remember everything that went wrong and -- every second leading into the ground like they were taking a year each. I think -- it was like that for him. That seeing her was so intense -- he almost had to drink so remembering it would scare him less. You see some old fliers..." She trailed off, stared at the gazebo's roof for a few seconds. "I say he was telling the truth and his memory was good."

"Breaking a tree in half..." Rarity mused, looking disturbed. "Applejack, the way he described the trunk -- how large would that typically be?"

"Big," the farmer flatly replied. "Gotta be that same orchard everypony raids. We'll get directions an' go check it out when we've got some Sun t' work with."

"...it could really be her, couldn't it?" Fluttershy whispered. "She's hurt, she's hungry -- she needs help."

"Which brings us back to why Discord would care," Twilight very carefully didn't snap. "I'm still looking for motive, Fluttershy... he might ask us to help you --" forcing herself to fully believe that for the duration of one sentence "-- but somepony out here..." Some random pony we don't know anything about except that she's strong and doesn't have control... strong enough to break that leash?

"...he cares more than you think... he's trying to care... Twilight? About the sparks from her horn...?"

"It is what he said there," Twilight conceded. "Everypony does it when they're just starting: the field doesn't focus and you just send little bits of energy everywhere. But -- he said she's a couple of years older than you, Fluttershy -- maximum. Most unicorns start to get control when they're a little older than Sweetie Belle: some younger, some older -- but not that old. Even if you aren't taught, you get the basics on your own. For somepony to be showing first spell signs at her age... Well, we were looking for strange..." A tall mare. Blue coat, tan eyes, and that strange purple horn. In pain. Hungry then, lost in the wild zone. But -- not visibly wounded, at least not that their witness had seen. What was wrong with her?

Pinkie had been visibly bothered by a missing part of the description when it wasn't made, and was still trying to deal with it. "He remembered so much else -- why couldn't he tell us about her cutie mark? That's one of the first places I look when I meet a new pony! Everypony does, because it can tell you so much about who they are! How can a cutie mark be hard to look at? I've never seen one that was ugly or even had really clashing colors!"

It had been bothering Twilight too -- but the line for that stretched all the way back to Ponyville. "I don't know -- maybe he just didn't get a good look and was making an excuse..." She sighed. "Okay, everypony -- I'm not fully convinced that she's the mission, but I'm hoping she's at least part of it. So much for our being out here on a wild antelope chase..." (They weren't fully sentient. They still loved to race anything they encountered, ground or sky. They loved winning slightly less than Rainbow Dash and in their way, gloated just a little more.) "We should go out to the orchard. Maybe we can find something he missed."

"We'll have to be careful about time, though," Pinkie pointed out. "Doctor Gentle is expecting Fluttershy and me sometime tomorrow, and you wanted to speak with him later -- and if we're here long enough, there's going to be a party."

That got a small, weary smile out of Twilight. "I do want to talk with him..." (The weariness was focused on the inevitable party.) "Let's get some sleep." With slight (but real) mirth, "I might even let Spike sleep when we get back in and give him the bad news in the morning. Grape Indulgence might have missed a cutie mark somehow, but I don't think he would have missed wings..."

Rainbow Dash looked up at that. "We should really go out together tomorrow morning, Twilight! Get the overhead view of the area -- see if there's anything weird we can spot from above! I can even -- get up -- early -- and meet you at the front --"

"-- we'd better just concentrate on the orchard for now," Twilight quickly interjected. "Back to the castle, everypony -- and anypony who's had drinks, sleep them off!"

"I had one, dear."

"I know. You're still upright."

Five ponies were in bed. One dragon was curled up in a basket (although Twilight's sheets looked suspiciously straightened). One pony was still awake.

Applejack was asleep. The cottage was pleasant enough, reminding Applejack of an only slightly overdone earth pony building -- at least when compared to the other residences they'd passed. And the bed had been comfortable. Too comfortable, really: Applejack was trying to half-sleep, keeping an ear out for movement. She hadn't hauled her temporary bed to block the front door for only one reason: there was also a back exit. So she was trying to practice the delicate art of resting with awareness, something she'd only had scant experience in and that had led to something less than wondrous success: Apple Bloom had gotten out to wreak havoc anyway. The farmer was trying regardless.

Pinkie was asleep one room away. She had known why Applejack had made sure they were in the cottage together. She was, in her way, more than a little -- angry -- about it. But she wasn't going to make her move. Not just yet. And when (if -- no, at this rate, when) she did, Applejack could do everything up to and including diving into a mirror pool and creating a horde of single-minded earth ponies to block every way out. It wouldn't matter. Pinkie had made her own decision and was just waiting to see if -- when -- she would have to enact it.

Rarity was out cold. The sheets were slightly musty. They were also heavenly.

Fluttershy was having a perfectly lovely dream, reliving one of the happiest days of her life.

Rainbow Dash -- well, it wasn't as if anything short of a -- floor -- was going to slow her down.

Twilight was staring at the canopy bed's fabric roof.

She wasn't sure what time it was. (There was an enchanted clock on the wall which would have told her if she'd asked. She didn't want the voice to wake Spike.) Just that it was too late -- and, given how long she'd been doing this, also too early. Her thoughts had been going around in circles again, and it would have been impossible to wear out a track in the stone. All she could do was stare at the linen ceiling and think. There was too much to think about, and none of it ever seemed to go beyond the original groove.

The breaking of the tree -- nopony had asked Twilight if she could have done it. They probably already knew: she could -- but not casually. Not without at least a double corona, and not by seeming accident. The story's conclusion had shaken all of them -- Rarity and Twilight most of all. Especially Twilight, who was still hoping Grape Indulgence, watching the apple and glow, had left an extra layer out somewhere. But if he hadn't... yes, this one was strong. Strong on a level which kept trying to terrify her. Strength without control. The waves in the wild zone might have been the best of all possible results. Power without restraint or knowledge of how to temper it...

Not an alicorn. But -- the power of one? Strength beyond hers, a field which might operate somewhere between her level and that of the Princesses? Or --

-- no. She's not an alicorn. Unicorns existed who were stronger than me. I've read about them. Star Swirl -- I finished one of his incomplete spells, but I still can't do everything he did and he never -- changed. She's just -- strong. But there's seven of us. We have the numbers, we have practice and tactics and strategy and she --

-- just breaks huge trees in half.

By accident.

It wasn't a thought which encouraged sleep.

She'd almost gone down to the largest of the armor rooms and started cataloging just to have something to do.

The bar. She had seen the potential value in going and in fact, Rainbow Dash had been right: if this strange unicorn was their mission, then they had that much more information about her. But -- well, with limited exceptions, it hadn't been a night of being Princesssed into oblivion. Instead, it was ponies trying to add her to a private list of lands conquered -- a list which wouldn't have remained private for long. She had wondered -- before the change -- how many ponies who claimed to look at her with romantic intentions were really seeing her for herself. That thought came more often now. She was sure all the ponies from this excursion truly saw were wings. Lectures were her automatic reaction to so much -- sometimes too much, and she knew it -- but now they were turning into self-defense. And there were still ponies who would have listened for far longer than any of Dash's failed suitors managed to hang on if it had meant the chance to be with her. It sometimes felt as if the only chance she really had now was --

-- well, that was just silly, really. No matter what some of the gossip columns tried to say.

Quiet... he'd been nice. No -- not just nice. Casual. As if meeting a Princess was just another part of an ordinary day, happened all the time. He'd greeted her with a tease about her status, the best way to say that it meant nothing to him whatsoever except as a chance to joke around a little and watch her squirm, she'd done the same to him...

...married.

Figures.

What are we doing here? What does Discord want? If it is her... then should we even be helping? Is that what would help him? But she's in pain -- so much pain... how can anypony get even a hint of that and not want to help? (She was still mad at Grape Indulgence for his lack of effort.) But if...

'But.' 'If.' Words she was coming to hate.

She couldn't write the Princess -- or Luna -- but could she contact the Canterlot Archives? Ask about horn-coat differences? If it meant anything?

But -- there's other ways for a unicorn to be that powerful...

She blinked, turned slightly to the left. The wall held no more answers than the ceiling had. Still -- I will send a letter tomorrow. No point to waking Spike: this is going to be a hard target for him and he'll need to be fully refreshed before he tries. But it's a question I can ask, and there might even be answers...

...I can't sleep.

Carefully, she got out of the bed, slid her hooves across the carpet and chill stone rather than allow the tapping to wake Spike, carefully opened the doors to the outside and stepped through, closing them behind her.

The porch was -- calming, in its way. Twilight had always liked porches, appreciated a view from overhead gained with something solid beneath her hooves. Liked being able to see and study so much at once. Even though there wasn't much to see here, really: the Moon was waxing towards full -- another four days and it would be there -- but the light didn't reflect on much other than a lot of playground equipment and some sports fields. From here, she could see the river which Quiet had told her formed the town's border. The falls themselves were out of sight -- but she could hear them, and the sound was more relaxing than anything else. He'd mentioned that portions of the landing pool were shallow enough for swimming, although the water was so cold that most ponies only went in on a dare.

Twilight was enjoying what bit of view she had. Probably would have enjoyed it just as much from fully overhead, from flight. But...

...I have to get this right. I have to fly. I have to fix one thing. She's not going to stop asking me. She's...

A quick look at the sky. Partly cloudy: the Moon was showing through a large hole in the layer, one which wouldn't last long: there was a breeze whipping up in the upper layer of atmosphere and the clouds were beginning to shift east in something of a hurry. It didn't look like there were any rain clouds in the group, at least not in this lighting. She wondered if Dash or Fluttershy would have known at a glance. Tried to figure out why she didn't.

Back to the ground. The edge of the porch. The railing...

...no. This is higher than my porch at home. When I fall here -- if -- no, let's face it, when, it's going to hurt a lot more. That might be a hospital fall. This isn't the time or place to practice. Stepping off into air gives me more of a chance to catch the wind with my wings and get the right airflow pattern going, but...

She wanted so very badly to do something right...

...she was being stupid. It was too high up, it was too late at night, and the wind gusts (which were moving lower) were frankly too strong for her to think about going out in. A warm wind, at least: she didn't have to retreat from the chill -- but enough to move the end of her tail and send her bangs swishing about in an uncomfortable manner.

Couldn't fly. Couldn't touch the clouds. Couldn't do anything but fall.

She felt stupid.

A bare whisper. "I hate feeling stupid..."

"Then. Teach!"

And the wind had her.

There was no time to react. No field to push back against, no grip to break or magic to counter. No chance to think. There was just a howl of wind as the air surrounding her spun, faster and faster, lifted her from the porch, taking her up as she spun around and around within the dust devil, barely able to breathe in the twisting atmosphere, raised into an involuntary form of flight, uncontrolled --

-- no. Not under her control. Under --

"-- who are you?"

She had been raised to be on a level with the roof of the observation tower -- but not in contact with it. Three body lengths away and four stories above the ground. Hanging within the air, wind still twisting, keeping her up -- but with the air pressure somehow rendering her stable inside the dust devil. She was no longer turning, even with the wind buffeting her and her tail being whipped into her right flank. And her words had not been taken by the wind, not completely. They had been heard by the tall pegasus mare standing on the conical roof.

A tan coat. Blue mane and tail, both short. Deep purple eyes. Incredibly dark purple wings, large and unfurled in a posture which, on Rainbow Dash, would have been challenge. And -- she noticed it, wasn't sure why it of all things registered -- a touch of that same purple at the very bottom of her hooves.

That voice -- but...

The pegasus had heard her question, yes -- and responded to it with a sound. A sound Twilight had heard twice before and still never wanted to hear again.

"...no."

Her thoughts spun faster than her body had, would not come together. illusion disguised field shapechange on that level impossible for anypony outside of the Princesses sisters from the same family faking not that can't be that can't be... And her own wings spread, pushed -- but all it did was start her spinning again as the dust devil caught them: she just managed to bring them back against her body.

She could hit the pegasus with a spell. But she couldn't fly, and the dust devil was the only thing holding her up. And if she knocked the other pony out, or her opponent chose to drop her...

Teleport? Try to reach the ground? Do I have a clear enough image of the bedroom to go between with? Can't just aim for the roof: can't stay out in the open...

And the pegasus trembled, feathers vibrating. Clenched her jaw as her eyes narrowed, bit back most of a moan. "Not -- stupid. Finished. So -- teach."

The voice was the same. Exactly the same. Torture rendered into words.

"Teach what?" Twilight cried out, fighting against inner and outer confusion. Could anypony hear her? Her friends scattered about the castle and grounds, too deep into night for anypony to be up, and any signs of a signaling spell...

Another moan: the dust devil seemed to vibrate in sympathy. "You -- finished. The -- Great Work. Complete. How?" Anger, challenge -- and desperation, with the wind now moving faster than ever.

"I don't -- understand!" Twilight gasped, still trying to find a plan. "The Great Work -- what is that?" Sisters, it had to be sisters, some kind of family conspiracy, she needed the complete identifiers, had never met or heard of a pegasus who could do this, somepony would know her, she had to see --

-- looked at the pegasus' flank. At the cutie mark.

And her mind almost broke.

The mark was present, a icon she had never seen before. It consisted of three Möbius strips linked to each other: she could see the twist in each of the loops. They were arranged a hundred and twenty degrees apart along an imaginary circle: the one facing almost straight up was cloud-white, with the next clockwise loop bright gold and the back-facing one forest green: the colors were most intense at the outermost parts of the loops and began to fade into each other as they came back around. But that was not what struck the blow against her sanity, nowhere near the factor that sent her thoughts cascading on top of and around each other with all order momentarily lost.

It wasn't the center -- or the lack of center. In the place where all three loops should have met was -- nothing. Not only no mark, but it almost seemed as if there was no flank. No view of space beyond or the interior of a hip, just an overwhelming sense of vacuum against her eyes, almost impossible to look at for more than a second, painful to keep coming back to. A total absence. It should not have been, and it was not. It kept right on not being no matter how hard she tried not to look at it, and it was always not there when she returned. Still not the part which nearly shattered an orderly universe into purest discord as a screaming fragment of her mind wondered if her own coat had begun to grey.

What nearly broke Twilight was the movement.

There was a silver fizzle on the white loop, just beginning to dip below the uppermost ascent of the curve. And it was shifting, slowly, visibly getting lower as the entire mark moved in turn, the loops rotating counter-clockwise oh so slowly, just barely enough to see. White dropping, gold ascending.

Transfer, yes. That had happened, and the undoing of it had undone Twilight's entire life. But cutie marks did not move. Could not move. Had never moved in Equestria's history. The images were stable. They did not change in any way, not color, not iconography, not ever. The mark was permanent, fixed forever from the moment of appearance. No magic known to the three races could make it move.

impossible impossible impossible impossible

The Twilight Sparkle who hadn't faced Nightmare Moon would have broken. The one who hadn't been inverted by Discord's influence would have screamed. The young mare from years before seeing Sombra's shadows flowing towards her would have curled up sobbing as the last bit of predictable order in her universe shattered.

The Twilight who had lived through all of it made the effort of her lifetime -- and thought.

"I --" and she gasped again, tried to get her breath, tried to keep her focus, "-- haven't -- heard of it! Maybe it's what you call something I know, but --"

The pegasus stamped her left front hoof: whether in frustration, anger, or pain, Twilight couldn't tell. The air spun faster, made it harder to catch the words -- but catch them Twilight did. "The Great Work! Alicorn! You know! You! Finished! How?!?"

And the impossible flashed across Twilight's mind for the second time, an idea which could not exist, a concept too insane to face, a leap of intuition born from the purest discord...

It couldn't be.

Could not. Should not.

Voicing it would prove it wrong.

"You --" Her bangs whipped as the dust devil vibrated again, her feathers trembled as her wings seemed to try and uselessly unfurl on their own a second time, as the fizzle moved lower on the loop. "-- from the wild zone, you can't be the same, you're not a unicorn! You're not the same pony!"

The laugh, the scream of internal agony expressed as the darkest of humor. "Not -- unicorn. Not -- pegasus. Not -- anything. Failed. Broken. You -- finished. Tell me. How. Tell me -- so -- failures end." And a little softer, the pain coming out more clearly, almost destroying the words, "Others -- need. You -- other three -- finished. You are -- here. Need answers --"

The silver shifted. And the wings -- involuted. They shrank, just slightly, the pinfeathers becoming a little smaller, the wings themselves diminishing just enough to notice. The pegasus screamed, a scream which went no further than Twilight before a new wind ripped it apart, the dark purple-black eyes squeezed shut against the fresh wash of internal acid --

-- the dust devil dissipated.

Twilight fell.

She tried to reorient, tried for the teleport, make it to the roof if nowhere else, but she hadn't been able to get a fix during her time within the wind, too much else to think about, didn't know if she could make it to her most local truly memorized spot within the ravine, had to try --

-- and there was another rush of wind and the sound of wings --

-- but not her own.

Downward momentum went angular, bled off along a new pattern as the pegasus caught her, rushed inches above the ground with Twilight's small body pressed between outstretched front legs, going across most of two fields before the stranger had managed to slow enough to safely drop her. The former unicorn landed on all four hooves, tried to reorient again from the sudden motion. It gave the intruder precious seconds.

"You -- didn't... Fly," she said. "Why. Didn't you --"

Another spasm. She dropped two feet to the ground just as Twilight got her head up again, saw the wings involute just a little more. The white was rotating away. The gold was getting closer to the top. And under the moonlight, there seemed to be just the tiniest purple spot on the pegasus' forehead.

Twilight had the edge: back on the ground, the pegasus distracted by the pain. She marshaled her field, grabbed the intruder, held her hooves against the dirt. "Who are you?" she demanded. "What's wrong? If you --" can't be, can't "-- are the same pony, then let me help you! Nopony should hurt like this!" Pleading, "Please -- if you just give me a chance..."

"A -- chance..."

The wings, just a miniscule percentage smaller than they had been seconds ago, flapped.

Twilight saw the lightning the barest fraction of a second before hearing it, saw the bolt hit the river. Wasn't willing to believe coincidence. Managed to keep her field in place. "How can you do that without contact? How? You weren't even flying around me to create and maintain the funnel! What you're doing isn't thaumaturgically possible! Not for --"

Luna in the Hall Of Legends, with no clouds in sight

It almost made Twilight lose her grip. "-- almost anypony! Just talk to me, and --"

"-- talk..."

The pegasus looked up, seemed to check something behind Twilight. The pained eyes widened with panic. And the wings flapped again.

It was a blast of wind this time, moving playground items which hadn't been put away, lifting them from the grass. Twilight, too close to her last backlash, saw the objects moving and released the field before thinking to track them. The pegasus lifted off, hovered a few feet over the grass.

"Talk," she said. "Talk -- tomorrow. Night. Falls. Tell nopony. Don't -- tell --" A spasm: she nearly fell again. And now there was a new note in the tortured voice: begging. "Don't..."

The wind surged. Dirt and dust were kicked up, went into Twilight's eyes.

And by the time she could see again, the pegasus --

pegasus?

-- was gone.

Naturalism

It will be one of the happiest days of her life.

She is almost finished completely moving in (a process which has taken two moons), is as close to broke as she has been since fillyhood when her parents (who love her, who don't understand her, don't understand this) would give her a tiny portion of allowance to spend on diluted rainbows and candied cumulus, neither of which ever truly appealed to her. She would spend on fruit. Summer hay. Things from below, even when she was very young, long before she made her first (involuntary) visit. Foodstuffs she can now have all the time if she can just get things going to the point where she'll be able to pay for them -- or simply take advantage of what comes from being on the ground.

The place is truly her own. Her parents gave her the money to pay for it. It was the extensive savings of bits which were originally supposed to be used for weather college, now sunken into ground. They (care for her so much, sometimes look at her as if they can't understand how she could truly be their daughter) had such hopes for her, she knows. So much of her extended family has worked for the Weather Bureau, many high-ranking, some in charge of entire cities, a few even venturing out into the wild zones and trying to establish control before control, taming the worst portions before they can surprise pony lands. And so long before she was born, her parents began to save, for scholarships were hard to come by (although they'd been confident in her -- before she was born) and the best weather colleges were always expensive: even a full break on tuition and a possible legacy discount for board would have meant high expenses for food, books, and everything else that came with higher education -- everything except dating. She gave up on dating while she was still attending the most basic of flight camps, surrendered the idea long before the point of first inquiry to an attack of foal laughter and fled from it, never to return. She has known she would be an old maid of a mare from the age of ten. Nothing has happened to change her mind. She has nothing anypony would desire to be with. She is --

-- defective.

She knows it.

And maybe now it won't matter any more.

She looks around. The land was -- well, cheap, really. She got quite a lot of it for what she had to spend and understands that it's hers, although she's still trying to work out this thing called 'property tax' and hopes it won't come back to haunt her. Nopony else wanted to live here, and she does understand why. The reason scares her, has kept her from sleeping well on those occasions when she does sleep (averaging less than three hours in every day even when she was the tiniest filly, and then a little less after her mark appeared), and she is waiting for something to go wrong there. But in a way -- this is where she had to be.

Still -- she is living right next to a wild zone. The real estate agent had kept explaining that to her, over and over, as if afraid she might come back to sue him over claims that she'd never been told. The strange realm known as the Everfree Forest starts mere hoofsteps away from the edge of her property. He had told her she was barely within the zone of control. Said something she didn't really understand about background effect possibly not reaching her. That he wasn't responsible for whatever scented pony so close to the border and came out to get a closer look -- or worse, like the worse which he never quite discussed, the one which seemed to have happened to the prior occupant. He, in fact, nearly talked her out of it several times, and it was with shaking feathers and chattering teeth that she finally signed the papers (with signature not all that legible), just barely old enough to legally take responsibility on the contract, and she only managed it because she'd been waiting for years to do it and saving up that much courage over so very long had turned out to be just barely enough.

But -- this is where she has to be, isn't it? The animals are in that forest. Some of them may venture out to her. She may (it scares her, it terrifies, it makes all four knees shake) have to go in deep to find them. That's her job. She knows that more strongly that she's ever known anything, and all it sometimes takes to make lingering doubts go away is a glance back at her flank. It felt as if the mark spoke to her on the day it first appeared, told her what she was meant to do and be. And now she is old enough (if just barely) to do and be. She is here, on the ground.

She is home.

For the first time in her life, she is truly home.

And now she is making ready for her first visitor -- well, her first pony visitor, anyway. Some of the animals have already begun to find her -- and the reverse. Resting in her living room right now is a baby -- bunny? Yes, bunny: she's still trying to learn all of the names -- whom she found along the edges of the Everfree during her first cautious peek in. It had been under attack by something which -- well, which had every natural right to attack and eat him because that was how the bigger thing lived. She understands that, knows she'll have to deal with it over and over in the years to come, realized that so early. But it still hadn't made her happy, and she had --

-- done --

-- something.

Eye contact. Something in her stare. Something which makes her a little afraid of herself --

-- but it had worked, and now the tiny bunny (whose parents she could not find) is recovering in her living room. She pulled him out of the cycle when she did that, she knows, felt it on the level of the mark. But -- there's such a thing as pets, right? Pets who aren't birds and bats and the larger insects. Pets are outside the cycle, just a little. Maybe he'd like to be her pet. She'll have to ask him.

She sings to herself as she walks along the ground -- walks! Ground! -- and makes ready. The interior of the cottage has been cleaned, something which has already shown the signs of becoming a permanent struggle: few of her early guests are housebroken. She cleaned the exterior, floor to roof, and was amazed at the solidity against her hooves. Clouds always felt -- too soft. Tacky. Like she was sinking a few centimeters into slightly undermade taffy. Walking across the floors of her parents' house, the streets of Cloudsdale, watching all the pegasi going about their business as if strolling on vapor was the most natural thing in the world -- she never quite got the feel of it or the total feel. And now she knows why. Because this wonderful place was waiting for her, and all it took to make things right -- or at least create the chance for it -- was the arrival of her cutie mark.

That, ultimately, was what her parents had understood. The mark could not be denied. They love her, they wish her well, they did everything they could to help set her up in this new life. Don't understand her at all or how such a strange mark could manifest on their daughter. Still. And they love her anyway.

She checks the little stream. A fish pokes its head out at her, raises back fins slightly out of the water and splashes her face. She laughs.

And her visitor's voice is alight with wonder. "There were days when I never thought I'd hear that, Fluttershy. Never hear you happy."

She doesn't jump or start: he always comes like this, and she's been expecting him all morning. "Doctor!" she laughs again and gallops towards him, almost bowling him over when she makes contact. (She is thin still, just filling out along her body, the stretched-out appearance and overall gawkiness of an early puberty finally starting to fade, but she's stronger than she looks.) "You made it!"

His eyes twinkle. "Did you think I wouldn't come?"

She seems to shrink a little. "...no... just that... there are so many other ponies and..."

A hoof gently touches her chin, props her head up. "Relax, my eldest. I came to see you. My newest friend was two days ago and my next should be here in another three. My time now is for you."

"...but I'm not worth..."

He shushes her. She hugs him with her wings as best she can. And then she begins to show him around.

"A henhouse?" he asks, and his voice is -- amazed. "Were you also planning to take on tenants?"

"Not really," she tells him. "The big farms get most of the boarders, and I'm still getting used to having the ones who don't talk around. But -- I like the chickens, and they like me. A rooster came in two days ago... there's a couple in town who said they always need fresh eggs, and that's a few bits... I know it's going to be hard to keep this place up, but if I line up everything I can -- I did the math, I think I can manage if I just watch my expenses. Boarders wouldn't hurt, but..."

"They talk," he smiles. "Maybe in time --" and the words stop. He is staring. Looking at the ground ahead as if he might never blink again.

"...Doctor?"

"I," he softly declares, "seem to be rather hungry after my journey. Do you think any of those carrots are ready?"

"Yes!" she laughs, and runs into the garden to pull the choicest one out herself, lets his field take it once it clears the ground. "It was one of the first things I began working on when I started moving in two moons ago. It's an earth pony town, at least mainly, and with so many of them -- I just tried, and I could do it! It was so easy! And anything I grow is one less expense, some of it is food I can give the animals..." Her voice fades a little. "I'm still trying to figure out -- meat. I know I'm going to get carnivores. I asked around, and -- the places that make food for pets, they scavenge the wild zones and use magic to clean up -- remains. It's -- not a -- nice job. And I don't have the magic for it, and their needing meat makes those kinds of pet food so expensive..."

"You'll work it out," he tells her, his voice filled with more confidence in her than she ever feels in herself. With pride, "If you got this far, there are no limits to the horizons you can pursue. Just talking your parents into letting you come down... even with your mark, there were times when I thought they'd never let you descend, certainly not while you were still so young. And here you are -- with your own home, the start of your own business..." He is smiling at her, and his eyes are warm and kind. "Show me, Fluttershy. Show me what you can do down here, with creatures other than the ones you know."

She doesn't ask. She doesn't question. She is just happy, fully within the realm of her cutie mark, in the heart of her talent, standing on her own ground and about to do what she can manage better than anypony in front of somepony she loves. And she looks out at the border --

-- there. Most would see a hole in a tree. She sees a home. And she makes a sound, a noise she hadn't known she could make or was even aware of until that moment, a sound she's never heard before and one entirely natural to her.

The creature pokes out a nose. Then a head, and little paws that look as if they can grasp. The rest shortly follows, concluding with a tail large enough to drape across its entire body and provide shade for everything below. She laughs to see it, kindly. The creature doesn't mind: it runs up to her, nose twitching, makes a sound like a light squeal, the twin to the one she'd just created -- then runs up her left hind leg and stands on her back, upright on rear paws.

"What is it?" she softly asks. "I know it's a friend..."

"It's called a squirrel," he tells her. "You've never seen one before?"

She shakes her head -- then corrects herself. "I have, once -- that first day -- but I didn't know the name, and there's so many books -- I didn't speak to one until just now, not personally... Oh -- I think I upset..." It has jumped off her back and run to the tree, back into the hole -- but seconds later, it's returning to her. "Um... what do you think I should do?"

"Say thank you," he suggests. "But tell it --"

"Her."

"-- tell her you don't really need the nut right now, but you're grateful for the offer and will remember it."

She does. The squirrel chatters at her, looks pleased, and leaves. She glances back at her visitor.

There are tears in his eyes.

"...Doctor?" Has she done something wrong? The other pegasi -- her parents -- so many ponies who felt this was wrong, that it was even cutie mark as another sign of defect -- he can't be one of them, would never be, just can't...

He trots closer, puts his front legs over her shoulders, gives her the nuzzle meant for family.

"You are exactly where you should be," he tells her. "Exactly who you should be. Never forget that. In all this world, you are unique. Your gifts... you are a wonder, Fluttershy. My first, my eldest -- my special filly..."

She nuzzles him back. And she is happy.

The rest of the day will be spent with him. He will remain by her side as they finish the tour of the cottage and the surrounding grounds. He stays with her as she summons her courage (so much easier with company) and ventures a little way into the wild zone to meet new friends. He will be there in the late afternoon when a stranger with a sick pet comes down the approach road, disgusted by the town vet's inability to diagnose her companion's illness and willing to try anything new to give that friend a chance. (She works it out within minutes: eating the half-dried paint in the new colt's bedroom.) He helps her speak to the first of her clients, sets a pay scale, gives her still more books on animal medicine and a few bottles to get her private pharmacy started, along with tomes of herb lore and some exotic instruments reconfigured for mouth operation so she can start mixing some medicines on her own.

It is the warm spring day when she finally feels complete, with warm ground under her hooves, the smell of animals and fresh earth, and a kind voice guiding her through the first of what will be so many to come. The day she knows that she is truly -- exactly where and who she should be. And on days when she still has doubts, afternoons where her fears threaten to overwhelm her, or nights after being with the one who always believed she would find her way, she comes back to this place in her nightscape and lives through all of it again.

It is one of the happiest days of her life.

And then she hears thunder in the distance.

There was no lightning that day.

Fluttershy woke up.

It was habit, too deeply ingrained to break: growing up in a family grooming her for the Weather Bureau (generally in spite of herself) plus knowing how easily some of her animal friends could be spooked by lightning -- she always had the Ponyville weather schedule memorized and Rainbow Dash had made a permanent bolt strike exception for her cottage: lightning came down around her property -- there was nothing Dash could do about that -- but never on. It helped a little with the noise from the thunder, at least until an unnatural front blew out of her neighboring wild zone and startled everypony anyway. (There had been a major unexpected one two weeks prior, but it had gone over her and continued into the Everfree. Rainbow Dash claimed to have no idea how it had started in pony territory, was still searching for the culprit, and Fluttershy believed her -- especially after she'd seen Rarity marching across town in the affronted huff of the falsely accused.)

So almost as soon as she'd gotten into the castle, she'd timidly asked Mister Presence for a copy of the local schedule, which he'd kindly given her. There was a big storm on the calendar -- but it wasn't supposed to come in for a while. There was no lightning set up for this night, and her first thought was that Rainbow Dash had found somepony to prank -- but at this hour? Dash never saw this hour unless she was approaching it from the other side. The sound struck her as strange, and strange was what they were supposed to be looking for. She got up.

"...light?" she cautiously asked. The enchanted lamps turned on. Fluttershy exhaled and trotted to the window for a closer look. It couldn't hurt to check -- probably. Peeked outside, shaking her head a little to clear sleep-pressed mane away from one eye --

--- Twilight. On one of the sports fields. With a tall pegasus. The glow of Twilight's field around the stranger's hooves. And the pegasus looked up, saw Fluttershy's silhouette within the backlit window --

-- a window just large enough for Fluttershy to climb out of. She launched --

-- but it was already too late. By the time she reached Twilight's position, the stranger had taken off and put distance between herself and the two of them. Too much distance. There was no way for Fluttershy to catch up, especially given the speed the other pegasus had been moving at. Fluttershy could -- well, not barely fly, no matter how much the chorus of memory tried to insist on it. But her maneuverability was less than perfect, her typical speed low, and there were times when flight was the last option she thought of -- and that generally when it was already too late. She could fly well enough to get by, at least as far as the average unicorn and earth pony were concerned. Among other pegasi -- no. And against one who had just put on a burst of speed nearly suitable to Rainbow Dash, even if it had all been low to the ground...

Which meant she had other priorities. "...Twilight? Are you okay?" Because her friend looked -- deeply shaken. Scared. Sick. No, she wasn't okay at all. "Is there anything I can do? Do you want me to get the others? Do we have to chase her?" Whoever that had been, it was a pony who'd upset Twilight as much as she'd ever seen her friend upset. Frightened on a level which a pre-reformation Discord hadn't been able to inflict. Shaken to the point where a moon's worth of letters would have had to go missed and every last one sent before that returned with a single word stamped across all of them: WRONG. "What happened?"

"...impossible," Twilight muttered, seemingly not fully aware of Fluttershy's presence. "That's -- impossible..." And a hard head shake: wind-blown bangs settled partially back into place. "I -- I think the mission just came to me, Fluttershy. I think she's coming back tomorrow night -- to talk. And --" She turned to face Fluttershy, and she was shaking "-- oh Luna, oh Celestia, Fluttershy, Discord was right -- something is so wrong, wrong like I've never seen or imagined -- wrong that shouldn't be -- but she is..." Blinking away tears of pain witnessed and not helped. "I want to -- wake up. I keep trying to wake up and make this not be and go to Luna, ask why she wouldn't stop that kind of dream within seconds. But I am awake, and it's all so wrong..."

Fluttershy had known Twilight was stressed, was more aware of it than any of the others. Had seen the worries settling in after the change, the fears she couldn't identify and still recognized as such. Fluttershy knew fear. How to recognize it, always: deal with it, hardly ever. Had been afraid for her friend without knowing how to fix it. Now she saw her friend on the verge of drowning in hurt -- both for the stranger she'd had a mere glimpse of and the personal piled-up agonies which Twilight didn't know how to deal with. And all Fluttershy could do was softly ask "...are you hurt?" Knowing the emotional status answer wouldn't come.

"...no. Not -- physically. She caught me in time."

"...you fell? But --"

"There was -- a miniature tornado -- I think it's called a dust devil -- just big enough to hold me, and she held me..." Large purple eyes looked at her as more tears fell away. "It's -- too late to follow her. Too late for -- I should have, I should..." Stopped. "We -- can't do anything tonight. The others -- need rest, and she won't come back. Not yet. I'm sure of that. We have an appointment. I..."

Twilight collapsed. Her legs gave way under her, head dropped, tail drooped.

"It's wrong... and -- it might be my fault..."

Fluttershy dropped down next to Twilight, did the only thing she could: pressed tightly against her friend and let the tears fall on her again. "...please, Twilight -- let me help... you have to let all of us --"

"-- not tonight," Twilight whispered. "No good to do anything tonight. How did you even know?"

"...I heard the lightning -- I knew we didn't have any on the schedule -- it woke me up... Twilight, please talk to me... please..."

Her friend took a slow, shuddering breath. "Tomorrow -- we can talk about all of it -- tomorrow. We should -- just get back to our rooms. Before anypony else wakes up and sees us out here."

And Fluttershy knew Twilight was lying. They would talk tomorrow, all of them. About the mission. About what had happened on the field and above it. But not about what was truly important.

The only thing Fluttershy could do was keep trying. Keep waiting. Keep being there.

"...all right. But... I'm staying with you tonight. Don't argue."

Which got a tiny smile. "I won't."

They went back to the castle. And in time, Twilight fell into a restless sleep, hooves pushing against covers and rendering blankets into a shapeless mass of displaced stress. Fluttershy knew because she saw all of it, curled up at the end of the mattress, watching. She'd had enough sleep for one night.

Fluttershy watched over her friend.

Guarding.

Helpless.

Guarding anyway.

The early morning consisted of three conversations. The first was the quickest, and it began with words she'd been longing to say ever since the mission/disaster-potentially-in-progress had begun -- even if she couldn't follow them with the three which might have made everything better. "Spike? Take a letter."

The little dragon sat up straighter in his basket. "Really? Who am I sending to? Because 'Dear Princess Celestia' is kind of off the map right now."

"You'll know when I start dictating it." He shrugged, glanced at Fluttershy's tail as its end swished around the last bit of doorway, the pegasus heading for the bathroom. Visibly decided not to ask just yet, went into Twilight's saddlebags and fished around until he had the scroll and ink, stood at the ready. "Dear --"

Spike listened, wrote it all down without questioning the contents, let Twilight sign it herself, and then glanced at his older sister. "Okay, Twilight -- the next part is you. And I know you packed it because I just saw it. Do you think she'll be able to handle it?"

"I believe in her," Twilight replied. "She -- has enough skill to work it out. I just hope this works at all -- we haven't really tried it before."

("Failed. Broken.")

The little dragon sighed. "I don't believe you packed it. I just saw it and I don't believe it."

"It was a mission. It felt like a good time to try it out. Are you arguing the results?"

"Not until it blows up in my face," Spike grumbled. "Okay..." He went back into the saddlebags, rummaged. "Got it." The thin vial was hematite: carefully hollowed, just large enough to hold about an ounce of fluid -- or something else. "At least my part's easy..." A deep breath, he pursed his lips into the tiniest circle he could manage, looking exactly like he had the day he took (and lost) the bet about blowing up two hundred of Pinkie's balloons in a row -- and exhaled a single wisp of flame, jamming the jade stopper onto the vial a split-second later. "Your turn."

Twilight nodded and captured the vial within her field, let it float in front of her eyes. Concentrated -- then stopped. "Umm -- you might want to stand --" and he was already in the doorway. "Voice of experience, Mr. Spike?"

"Voice of painful experience," he corrected -- but wouldn't go any further than that, just in case she needed him. "It's all you, Twilight."

She focused. The edges of her vision started to fade into white as the second corona appeared.

Reach. Feel the dragon flame within the vial. Touch it. There is no burn, there is no heat: it's just imagination. It's just energy, and it's an energy I know. Diffuse -- but diffuse without losing strength. Let part of it blend into the vial, just for a few minutes. There's space available. Space within solids. A grid: plenty of room. Let the solids not just envelop the flame, but hold it. Move it delicately -- and make a cage. Temporary. It'll have to flow back out and she'll need all of it. Diffuse and suffuse, just for now. It's not paper or parchment, but it has to move like them, and the only way it can do that is if the magic considers it to be part of the flame itself. Have it be two things at once and keep it that way for just long enough...

She could feel it happening as the vial glowed, the green of Spike's flames shimmering throughout the hematite and adding extra highlights to the jade --

"-- got it!" She let the corona drop one stage at a time as Spike ran back in and plucked the vial from her fading field. "Quickly, Spike -- I don't know how long they'll stay united! It'll just harmlessly leak back into the vial, but...!"

He nodded, claws working furiously to tie the vial to the scroll. "On it!"

"And it's all you now," she told him. "Can you hit her?"

"I think so -- I wish I knew where she was, but it's not like we ever know unless she's right on top of us... I'll use the aimfiz variant: that should target the pony instead of the location." Spike took another deep breath. "Here goes..." He exhaled a second time, and this flame had a faint purple tinge along the edges of the green.

The scroll vanished.

So did the vial.

Twilight laughed, the joyous mirth of having made a spell that much better, of having done something right -- and incidentally, the laugh of a pony who might be sending a missive to the Equestrian Magic Society in a few days. "It works! -- well, at least for just sending it along, we don't know if it got there yet, but it works!"

Spike took what he could get and grinned, gently hugging her front legs. "She got it. I'm sure she got it. It's not like Princesses, where I could mix them up..."

"You were stressed, we all were, and it's over," Twilight assured him. "So..." The momentary happiness had already begun to fade.

Spike sighed. "So -- now we wait."

The second would come back to her later, and it began with a thin grey unicorn stallion leaning against the edge of a doorway, one who was looking vaguely bemused. "Twilight?"

Where did he -- wait... who is... Oh! "Good morning, Quiet," Twilight greeted her host. "Did you sleep well?"

"I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be my question for you," the noble-of-sorts replied. "Although I do have a few potential others, starting with this one: do you know where you are?"

Twilight was momentarily confused. "You said this was your main armor room."

He nodded. "Good. You have a location. You know it's an armor room and you're aware it's mine, if only by inheritance -- I never purchased any of the stuff and I'm certainly not about to try carrying that much steel on my frame. Your little head injury hasn't touched your memory. That's a positive sign. So next up would probably be -- and why are you floating so many of the pieces around the place while taking what looks to be some very extensive notes?"

She blushed. "Umm..." One of the helmets (a pegasus style: the back was aerodynamically low to the (currently absent) skull and there was no hole for a horn) dipped a little closer to the floor. "...I had trouble sleeping last night, and -- I was up pretty early -- and you said nopony had ever cataloged this, so I thought..."

("Failed. Broken.")

"Which at least tells me how you slept," Quiet dryly noted. "I'll try not to take it as a personal offense against my guest rooms." Then, with a little extra humor, "And is this what you always do when you aren't sleeping well and get up too early?"

"Well -- no. I usually just wind up doing some spell research, or checking in some new books -- reshelving, that's always a big concern -- getting letters ready for sending to ponies whose late fees are piling up, even when I know they're going to ignore them..." She sighed at that last. "I've been working on a spell which would automatically teleport overdue books back, but --" and for a rare once, stopped herself. "-- you probably don't want to hear about that."

He raised his left eyebrow. "A teleport spell that goes off on its own and brings something back to a preassigned point? Just because I can't do it doesn't mean I'm not curious about how it would be done. I'm already imagining what it would mean for security device sales. Valuables which could be stolen by any thief without the owner having to worry because they'd be back a week later... you could make me a much richer pony, Twilight, if you'd just allow me to handle the marketing..."

She couldn't repress a giggle. "It's dragon flame based. So far, it would probably only work on paper. It's the timed release that's the biggest problem..." Not to mention (and she wasn't going to just yet) keeping it from consuming the pages.

Quiet smiled. "All the better to safeguard my own library, then. I know I have some books I don't want to lose -- things I don't even like loaning because I'll never see another copy..."

Her eyes were sparkling. She knew it. She didn't care. "You have a library?"

"Did we miss that on the tour? Yes, but -- probably not entirely to your taste. I mostly collect tomes of unicorn history -- and your face tells me you're at least still curious. All right -- maybe later: I typically don't even get that far before the colts and fillies pretend to fall asleep... And you're -- actually a librarian? Truly? I saw that mentioned in an article, but..." He groaned softly, rested his head against the door frame. "...well, let's just say I was considering the source at the time. And in this case, the source was Murdocks and they also wanted me to believe you were conducting experiments to take over the world with a magically-created army of earth ponies who were, for some reason, pink. I've already dismissed the part about your keeping a dragon in abject slavery -- you're blushing." Surprised. "Dear Celestia, I know none of that tripe could have been accurate, but please don't be embarrassed by somepony else's rather stupid lies."

"It -- wasn't what happened," Twilight sighed. "Yes -- I'm really the town librarian for Ponyville."

Quiet looked as if there were about a hundred questions he wanted to ask: all of them were reshelved in favor of "Still?"

"Still," she confirmed. "The Princess never changed my posting -- and now you're blushing."

The shade deepened. "It's just -- not what I would have pictured you doing -- all right, after seeing this --" a nod towards the floating armor "-- it's exactly what I would have pictured you doing, but it's not what most ponies would ever expect from somepony of your new status -- Luna's mane, that's why you need to recover books, isn't it? Autograph seekers and sellers..." He spotted the wince. "Twilight, I know this is an odd thing to say and -- I know it's very personal, especially given that we've basically just met and spent most of our introduction titling each other but..." Softly, "...it hasn't all been coronations and dances, has it? Celebrity isn't a double-edged blade, just a single -- and the pony holding it is the only one who ever seems to get cut."

She blinked. Stared up at him as the armor pieces in her field threatened to dip into the stone. Couldn't bring herself to answer.

("Failed. Broken.")

"The funny thing," Quiet gently continued, "is that I think most ponies envy you -- on instinct. The mares dream of being a Princess and stallions -- well, I guess we'd need a precedent and some would probably think there was a mandatory gender switch involved, but -- there's envy there at the core for so many. To become a Princess and everything we think goes with it -- but what we think about is coronations and dances. Not having to be introduced to every pony at the dance and never getting to take the floor..." He shifted his position slightly, rotated an aching shoulder. "I have -- a little celebrity -- well, of sorts, although it mostly slips everypony's mind. I am the ranking noble for the area, although my family very happily granted over whatever authority we had to the mayoralty a few centuries ago because the generation at the time frankly couldn't be bothered -- and believe me, I have no desire to get it back. All being the reigning Lord and Heir to the House of Deluge gets me is some party invitations to events I don't want to attend, the right to get the entire town on my lawn a few times a year, and any number of charitable organizations asking me for donations when I have to think about keeping a group of servants in happy employment: I have enough bits, but..." A pained shrug. "My title is -- other than being boring, mostly an annoyance. But I can still go out and wander freely as -- just another unicorn. And you can't any more. I'm imagining what it would feel like to lose that, and..." He couldn't finish. Looked at her, almost helplessly, as if not knowing whether there were still words which could be said at all.

"Say it," Twilight whispered.

Quiet took as deep a breath as he could manage, his face twitching at the ache it brought. "...you have my admiration, Twilight. You would have had that without wings. But I can't give you my envy."

Twilight had been through awkward silences before. The one which had descended on the library after she'd explained the last part of Want It, Need It to the Princess: that was her all-time entry. It was closely followed by that which had resulting from trying to tell Shining Armor about her entrance exam -- and leaving a very deliberate gap in the tale. And then there was this one. Third place with a sling dart.

"I --" she breathed, "-- don't want it..."

They stayed in their respective positions for several heartbeats. Armor dipped, rose, moved out of the way.

Finally, he trotted in, sat down next to her and began to read her notes. "So," he restarted casually, "have you found anything of particular interest? Such as why I have all these pegasus pieces around the place when I'm not sure my family hired a single winged soldier since we moved here?"

"I'm not sure they were soldiers to begin with," Twilight quickly replied. "The colors on this one -- I'd have to recheck my own shelves, but I'm pretty sure this is from a mercenary company. Rainbow Dash asked for the book a few moons ago and I paged through it -- see what looks to be spaces from missing feathers along the side plumes? That's not battle damage or age: that's deliberate -- it means the pony who wore it hadn't taken down enough of the enemy to completely fill it in yet."

Quiet winced. "Let me guess -- counting coup, right? A feather from each fallen enemy?" She nodded. "Do I really want to know what they took if they brought down a unicorn or earth pony? -- no, wait: I do. It's better that I get this over with than allow Princess Luna to clean up after my imagination tonight. Let's hear it."

She told him. And they talked about it and the natural tangents until Rainbow Dash finally struggled out of bed.

The third brought the most immediate hurt.

They'd had breakfast (a mere three courses, with the Doctor fully absent this time -- he'd gone out to greet those arriving on the early train in the name of getting them home more quickly) and then made their excuse, which was a simple one: explore a little in Sun. Twilight had assured Quiet they'd be there long enough for the party ("You're holding me to that? Tartarus chain it, the entire town probably will too...") and that they'd be back by late afternoon, so please let the Doctor know she'd have Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie around in time to chat. He'd told them to be careful if they went into the wild zone because Coordinator had been all too full of himself for juggling so many search parties and the last thing he wanted to see was the speckled unicorn enjoying himself as it was done all over again. And off they'd gone.

Fluttershy seemed to have kept her silence throughout the morning, at least about what she'd seen and what a shaken Twilight had said to her -- Twilight thought. It almost felt as if the others were giving her some -- well, strange looks as they made their way out of town via the most secluded path Rainbow Dash had been able to survey from the air. Or maybe I'm just thinking about it too much. Reading too much into things. Going through too many emotions...

Spell experimentation (although with a planned letter). Cataloging. Talks. All self-distraction. She knew it. Nothing stopped her from knowing it. And she did it anyway, just about every time. Compulsive behavior. Denial expressed as action. What was sometimes obsessive action. Trying not to think about what had happened before the Sun had risen until she had to. Constantly failing. And now -- she had to relive it, tell the others everything...

So she waited until they had reached a clearing far enough away from the town, a hollow in the pines which looked as if somepony had been clearing land for a new residence and then changed their mind -- no, and left: they found the dirt-shrouded foundations of the former home as they moved closer to the center. Somepony had been here, decades ago -- and then departed. Nothing left but carefully arranged stone in a place the trees could not reclaim.

Twilight told them everything.

And in almost immediate retrospect, she had told them too much.

It didn't hit immediately. When she finally stopped and the last tears of empathy had fallen from pony eyes (along with one dragon who was looking with a little too much determination at his own feet), things began normally enough: with her own summation. "Let me talk for a few more minutes, everypony -- I know you have a lot of questions, but this -- well, it won't take that many of them away, but I might beat you to a few." They agreed. "At this point, I think she is the reason we're here. I think --" and this part was still hard to say, the words continuing to carve trails of near-disbelief across her sanity "-- the unicorn from the wild zone and the pegasus from last night are the same pony. I don't know how. But -- I didn't feel any magic last night. Not unicorn magic. There are ways to disguise a field, and some unicorns have one that's naturally hard to spot. You probably saw Quiet's while he was eating -- or barely saw it. He's one of the few whose field just operates on that level. It runs in certain families. But -- I could still feel him moving his food if I tried for it. Last night -- things got confused, and I know I'm still trying to sort everything out. I'm sorry about that, and I'll come back to something if I catch up with it later. But I'm sure I didn't feel a field at work. Because I don't think it was a field. Right now, I think it was pegasus magic -- something close to what Luna uses when she sets the clouds off at a distance."

Rainbow Dash was frowning, concentrating more deeply than Twilight had ever seen the pegasus focus when she wasn't figuring out a trick. Fluttershy was trembling. They all continued to listen.

Twilight forced herself to go on. "What she called The Great Work -- from what she said, she sees it as the process of becoming -- an alicorn. She called herself --" and it nearly took everything she had to voice the words which kept echoing in her head "-- 'Failed. Broken.' Like she tried to become an alicorn -- and what I saw last night was the result. She wanted to know -- how I'd done it. How I had managed it when she couldn't. And -- when she comes back tonight -- she'll want answers." She had to will herself to breathe. "Answers I don't have. And she implied it was about -- other ponies. 'Tell me so failures end. Others need.' Like there are more ponies who might try to -- change -- and she's what happens if they get it wrong. But -- I don't know how ponies try. How it works. How it -- fails... or if it's failed before, and she's just the latest victim, and..." She couldn't continue. Not at full volume. The last words were a whisper, the words she had to say because they were so probably true, and if she didn't, Fluttershy would bring it up, had heard them already and wouldn't keep them a secret, not those horrible words, what was nearly the only possible conclusion and lone truth. "...it could be -- my fault." Raised a hoof, stopped the babble of protest before it really started. "No. Think about it, everypony. I just changed a few weeks ago. Cadance -- I don't know exactly when she changed. Or even if she did." Why hadn't she ever asked? How many chances had she missed? "But I'm pretty sure she was around before I was born. Which means I was the first pony in at least a generation to -- change. Maybe -- depending on --" she forced herself to focus on Pinkie "-- whether -- " and it was still barely emerging "-- the Princesses were ever -- anything -- else -- maybe the first ever. So suddenly, everypony knows it can happen. Which means some of them are going to be thinking about how to make it happen -- how to become Princesses or even Princes themselves. And she -- didn't make it, and if I hadn't changed, then ponies wouldn't be trying, and -- there could be others. There probably will be others. She knows some, and... if they don't make it..."

It was all she had. All the self-hatred, all the blame. She stopped and looked at the ground. The lost foundation did not threaten to crumple beneath her. That was the job of her legs, and she laid down in the dust before it could happen. The others all laid down with her.

"It's -- not you, Twilight." Spike: she felt his claws running through her mane. "The Princesses have been around for a long time. Princess Celestia -- you know there were attempts to seize the throne. You thought they would make good funny bedtime stories for me because some of them were so stupid. Like all the ones after Nightmare Moon was banished because some idiot ponies thought the Princess would be weak alone. Ponies have been trying to get power for a long time. I bet ponies have tried to become alicorns before this. Lots of them. We just didn't hear about it because --"

She cut him off. "-- because they failed? But if they failed -- you'd think nothing would have happened, Spike. Just a very frustrated pony who was still a normal pony. Because I don't know any magic which would do it. Just the Elements -- maybe -- and I don't even know how those work! Their magic is so powerful -- but it's also so subtle. I know each is connected to one of us -- now. When I gave you Rainbow's necklace -- I really thought it had a little chance to work. You've always been loyal: I thought it would feel that in you and activate. It didn't. It's tied to Rainbow Dash for -- the rest of her life. And I can't feel that connection: I only know it's there based on effect. I don't know if the Elements just transported me to that place where I spoke to the Princess and I did the rest from there. If I did do it myself -- can it only happen in that realm? Did the Elements prepare me, send me halfway and then I finished the process? And if I did do something on my own, I don't know what or how! But if it was the Elements to any degree -- she didn't use them. I know they haven't been out of the vaults at any time when we weren't using them, except for that brief time when Discord was hiding them -- and I really don't think he can use them. He can't connect." She wanted to blame him. She couldn't. "Which says they might be necessary, and she's as far as you can go without them -- or that there might be all sorts of different routes and she took another one which still failed -- or all they did was send me to the Princess for a talk first..." She was repeating herself, the circle back at the beginning of the groove. "I don't know anything, Spike! All I have are questions! And she needs answers. To keep other ponies from going through that. I don't ever want to see another pony hurting that way. But if I even knew how it worked and told her -- why did she try to change? What was she going to do as a Princess? Just -- be an alicorn and call it done? Take the throne? Find her own thing to be a Princess of? I don't know her. Just that -- she's hurting. And I -- want to make that hurt stop... but I don't know her as a pony. What happens if we fix her? Complete the change or even send her back to where she was? What's her personality? Is she a good pony? A bad one? I --"

Stopped.

Fluttershy sighed, scraped at the ground with wings and hooves. "...it's not your fault, Twilight. But... I know you want to help, I do too... but I understand what you're saying. All kinds of ponies might try to become alicorns, and some of them might not be... nice. Can you imagine -- the Flim-Flam brothers if they were --" trying out the word "-- Princes?"

Applejack groaned. "Yeah, Fluttershy, Ah can. An' thank y'kindly for puttin' that picture in mah head. They'd try it, all right, if they thought they had a way. Princes Of Rip-Off Businesses. Short-sighted ones, too. An' they would have been able t' keep the Acres that way..." A slow head shake. "Jus' for starters."

Rainbow Dash switched concentration for confusion. "Keep the Acres?"

Applejack blinked, looked at the ground as if the words she'd just spoken might be lying there and she could get them back into her mouth before anypony else noticed. Reluctantly, "Well -- y'know, they're -- unicorns. So if they hadn't gone an' ran -- well, we wouldn't be workin' the land any more. So the Effect would've -- gotten weaker. With Golden Harvest an' the other farmers around, it wouldn't have gone away completely. But Ah don't think there would've been enough left for them t' keep runnin' the Acres at full production with no earth ponies makin' a personal effort. Unless they spent a big bundle t' keep ponies on the place -- and jus' cider sales wouldn't pay for it -- Ah would have given it a crop or two before the Effect dropped too low t' keep goin'. Ah know we didn't technically lose the Acres in that bet -- jus' the cider sales rights. But without 'em, we wouldn't have had the bits to keep goin' ourselves. Probably would have sold 'em the land -- on purpose. Hopin' it would stop producin' fast enough to chase 'em off -- an' then if we were lucky and no other pony got there first, maybe we could've brought it back cheap. They were parasprites, Dash. Come, eat, ruin everything an' leave. Parasprites don't care 'bout what happens to the husks. They never could've made it work without a partnership... they were jus' too blind t' see it." A tiny shrug. "Y'know something? Before Ah saw what we could all do goin' full speed like that? If they'd said twenty percent them, eighty us? Ah would have agreed t' try it for a day an' see how it went. But -- parasprites. Never leave anythin' behind..."

"So how do they keep them if they're alicorns?"

Applejack didn't answer. Twilight did. "I guess because alicorns are part earth pony, too -- the Princesses could probably bring the Effect on their own if they wanted to. The palace gardens hold on really well given how big they are, how few earth ponies live and work in the city, and how much variety the Princesses put in. Maybe they're maintaining everything there almost by themselves."

"That sounds right." Pinkie, who wasn't looking at Applejack. "That's only common sense."

As if every letter had been dragged out of her by lasso, "Yeah," the farmer agreed. "Common -- sense. Still leaves us with the other problem? Look -- Ah don't know if y'all remember, but we can't get the Elements. That was one of the rules, an' Ah don't even wanna think 'bout what happens if we try t' break it. If the Elements could fix her -- finish it or send her back -- we can't use 'em. Can't ask the Princesses t' do it neither. Gotta take those two things out right now before we start countin' on 'em. Sorry t' be harsh, but -- some truths are hard ones. We're stuck. Maybe we can find out what she used an' fix that one way or another, but -- goes back t' what Twilight said. If we don't know how it works..."

Twilight sighed "...then we don't know where and how it can go wrong."

"It's not as if we don't have somepony to ask, though," Rarity pointed out. "She knows what she did to get -- where she is. She can walk us through it step by step. Every trick, every bit of magic. What concerns me is -- her cutie mark." It was her turn to dig a little trench. "I've been -- thinking about that. Not that -- hollow. The presence. And I would guess it's something none of us really want to think about -- but unfortunately, that apparently means it falls to me." And of all the possible subjects, she looked at Spike before she continued, her voice soft and gentle. "Twilight -- dear -- it may not be possible to fix her. Not at all."

It might have been something Twilight had been thinking about. Or something she'd been trying not to think about, succeeding for a rare change. Possibly an idea she'd refused to confront at all -- and here Rarity was dragging it out under the Sun. "What makes you say that?"

"Because -- it is the cutie mark." Cautiously, white hooves picking their way through a field of quicksand, "I was thinking about -- the shape you described. And the movement. Assume for a moment there is no conspiracy of sisters or magic Twilight couldn't feel -- an illusion strong enough to cover the mark and temporarily replace it with one that seemed to shift. Believe, if you will, that everything seen was the truth. I'm not trying to sound condescending, really -- we may prove otherwise later, but for this purpose, I just need everypony to accept that for a moment as an absolute reality." Slow, reluctant nods around the circle: some (including Twilight) were still hoping for a trick.

"Very well," Rarity continued. "It seems to me that she's essentially bearing -- a clock. Each loop represents one of the three main pony races. The white is clearly pegasus. Given the color of her field, gold would be unicorn. Green then becomes earth pony. You can all see that, yes?" Agreement, just as slow as the first round of nods. "Think on what Twilight said. The silver is near the top of the pegasus stage, but it's dropping. The white loop is pointing nearly straight up -- but it moves back as the silver drops. And the gold is coming around to the top. So as the silver moves down, she becomes less and less pegasus. The white -- moving away. The silver simply shows how much of her is pegasus at the time. When it's at the absolute ascent or close to it, she is completely a pegasus -- or as close as she can come. Based on what happened -- complete. As it drops -- less. At some point, the silver would have to cross loops -- and then she would start to become more and more unicorn, until that descended -- and so on. Over and over -- and --" She shuddered. "-- that is the pain. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy have muscles the rest of us do not. Bones. Feathers. I know pegasus anatomy: I must in order to design for it. Their musculature around their rib cages -- and even through them, to an extent -- is completely different from that of an earth pony or unicorn. To truly transform oneself into a pegasus -- bones would have to grow. Muscles rearrange. Joints simply appear. You can all see that, I trust?" They could, and the looks of discomfort and empathy aches showed they had anticipated the next part. "Now -- imagine how that would feel. And then how it feels to have all of it go away. How do the new bones vanish? Do they simply become nothing? Do they break? And pushing against the skin from the inside, constantly..." There was an underlayer of green beneath the white. "I can imagine it. But I never want to go through it. Cosmetic magic -- all the kinds I've heard of -- only affects the outermost parts of a pony. Change the color of a coat or mane. The wings Twilight gave me -- an artificial construct: no part of my actual body, just made to respond to my thoughts. Anything deeper than that..." She looked to Twilight.

"The Princesses." Twilight gave her that. "I've heard stories that they can completely change -- at least to the shapes of other ponies. Rumors that they -- well, go out in disguise sometimes. I don't know if it's true, but you'd have to think if any pony could -- just them."

Rarity nodded, resumed. "And there is her agony -- or at least part of it. As we discussed in the Hall, Twilight and I have a sense that the rest of you lack: our feel of magic and its use. And -- Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash -- I am sorry, I know this may be somewhat personal -- you have a sense we lack, do you not? Something within your sense of touch, at the very least, to feel the density of a cloud? Or within feathers for the flow of wind?" Rainbow Dash slowly nodded. "Applejack and Pinkie Pie --" (the farmer tensed, held her breath) "-- perhaps you can tell how promising soil is with a single glance and have a feel for what would grow there best?"

"Ah -- think that's -- safe t' say," Applejack just barely got out. "Sure. A feel for it. Each of us with one of our own -- an' she would have all three, wouldn't she? One at a time, comin' an' goin', not understandin' 'em, an' --"

She went pale as her tail gave one mighty lash. Her hat slipped.

Rarity misinterpreted it. "Yes. Chaos in her mind to go with that in her body." Sadly, "The poor mare must be struggling moment by moment to simply exist -- or even want to. And -- she may have been doing so for years." A little faster, "Twilight -- there may be ponies who try to become alicorns because you did. That is possible, and if it happens or threatens to do so and go wrong, we will deal with it if we can, as best we can. But she? Is not your fault. Because -- it is the cutie mark. Please, all of you -- think. About what that means."

They did. And Twilight (who might have been thinking about it in her subconscious all along, who refused to remember her dreams from the previous night) got there first.

"It means --" oh no "-- her talent -- is for transformation." With sickness rising, "The focus of her personal inherent magic -- the unalterable destiny of her cutie mark -- is change. It's -- built into who she is. She's been this way ever since her mark appeared. By the Princesses -- how does that happen? How does a pony wind up with that on her flank? How can that kind of talent even exist?"

"I don't know," Rarity said, her voice the tiniest break from weeping. "But -- you see the problem. One cannot cure a cutie mark. One cannot change it. Not even the Princesses could manage such a feat. There is a spell to block access to one's talent, if I remember my final year of school correctly -- but only the best casters in the world can do it, and it lasts but for seconds. It might be possible to transfer her mark by using Star Swirl's spell once again -- but to whom? What pony would bear that curse? We would give one a life by destroying another -- at best: with us, only the mark moved -- not our talents. What if we somehow wound up cursing two ponies that way? She is -- what she is, Twilight. And given the typical age when a mark appears, she was like this long before you even heard of the Elements. Her attempt to become an alicorn... likely took place when she was a filly. The years -- spent in that kind of -- I am going to be sick..."

She got to her hooves, ran off a short distance down the approach path and into the bushes, left them all to the company of thoughts which refused to leave. Thoughts that went unvoiced.

Finally, Rarity returned and took her place in the circle again. "I am sorry," she told them. "I pictured it -- too clearly, I suppose."

"...I was almost right behind you," Fluttershy whispered. "You can't cure a cutie mark. I've heard of parents who -- hated the talent their child had and tried to change it after the fact... stories I never wanted to hear twice..."

Twilight shuddered. "There's just as bad on the other end. Ones who try to stall marks indefinitely if they feel the 'wrong' talent is coming. If you ever wanted to see the Princess furious..." She had attended a few trials during her school years: the Princess had wanted her to see how parts of the legal system worked. One of them... "But if I had a filly and knew that mark was coming -- Luna's shoes, I would try to stop it with everything I had." A child of hers in that much pain and is that what happens when alicorns have children? No, please, don't let that be it, anything but that... She just barely managed to push the thought aside. Let it torment her later: other horrors had the floor. "You're right, Rarity -- you and Fluttershy both. I hate that you're right -- but you are. A cutie mark has no cure. It just is. That's going to be her for the rest of her life. We might be able to work out what went wrong with her and stop it from happening to somepony else, but -- it can't be fixed." Fluttershy was softly crying, empathic agony for a patient beyond cure. She wasn't the only one. "Is there anything we could do for her?"

"...painkillers?" Fluttershy faintly proposed. "...strong ones? But -- anything that strong would have long-term consequences, and -- I don't know if anything is strong enough... I can check the pharmacy in town, or try to mix something suitable for a pony, but... I don't know..."

"Meditation techniques?" Rainbow Dash wondered. "Like the stuff those fictional monks use so they can walk on hot coals and -- fictional. Right. ...never mind."

"I don't know of any magic that blocks pain," Twilight said. "I would have used it." An automatic glance at Pinkie Pie as certain memories replayed. "A lot."

Pinkie thought it over. "I -- wish I knew." And that was all she had.

"I don't know anything," Spike said heavily. "Just -- if she'd been like that for years -- what you all told me about her with the orchard -- why would she have trouble with a spell? She would have been going through the unicorn part for a long time -- more than long enough to start figuring out how the magic worked. I think -- I think we're missing something..."

The silence spread around the circle, made a partnership with the thoughts which would not leave, gave birth to nightmares.

"...I don't know," Twilight finally said. "I don't know what we're missing. But I'm going to see her tonight, and for every question she has for me, I'm going to have at least three going back. We'll work out what we're going to do when she shows up. But for now -- let's go see where she broke the tree. That was magic -- maybe there's some residual feel or something..." She stood up. "Come on, everypony -- maybe we'll think of something on the road."

"Not so fast, Twilight."

Rainbow Dash stood up. Trotted up to her, stopped inches away. Magenta eyes fully open. Angry. The others stared, but did not intervene.

"...Rainbow Dash?" What did I do? Why is she mad at me this time? I thought -- we were all okay after the ravine... "What's wrong?"

Solidly, a furious tone which would take only two answers. "Fly. Take off and land. Right now, Twilight. No excuses. I want you in the air now."

oh no oh no oh no... "Dash -- I don't have time to race right now..."

"You think this is about racing?" The pegasus laughed. "This is about your nearly dying! She caught you. I don't know if she saved you because she's a good pony at heart or she's evil and just needs you alive to get her answers, but she caught you. Slipped up, Twilight: should have watched your wording a little better! You were falling and she did a pretty good save. You? Just fell."

She's not supposed to pay attention like that! She's not supposed to analyze! Oh, Rainbow Dash had been changing since Twilight had first met her -- and for the first time, it seemed as if she'd changed too much. "I couldn't think! I was trying to -- keep it together after seeing a cutie mark move!" Better to admit that. "You would have had the same problem! You don't know what it's like, seeing that -- you won't until you do! It goes deep, Dash, deep like Discord! And I was trying to save myself! I was going to try a teleport before she caught me! You of all ponies know how fast a fall accelerates: I didn't have the time to focus my field for a push, that works best when it's a greater distance and I can think about it, and I'm not about to reverse gravity when there's nothing above me! I'd just wind up falling into the sky!"

Rainbow Dash -- grinned. Viciously. "Slipped again, Twilight! I believe you about your field: I know you don't always block because you're thinking about blocking and don't do --" She stopped. Eyes widened -- then focused again. "But not reversing gravity? You would have fallen up, all right -- to a safe height, because then you could have let the spell go and flown down. Or just stopped and teleported after you got your bearings -- while you hovered."

"You weren't there!" It was nearly the only protest she had left, the only one she could come up with which wouldn't give more away. "I don't have to prove anything to you!" She probably should have stopped there -- but halting her words in time had never been her strength. "The dust devil -- I was disoriented! I couldn't focus, I told you that! Couldn't think!" And still the others weren't intervening, not even Spike, they were letting the two of them have it out here and now and she didn't understand why...

"It's a neat trick, I'll give her that," Rainbow Dash allowed. "And we're going to talk about it later -- and maybe a lot of other things. Guess what, Twilight? None of those things change what I already asked. Here and now."

She knew what the next word would be. None of the others would stop it. Twilight couldn't stop it. And with the inevitability of Sun and Moon, it rose over the horizon and turned her world into fire and frost.

"Fly."

He slipped away for a moment.

In a way, he had been enjoying seeing so very many of his. It had been a reunion, and these -- only the ones within a few days' travel, those old enough to go on their own. The younger ones, those too young to be without their parents -- so many more of those. If he had the bits to bring them all to a single place -- a total reunion once per year, or even once every five -- that would be something to see. He found himself hoping he could do it one day.

But he still had other things on his mind. And when he could get a moment, he slipped away -- to her place.

It was, as Quiet said, intact. And it was silent.

He had been thinking about -- the darker possibilities.

She had teleported. He knew that, had seen it: no other interpretation was possible. But teleportation without destination came with consequences. She could have arrived within an object so large that the recoil acceleration resulting from the exit would have sent her materialized form into the nearest solid object with enough force --

If she had arrived safely -- based on percentages and sheer geography, she would have been most likely to appear in a wild zone. Something she had no personal experience of. Could have met one of the other sentient races, or -- one of the monsters. Something much less than friendly. All the power, yes, but with no idea how to use it yet. If something had confronted her with violence --

Or -- flight. Forgotten a rule (although that was the least likely possibility), tried to reach him in a single mad rush through the air before she was truly ready to do so: flight camps existed for a reason. Run into conditions she couldn't handle. Wind dashing her against the ground, lightning through her body, all so very possible to see for a mind wracked with worry --

There were so many coming to check on him. So many more too young to try. And then -- there were those who would never come. Those who could not. The ones where he had taken the walk.

Too many years doing this. And as he had told the new Princess, there were times when he had lost the battle. Foal dead. Mother and foal -- Pinkie, so close to the absolute edge, to being an absence on his grounds. Sometimes foals in the plural: multiple births had their own terrors. Sometimes...

mother dead, foal might still be alive, mother dead

...that.

And he would have to take the walk. If there was a father or Second Mother or any of the other possibilities Equestria's many means of love created pacing about his waiting room. He would have to go out and -- tell them. That one was lost, or both, or many, and there was no way to take it back. No way to return them. And sometimes he would stand still and let them weep against him. Listen as they raged. He had allowed himself to be kicked without retaliation: he understood. Twice, when all had been lost, he had found himself stopping a suicide as a devoted partner decided the only course left was to follow.

He had come to her place to see if she had returned. And it felt as if he was talking the walk -- for himself.

He called out into the empty halls again. Received only echo.

He had done what he had to do. He knew that. It had been necessary -- not just for her, but for so many. Every part of The Great Work, every step they had taken together along the seemingly endless path -- doing the needful. Given the chance -- and at the same time, given no ability to change the beginning or full understanding of the future -- he would have accompanied her a second time. But that knowledge was no comfort -- not now. He didn't know where she was. He didn't know if --

-- he had to face this...

With his having openly returned, he and Quiet were free to do more. But it had never been four eyes and ears searching: it was simply Quiet to whom he could speak, always had been for his most devoted. With Quiet, there was that extra measure which brought him closer than the others. His hope. His pain. From deep into his friend's youth, he had been able to tell Quiet anything -- and had. No other pony outside of he and she and perhaps the Princesses knew as much about The Great Work as Quiet did. And the young stallion wanted no part of it for himself. He was almost unique that way among those who knew even a little bit more.

In Quiet, he confided, nearly every last detail -- but not every last thought. He had not told his friend about this one. Suspected it had appeared independently, and the young unicorn simply did not wish to make him confront it just yet.

There were more looking now. That was spreading. He could openly contract a few, they would tell others, and it moved out from there, as quickly as the news of the fire.

But he could not find her with magic. Nor could they. And she would try to stay hidden: that was the rule. So ultimately, all they could hope for was signs. Some kind of indicator. Or -- return...

...or a body somewhere in Equestria's wild zones.

Possibly beyond.

He didn't know if she was alive.

Finish The Great Work -- and lose her to its completion.

Irony.

He should have set up more places for her to go. Safe zones. He should have...

"Please," he whispered. "Please be alive..."

He could not stand to be there any longer, and the flash of light took him away.

Twenty feet below his departure point -- with all sound blocked by stone -- she slept.

Morellian Analysis

Consider the brown and white speckled unicorn stallion known as Coordinator. (It's Clear Coordinator, actually, but nopony calls him Clear -- including his parents, wherever they currently are, who have likely forgotten they ever applied it in the first place when they aren't trying to forget they ever produced him.) There are several things worth knowing about him at this time.

First: he has passed almost every test which was ever put in front of him. He took virtually none of them.

Second: he attended Twilight's school while she was there, entering when she did and graduating on the same day. He would have gone through the entrance exam three places before she did, if he'd gone through it at all.

We may need to expand on those two for a while before moving on to the rest.

Coordinator never should have wound up in a school for gifted unicorns, at least not when ranking purely on field strength and magical potential. In terms of raw ability when graphed on the Celestia Meter (Adjusted), he falls into that category which would have trouble lifting the application forms. His field was, and always would be, somewhere below average strength. He hated this about himself and went to great lengths to conceal just how magically inept he truly was. Oh, he could get by for day to day purposes: in fact, practically nopony would ever notice a thing -- except, perhaps, that his field tended to wink out when he was feeling a high degree of stress. Therefore, one of Coordinator's self-assigned missions in life was to make certain that only other ponies went through stress, preferably arranged, caused, and justified by him. Certainly enjoyed. In some ways, Coordinator can best be described as the sort of pony who, knowing others have become used to filling out forms in triplicate, will send the set to sextuple and add subtle differences to the extra three copies so the complete group will be impossible to complete the first time through. And he will do it simply so he can watch and wait for the moment when he can tell you to start over. The expressions are priceless.

Actually, that description might be a little too kind.

But there are times when it's not what you know or how much you haven't bothered to study: it's how deeply entrenched your family is into the back alleys of the Day and Night Courts. Understand, Coordinator's parents weren't incredibly well-connected, not living in the relative backwoods of Trotter's Falls. If they pulled every Canterlot-attached string they had via remote at the same moment, they just might be able to manage two tickets to the Grand Galloping Gala, and no amount of claimed friendships towards extra potential guests would ever bring another. (The tickets would not have been sent by the Princess, either. Other ponies would have to give them up -- and not willingly.) But they knew enough ponies in strategic positions to get their son into Twilight's school using a labyrinth of regulations and paperwork which shuffled him through without ever having to do more than have somepony else sign his name to a few forms, a mixture of legacy admission and a carefully arranged chain of slipped memories where nopony had any idea who had handled that last filing, but filed it had been and so student he must be. His parents intended for Coordinator to get out of Trotter's Falls for a single reason: it was not Canterlot. And after they had explained that to him in great detail over most of his childhood, he had not only readily agreed with it, but suggested some improvements to the overall plan. The first stage was to attend the school. Done with style and a special flourish of fieldwriting.

The ultimate goal was that Coordinator would work for the palace. Be at the Princess' right front hoof. She would speak through him -- or rather, he would speak for her. In fact, Celestia would hardly need to speak at all and would have been shocked at some of the things she hadn't been saying. And that was necessary, because the existence of certain policies throughout the land and its laws proved the Princess wasn't capable of speaking for herself because she kept saying the wrong things, words like 'tolerance' and 'acceptance' and -- brace yourself, this one can make you ill if you're forced to hear it too often --'equality'. Clearly she needed somepony who knew how the world really worked -- or at least, how it should -- to make a few moves on what everypony would assume was her behalf. And the first step in getting Coordinator to that honored position was to get through school -- or rather, to have the right other ponies get him through school. Happily, this also happened to be an early lesson on how to get into what Coordinator and his parents saw as his future palace life. All that was required was getting the right other ponies under him and allowing them to hold him up. It was that or take a chance on the full weight of his words descending on them. Numerous colts and fillies chose to go through that risk. Few tried it twice. And only one was partially immune.

(If you ever wondered how a shy, bookish, but ultimately happy and friendly unicorn filly who had been chosen by the Princess to be her personal part-time student could have wound up as a self-determined social outcast with absolutely no interest in making friends within her own peer group or virtually any other, you're about to get part of the answer.)

Coordinator's path through school was a simple one. Listen to other students. Go through their words, including some of the ones they'd written down -- when they weren't looking. Turn those words against them. There were many times when he'd invent words himself and plant them in another pony's writings, or claim he'd heard them saying those foul things and other ponies whom he'd had previous contact with would be only too happy to back him up. Surely no reasonable pony would want such things to get out, would they? Oh, or there were events to create. He'd seen a pony going into the restricted access section of the library -- well, he hadn't, that pony never went there at all, but he had plenty of ponies who'd swear they'd all seen it take place. And who was that pony who started the fight which didn't happen? (He would make other ponies ram their bodies into walls and furniture to create the evidentiary bruises. Sacrifices had to be made.) It got even better when the class had aged to the point where those first tentative fumbling relationships began to blossom: that let him invent infidelity. And all you had to do in order to keep Coordinator on your side (or rather, behind you, listening to everything and waiting to use it against you) was make sure he passed every test. Whole new methods of cheating were invented and smuggled past teachers in order to get a single colt through his classes. Coordinator ultimately graduated with just enough understanding of magical theory to squeak past those practical exams which were personally supervised by those adults his parents couldn't bribe (or, in his later years, the ones he hadn't quite managed to manipulate himself), but with invisible doctorates in rumor, social climbing, and blackmail.

And since it wasn't what he knew so much as who (and what he knew or had invented about them), Coordinator paid particular attention to the fact that there was a filly in his class who took special lessons directly from the Princess and even went to the palace on some weekends, plus there were rumors of royally-escorted field trips and so much more besides. Clearly a unicorn who was going places --and look who was always going with her. Coordinator had made a number of friends quickly -- or rather, he had accumulated a quantity of protective shielding bodies, both those who saw and liked his style and the ones who quickly decided it was better to risk a hit from the outside going in rather than the reverse. So he decided to add one more friend to the list, the one who would be his most special friend of all. Even in his first year, he'd already formed a vague idea that an eventual upgrade to very special somepony might be the best move he could ever make.

She rejected him.

Rejected. Him.

He didn't understand why. (He still doesn't. He was and is perfect in every way.) He made up any number of excuses, starting with the Princess herself, who believed in all those stupid things like tolerance and acceptance and he could just vomit at this one, equality, and so would only have taken on a student who was so much of an ignorant self-blinding moron that she'd believe in all that idiocy too. The reality (which he did not and still will not see) was that Twilight's little bare portion of natural social empathy combined with her brother's careful warnings had been more than enough for her to look at the bottle she was being offered as a gift and see the word POISON written on every last square inch. But no, it must have been the Princess. And the Princess created -- problems. He could only do so much with Twilight. Oh, he could spread some rumors about her and invent tales and use every other tool in his growing kit -- but if he did too much -- well, the other students could, at most, run to teachers (many of whom he would eventually have) and parents (largely helpless and it wasn't as if the stories ever truly led back to him anyway, not that anypony could prove), but Twilight Sparkle could gallop right up to the palace. There was only so much of a risk Coordinator could take, and the chance of getting that result locked a number of tools away. Attacking Twilight with anything more than the most indirect methods appeared to him as an open begging for his own expulsion -- or worse. But he could still see the benefits in being her friend.

So the next step in becoming her friend -- was to make himself into the only option for friendship at all.

A lie here, a lie there...

Oh, Twilight always had ponies trying to use her as the key in the door which would unlock the palace: he was hardly the only one there. Students came to the school from the most ancient and supposedly-noble of the Houses, and many of those had their parents instructing them to tie their leash around the purple one from the moment they saw the Princess coming to pick her up. But being from one of the Houses did not automatically make a pony into a social-climbing sociopath with no real emotions beyond the negative ones. There were and are Houses who host kind, friendly, charming unicorns who are truly worth getting to know, who understand friendship and would be happy to try forming one with you. Some of those current young adults went to school with Twilight as well, saw how much she would benefit from having a friend and tried being one to her. And none of them ever had a chance. Each well was tainted, every ray of light blocked by shadow.

Some of the rumors meant for the student's ears made Twilight into a danger. Nopony knew how much power she really had and everypony could see that her control was lacking, especially in the early years: a little stress in class and her corona went double, sometimes with her eyes turning white. Best not to be too close in case she lost it, yes? (Coordinator never learned about exactly what had happened during Twilight's entrance exams. He would have been thrilled. And then would have created an extra layer of protective pony bodies.) Others had been designed to eventually drift into Twilight's twitching and increasingly paranoid ears. What were the motives of all these ponies who claimed they wanted to be her friend? Well, the easiest way to go there was by taking his own motivation and assigning it to others, although that was hardly the only take he spun. And should a pony keep on trying regardless, or if Twilight seemed to almost be on the absolute verge of reaching out to a particularly persistent student? Attack the student. Try to be Twilight's friend and your school life would be a misery -- until you stopped. He had to isolate Twilight -- but he had to do it carefully, because there was a very large shadow of wings lurking overhead, waiting to swoop down on the first mistake.

It was a testament to his skills that he succeeded as well as he did. Oh, he couldn't manage a complete victory. He couldn't do anything about the dragon. The infant learned to talk within moons, spent slightly more time at the palace than Twilight did and was rumored to be receiving private lessons of his own. What Coordinator would have used as a personal assistant and virtual slave labor was (disgusting, sickening, unnatural) being treated by Twilight as her brother. And the dragon would not listen to anything he made other ponies say. Wouldn't take any side which wasn't Twilight's. The bond was unbreakable and oh, he tried to prove that wrong, tried over and over -- but before that first year was over, the dragon was on his feet and toddling along at Twilight's side or on her back (she let him ride, there were no words for how low she had sunk, but he had to swallow it and get close to her anyway), always trying to help and sometimes even succeeding. They could not and never would be brother and sister, should never be anything other than master and servant (or worse). And yet they treated each other as siblings and it was a horror, it made his parents pale when he told them, it should have been a crime -- but it was and it would not break.

But other than the dragon -- complete.

He approached again. Was rejected again. (She could still read, still had a mentor and brother to be with when the loneliness threatened to erupt into tears, hadn't even begun to learn about tracking the flow of rumor, much less approaching other ponies with her problems. She's still working on that last.)

Twilight Sparkle would not allow him to be her friend. So until she did, Twilight Sparkle, excepting that damnable dragon, would have no friends.

She never accepted him. He never allowed anypony to accept her or let her think well of those few who wouldn't learn their lesson and still occasionally tried. And so the years passed.

Oh, she was smart -- in some limited ways. There were times when Coordinator thought she was threatening to pick up a new kind of feel, had managed to detect his own resonance in the echoed words. But it was never anything she could prove or even dig too deeply into, and he was never sure she'd truly figured anything out. Dark looks in the hallways, sitting as far away from him in the classrooms as possible. Nothing more. Perhaps not all that smart, at least for things other than magic. She had very few social skills and had never picked up more, her development there arrested at the level of a shy young filly who had once truly wanted friends and now simply didn't care any more. In fact, she even seemed to be regressing: as graduation approached, the horror of the false sibling relationship began to diminish. By the end of their seventh year, she was starting to treat the dragon like the servant he should have been all along. He took all silent credit. He was very proud.

But then she received her diploma and moved on to postgraduate studies, without a single relationship to her credit outside of Princess, parents, brother, and dragon (with that last now just barely), still not his friend -- and he shrugged. He'd tried. If he'd done damage, she had deserved it and quite possibly more. It didn't matter any longer, as least not as far as it affected him. Coordinator had graduated. He had no intention of advancing his studies further: his triple invisible doctorate would serve. It was time to begin life as a young adult, a life in the palace which would in time place him at the Princess' right front hoof. Or, more to the point, turn him into the voice for one whose true words would eventually no longer be heard at all. Every string was in place, every contact his parents had made tied to the ones he had arranged, and they were all yanked at the moment he handed over his application.

He was rejected.

Rejected.

(The Princess had never been told about him at all, never had a chance to delve into the school's social circle and see what was truly happening, hadn't known how to reverse Twilight's diminishing desire for outside contact and couldn't make her student talk about it. But she could also read.)

And he didn't understand why. He had done everything right. There had been no fault at all. The plan had been perfect and executed without flaw. But she had turned him away. Had never even met with him. (Normally, Celestia gave such a day or two of suffocating in their own self-importance before dismissing them. In this case, the writing had been too large.) The palace refused to reconsider him. The heart of Canterlot was closed, and there would be no path in through the Courts no matter how many lives he threatened to ruin. In the end, his power to destroy was considerable -- but compared to the shadow of those wings, it was petty. They could risk him or they could risk her.

With no other choices, he'd returned to Trotter's Falls. As a failure.

His parents had treated him accordingly.

That particular piece of resulting blackmail hadn't been as satisfying as he'd hoped.

It hadn't taken long for Coordinator to work into the town's government. (Not the mayor, but close to him. Always have at least one shielding layer whenever possible.) But there was no satisfaction to it. No power beyond the ultimately petty. And always the knowledge that petty was the only kind of power he would ever have -- unless a certain impossibility was true, unless what could not happen somehow came to be, something he had been told about about early on and never quite believed, keeping it in his mind as nothing more than a fantasy to carry into the nightscape for a dream of real power. It would never occur, of course -- but if it did, it should happen to him. He deserved it. Not --

-- her.

Sickening. Disgusting. Unnatural. Never should have been allowed to breathe.

He refused to acknowledge that memory unless there was no other choice. Had no idea she'd made one of her own -- but would almost never visit it.

Time passed. He became a fan of Murdocks' publications, would often write guest articles sent from the wrong postmarks under assumed names for no money whatsoever, for he saw it as his duty to do anything which stood a chance to eventually depose such a clearly unfit ruler -- and, in time, an extra nightmare (with the capital dropped): the plural. He did not speak against the Princess (and then Princesses) in the open, of course -- not unless he was among very special company. But speak there he did, and write, and added darker dreams to his nightscape, dreams he used that thankfully-basic spell to keep away from prying eyes. (He would have given much for that ability, and it was unfair that a Princess had it and he did not. So much blackmail material in the nightscape...) And Twilight Sparkle mostly faded from his life -- at least for a time. The name came up on rare occasion, of course, and he would automatically repeat some of the things he'd said and spread over the years (attributing them to other sources), making certain her reputation among those surrounding him was no better than it had been in school: that was what she deserved. But it was a rare occasion indeed --

-- which then started to become more common...

...his article writing had picked up considerably, he had a skill for taking a debate and twisting it so that only one side ever got a word in and for the other to be permitted speech was a capital crime, with the later never a problem since he got to write the (in)complete argument...

...and then the true nightmare, as the petty power of mere magic suddenly became something actual.

Slightly over three weeks later, actual and right in front of him.

That power was unhappy.

Had she grown social awareness to go with the wings? Finally realized how much he had truly been involved in her isolation? What was she planning to do? Because she could retaliate now. She always could have beaten him in a fight, the prospect had been terrifying and his best bet would have been to hope others gave up their bodies long enough for him to find some way to escape. But now she could isolate him. A few words from a Princess and everything he still had... gone. Forever. With no way to rebuild it.

Coordinator hated her. Hated every alicorn at this point because they had actual power. All he would ever have was ultimately petty --

-- or so he'd believed.

There were new stories circulating. A sight to watch out for. Something which threatened -- success.

He didn't believe it, of course. It had been madness all along and he had only entertained it as a fantasy (although a delightful one), even if that delusion was being enforced on a walking sickness instead of, should any chance of such a thing be true, being given to the deserving.

But... 'but' was an interesting word. There was a chance something had happened. Madness had a way of producing results simply through attempting things the sane would never try. Coordinator was -- curious. At his previous best, he had treated the concept with detached amusement (along with that permanent disgust), but now....

Coordinator wanted power, always had. Actual power. And with the return of Twilight Sparkle to his life -- a Twilight Sparkle who openly didn't like him -- he wanted that power more than ever. Needed it. Coordinator was always on the side of anypony who could help him, and if the impossible was coming true -- why, then Coordinator was about to become the single most devoted member of the cause (or The Great Work) anypony had ever imagined. Besides, even if it somehow couldn't be his immediately -- well, the best counter to a Princess had to be another Princess, correct?

However, until then, Twilight Sparkle was here. Angry. Possibly suspicious -- or worse, with suspicions confirmed and just waiting to make her move. Petty power would do well to hunker down and pack its bags just in case it needed to move unexpectedly.

Coordinator should have recognized that. A truly intelligent pony would have purchased an open-date train ticket on the way back from the burn site. Those with foresight would have already been on the train. A pony with survival instinct ascendant would have skipped that stage and just run. And Coordinator was intelligent (in certain ways), would anticipate certain possible results (in a few categories)...

...but he loved power. Was, in fact, addicted to it. (He did not recognize that. Nothing controlled him. He controlled everything -- or so he told himself, wanted to believe, longed to do.) Exercised it at nearly every opportunity, although most of those took place out of sight and hearing of the ponies targeted.

Twilight Sparkle was here. In his territory. And once the terror began to subside, he decided that if she could have proven anything, she would have acted already. And a coward like Twilight Sparkle would never risk a move without proof, not to mention that she was far too tied to the open rules to do anything outside them. The junior Princess had actual power -- but only in theory. Power she had no idea how to use. She could not be allowed to operate in comfort and acceptance on his territory. Ever. She needed a reminder of what petty could do when exercised properly.

Coordinator, on the morning after Twilight arrived in Trotter's Falls and brought more of the unnatural, the warped along, with his terrors lesser beneath the new Sun, began to write. Speak. Neither of which would ever be traced back to him: he was certain of that, because it never had been.

He should have run.

Rainbow Dash wasn't backing down. She almost never backed down and when the confrontation had a physical component, somepony generally had to make her back off -- typically by clenching teeth or field around prismatic tail and dragging her away. Letting a confrontation diminish on its own or outright canceling it -- hardly ever. It was a challenge, after all, and to back down would be to come in second.

Her muscles were visibly tense, tendons standing out along her legs (wide stance, braced) and the partially-unfurled wings. Teeth clenched after biting off the end of the final single-syllable sentence. The nostrils were flared. Head not lowered, but it would have been the last step to being in a full pre-charge pose. And she would not back down. The last word still hung in the air around her, in front of Twilight, surrounded the others and kept them from moving. The word to which there were only two responses.

I should have looked at the scroll's feel. I should have wondered about it. I should have...

Twilight wished for a monster to burst out of the wild zone. The foundation to disintegrate beneath their hooves and send them tumbling into a lost basement, dungeon, Diamond Dog lair. The appearance of the pony she was now convinced was the mission target (even if she still didn't understand why Discord would pretend to care, much less any chance of his actually doing so). Gilda could crash into her back and Twilight would have thanked her. She would happily settle for the totally unexpected and suddenly very welcome return of Sombra, and in fact was briefly willing to entertain any and all disasters -- well, not losing Luna to Nightmare Moon a second time or having Celestia be submerged within something even worse, but anything short of that might get at least five seconds of her delight just as thanks for the distraction. Twilight wanted something to explode and gave brief thought towards trying to create one out of sight in the trees -- but while she had hidden her field a few times, such as with a certain ill-fated Come To Life spell during her first Winter Wrap-Up, she wasn't all that good at it and it tended to make the spells cast during that state go out of control. Not a good idea when used with offense. So she took a breath and relied on the potential malevolence of the wild zone to save her.

And with the smugness of a universe which had decided it was on Dash's side, nothing happened.

Fly. Or admit she couldn't.

No other options.

So she went with the wrong one.

All right. I am an alicorn. Whether I want to fully believe it or not, whether I want to be one or not, I am a unic -- alicorn. Alicorns have wings. Alicorns fly. I've seen all three do it. I have wings. They flap. Alicorns flap their wings and fly. So. No real wind here right now. Maybe a little jump to get some height before the first flap. Gravity is of course a constant and not to be worried about. Airflow should be normal around wings because it always is. Vectors, force applied, calories burned with muscles exerted. Basic calculations. Consider the efforts involved in a very simple path. All she asked for was take off and land, but that's probably not what she meant: if I just went up two Celests and then came down again, she'd say I wasn't really flying and challenge all over again. I need something a little more complicated. Haven't even begun to figure out hovering yet, so let's just say -- take off and circle the clearing once. Nothing fancy. Just tour the border without going too close to the trees, return to start and land. I can even drop down for the last part if I'm close to the ground. I don't have to go that high at all. It is a basic circle, low to the ground, which I have already roughly calculated for force, exertion, vectors, and everything else physics say should go into this, and it should fulfill her requirements. I am going to do this. Because somehow, I am an alicorn. And alicorns fly. A includes B, B is a subset of A, and A has been achieved, therefore B is now automatic and not even remotely worth so much as a single moment of light concern.

Right?

Right.

So here I go.

And to the accompaniment of total silence, Twilight went.

A number of things happened. None of them would have had a captured image fetch less than four thousand mostly-counterfeit bits.

The silence settled in again and hung around for a while, getting comfortable and checking out the available snack supply.

Finally, "Twilight?"

The whisper of humiliation beyond hope of recovery. "...what?"

It could have been the offer of a save, one last way out. "Was that -- supposed to be a joke?"

Trying not to cry, one more rubbing straw creating an exposed sore on a back which was being asked to carry a greater burden with every step, so close to total collapse, "...no..."

More softly than she'd ever heard Rainbow Dash speak, "You missed the thermal by the path. How could you miss that? And that shift layer coming off the west -- you went right through it without even trying to adjust. You weren't accounting for -- for anything, Twilight. You were just -- pushing. There was no flow. You didn't work with the air, you just..." Volume dropping still more, "Twilight, stop crying -- please don't..." The pegasus dropped down next to her, began inspecting the splayed left wing: Fluttershy moved in to check the other side. "Nothing hurt..." Dash decided (with Fluttershy confirming). "You took a tumble after that final rebound, but that last roll didn't do any damage... Twilight, I saw you fly. Right after the coronation. And -- you did a good job. Nothing too fancy, you had a sort of nice basic swoop at one point, but -- you flew. I thought you might be hurt or sick and trying to hide it, or she did something, or part of that stupid backlash stuff..." It felt as if Dash was trying to make excuses for her. It had gone that far.

And Twilight barely noticed. Head down, eyes focused on the ground she never should have left, unable to look at any of her friends. "...there -- was a thermal?"

Rainbow Dash blinked. "How can you fly at all and not feel --" stopped dead for ten eternal heartbeats. "Because -- you can't -- can you? You can't feel -- and if you can't feel at all, then you can't fly. You just push and beg the Princesses that nothing goes wrong..."

Feel? There wasn't any magic. What didn't I --

-- no. They'd just discussed it. Pegasi had their own feel. One Twilight had never knowingly experienced -- one that was apparently necessary for flight to take place at all.

"...I..." Twilight whispered, "...don't feel anything... not like that..." She would have thought it impossible for the humiliation to become deeper. She would have been wrong.

Confusion from both pegasi, with Dash as the one to express. "Then -- how did you fly the first time?"

"...don't know... I don't remember... I just -- wanted to fly... I wasn't thinking about it and I don't remember..."

The silence moved in again. Nopony or dragon tried to stop it.

"Get up, Twilight." The voice was brash: it almost always was. But there was no teasing or anger in it. Just a simple instruction. "Go ahead -- just get up."

Slowly, Twilight got back to her hooves, putting her head as far above a surface as she was convinced it ever would be again. She couldn't look at Rainbow Dash. Still couldn't look at anypony. They knew now. She was a joke of an alicorn, another failure and in her way, equally broken. Couldn't fly. Never should have changed at all. A pitiful excuse for a Princess, a Princess of nothing with no way back to just being a unicorn with five good friends and a little brother, all of whom had just found out her so-called ascension had been a drop. Good for nothing but luring in press to disrupt everypony's lives and losing books and giving out unhelpful advice other ponies had written long ago. Student to Princess Celestia in a course which she had taken over more than half her life -- and finally flunked.

Rainbow Dash moved around her (as Fluttershy backed away a little, as the others let it continue to be just the two of them), got in front of Twilight again and propped her head up on the pegasus' front right hoof, gently forced warm magenta and tear-streaming purple eyes into gaze contact. "No flight camps or schools," the pegasus softly (gently) mused, thoughtful on a level Twilight had never seen from her. "No parents to watch you on those first attempts and no infant surges working on instinct to barely remember when you start to really try. No feel. And -- you're thinking. All you do is think..." A bare wisp of a sigh. "I should have figured that out when you didn't know how to preen or even before that, buck it, buck it all, too much Tartarus-chained thinking... because in your head, you're still a unicorn and you're one who doesn't know how to do anything but think..."

Twilight blinked. Tears fell. Rainbow Dash was still there when the blinks stopped. "I -- don't understand..."

"Of course you don't." She'd never heard this level of softness from Dash, this amount of open caring. Hadn't know Dash was capable of it. "I never should have expected you to. Never assumed. That first flight tricked me, tricked all of us, but when you didn't repeat it, I thought it was because --" and another stop, five heartbeats this time. "Thinking... well, this isn't what I think, Twilight: it's what I know. School is back in session. I'm your teacher. Somepony has to get you to feel instead of think and it's going to be me. You are going to fly or I'm going to die trying. Nothing is keeping my flying buddy grounded. Ever."

"But -- but I don't -- I can't..."

The pegasus dropped her hoof, moved closer. Gave her the nuzzle meant for family, and a little bit more.

"Ever."

They stayed that way for a time. Rainbow Dash refusing to move. Twilight sobbing. One of the straws finally dropping away.

The group was moving towards the wild zone orchard again. Dash had resumed her normal level of volume. She had not resumed her normal height, not in the sense of Celests above the ground. She had walked next to Twilight for a while, drawing up the tentative lesson schedule. "...and there's no way I'm going to let anypony else laugh at you, no matter how funny that one accidental rebound double spin was. So we're gonna have to figure out a way to do it in private. Maybe -- oh, Celestia blast it -- in the middle of the -- Luna shock me, we're really gonna have to -- night. When -- nopony's up to watch. Can't do it out here -- too much to run into too early. I can't get you to the normal training level because you can't stay up there on your own... Tartartus, ground level interference is an advanced course, we're going to need a ton of open space... maybe Quiet's fields: he's got lots of room. We can try that for a while as long as we're here. When we get back to Ponyville... I'll scout something out. I might have to -- be up at -- all hours of the -- night to find something, but we'll get a place. Sure not gonna be the Gorge..." And then she'd stayed on ground level even after letting Twilight have the sole lead again, which might have been a weird form of student-teacher solidarity.

There were going to be classes. For once, Twilight hadn't been able to make herself look forward to them: she knew they were going to involve still more failures, and Twilight was used to passing her courses -- sometimes very quickly, occasionally pulling ahead of her unicorn teachers. But classes there would still be, and -- now they knew. And they were her friends. Still her friends, and they loved her no less for her failures. Twilight didn't know why she had so much trouble making herself remember that or believe it beyond the time it could take to write a letter, why part of her was always convinced that the next wedge she drove would be the one that split them once and for all. Why some lessons had to be studied over and over.

They loved her. She hadn't let herself believe it. Again.

How much do we have to go through together before I let myself accept that this is real? That I'm not one stupid word away from losing everything and everypony, or just waking up and finding myself back in the dorms in my first year with no friends and losing all hope of making any? That I'm not watching ponies murmur about me or try to use me or start to move in and then back away without ever completely knowing why some of them left?

Well -- she knew why some of them had left, or at least had suspicions. Some of the stories in school had seemed to have a suspicious brown-and-white speckled hole in the center -- one which had kept trying to attach itself to her flank to be towed along. She'd never been able to prove anything and without solid evidence, approaching the teachers who'd seemed so much in his thrall -- or worse, bothering the Princess with her stupid filly problems, ones which had no evidence...

There are ponies you can't make friend with, ever. There are ones you shouldn't make friends with. And there are ones who deserve to be scared...

He'd been scared of her. She'd seen it. On a level not too far from the surface, enjoyed it...

...so why did she feel just a little bit ashamed of herself? Because it was something Princess Celestia wouldn't have done? Luna would have.

They weren't in school any more. But she'd still reacted like a filly...

He deserved it.

Next problem.

Too old for a first spell... All right -- reasons for that, ideas she would share with the others later, some of which might have been conceived independently. Discussion for the way back. First, it might have taken years of -- the cycle -- for the actual power to build. Maybe it had just been the physical changes to start with and the ones to her magic had come later. Or -- well, if she'd started as a unicorn, she could have had her natural magic disrupted by the changes: getting her cutie mark just as she would have started on the path which led to the basics. Pegasi magic coming and going -- how could anypony hope to learn two forms of magic at once? Years stalled because as Rarity had said, it had been a moment-by-moment struggle just to exist and anything past that for a long time might have seemed beyond hope. Possibilities.

Another one: her magic had been bound. Twilight was familiar with the devices used to restrain unicorn magic: not only had she studied the theory and practice, she'd seen them on some of the prisoners in the trials she'd visited and, when the Lunar Guards had arrested them, found one clamped onto her horn for the first time. The last wasn't one of her better memories. She's strong. Anypony around her knows she's strong and at her level of power, strength without control is terrifying.

(There was something she almost thought of then, but stopping that memory was one of her oldest habits and the success was virtually automatic.)

So somepony could have put a restraint on her if her first tries were doing damage and just -- left it there. But that's postulating a lot of things, starting with at least one other pony. A parent or guardian. Or -- would she have restrained herself? Seen she was a danger and stopped herself from casting for years? But then -- why would she stop and come out now, unbound? To look for me and try for her answers? That's possible -- hope for a cure, an impossible cure after years like -- that -- and she might have decided it was worth the chance. But why not go to the Princess before that? I know she doesn't want other ponies to know about her or what happened: 'tell nopony'. Is she hiding from somepony? Everypony? All questions to ask her, and --

-- I still feel like I'm missing something.

Or --

-- like she wasn't telling herself something. So many changes to her life, struggling to adjust and reconcile and eventually just to hang on, and then this nightmare of a mission from Discord with everything inherent in that name, horror after horror adding to the burdens she was already carrying. One lifted, but so many others still present and more piling on all the time. It was as if there was a thought she'd almost had and couldn't quite finish yet, just because the nightmares had been there all throughout what had existed of her sleep and Luna, bound not to interfere, had chased none of them away. Nightmares Twilight couldn't quite remember and didn't want to. But dreaming was still a form of thinking (if not the kind Twilight usually engaged in, the one Dash seemed so set against) and possibly there were things she didn't want to face which had emerged under the Moon, possibly related to a thought which would not come into the open beneath the Sun...

Maybe it was just something she was still trying to work out, deep down.

There were a lot of reasons to show first spell signs at that age. At her age. Eventually, Twilight might come up with more. And there would be at least one chance to ask her...

'Her'. We haven't tried to name her beyond Pinkie's one discard. I keep thinking 'she' or 'her' and nothing else.

'Who are you?' One of the biggest questions of all.

'Not unicorn. Not pegasus. Not anything.'

Not an alicorn.

Failed. Broken. Malformed.

Malicorn.

No. The name was too cruel to apply on anypony going through so much suffering. She wouldn't use it.

Rainbow Dash had asked for a group session later, told the others they need to learn more of pegasus magic than they'd ever understood before and had to do it before tonight. The rest of the outbound journey was being used for simply calming down, at least as far as they all could -- but before they met this stranger again, they needed to have a stronger comprehension of what she might be capable of in that form. Twilight already had a good idea of what she could manage as a unicorn: raw strength (and possibly strength which surpassed her own), but potentially with no comprehension of how to channel it into any spell more sophisticated than movement -- or not. She didn't know and the idea of seeing so much energy channeled into a more advanced working was its own horror. She had already told the others what to expect there if such happened: anything -- which helped nopony in the slightest. She couldn't help it: telling them about every spell unicorns had ever invented over the centuries couldn't be done in a single day or even a year. And there was knowledge lost, new discoveries being added...

If she comes as a pegasus... if she comes as a unicorn...

She would be coming. Seven of them and one of her.

The odds seemed a little too long on the wrong side.

What the orchard mainly told them was that the tree had been big. When intact, it could have sat at the bottom of the ravine and had the uppermost branches peek over the top. Applejack had softly whistled upon seeing it and its brethren. "Eastern Red Giant," she'd told them, and the stress which had been visibly tensing her entire body since their discussion at the foundation briefly eased. "By Celestia's mane, Ah never thought Ah'd see one -- everypony, grab an apple an' eat it, you're not gonna see another one for a while. Tart an' sweet at the same time, natural candy... Ah've seen some of the apples, 'course, but the seeds -- almost impossible t' get an' the apple sellers core 'em out t' keep 'em rare, charge way too much an' limit the sales. Takes the trees decades t' get this big on their own... even if Ah brought some seeds home an' the whole family all worked on it t'gether, least a year t' get the first bloom an' five before they'd start t' peak... an' why am Ah sayin' 'if'? Sorry, everypony, but y'know Ah've gotta... the cider off these is legendary..." And they'd let her have a few minutes to herself as she happily collected some of the apples in the delighted knowledge that she'd eventually have a new crop to offer -- but as soon as she'd finished, all the tension had dropped back in, leaving her once again with a tail which tended to lash whenever she wasn’t paying attention to it, ears almost constantly flat back against her head, and the general aura of a pony with one wire tied around her forelegs, another looping the back, and a train attached to each -- which were pulling away in opposite directions. That talk had shaken Applejack more than it had Twilight, and the former unicorn wondered what was going through the farmer's mind. Possibly wondering what she would (or even could) do if it came to a fight: this wasn't an opponent Twilight could picture being beaten by lasso.

It had been a big tree -- very big: Twilight had to boost Applejack and Pinkie Pie over the trunk (with Dash initially carrying Rarity), as the fallen wood cut across pretty much the entire clearing and going around would have taken too long. They found where Grape Indulgence had been standing: the discarded bottle (which Fluttershy took for her own saddlebags and eventual disposal) was the clue, along with a few thin tracks that proved he'd been pulling a very light cart nearby and stopped to detach himself from it. (There was also a slight lingering odor, which they took care to avoid.)

The tree had not fallen directly towards him: given Twilight's best first guess of where she might have been standing -- she had picked up on a degree of residual feel (still off somehow, but she was unable to analyze a fading signature which would have been gone in another day and had only lasted so long because of the sheer power originally involved) near the base of the break -- he'd been observing from about a hundred and fifty degrees to the left. But the crown would have come close, and -- who would have stayed? Certainly not a drunken pony who hadn't given a single thought to help.

What he hadn't mentioned became evident within seconds of closer inspection: the intruder had pulled the whole tree down towards her -- and had instinctively thrown it over her body. There was an eight-foot gap between dying stump and fallen trunk. An incredibly small fraction of the pressure she'd put on the tree had been brought against her body, enough to leave an impression of hooves in the dirt.

"No shoes," Rarity frowned. "I know that's common in everyday wear... but not only no shoes, no signs of shoes, none of the little indicators you find where shoes have pressed. These are practically virgin hooves..." A glance back at the others, who (other than Applejack) were looking amused. "All right, very well, but it's all I have to contribute at this time. My apologies for not having put more time into studying detective work and Pinkie, there is nothing that hat goes with unless you have the appropriate half-cape, thank you..."

Pinkie shrugged and put it away -- somewhere -- then looked over the fallen trunk again. "Poor tree," she sighed. "At least it was quick... do you think we can just leave this here? Other ponies are going to come out for more apples, and they might -- wonder what had happened. Maybe they already came out. But we can't put it back where it was -- unless there's a spell to -- make it whole again?" She looked hopefully at Twilight.

No such luck: the head shake came immediately. "I'm sorry, Pinkie, but -- it's dead. A complete break and a couple of days... a wood mending spell would have had to be immediate to have any chance, and it's not my specialty."

Rarity sighed. "I grafted some sculptured dead branches back once. They were still dead. Ask Applejack how that worked out... dear? Are you sure you're all right? You look rather as if you have two Ursa Majors playing tug-of-war with you as the rope."

"Ah'm -- jus' -- thinkin', Rarity. Ah think sometimes. Yeah, Ah remember the branches. Wouldn't want t' see this poor old beast crash down in the middle of a slumber party neither. Y'can't get rid of this one the same way, right?"

"Far too much mass for me, although Twilight can surely do it... Personally, I rather forced the issue the first time and I'm still surprised I affected as much as I did. And getting rid of the trunk still leaves us with a stump, moving the stump leaves us with a hole... if we've found as much as we're going to, perhaps we should just -- move them closer? Cover where she was standing?"

Spike had been confused by the latest turn in the discussion. "Why are we trying to hide so much? We're allowed to ask for help, guys! Doesn't that mean we're allowed to tell ponies what we're doing? What's been going on? Maybe if we started spreading the news around, we'd find somepony who knew everything."

Rainbow Dash shook her head hard enough to blur the colors of her mane: for a moment, there was an impression of muddy brown. "No way! You never know when things are going to get back to the wrong ponies! She said there were others who needed to know, remember? What if they find out we're looking and decide we're trying to keep them from changing? Think that would go over well? I'm not making any public announcements and nopony else should either. We could start a panic, we could start a riot -- against us. Like, maybe, what if the whole town was in on it, like in Volume Twelve of the expanded universe series, and we're the only ponies in the dark, and -- okay, stop snickering, it's possible, right?"

"Your potboilers over," Rarity quipped with a dignified giggle. "I understand your point, but I suspect that put against reality, you're rather overstating the case. Still -- caution, I think."

Fluttershy had been inspecting the trunk for lost animal homes and had thankfully come up empty. "...it would scare ponies... some of them would just think about how different she is and not her pain... they'd be scared and when some ponies are scared, they do -- stupid things. We don't know her well yet... we shouldn't scare them unless we know she's trying to do -- something which isn't -- nice. All fear usually leads to is... more fear..."

Twilight nodded to that. "I'm not going to risk a panic or a mass faint. If we need to alert the town, I promise we will: no information concealed if we're sure hiding it would hurt somepony." (Applejack felt Pinkie Pie staring at her, wouldn't look back.) "But she hasn't attacked the town, she didn't take all our food, she saved me when she could have let me fall..."

"I already found more than one reason for that," Rainbow Dash said with just a touch of snit, offended by both Twilight's slip of memory and 'potboilers'. "She had to save you, no matter what her motivation was."

"...Discord... we're giving him a chance here," Fluttershy half-whispered. "...is he the only one?"

Pinkie answered that. "Sometimes the fastest way to turn somepony into a bad pony is by telling them they're a bad pony." Looking around at the others, gentle blue gaze steady. "I don't want to say that about anypony before we know."

"I agree," Twilight said. "So far, she's been dangerous by accident -- or when she's scared. There's a risk there, but -- again, tonight. With the way her changes are visible if you're watching her long enough, and how hard it is to hide that pain or manage with it -- I don't think she goes near other ponies much. Maybe -- hardly ever." A life of agony, in self-imposed isolation. Can't get that close to anypony or risk letting them get close to you. No stability. Feel coming and going. No friends and no hopes of ever having any, because nopony would ever stay near you and you're afraid to be near them...

Too many horrors under waking Sun, too many for the Moon, and Twilight found herself hoping not to remember her dreams again.

"Maybe -- we were the first since -- her mark appeared," she forced herself to finish. "Tonight... we'll make plans, I promise: we have to. But if we don't threaten her or upset her, I don't think she'll attack. Attacking means no answers."

Spike looked up at Twilight. "And what if not having answers is what upsets her?"

The body gave them a possible answer.

They had taken a different route back. Several of them were carrying maps of the area (provided by Quiet, who had passed them out without comment) and Rainbow Dash occasionally took a brief jaunt up so she could stay oriented on the town. Twilight had felt she'd picked up a last bit of feel heading towards one edge of the clearing, and broken small plants showed something had rushed through the area. Moving away before completely releasing the bulk of the field. She had likely gone that way, and following a bit of her trail might find more clues -- where she'd come from, where she hid...

...who she'd killed.

Rarity drew back, almost reared up in her desire to get a little further away. "Oh, no... the poor --" Stopped. Looked again. Looked harder. "No, I take part of that back. I regret his death, but this is not necessarily a poor thing. This is an exile, and the crime was theft from the pack."

Nearly all of them looked at her, and none with more tension than Spike.

She had the grace to blush. "I never -- entirely broke off contact." Stopped the protest before it did more than scare several hiding birds. "No, everypony -- it's quite all right, and I always told Twilight where I was going and when I would return. She even accompanied me a few times at random intervals, to keep them on their toes." (There was a second immediate blush visible within the purple coat -- especially as her brother hit her with a glare which was just a little cooler than his fire, a promise that there would be a Talk coming later...) "I am not a fool -- and neither are they. We came to an understanding. I would return every so often and show them where to find a few gems within their mines, of my own free will. I would keep a portion -- very well, a large portion -- and freely depart. In exchange, they would not attempt to kidnap any ponies, I would not ask the Princess to evict them, and we would all keep our voices level and controlled. Spot, Fido, and Rover -- yes, those are their names, it took moons for me to learn them and please do not laugh any more about it -- aren't always happy with our arrangement, but they lost status when we all got away. Pretending it's a trade agreement of sorts is the only thing keeping them as anything close to alphas. It gives me gems, it keeps them out of trouble, and other ponies are safe. My main cost is an extra-long spa day when I emerge."

Twilight sighed: another secret out. "I was always supposed to call everypony and alert the Princesses if the Diamond Dogs ever tried anything. Their tunnels -- wouldn't have lasted long. As it is, it's a truce with attached trade agreements in everything but the signing -- and they don't really write. She's always come back safely: they're still scared of her. And at least this way, they get some gems -- since she doesn't take them all." Not quite. Sixty percent, tops, and that only with the highest grades.

Rarity managed a small smile. "'Tyrant of the Underdark', Rover once called me. I think he meant it with respect. But -- I have been among them often enough to pick up some aspects of what culture they possess. To know what their crimes are. Do you see the scar on his forehead? Recent wound, isn't it? Odd shape? And no part of the ones which killed him. That mark indicates a Diamond Dog who stole. For all their greed over gems, they share freely with the pack: to each their own portion according to the work they had done to gain them, and always at least enough to adorn. Theft... they do not look kindly on theft. The wound is made so it will scar in that shape, a special kind of dirt rubbed in to discolor. He would have had to scalp himself to be rid of it. Any Diamond Dog who so much as glimpsed him would know this one had stolen from a pack and been exiled. No tunnels would have taken such a one in: the punishment is for life. And the smaller scars next to the main one -- he was exiled with a group. Four others. Three males, two females. They do write in their fashion, Twilight -- they simply don't read anypony else's words."

"And he was killed by a pegasus."

The others turned and looked at Rainbow Dash.

There was no fury in her magenta eyes, no anger or protest. Just acceptance of the facts. "You felt a trace of what had happened at the tree, Twilight. I can feel -- something on him. It's hard to -- we'll go over it later, I promise. But for now -- he was hit by wind. Wind which a pegasus changed. The feel is all over his body -- almost gone, but... there's still enough. Another day... too late..." A small head shake, and then there was a touch of light confusion in her voice. "It is weird -- talking about this. It's not a secret or anything, but -- we're taught everything -- with other pegasi. By pegasi. Flight camp, flight school, colleges." (Fluttershy sighed: ponies noticed and wondered why.) "There's never any earth ponies or unicorns in those classes. And after, it's like boasting -- about flight. Just flight, when other ponies -- can't. You don't want to keep making ponies think they're -- missing something. Only other pegasi understand how it feels, but we pretty much all feel --" (another sigh, this time softer, mostly missed) "-- and so -- when everypony can do it, why talk about it? And when everypony can't do it... we knew Twilight for nearly three years and Rarity for longer before I ever heard 'feel' come up and... maybe it's the same. It's so natural that you don't talk about it. It's like talking about breathing." She visibly rejected the comparison, went back to what she saw as the better one. "Or flying -- when other ponies can't."

"I understand," Twilight said, and she did. "No pegasi or earth ponies in my schools... Luna's shoes, what don't we tell each other just because we don't think about it...?"

Applejack shuffled slightly, moved her tension-riddled body towards the back of the group.

A rare sigh from Rainbow. "Anyway -- it's the same feel -- I can't believe I'm using that word -- you had this morning, Twilight -- just weaker because it's been longer. He was surrounded by wind at some point. Maybe another one of those dust devils. And then he got thrown out of it and -- you can see the tree. Broke his back, and..." She looked down at the body again. "You said her magic feels -- off. This is so weak now, but -- I can't be sure, and... I -- oh, horse apples, I don't know with him, there's just barely enough to feel. But your residue wasn't -- right... buck it, I don't have the words..." She looked as if she wanted to ram her traitorous head into the nearest tree for having failed her. Or another tree, one not quite so bloodstained. "Why don't I have words...?"

"You need a better editor?" Twilight risked joking, and it got a small grin in response. "So -- we don't know if she killed him, but -- the odds are pretty good. Rarity -- would they have attacked her? Exiles without a mine to make her work in?"

Rarity was taking on that faint undershade of green again. "There are -- reasons, Twilight. Not -- kind ones. I -- oh dear, this is only going to make you worry more and I assure you that our local Diamond Dogs would never so much as entertain this thought, not even as a passing fancy... please don't yell or scream or faint, but... Spot told me there are legends of those who ate ponies -- and at least you all held most of that back. There were supposedly days when they were able to keep slaves, and that was how they -- disposed of the old ones. No, I did not ask how we tasted, Pinkie. But -- they do badly under Sun and Moon. Our local pack will at least venture outside for brief periods: most others will not risk even their minor sojourns. They don't understand how to survive on the surface. Five exiles, and the scar was still healing... too soon to have learned? And then they find a pony -- a single pegasus, alone, and -- in pain. Appearing weak. Fido spoke to me in confidence once about -- kidnapping. What they are taught of how -- and who. I think he was worried that I would travel and some distant pack would be stupid enough to try a second time, so he wanted me to know in order to protect them..." She trailed off, took a few deep breaths.

"Go ahead, Rarity," Twilight gently encouraged. "I know this isn't easy."

"Rather not. Well -- on the whole, they want pegasi because flying is, to them, useless in the tunnels except for freeing gems near and in the ceiling, and weather changing does little underground. But they can't catch them. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash can evade them simply by taking off and hovering out of reach. Unicorns... we make them nervous. They don't understand magic beyond the faint bits they have for their own -- oh, they have their tricks, girls: that tunneling is not entirely without power behind it. The range of our abilities worries them, as they can never know what a single unicorn is truly capable of. And earth ponies --" a look at Pinkie, with Applejack out of sight "-- they are terrified of. He couldn't say why. Just that he was taught to leave them alone unless there was no other choice. I suspect a truly bad experience some generations back, exaggerated and partially lost in oral history. But a lone pegasus -- one who was hurt, who might have looked as if she couldn't get away -- that would be their ideal catch. For slavery, or -- worse, as they would have had nowhere to keep a slave and -- no idea how to catch the local food. Yes, they might have attacked her: five on one, seeing easy prey. I imagine what happened next would have -- been a surprise... Spike?"

He looked up at her, waited. He always did.

"You are -- the best digger among us. I will help, and I'm sure the others will too, but -- if we are concealing, then I would like to bury him. He committed at least one crime in his life and was likely trying for another, but -- he never would have been content to rest under Sun and Moon. Let us return him under the ground and perhaps in that way, he will find some small measure of peace. A final gift." Even for one who might have tried to kill a pony, who didn't deserve such a favor, Rarity had something to give.

The little dragon nodded and began looking for a good place to start.

"Rainbow Dash?" The pegasus looked away from the body, back to Twilight. "Can you track her from here?"

This negation was slower: the colors remained distinct. "It usually doesn't last long in air, Twilight. Seconds if somepony's just flying normally. We can't track each other just by feeling which way somepony's gone, not unless they're moving super fast and there's no other air traffic around... and in here, with the forest this dense... she probably would have been grounded anyway. Maybe -- depending on where she was in her -- cycle -- she couldn't fly. But she could still move the wind..." How shaken was Rainbow Dash? So shaken that she'd momentarily forgotten to try and hide it from the others -- and there she went. "It's all right! Like you keep saying, we've got her tonight! All seven of us. We'll talk more when we get back in, and then you can do what you do second-best after boring everypony to sleep with lectures or that dumb Star Swirl: come up with a plan... wait. I'm -- gonna be -- lecturing, right? That's what it's going to feel like... do not fall asleep on me, this is crucial stuff..."

She's killed. Twilight could see what Rarity had proposed, could easily imagine the scene. Should that have been the way events worked out -- then self-defense, nothing more. But -- she had killed.

One dead.

It became two before they reached Trotter's Falls again. This fallen Diamond Dog had retained her vest, but Rarity was unable to identify her home tunnel. "The gem pattern is the identifier -- and if you steal from the pack, you lose what the pack granted. She did not take their gems: the pack did..."

And then there had been a second burial, with Pinkie Pie saying the words over the body again, ones she assured them the Dogs wouldn't mind. "We return to the earth what came from the earth," she'd said, voice soft and as calm as they'd ever heard her. "The lost life which was first granted by soil will bring forth more life in time. The loan is repaid. Give those who come after the protection of the contract completed -- to come forth, to work, to honor, and to return..."

She'd said it was something her grandmother had recited when her grandfather had passed into the shadowlands. Words for rock farmers. And that no true Diamond Dog would ever object to those.

(There had been a moment, after she'd finished speaking, right after she'd walked around the grave three times, when it had seemed as if her curls were gone, just a single second in which the pink mane and tail had collapsed into straight falls of slightly darker hue. But then it had passed, and they'd moved on.)

That was all they found during their ultimately meandering, seemingly random trek through the wild zone. A broken tree, a set of hoofprints, a pair of dead bodies, and fast-fading feel -- two kinds. That and Twilight knowing that there were lessons coming, teachings in pegasus magic and flight. Lessons from Rainbow Dash, ones she wasn't sure she could pass -- but at least now there would be lessons. Plus a stranger returning a little ways into the future. One they had to plan for before sunset came, and there was still Pinkie and Fluttershy's appointment with Doctor Gentle and a potentially looming party and a letter which she hoped would be coming back and the Princess only knew what else -- but even if the Princess knew, there would be no word.

They knew little more than they had: Twilight's telling them her late first spell theories on the way in had just added extra questions. But at least a single thing had been settled. No flight -- but still love. There was that, and it kept the worst of the horrors away from Twilight's thoughts as they made their way back, rejoining the original trail near the lost foundation (with Dash's help), and it was easy from there. A peaceful time granted by the wild zone, which had found other ways to instill trauma.

Quiet was at the edge of the hoofball field as they emerged, his nearly-imperceptible field raising and lowering a whistle from his mouth. "No, you may not use your horn for anything other than a deflection! And it's a physical deflection at that, Splendor! Do you really want to have your horn lit when one of the balls comes right at you? If you want a backlash so badly, just come over here and I'll inflict it: maybe it'll knock some sense into you! And Darkwing, if I see your hooves more than three inches above the ground one more time, I am bringing out the penalty rope! Dear Celestia, is this a scrimmage or a scrum? Do I need to start going through the armory and fitting all of you? Because part of it was cataloged this morning, I now know I have at least one colt size in there, Luna only knows how that happened, and if I have to wrap bodies in steel and horns in worse to enforce the rules -- oh, Twilight, didn't hear all of you come in -- Sun and Moon, very nice Royal Greeting Stance, everypony, but get up -- Princesses, present company excluded, why do I bother -- hmm... And is that why you went out? You're hardly doing a good job of concealing it, Miss Applejack."

The farmer jumped. "Ah -- what? Ah didn't -- Ah don't know what y'mean --"

He grinned. "Please. I can see the outline of the apples in your saddlebags. No Eastern Red Giants in your orchard, I take it? I'm vaguely familiar with the attempts at seed restrictions and artificial price hikes. Well, I'm certain Ponyville won't object to a new flavor and since the orchard is nopony's property, it seems to me the seeds belong to whoever brings them out. Just plan your plantings well -- as I'm sure you saw, they take a lot of space."

Applejack blinked twice, adjusted her freshly-slipped hat. "Um... yeah." With increasing certainty, "Believe me, Ah'm lookin' forward t' getting 'em in. Ah haven't had these since Ah was in Manehattan an' Ah never thought Ah'd get some in the Acres. Ah'm thinking 'bout mailing a few ahead so the family can get started before Ah get back. Y'still got those directions t' the post office handy, Mister Presence? 'cause it's still early enough t' catch airmail out, by Ponyville standards."

He nodded. "If you'll stay with me a few minutes, yes -- oh, Luna's tail, that was a foul! Don't think that just because I'm speaking to her, I'm not watching you! Darkwing, if you don't get yourself over right here now on hoof, I am going to tie the penalty rope so tight, your parents will wonder where I found a turkey to squawk! Of all the blatant..." A groan. "Or perhaps more than a few minutes. I don't suppose you've ever refereed hoofball?"

"Played," Applejack replied. "Refs -- mostly ignored."

Quiet sighed. "Yes, a perfect example to hang around me while they're practicing. I'm sure you have a lot to teach them. And they'll try to get away with all of it. Miss Pie? Miss Fluttershy? The Doctor is in at the moment, but he's napping. I'm trying to make sure he gets plenty of rest, mostly in spite of himself -- the more he's off that leg, the faster it should heal. But he should be up in a short time to join the two of you for your update and tales. And here we have Darkwing, looking vaguely ashamed of himself in a way which he sincerely hopes I will take as contrition and not gave him the penalty he so richly deserves. Should you remain in town long enough, you'll become very familiar with that look. I personally see it at least twice per practice session. Hold very still, young colt, and you won't need to be preening bits of hemp out of your feathers tonight. Twilight, I generally wouldn't discourage education, but if you ever teach this one about counting coup, I have another rope and I am only incredibly afraid to use it..."

It is called chaos terrain.

There are places in Equestria where ponies do not go. The wild zones -- that's one thing. There is no overt control there, and some of the other sentient races take their residences along with the monsters and plants which do far more than just taste good on a plate -- some of them can and do try to eat ponies right back -- plus magic with no grounding or purpose and everything else unnatural -- but there are ponies who will venture inside, because the wild zones also hold items worth bringing out. There are things which can be done with the bounty from the uncontrolled regions, and some of those bring bits by the saddlebagful. He is becoming increasingly familiar with the riches of the wild zones. He has been forced to learn a large number of things since --

-- it happened.

He is about to try something new.

Research, so much research -- and nothing. Oh, he found something, all right -- he found the place where they should have been. He still swears he was in the right place, exactly the proper location -- and there was nothing except wild zone. He has wondered if they -- hid from him, somehow. Decided he was not meant to find them and concealed themselves accordingly. It's possible. Almost anything is when it comes to that subject. He intends to return to the chase later after still more research has been done. He might have been in the wrong place after all, or could find a way to break any concealment. It is not a road he feels he is anywhere near finished with -- not yet.

But he cannot commit to a single plan. It is possible that they will remain hidden, that neither he nor anypony else will ever find them within his lifetime. He can study, research, unearth the dustiest of texts (and a certain private library has proved more helpful than he would have dared to dream), but it ultimately may come down to his magic versus theirs -- and that is a battle he feels he would lose. He is stronger than he ever suspected, never knew what he could truly do until the day this path began -- but not that strong. Learning every day, yes, every day until this plan which he is starting to call The Great Work is complete. But even if there's a way to beat such things and he learns it, using it -- another matter. And so he has, after much study of lost works and words believed to be insane, created a backup plan, one which may have to become the primary.

It is eleven moons before his eldest will arrive. Fourteen after -- it happened. Nearly all of that time spent in study and travel, acquisition and interpretation, desperately seeing answers and forming the first steps on the path. And on this day, late dusk in the nightscape with the Sun fast-descending, years before there was a returned Princess to take control of her own Moon and the mere possibility was a dream in only one alicorn's mind, he has become very probably the first pony to venture into chaos terrain for the first time since it formed. Or was formed.

He wishes the first way had succeeded. That he had been able to find them. But he was not. And so after looking through the lens of recorded madness, he has found a second means. It begins today. If he is lucky. And if not -- one thing he has learned: there are always more beginnings.

The chaos terrain is -- just that.

He is fighting the urge to run. To gallop, or even teleport. Anything which would take him away from here. Something deep in his blood recognizes the nature of the place, that ponies should not be here and things happened to any who once were. His tail is lashing, ears back, his breath comes in great shuddering snorts. But his mind is overriding his body. A heartbeat-by-heartbeat accomplishment -- but he is managing. He will do the needful. Nothing will stop that, not ever, not if -- The Great Work -- is to be complete.

With great effort, he makes himself look at the ground. There is consistency within single hoofsteps, but not much further than that.

There: broken land, jumbled rock, with great spikes of thin metal jabbing up between crevices. There: a patch of greenery, or a color which only registers as green to his eyes because he has no sight or feel for what is truly present. Something which could be plants is in that area. They move. They reach towards him and stop at the border. He still will not venture too close to the line. They could be bluffing.

Lava in that next section, three body lengths across. A ice field twice that size on its right. Curious, he does force himself closer to the later and notes with faint amazement that he can feel the cold only when he puts a hoof over the line and holds it above the ice. He has to stand on a portion of gameboard to do so, although no gameboard ever bore such colors.

Desert. Then tundra. Oasis, followed by rain forest, accompanied by a two-Celests high section of mountain slope which he must cross -- and when he steps onto it, mere feet above sea level, the air grows thin and cold as snow whips across his body, blinds him for several hoofsteps until he tumbles off into plains.

Ridges and cracks now, running through dead ground, intermeshed, as if dozens of miniature rivers had run through this portion before going dry. He feels oddly -- tall -- in this section. After a time, he stops looking down.

A smooth black surface which feels like nothing he has ever walked across and nothing he ever wants to walk across again.

And onward.

Most of his will is being bent to moving forward. Not running away, and he wants to run more than nearly anything else ever desired in his life. But even more than that, he wants The Great Work to be achieved. There is nothing he will not do for that. For her. And so he forces a step and another step, as his will drives him and his magic is forced to reach outwards. To feel for something he is not certain can be felt.

The practice was simple. He stood still and tried. Over and over. He could not stay for very long and had to go at odd hours or somepony surely would have inquired why: the lies he had made up in advance thankfully remain untested. And when he believed he had felt something on repeated tries -- he came here. It had taken so much to find that last bit, what virtually everypony must believe doesn't even exist. He had nearly wept when he first believed himself to have felt it -- nearly. Emotions have barely come over these last fourteen moons, a dam waiting to break with much building behind it. Tearless sorrow and determination freely flow through. And love -- always love. But not laughter. Not yet.

He needed that feel. It was a first step. It was a necessary one. But he has been studying so much, chasing down so many possibilities in seeking paths, and he is all too aware of the mind's power to delude itself. He might have believed himself to feel simply because he needed to so badly and he was in a place where that illusion could have been brought onto himself. This is a truer test. He will succeed or fail.

This is where it should be. In chaos terrain. But he does not think he can feel very far yet: he had to be within a few hoofsteps when what still could have been delusion finally came. So he pushes himself through the areas where he can step -- walk without dying. And if it's in another, if he should somehow find it and getting it would mean instant death... what then? Retreat? A new plan? Would it move?

Hail sticks to his coat. Insects half the size of his hooves try to land on his flanks and bite: his tail lashes them away. Sand blows into his eyes --

-- and he feels it.

He stops. Blinks, uses some of the water in his canteen to wash the grit away. The feel remains. Not the normal one, not that of magic, but that which he has desperately been training himself to try and find, what he believed (hoped) he had succeeded in attuning to. The weakest sense, just barely there, insisting on registry simply because he has been trying so very hard, that barest remaining trace of -- Other.

He is within a mere two body lengths.

Then one.

And then he begins to dig.

Author's Note

In the 'credit where credit is due' department, Groaning Grey Agony came up with the term 'malicorn'. Twilight creates and rejects it here -- at least for her own use.

Inspiration

There was a list Twilight had never written down, one where every entry was something she kept hidden from herself. None of the items on it had ever been checked off. Her subconscious read it every day before once again burying it beneath any possible waking notice. Twilight lived by that list and had, as of a little over three weeks ago, been adding to it without any true knowledge of having done so.

Of course, it wasn't the only one. Twilight had a love of schedules, of check marks, of virtually anything which would make the universe function in some kind of comprehensible order. It's all right for a train not to run on time in Twilight's world, but the conductor should be able to break down all the reasons for the delay and work to make sure none of them ever happened again. She had an affection towards things which were predictable and even more when that certainty of sequence sprung from nature itself, since that was a sign of the world trying to get it right. Ponies who wished to make a favorable first impression shouldn't give her flowers, but flower clocks. This species opens its petals at four in the afternoon and closes them at five, just in time for another to take over. Others make their move at night, adapted by centuries of natural background magic to receive nourishment from Moon, when there's a little less competition to worry about. Get enough different types together -- about three square yards to make it all work -- and you'll have something accurate to the quarter-hour: hardly perfect, but it shows nature is trying and Twilight would truly appreciate the effort, including that involved in gift-wrapping three square yards of earth and carrying it along in such a way as to make the presentation into a surprise.

(She spent a moon in her third year trying to make one herself, but -- unicorn. The 'dragons might be natural gardeners' theory also bit the dust.)

When Sun and Moon moved as they should, when equinoxes and solstices arrived on schedule, every time the stars marched across Luna's sky in the patterns they always followed, Twilight knew the world was a place where discord -- and Discord -- hadn't won. It made everything else that much easier to deal with. The universe wasn't necessarily orderly by nature -- but portions were, and those portions could at least try to organize the rest. She had yet to realize the true value of having a little chaos around -- certainly not to the point where she would have written a letter on the topic. It was a lesson Pinkie had been teaching her for nearly three years, and Twilight still hadn't realized there was even a class in session. Disorder, missed deadlines, things which came out of bucking nowhere, and chaos -- those could still throw Twilight for a loop, or at least send her into the groove for a good long pace.

And natural events going off schedule, or those which operated by no true schedule at all -- well, those weren't exactly in her comfort zone...

They were watching what Quiet had assured them would be the last few minutes of the practice. The penalty rope was still being used. As was the backup penalty rope (although not on Twilight), and the backup to the backup, along with Applejack having taken out her lasso before doing the last series of knots herself. Hoofball was like that: a game where sixty minutes of supposed action could easily take place over four hours, much of which was occupied by the calling and enforcement of penalties from a rulebook which had, over the course of a millennium, reached the point where virtually nopony could actually lift it and most unicorns needed a double corona just to flip through the index. And in this case, it also had Applejack and the tiny subversive streak she typically kept hidden at the lowest level of her psyche -- the one which had chosen to peek out through her stress and whisper a few words into the ears of hogtied colts. "...an' he's only got the one pair of eyes, don't he? So the time when y'want t' retaliate for that last hit is when he's callin' one on somepony else. Jus' make sure yer standin' -- and Ah mean standin', don't want his attention at'tall -- nearby when that whistle goes off, a little out of his sight, an' then y'jus' move your hoof in an' out real quick..."

(Actual games work with a team of six referees, mostly so they can guard each other's flanks during their escape should the home team happen to lose. It does nothing to stop the penalties, but it does tend to add an extra thirty minutes to each quarter.)

Quiet missed (or at least pretended to miss) all of it, watching the children, calling slightly fewer penalties than would have been found on the professional level, and listening to Twilight. "Signs of Diamond Dogs? Strange... the only tunnels I know of are several gallops away, and they've never been known to poke their heads out for more than a second or two. They're well outside their territory." There was a minute-long interruption while more penalties were announced, enforced, and gleefully forgotten by most of the players. "I'll let the mayor know, though -- that's an extra hazard for anypony who heads into the wild zone, and the town should be aware of it. A one-sheet slid under the door of every home and business should do it."

Twilight nodded. "Rarity thinks there's a chance you've got exiles -- three of them." They'd discussed it on the way in: it wasn't as if the Dogs were likely to communicate with anypony -- and might not even approach one after what had happened to two of their number. But they were still out there, and could be more desperate than ever. Raid the town: virtually no chance. Take one more chance on getting a pony: unlikely -- but the odds weren't fully at zero for either. "Two males, one female, all adults. They don't know how to survive up here and the longer they're on the surface, the more panicked they might become. I just want everypony to be aware they're out there, before they try something stupid. But --" she sighed "-- there probably isn't much point to sending out more search parties to find them. They'll scent us before we see them most of the time -- and then they might just tunnel."

"And that is the voice of experience," Quiet noted. "Is there a story here, Miss Rarity? I hardly would have expected you to be an expert on the burrowers, especially given how limited their wardrobes tend to be."

"Most of them won't even consider my designs, not even after I spent half a moon on them! And trying to make something for hands... Celestia's shoes, no appendage should have that many joints, the gloves kept wearing out against the, oh, what was that word -- knuckles, and then they wouldn't trim their claws and you can imagine what that did to the tips..." Rarity took a breath, then tried two more. "Oh, yes, right -- there's a smidgen of story there, but I think we can save it for later."

Their host chuckled. "Somepony should probably be writing some of this down. I understand what you mean, Twilight, and I don't think the mayor will ask the townsponies for anything on that scale anyway. The Doctor was one thing -- this is another. And there really aren't many of us who go that far into the wild zone when apples aren't involved. Just alerting ponies to travel in groups for a while should do most of it."

Twilight hoped. It was a balancing act: make sure the locals knew about the dangers they had to be aware of without scaring them to the point where they could turn a potential innocent into a threat -- or something along those lines, anyway. Twilight also wanted her to feel secure enough to approach them, not hiding because there were ponies crashing through the woods in all directions. Maybe it was the search parties which flushed her out, just through having so many ponies in her area?

"I have been writing some of it down!" Rainbow Dash insisted with the slightly frantic tones of a pony who could see somepony else, one who was a little less wantonly cruel to the common comma, beating her to the copyright office. "Lots! I just need -- to polish some of it a little, that's all..."

Quiet's expression took on a faint layer of surprise. "A budding author? Well, keep it detailed, factual, and dry and I'll be sure to add a copy to my library. Add lies about scandal and sex if you want to sell two."

The brash tone was terrifyingly thoughtful. "Scandal and sex -- huh..."

"Dash, don't y'dare, Ah swear Ah'll get every rope on this field and make y'wish for the Running Of The Leaves because y'won't even tie for last any more, y'won't even get on the course 'cause y'won't be movin' --"

-- and the pegasus came down right in front of them, a scream of pain emerging as she contacted the ground.

One of the very rare metallic coats: a light touch of emerald across her entire body, a hue which extended to her eyes. White mane and tail. Adult. Half-covered in froth. And pregnant. Very pregnant. Almost as pregnant as it was possible to be without finishing -- which was the problem currently in progress.

"The doctor..." she gasped, "...they said he was here... please..." Her front knees buckled, and she made an effort to keep standing, to keep her belly off the ground. "...I need -- the doctor..."

The moment froze --

-- and the ice flashed into steam under the heat of action. "Right!" It was the first time any of them had heard Quiet seriously raise his volume and the reason for that was immediate: pain flushed his voice as the overexertion hit him. He kept going regardless. "Every colt and filly, practice is over, those of you with ropes and lassos get them off and then head home immediately! Twilight, I know you can lift her, carry her in, please... I cleared a room when I took him on as my guest, I knew this would happen several times before he had anything of his own again, it's on the second floor, look for the double-edged mouth-mounted parry blades and then take a hard left. Miss Dash, fly ahead, the Doctor is five rooms down from that, wake him up, I assure you he won't mind -- dear Celestia, she's fast. Madame, we're going to take care of you. I won't ask you to relax, but do know you're in the best hooves and fields available for all of Equestria, and there is no chance better than this one."

The pegasus squinted against the pain of the fresh contraction as Twilight's field gently raised her, looked down at the source. "...Princess?" There was an attempt at a midair dip. The belly didn't make it look any less awkward. "The Princess -- here?" Her eyes widened again -- and then, out of nowhere, "Please -- please bless my foal..."

Twilight blinked. ...what?

The pegasus, having clamped onto the idea, was holding on for dear life. Possibly two lives. "...you're here... you can make everything -- all right... please, bless..."

Twilight looked at Quiet. He returned the favor. No words arrived with the eye contact.

...okay... I always wanted to see the Exception at work and try to feel what Doctor Gentle was doing... at least, I did right up until I got a possible chance at it... "I -- I'll -- ask the Doctor if I can -- attend the birth?"

Another cry of pain. "...please..."

Twilight decided it was a course of action. It was something to do. It was anything which wasn't the word 'bless' and everything which was threatening to come with it. "Let's get inside, everypony! We've got a foal to deliver!" For a one-pony value of 'we'.

As it turned out, Doctor Gentle could wake up fast: Rainbow Dash later said she'd never seen a pony go from prone and unconscious to standing and fully alert so quickly. ("Too much practice," he would tell them over dinner that night.) He'd asked her to leave the room while he made ready and emerged less than two minutes later, covered neck through tail in the largest garment any of them had ever seen on a stallion, dark brown with numerous large pockets scattered over its length, several of which were laden with weight. "Birthing garment," he'd explained in a hurry as they moved towards the makeshift delivery room, Doctor Gentle limping along at his best speed until Twilight finally decided to save a few seconds by adding him to her field, which he took with aplomb. "I never know what I might need and all of it has to be close..." More softly, clearly hoping the new arrival (floating some distance ahead) would miss it, "And I'm horribly short on supplies right now: nearly everything was lost in the fire and all I have is what I've been able to purchase in town or have shipped in at emergency speed within a few hours, this is sooner than I thought it would be..."

Spike was running alongside them, with the little dragon holding his nose. It gave an odd tone to the words. "I can send letters to some ponies, Doctor Gentle! If it would get things back faster!"

Doctor Gentle smiled as he looked down. "I'm not quite sure what you mean, young dragon, but -- does the garment smell that bad to you? It's an old one which was at the town laundry when I left. I suppose some stains never fully come out. All right -- Shining, you truly wish the Princess to attend? I have no objections."

"...bless..." the pegasus whispered.

They both took it as an answer. "Very well. We three inside -- I'm sorry, young dragon, but a sentient who emerged from an egg might not want to see this at this point in his life -- and everypony else, do your best to wait for us in whatever space you can find. We may be some time..."

The door closed, and it was just the three of them.

Doctor Gentle glanced at Twilight as she released him from her field. "This is a messy business, Princess. Have you ever been at a birth before? No? Without meaning to be indelicate, things can emerge which are not the foal, and I have no garment for you. I realize you may wish to observe, but I recommend doing so from a slight distance."

Twilight didn't have Rarity's mild rupophobia. She wasn't all that comfortable with the range of concepts presented by 'things' either. And deferring to those who were at the top of their professions was practically built into her hooves. "Yes, Doctor." Twilight took half a step back.

This upset the newly-named Shining. "...but -- bless..."

Another glance, this time with increasing awareness dawning in the Doctor's eyes. "I understand. Shining, I assure you the Princess is bringing her blessing to our mutual efforts simply by her presence: words will await your foal's arrival so she can give the child appropriate ones upon first sight. But if you need more --" clearly trying to calm the mother-to-be down, his expression both telling Twilight that and softly requesting it "-- Princess, would you --" visibly thinking fast "-- invoke a blessing field upon this room?"

Twilight, her own mind working at full speed, coated the walls with soft, passive, doing-nothing-whatsoever glow. Shining sighed with relief, and Twilight got her onto the birthing table.

Doctor Gentle exerted his own field, helped Shining get her hind legs into the padded cuffs before carefully closing them. "At least this came quickly," he softly told Twilight. "Quiet ordered it yesterday via the fastest pegasus he knew and kicked bits around to make certain it would arrive shortly after the Sun rose."

Whispering back, "Do you -- have enough?" Because the room was virtually empty. There was the long low birthing table with its padded surface, almost large enough for a pony and a half, with Shining occupying about two-thirds of it. A smaller table bearing a silver tray which had a few scant instruments on it, objects Twilight had never seen before and wasn't sure she wanted to see in action here: she wanted to observe the Exception (which this particular birth might not even require), not -- whatever those did and how and she already knew where. A tiny elevated bath filled with warm water, which Rainbow Dash had placed in the room some time before they'd entered: she could see the splash zone around it. Three small bottles and two larger ones. And stone walls coated by glow.

Just barely at the edge of her hearing, "I hope." Back to normal volume. "All right, Shining, let's see where we are..." His horn lit --

-- and it took Twilight a moment to see the strangeness, something which hadn't happened when Doctor Gentle had been eating dinner. "Doctor?"

He glanced back at her again -- then made the correct guess. "Oh -- yes, I know it's odd. The heads of the Equestrian Magic Society were the first to remark on it: I truly never noticed before they did, and it only happens when I'm doing this. The sparkles will return for every other spell, but when I'm on the verge of or actually using the Exception, they vanish. There doesn't seem to be any harm to it. I'm preparing -- relax, Shining, the Princess has never seen this before and asked for instruction, simply feel honored to become part of her education -- but I haven't invoked it yet. Your contractions are very close, Shining -- but you're nearly two weeks early, and your foal is rather on the large side. I suspect this one simply couldn't wait any longer. The presentation --" and he carefully moved his front hooves across the pegasus' belly, made just the lightest of contact.

All expression vanished from his face. He looked at Twilight.

And she knew. The presentation isn't right.

"-- can be dealt with," Doctor Gentle continued. "Princess -- please continue your blessing."

Possibly more than the presentation wasn't right.

Twilight -- couldn't do anything. She didn't know how to invoke the Exception. Couldn't feel the foal. Certainly had no power to bless. She could only watch and feel as helpless as she had after the Elements had failed against Discord, the inversion of her friends and absence of Rainbow Dash taking the only hope she'd had and leaving it as rubble scattered across gameboard ground. Just as weak and ineffective as she'd been making her way up the stairs to pack, defeated and looking only to find a place where nopony would ever see her greyed coat again.

She intensified the useless glow. Shining smiled as she blinked back tears of pain, looked happy.

If the foal dies -- if the foal dies and I couldn't do anything to stop it...

...wait! There was something! "Doctor -- Gromway's Combiner..." Weld her strength to his! If he could use the Exception with her power behind it...!

He blinked. "I -- know of it, Princess, but I do not know it. And I have never been sorrier for that gap in my education."

Which once again left her unable to do anything beyond adding a few more lumens to the light.

"Very well," Doctor Gentle said. "Shining, I will have to move the foal somewhat. There will be additional discomfort from the internal shifting, but it will simply feel very strange. I regret that I do not have the medicines I would need to take some of your pain away, but mares birthed long before there were foul-tasting liquids in bottles. I will do my best to ensure we all come through it together -- all four of us."

Shining bit back a scream. "I -- trust you, Doctor... I trust in the Princess..."

...don't... please don't...

The Doctor smiled -- and made it worse. "As well you should," he said, and gave Twilight another look, one she could clearly read and wished had never been written. This mare needed something to believe in right now, and a truly helpless Twilight was going to be it. "Princess, this is the time. Shining, I know how difficult it is, but you must try to restrain yourself from pushing for a time. Do your best."

The sparkleless silver glow around his horn intensified, reached the absolute limits of a primary corona -- but did not go further than that. The same hue surrounded Shining, most intense around her belly.

Twilight, who had wanted to observe (but never like this, never this, not with a life at risk), stretched out her senses simply because there was nothing else she could do. Tried to get the feel of that altered field.

Power. He's stronger than I thought he would be. But it's not a working -- and yet it is. This is the most basic manipulation of an object, but there's a twist to it. I can feel where the field has been warped, but not how. The difference is present and visible -- but how do you copy it? I know he's tried to teach it, and I know he's failed... Luna's tail, no wonder ponies come from all over Equestria, he's just about the only chance...

Another, much lesser layer of frustration. There was the twist to the field. It was right in front of her. And she had no idea how to even begin duplicating it. Spell copying was hardly instant for her in most cases: it had taken six hard hours of instruction and supervision before she'd found the key to Rarity's gem detector and -- well, as she'd found out two days prior, she'd never quite achieved the same level of refinement. The mark did mean something and, as with her too-fast-approaching Moon-lit appointment, there were times when it could mean too much. But Twilight's mark was for magic itself, and that meant she usually did get the sense of a unicorn's personal spells when she tried hard enough, could learn to replicate the feel with enough study and practice. It was just going to take a lot more than a single exposure for this once-impossible trick -- and there were only so many births she could attend while she was in Trotter's Falls. Only so many she wanted to attend if this one went wrong while an innocent mare trusted in her.

I know he's doing it. I can feel him strengthening his field over selected areas. He must be -- grasping the hooves, maybe? Inside. But I can't figure out entirely how. Just that -- it works. And it's a miracle. If there had to be a single exception to the differentiation rule, at least it's this one --

-- but is this a miracle that's going to work?

Doctor Gentle continued to concentrate. "Almost there, Shining," he assured the mare. "Incidentally -- a filly." That with a smile. "You can cut your name list in half now. A very large filly for a pegasus -- and yes, that means her size, gender and race: I can feel the wings..."

Shining was crying now, still looking at Twilight with that trust, still smiling. "I -- wasn't sure," she gasped. "Unicorn -- four generations back -- my Second Mother's side... couldn't be sure..."

"I remember," Doctor Gentle told her. "Now -- she is all right." (Twilight's heart soared, Shining's tears flowed faster.) "There has been some strain on her from the presentation, but she will be perfectly all right once she emerges. You'll simply wish to keep her from exercising too much for the first few days. A little more --"

(-- and that twist in his field seemed to widen, became a channel and Twilight could feel something moving down it, a rush of energy like none she had never sensed before, something she couldn't begin to identify beyond the surge of resonance, so much emotion present as to actually impact her without being the direct target, a burst of hope --)

"-- and push, Shining!" he told the mare, volume suddenly increased, eyes lit by emotion. "I have her from my end -- your part is now! Push with everything you have, and bring her to Sun!"

The mare screamed. Tried to kick, with only her uncuffed front legs moving. Pushed.

It was happening --

-- and then it had happened.

Twilight stopped trying to feel the Exception, which had just been released -- and as he had said, sparkles seemed to flow back into the Doctor's field as he gently moved the pegasus filly towards the little bath. Stopped watching Shining's face, even though it was the strongest expression of pure happiness she'd ever seen. Stopped trying to do anything other than prevent herself from vomiting all over the floor.

'Messy business' had been the understatement of a lifetime --

-- please tell me that isn't a placenta, oh please, oh Celestia and Luna, I learned about 'afterbirth' but I never thought I'd see it, and -- well, there's muscles contracting everywhere, so I guess some of the wrong ones would go along and -- the smell --

-- it took four slow breaths (taken through her mouth) for her to retrieve any idea of 'I may someday have a foal of my own' and jam it back into the mental folder where it belonged. A folder which had nearly been thrown away a thousand times over the last few weeks to begin with.

"She's beautiful, Shining," Doctor Gentle smiled. "I'll have her to you in a few minutes... I need to clean her and do the standard tests first, but I already know she's healthy. Princess, if you'd like to say hello?"

Twilight forced herself to approach the bath. (She still hadn't released the glow.)

And she was beautiful, now that some of the -- muck -- was being wiped away. The same metallic tint which was in her mother's coat had manifested here -- but instead of emerald, it was ruby. Emerald eyes, though, almost all pupil, blinking slowly as the mind behind them made its first attempt to reconcile the new environment. No mane yet, although there was a bit of tail hair: obsidian. And --

-- how did that...? Twilight pointed a hoof at the infant's neck, inclined her horn towards the bruises.

Doctor Gentle's voice dropped to a whisper. "Umbilical cord around the throat," he told her. "It was -- closer than I want to tell Shining right now. I had to unwrap it inside before bringing her out. This little one nearly didn't make it, Princess. Close -- too close... but here she is, and that? Is the only thing which matters. She will live: she simply needs rest for a time. A moment -- removing caps never stops being tricky..."

"Caps?" It was something to whisper back, something to try (and fail at) moving her mind away from the nightmare which kept pressing against her imagination. A stillbirth, strangled in the womb. A mother crying from something other than sheer relief and pure joy. A funeral among the clouds. But for him.

"These." He pointed his horn to each in turn: two hard-looking shells of slightly translucent tissue. "Only earth ponies lack them at birth -- and perhaps the crystal ponies do as well, I have yet to go and see -- but then, earth ponies don't need them. On a pegasus, they protect the wings from the stresses of the birth canal: for a unicorn, they protect the mother from the internal wounds which might be caused by a horn. A capless birth... almost unheard of, and never without consequence for mother, foal, or both. I've had -- two. One of each. They..." A shiver, the pain of memory made manifest. "...with Treylani, I very nearly lost her mother: the horn cut, and the internal bleeding -- in the end, both lived, but it was as much luck as anything I did. For Snowflake -- for those I have nearly lost, he ranks perilously close to Pinkie, and there was damage to his wings --"

"-- Snowflake?"

Doctor Gentle looked at Twilight more directly -- then figured it out. "Oh, yes -- he did move to Ponyville about two years ago: of course you've seen him. I hope he heard the news of my return in time if he was one who decided to be on his way, but I'll certainly be happy to see him should he arrive. He's one of mine, Princess -- one I'm very proud of. I truly never believed he would fly at all, but he somehow makes up for his birth injury with sheer strength and force of willpower. Not only a flier, but one good enough to get into the Wonderbolts Academy. He had no real intention of joining them, mind you -- he just wanted to prove that he could operate on that level. Snowflake took what many ponies would have seen as an insurmountable limitation and used it for personal drive. He's grown into an extraordinarily determined, resourceful, and intelligent young stallion." The warm smile of purest pride. "If slightly overexuberant."

Which made Twilight giggle, just a little. "I've noticed."

"Yes, most ponies within about three hundred yards do... well, caps generally fall away after a few days on their own, but it does no harm to remove them early. Mothers are divided just about exactly down the middle on whether to soak them off with warm water -- and there's a lot of care involved in the removal then -- or let nature take its course. Some even save the things. I asked Shining during her first examination -- too early to use the Exception for checking anything -- and she requested the removal." He diligently worked to remove the caps, his field exertions precise and gentle. "Look at this little filly, Princess. One of her two great moments of destiny passed, and she has no awareness of it. All she knows is that she's here -- and soon, she'll decide she's hungry..."

Twilight blinked. "I don't understand what you mean, Doctor." And didn't.

He chuckled as one cap came away, began to preen the tiny wing with a hundred times more expertise than Twilight possessed. "It depends on what you believe, Princess -- and some ponies believe in destiny. That there are things we are meant to do. Ponies we will meet, things which shall be achieved, events which cannot be stopped --"

a wave of color spreading across the sky, six cutie marks triggered on fillies all across Equestria, none aware of all the others, the invisible bond made long before the tide of time began to push us together

"-- and for some who believe that, birth is one of the two great moments. To arrive safely in this world is to be made part of fate's tapestry. She is here, and now her thread will begin to weave through the work and touch so many others. Oh, there are supposed to be other moments -- naming is a major one and personally, I've seen too many ponies with names suited a little too well for their jobs to suspect mere and frequent coincidence or simply taking one's own name as inspiration for a career path. If you think on it, you'll probably come up with many examples of your own -- myself included, although it took some time for me to realize --" hesitated, resumed more softly "-- what I was truly meant to do. But for the believers -- birth is the first of destiny's two truest touchstones."

I need to spend more time with the library's philosophy section. "What's the other?"

"The one you would expect," Doctor Gentle told her. "The manifestation of the cutie mark. Some take that more as confirmation of a destiny, but as I see it, it's as often the start of a new road as it is the continuation of an old one."

Which left a momentary bad taste in Twilight's mouth. The thought that she had been destined from birth to bear that mark and go through so much pain... no, on second thought, those books could arguably stay shelved for a while, presuming anypony hadn't already checked them out just to get the autograph. Still, there was a need to reply. "I understand, I think -- I mean -- Pinkie..."

A deeper chuckle. "Yes -- not a mark you'd expect to appear in a family of rock farmers, especially if you know anything about their practices and traditions." (Twilight didn't, and books on the subject didn't seem to exist.) "And -- not one they --" stopped himself. "Her tale, not mine."

Twilight pushed the curiosity back: there would be no more details from this party, and she knew it. But since they were on the subject... "Doctor -- what is rock farming? Pinkie never says, and I always thought it was just a colloquial term for mining."

"I always understood the same..." The second cap came away. "But they never practiced it while I was visiting her. I don't think they wanted me to see the entrance to their tunnels. Then again, Pinkie's father was so hidebound that he barely wanted me to see Sun and changed his mind on that issue every other second --" and another stop, but this one resumed after a single breath. "-- no, that I can speak about, at least for this," and his voice briefly went harsh. "Should his mine ever collapse on his head, I hope Pinkie never hears of it. And that I do. But those aren't thoughts for first minutes, are they, newest citizen?" He smiled at the tiny filly. "Cleaned and freed -- yes, there go the first flaps -- and merely bruised: no scars will come from that first misadventure. So now I believe it is time..."

And he field-carried the infant to her beaming mother, set the filly down in the light of glowing walls. "Hello, little one. This is your mother... and I am your very first friend... and this is Princess Twilight, who will now give you words of blessing."

Oh no.

She flipped through hastily-memorized imaginary pages, checked the phantom index three times before forcing herself to face a simple fact: Bark Leaves had never attended a birth in his life or collected a single quote from those who had. It was almost betrayal -- and now she had to think of something to say...

Horse apples.

Oh Celestia, don't say that.

I didn't say that, right?

No, nopony looks freaked out. They're just -- waiting. Shining looks happier than any pony I've ever seen in my life and she thinks I did something when it was all Doctor Gentle, she'll never believe anything else because she doesn't want to and she's waiting for me to say something and she'll just lie there with that look on her face for hours while I find the perfect blessing which won't do anything just like I couldn't do anything during the birth, oh Celestia, Luna, why...

They were waiting for her.

She came closer, leaned in, gently touched her glowing horn to the infant's forehead.

"May all your friends be true," she whispered, "and may you be a true friend to others. Let happiness find you wherever you fly and spread in the wake of your wings. Live free, live long, without pain. Leave the world a better place than you found it with memories given to all who knew you and tales of the joy you brought repeated for a thousand years and more. Live."

Shining began to cry again. "Princess..." she whispered. "I can't name her after you... no pony will ever be named Twilight again... but... Our Lady Of The Dusk And Dawn... Dawn..." She nuzzled her filly. "My little Dawn Sky..."

And Twilight had to leave, had to release her field and get out of the room before it all broke loose, found an empty hallway because it had been too crowded with everypony waiting in the corridor and they'd probably retreated to the nearest room instead, thanked Celestia for the momentary privacy --

-- and that was the Tartarus of it, right there.

How many times had she sworn by them? More for Solar than Lunar, of course: that was just a question of time. Swearing by Luna had caught on -- quickly. Very quickly. There was a second ruler to swear by and it added a certain variety to the oaths, so why not? It had become at least semi-natural within moons and, after that one Nightmare Night, turned into automatic reaction. But it wasn't just swearing by them -- it was, at times, entreating --

-- no, it was more than that. There were times when it was prayer.

Shining had called on her. And through Doctor Gentle's skills, through no effort of her own, it had all worked out and all it meant was that Shining would call on her again, teach Equestria's youngest pony to do the same, and it would march through time, moving ever forward and outwards...

...there are thousands of ponies or more who might believe the same and -- there are ponies out there who would usually swear by Luna's mane or the Princess' shoes who might right now be saying 'Twilight's horn' and I can't stop them from believing in me...

Luna keep us under your wings.

Celestia stand her watch.

Twilight bless my foal.

And in that moment, it felt as if there was nothing she would not have given up to change back.

En Plein Air

The stone would not wear away.

Applejack knew Twilight had a pacing problem, was well-aware of the deep-carved groove in the library basement. She'd never understood it. When you had too much to think about, you worked. When you were stressed to the point of snapping, you worked. And when you'd worked too much and should really stop before you started to do something stupid like trying to harvest the entire Acres all by your lonesome, you -- well, even these days, you still might take a few seconds for clenching your teeth and perhaps even worrying at your mane a little before you could make the words 'please help me' come out, but before that, you worked. Sure, maybe walking around in a circle gave you time to think, but what else was being done? Nothing whatsoever -- so in the end, didn't that make Twilight's idea of intensive thinking a waste of time, at least in the sense that the thinking was the only thing happening at all and not necessarily getting anything accomplished? Think, fine. But think while you work, because thinking without action hardly ever got anything finished in the farmer's world and she didn't really understand why it should be otherwise for anypony else. Even Rarity sketched while she considered problems, or tried out stitch patterns on sample patches. Maybe fancy dresses were ultimately pointless -- honestly, what was the reason for creating something which was meant to last a season before no pony would ever want to use it again? -- but at least Applejack could see where work was involved.

(She never really considered that ultimately, she was raising a crop to be enjoyed for a few minutes and then forgotten until the next time: Applejack saw her efforts as a drop within the generational bucket. There were a number of issues where Applejack was at least something of a hypocrite, but that one was more a matter of long-term perception. Refusing to recognize that Rarity was, in a way, her own Manehattan road not taken, and the willful disconnect which had come from that -- a deliberate blind spot.)

She even understood how hard Rarity's work was now. The rearrangement of the marks had left her with the urge to create -- and no ability to do so. Applejack had imagination and used it, but generally as a means of temporal projection: what kind of crop are we going to need for late fall? What's the potential cider traffic? How many pies do we have to throw together for the festival and how many can the cart even carry safely? She would imagine those futures and then work towards them. But weaving dreams out of silk and fancy -- no. Of the other five, Rarity had always been the most alien to her, the pony she had the most trouble even beginning to understand. Twilight's drive to improve her studies made sense to the earth pony. Pinkie was -- well, Pinkie -- but the baker's roots went back even further than Applejack's: she had to respect that and even understood the decision to break away from them. Rainbow Dash's laziness irked her even on the best of days, but the weather coordinator could exert herself when she really wanted to and like Twilight, she had that need to push. And Fluttershy -- she'd always felt connected to the shy mare, appreciated how love of land and nature could have drawn the pegasus down from the clouds and kept her at ground level: even at their first meeting, Fluttershy had practically felt like kin.

Rarity, though -- the unicorn, with her odd tastes and worries about what others thought (and there was a little of that hypocrisy, not that Applejack had noticed) and incredibly skewed priorities, had less in common with Applejack than the farmer had with the average minotaur. They had come to a truce during the slumber party and in the time since, had found some degree of bond -- but it was arguably the weakest connection Applejack had in the group. Or it had been until the transfer, when Applejack had found herself staring at endless arrays of fabric, colors and types forming an unbreakable wall between her and what she needed to do. A wall she couldn't kick through. All she had been able to do was stare at them until the tears came and try to dream, try to think of anything which would coordinate or drape or at the very least not fall apart when she was putting the horrible ugly results on the dress forms. Nothing had happened. She had tried until she could have sworn she was beginning to sweat blood instead of froth, and nothing had kept right on happening. She'd been crying when the others had finally brought Rarity in, buried instincts about to restore that piece of the puzzle. Crying because work was hard... no, never in her life until that moment, when she'd realized that dreaming for a living could feel like wounding her own soul to see if it bled diamonds.

In the weeks since Twilight's change, she had found herself growing closer to the designer, even spending a barely-able-to-spare hour in the Boutique just watching the unicorn weave visions from desire. Because it was watching work. Hard work. Unlike pacing, which just wore away the library's basement and Twilight was going to find herself crashing into an abandoned Diamond Dog tunnel one of these days.

But Applejack had a lot to think about. Too much to think about, and there was no work to be done. No Acres to maintain. No local gardens she could peek in on and offer a helping hoof with unless she counted the koi pond, and how was she supposed to do anything with fish? Couldn't clean the castle because there were servants for that and she respected their need to make a living. Certainly wasn't going to catalog anything in this small art gallery and barely recognized what the word meant. ("Inventory? Fifteen paintin's, ten sculptures, one of those 'kinetic' thingees with all the soft little bell noises, an' Ah think that over there jus' got left behind by the cleanin' crew -- what?") So after Twilight had vanished through the door with doctor and patient, she'd found the little display room to wait in and --

-- started to pace.

Because there was nothing else to do. Because her thoughts wouldn't leave her alone. Because her tail needed to lash and Luna, she wanted something she could kick. Her muscles were made of taut wire, her skin felt as if it had shrunken under Sun, and she was oddly aware of her teeth to the point where she kept wondering if they were about to grind. Did pacing actually work for Twilight? At all? Did it work for anypony? Was there any chance it could work for her, with no work to be done and no other alternatives on the horizon?

So far -- no.

Ah'm runnin' out of options...

The thought surprised her, almost made pacing into something worse than worthless on the spot because the idea was so stupid. She didn't have any options to run out of.

Pinkie was going to talk.

No -- Pinkie was going to betray. Greater crimes could be committed against a pony, but not against a race. Pinkie had every intention of going up to Twilight and -- telling her. Everything. And given Pinkie's background, her amount of 'everything' might even be more than Applejack's. The stories said what had to be done when somepony betrayed or even threatened to. All of it.

Pinkie had been right. She'd left the lasso out.

And, in the oldest stories -- the neck...

...no. Ah can't. Ah never could. Not -- not Pinkie. Maybe not anypony. Ah can't do that. But if Ah don't figure out how t' take care of this, jus' me an' her -- she's a walkin' breach, Celestia, any moment she's in that part of the damn cycle, she could be in front of somepony who scares her an' -- then it's all out. Nopony but Pinkie t' help hide it, an' she can't hardly feel. Can't help stop it. An' usually, that wouldn't matter. It would still jus' be me against her. One pony against one pony. A voice against a voice. We'd cancel. But...

...what she did...

...she's shoutin'.

Yes, fifteen paintings, ten sculptures, a kinetic thingee, and what had to be some kind of unicorn implement for tidying up. She hoped. The circle had brought her past all of it. Several times. She wasn't counting the circuits, didn't want to start. That felt as if it would lead directly to Want It, Need It all over again, only with her own eyes twitching and a lasso encircling --

-- no. Never that. Not her. But --

-- shoutin'.

Apple Bloom. Young. Innocent. And, she had to face it, not the brightest filly in the world. Oh, her little sister had her moments, but when it came to some of the most basic things under the Sun, stupid. The whole ongoing Cutie Mark Crusaders experiment was proof of just how willfully dumb Apple Bloom could be, and never more so than a few seconds after the cutie pox had been cured, just after Apple Bloom had finally seemed to understand the lesson of patience -- the moment she'd thrown that lesson away. Kids were idiots and in Applejack's opinion, Scootaloo made things worse. While Apple Bloom was more than capable of coming up with some great acts of stupidity on her own, the pegasus filly had a way of diverting the other two away from potentially safe activities (although when the trio was united, fabric samples tended to explode) towards the dangerous, the foolhardy, the outright idiotic and, in Applejack's worst nightmares, the ones she had at least once a moon no matter what Luna did, the deadly. The farmer had thought about ordering Apple Bloom out of the Crusaders a thousand times. Known it wouldn't work just as many. The bond between the three was too strong, even if it generally seemed to have been woven from purest idiocy.

But -- Apple Bloom was close to the other two -- three if you counted Babs. She considered them to be her closest friends in the world. The bond between them might be as strong as the sibling one. Could be -- she hated thinking about it, was coming to hate this stupid circle -- stronger.

What would happen if the others ever asked her?

No -- that was a stupid question. Virtually nopony ever asked, had certainly never asked Applejack before this mission -- although Rarity of all ponies was now trotting around the absolute edge of it, she'd worked out the existence of earth pony feel on her own, if not completely for what. (There were times when they all lost Rarity in Twilight's shadow, forgot there was a second fairly major intelligence in the group -- and there were days when Pinkie made it three.) But other ponies -- they saw the Effect and decided that was all there was. That was the idea, or at least part of it. And it wasn't as if the other Crusaders had their magic yet. Apple Bloom did have hers -- well, at least the basics. Her sister could bring the Effect with the rest of the family, although hers would need some more time before it reached full strength. Most earth pony colts and fillies had the capacity to at least pitch in a little before they started school and long after the lessons of the stories had been taught: Apple Bloom was actually right on pace, even if she insisted that even this was something for now. The rest would come. Sweetie Belle was just barely beginning to spark and Scootaloo couldn't hover for more than a second: they were the ones who were behind (even if Twilight claimed Sweetie was on pace herself), and they wouldn't really talk to each other about magic until those magics began to truly manifest. And Apple Bloom had learned her lessons: she would listen and nod and delight in the discoveries of her friends. Without talking. Without -- volunteering.

Except -- they were so close, that trio. So very close...

Applejack had been told all the stories. And how so many of them ended.

rope hangin' from a tree branch, deadweight at the end

It was getting harder and harder to keep walking. Her tail kept lashing on its own.

Such a thing had never happened in Ponyville, of course. The stories usually took place in far older towns and cities, and they were all set long ago. And it had seemed to Applejack even in the first times she'd heard them that sometimes ponies took a lesson and turned it into a story so the youngest would be both more willing to follow along and capable of truly understanding -- but also that there were times when something happened and those who witnessed it made a story from the results. A cautionary tale. Oral history, passed down from one generation of earth ponies to the next. Granny Smith to her parents, who had told her and Big Mac, and they, with mother and father lost, had been the ones to tell Apple Bloom. Stories. Echoes of the past meant to never fade. It had happened, somewhere and somewhen. It could happen again.

Pinkie had been told the stories. Might have been told more stories, ones which ran older and deeper. Stories only rock farmers passed along as the self-proclaimed purest among the earth ponies, the ones supposedly closest to the heart. Applejack had possessed cartloads of respect for rock farmers right up until the moment a much younger Pinkie Pie, voice nearly shredded by memory, had told her the most personal of truths. She still respected the profession -- but not all who practiced it. Certainly not after she'd met --

-- don't wanna think 'bout that right now...

Pinkie didn't know. Should never know. A secret which was easy to keep. But -- Pinkie was ready to talk. Applejack had never heard an earth pony say they were about to betray. It hadn't been a casual decision on the baker's part: the mission and the ravine had needed to team up before it had been enforced, along with --

-- don't wanna think 'bout that neither, stupid brain, listen t' me --

-- Twilight. Twilight and the change. But Twilight was a unicorn in her head and heart, even Rainbow Dash could see that. Maybe the Princesses would never tell her. It was possible that she'd never find the feel, certainly not on her own. Nopony had to be told anything...

Except that Pinkie was ready to tell her.

Pinkie. Her friend. Her traitor.

Maybe that had been part of Discord's intent in assigning the mission. To break the secret once and for all.

No earth ponies here. Nopony but me an' Pinkie. Nopony t' know but me if she -- does it. At least t' start. But if she tells once, she can do it again. Or Twilight could. Twilight, who writes things down, who never had a lesson she didn't want t' jus' turn around an' teach...

Pinkie was in the room, watching her pace. Keeping an eye on the endless circle as the stone floor refused to wear away under Applejack's hooves. The baker's expression hadn't changed since they'd entered: placid, patient, ready to talk if Applejack was. The look of a clock which knew its ticking had accelerated -- and then started the gears turning on another. Turning faster.

Either Applejack fixed everything (and how could she? How could any single pony against this level of horror?) or Pinkie talked. And the consequences from there, oh Celestia, the things which could happen -- or the things this nightmare of a failed transformation could do, the things Applejack couldn't stop...

"What are you thinking?" Pinkie, warm and caring, seeing her friend in pain and wanting to help. Even though she was a source of the pain, one of many. She still cared. And she would still betray.

"Y'see that paintin' on the wall?" Applejack inclined her head towards the ornate frame. "The one with what Ah think is s'posed t' be a stallion on some kind of bridge, with the sky all red an' somethin' wrong with the water an' two strangers approachin'? An' he's jus' screamin' at the air?"

"I see it."

"Ah know jus' how he feels."

As it turned out, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie missed their appointment with Doctor Gentle -- or rather, had it postponed. The birth itself hadn't taken all that long: less than an hour for happening to become happened. But there were follow-up activities to go though: cleaning up the birthing room led it off, followed by watching a proud Shining Sky show her newborn to all of the Element-Bearers while gushing about the blessing which the Princess had bestowed -- and that quickly segued into the others staring at Twilight as the mortified (and something more, something which added still another layer of stress to the tally Fluttershy was continuing to keep) librarian tried to invent an invisibility spell on the spot. There was cooing to be done towards the innocent face of Dawn Sky, with Rainbow Dash as the filly's biggest (and first) fan. "Will you just look at that rib cage? That is the rib cage of a courier. She's going to be an endurance flier, I know it! And a metallic -- better buy her a date calendar tomorrow and start taking reservations, I kind of wished I was a metallic for a while -- um... at least until I realized how much cooler prismatics were! ...not to say she isn't totally cool or anything -- or that you aren't -- hey, did you check out her tail hairs yet? How cool is that color?"

But Shining had just kept beaming through all of it, the happiest pony any of them had ever seen. And there had been a first nursing, Doctor Gentle had realized no pony had brought in the paperwork he needed to fill out for a birth and sent for it before the town hall began to stress ("Either I get it in before the Sun sets or Coordinator will charge the poor filly taxes," and they couldn't tell if he'd meant Shining, Dawn, or even somehow both), Pinkie played the first game of peek-a-boo and somehow managed to lose, Rarity took a few minutes with some of her samples and created a newborn bunting while doing more than a little cooing of her own and making sure Shining had the Boutique's address because metallics were such a wonderful challenge to design for -- oh, there were things to do with a newborn in the castle which took time, including Quiet insisting that Shining pick out something from a room as his birth gift for the filly, something without an edge, please, or at least something with a safety cover for practice... which inspired Spike to hand over a loose scale as a keepsake.

It all took time -- more than enough time for the second near-future mother of the day to arrive. And after Shining had gushed in that direction, the newly-arrived panting unicorn mare had virtually dragged Twilight back into the birthing room to get the second Princess-issued blessing of a new alicorn's life, with helpless purple eyes staring back towards the group, silently begging for a rescue which couldn't come...

...and then with new mothers and children (the second had been a colt and that parent, not to be outdone, had named him Dusk) departed, they were having dinner, which was thankfully back to a more typical courseload.

Rarity was in a teasing mood. "So, Twilight -- how did it feel, attending while your brother birthed?"

Slightly more normal than anything else which happened since this started? "Names repeat, Rarity -- you know that." Although hers no longer would. There was a reason no fillies were named Celestia or Luna, a tradition which had solidified into invisible law -- and now 'Twilight' was apparently being added to that list. "'Shining' by itself is gender-neutral."

The unicorn giggled. "Yes, I know... it was simply the image. And it's possibly the only way you could get him into the birthing room at all. Should Cadance become pregnant, I simply cannot picture him attending. The valiant defender, all knees buckled and being pushed in with horn prodding his rear, perhaps..."

Twilight was about to take offense -- then considered it. "No -- field-carried. And kicking all the way."

Doctor Gentle chuckled. "Some fathers do make it in, young ladies. But they are very much the minority. So, Princess -- did you learn anything from watching me work?"

She sighed. "Not really, sir." The honorific had ridden back in on the knowledge that the Exception would not be anything close to an instant copy. "Not in the sense of how you're achieving it. No pony's ever been able to duplicate you, have they? Or has anypony managed it since that last article five years ago?"

He shook his head. "I try to teach, Princess -- I keep trying, and there is no shortage of midwives and physicians who see the value in having such a tool. But nopony has ever mastered it. Happily, it's not exactly a requirement for the job. I would say I use it for less than one in every ten births, on average, and some of those are simply minor positioning adjustments. You saw Dusk's arrival -- perfectly normal."

That much blood is normal?

The Doctor took a sip of his juice. "But -- if others could learn it, then more of those on the edge could be saved. So I keep trying -- and..." He sighed. "Believe me, I would give much to have a full corps of graduates benefiting from my tutelage. But it simply hasn't worked out that way."

Quiet gave his guest a reassuring look. "Some tricks always remain unique, Doctor. Twilight can probably think of a dozen unicorns or more who developed a personal spell which never appeared again in Equestria's history."

"Thirty-seven," Twilight automatically filled in. "Not counting the current generations. And those are just the ones who demonstrated their tricks and had them recorded... I always thought there was a lot more lost. Of course, Star Swirl's one of them and I hope pretending to fall asleep in that sauce stains your coat, Rainbow Dash..."

Pinkie nodded -- after her eyes were open again and her head was off the table -- and continued from there (while an unabashed Rainbow Dash licked most of the sauce off her own face). "And some are so rare that ponies just think they're unique. I knew Twilight wasn't the only unicorn -- unicorn at the time -- well, Nightmare Moon was technically an alicorn, or at least in the body of one -- who could teleport, because I saw Doctor Gentle do it before that. But she did it, and Twilight did it, I'm pretty sure Princess Celestia can do it, which means Luna can do it, so that's sort of five right there, or maybe four and a half, which is still a lot more than one..."

Doctor Gentle was clearly used to it. "About one in every three hundred, Pinkie. Uncommon, but most towns with a significant unicorn populace will have their share. The range of travel is a bit trickier... and because recoil is such a concern, most of those who can do it still only make line-of-sight jaunts or simply return to their homes, so courier duties remain the realm of the pegasi. Having such variance of magic among unicorns is sometimes seen as an advantage -- and also an issue."

Fluttershy looked slightly confused. "...I don't understand, Doctor... how can being able to do a lot of things be a problem?"

"Well -- most unicorns can't do a 'lot' of things, my eldest. The typical unicorn has their field and can manipulate the world around them with it to some degree through telekinetic movement. Most will have a personal spell or two, the majority of which do repeat in time over the centuries, and some of which can be taught. But -- not all can learn. There are a number of unicorns -- the majority -- who will always have their field, a personal spell, a few basics picked up from study -- and nothing more. Some have less than that. So if you need a given spell, you must typically seek out a unicorn who can use it -- and as the Princess said, some spells have never appeared a second time. Furthermore, even if you find that spell, the unicorn in question may not be strong enough to use it as powerfully as required. It is difficult for us to combine our strengths: the technique for doing so is incredibly advanced. Two who know it can merge fields with some care. Perhaps three. More than that -- the stuff of legend. So there are many wonderful magics out there among my race, Fluttershy -- but finding the magic you need at the intensity you require can be the search of a lifetime."

Twilight had to agree with that. "Part of what the Canterlot Archives does is track the rarest talents and strangest spells, just in case they're needed -- and we're still missing a lot. Some unicorns don't know their spells are rare or unique -- they don't have the education or haven't met anypony who would recognize the frequency."

Doctor Gentle sighed. "In my own case, I'm registered as a 'valuable resource'. Possibly part of why the news of my absence seemed to spread so quickly... Princess, with the topic raised -- I have a favor to ask, and it may seem an odd one."

It's not as if Equestria doesn't owe him a favor or several hundred... "Doctor?" Waiting.

Hesitant at first, words picked carefully, "Should Princess Cadance ever be with foal -- I would truly love to attend the birth. No midwife in recorded history has ever been present when an alicorn brought a next generation into the world. If she ever comes to be expecting -- would you ask her on my behalf?"

'Where do alicorns come from?'

Doctor Gentle didn't seem to have given up on his foal questions either. But as favors went, it wasn't only minor, it wasn't even ultimately hers to grant. "I can ask, Doctor -- but I don't know what she'll say."

"Asking is enough," the Doctor smiled. "And Princess -- I do apologize for helping to put you on the spot earlier. I am aware of how uncomfortable that must have made you, but -- Shining came to me because her family has a history of hard births. Her own parents -- failed twice before she came to Sun. She was hoping I would be what she needed to break the pattern. And then, with you here -- you gave her confidence, Princess, and Exception or not, there are times when that extra bit of belief can make all the difference in the world. You may have felt you simply stood, watched, and spoke -- but you did help her in a very real way. What happened after was more -- upponyship, I suppose -- but for Shining, you mattered."

I did nothing. I meant nothing. I can't mean anything. I shouldn't... But a nod was required at the absolute minimum -- and after a great effort, it was all she was able to give.

Doctor Gentle accepted it and then changed the subject. "Young dragon, are you feeling any better?"

Spike looked like he really want to grumble. Or worse. But all he could manage was an abashed "Yes..."

"And do you now understand why I said a sentient who emerged from an egg might not want to see such a thing just yet?"

Doing a remarkably good unknowing imitation of Fluttershy (one that made the pegasus giggle), "...yes..."

"Are you going to peek into the birthing room a second time?"

"...no..."

Kindly, "Very well -- and incidentally, does your species always scorch the landing site after fainting?"

Sunset. Dusk. Twilight, although the disgruntled and shaken former unicorn was wondering if anypony would be allowed to keep using that term. They'd made a fresh excuse -- checking out the cottage to see how Applejack and Pinkie Pie were being hosted, along with giving Twilight a chance to discuss the births in more detail than anypony should go into over food -- and had gone right out the back, making their way towards the falls. She wasn't due until full night, and they had no to-the-minute idea when within that rather wide range. So there was (probably) still time to plan (and some was done on the way) -- but for now, it was time to learn.

The path to the falls was entirely within pony territory, and that included the side detour. Curious, they followed the rising trail until they found -- a hollow.

At first, the trail widened so that three ponies could walk next to each other comfortably. The ground became more even as the sound of rushing water intensified -- and then the falls themselves appeared, a tumble of white foam directly in front of them. They were about halfway up the drop, with the trail slanting sharply behind the water, far enough back so that keeping to the cliff edge would leave a pony no more than very mildly damp. And in the shadows of that edge -- a small cave, one with smooth walls and a clean floor, oddly so for each -- at least until Twilight and Rarity simultaneously picked up on the residue which said the place knew more basic shield spells than a typical home safe and Fluttershy, blushing, spotted the lover's nest of carefully maintained blankets at the back. Everypony's romantic getaway, even with the horrible humidity from being so close to the water: the blankets had clearly been added to by generations of ponies, with those couples (on up) who would go on to marry stitching their names into the patterns. Others had brought pillows. Snacks were left behind by silent group arrangement and steadily replaced after each tryst. There might have even been an availability schedule posted somewhere in Trotter's Falls and they'd just neglected to sign up, which meant they couldn't be sure when somepony new would be arriving. But cave occupants couldn't see anything on the other side of the falling water, hearing beyond it was equally impossible -- and there was only a tiny portion of approaching trail to check the land and water below from before all vision was lost. Still, they could use the cave to talk for now, and Twilight set up the shield (easy: the cave was -- used to it) plus a little patch of field on the path which would theoretically signal them if somepony was coming up -- should they step directly on the very visible glow.

(Twilight preferred to think of it as an 'Occupied' sign and hoped nopony would come closer after seeing it. All the gossip columns needed was for somepony to find all seven of them in here. Spike had thus far managed to escape notice in the impossible relationship carousel, but if anything might do it...)

"O-kay..." Rainbow Dash carefully marshaled herself. She'd been a teacher of sorts before, of course, she'd made a point of telling Twilight that -- but coaching Fluttershy in cheering... "So. Pegasus magic. Yeah." She checked the field-covered cave entrance, then looked at the back of the cave, and finally moved to the ceiling. No replacement instructor appeared from any of those places. "Um... everypony comfortable?"

"Since somepony does seem to be keeping this nest clean, yes," Rarity assured her. "Normally I wouldn't consider lying down, but since the sheets smell of detergent and nothing else..."

"...it's a nice pillow," Fluttershy decided. "...there's something in the middle, though... I'm right on top of it..." She worked it forward with her hooves, pulled it out with her teeth -- and then hastily stuffed it back in before Spike could get a look.

Pinkie jumped in the air as high as she could, came down in a storm of feathers and flung cases. "We should totally have a pillow fight in here later! We've never all had one together!" She looked around for the most likely easy victim. "I call dibs on Rarity!"

Which finally got a completely inadvertent honest laugh out of a still-stressed Applejack, "Pinkie, Ah would love t' see y'try. All set here, Dash."

Spike nodded. "Ready." (He had originally tried to bring a fresh scroll with him, but Twilight had asked him to leave it behind. It hadn't seemed to fit the cover story and besides, Rainbow Dash was probably going to find things hard enough without anypony taking open notes.)

Twilight agreed. "I don't think she'll come too close to sunset, Rainbow -- she'll wait for full dark and for ponies to fall asleep: less chance to be seen." (Spike had taken a long (if unintentional) nap, so was ready to be awake for a while.) "Don't rush anything because you're worried about deadline. I'll peek out every so often and see if I can spot her."

Rainbow Dash nodded, and the uncertainty was actually visible in the movement. This wasn't her usual role. She was a good coach and strong coordinator when it came to group efforts, but had a certain tendency to overlook problems like a rapidly-spreading flu. And she assumed no student could ever be as good as the teacher, especially with the teacher being her -- but her leadership was still for things physical, not intellectual. And so, "Fluttershy... you were kind of on track for Cloudsdale University for a while, and your family --"

The yellow pegasus shook her head. "...I dropped out of school, Rainbow... you know that... and my family is -- my family. They aren't me..."

Which made the cyan mare bite back a sigh. "Fine... so... okay, pegasus magic..." Visibly searching her recently-traitorous head for words. "First -- what the Doctor said over dinner, about it being so hard for unicorns to work together? It's not like that for us. And we don't have spells to learn -- just techniques. Not everypony knows every one, and -- there are some tricks which are more rare than others, things a few ponies can pull off where others can't. I can -- only do -- two or three." Almost immediately, defensive, "My cutie mark is for speed more than anything else: weather is secondary. But any pegasus who knows a technique can work with another -- or a group. It's not always easy to coordinate -- you remember the waterspout, Twilight: with so many of us there, it wasn't simple to keep things under control. And it takes some practice. Technically, I guess it's kind of possible that any pegasus could learn every technique if they worked at it long enough -- but some are just better than others at making them happen, you know? But there's no ultra-fancy twenty years of school spell to make it all work."

Rarity frowned. "Wait -- tricks? Other than flying ones? How so? And what?"

"Well -- okay, none of this is secret, but -- we mostly just show off for each other... Like, I don't need a cloud factory. Not all the time, not if there's a lot of moisture in the air. A place like this -- hang on..."

Rainbow Dash took off, hovered a little bit over the cave floor, brought all four hooves together under her body. Began to do something which made it look as if she was operating an invisible loom, all of her legs weaving in and out, the motion constantly repeating --

-- and a vaporous substance which was not cloth began to appear, although there was some resemblance to cotton...

(Twilight reached out, tried to feel. Nothing there. Not a trace of magic at all, or not one her senses would recognize as such. And it was happening anyway.)

A single strand of white fluff at first. Then more, rapidly spreading out from under her body as the weaving drew in more mass. And the air was getting -- drier. Easier to breathe...

...Rainbow Dash was standing on top of a freshly-made cloud, just large enough to take a nap on. "See? All it takes is -- well -- I sort of collect the water that's already in the air and -- move it in a little more... If I keep gathering, I can increase the size of this one, or make it denser and get fog. Or I could just add to the moisture and really get it ready to rain. But it's not my specialty, guys -- I need a lot of moisture around. Other pegasi can do more with less. Or charge a cloud, especially when there's lots of different weather patterns in an area. They sort of take the conflicting energies and store them -- inside. Lightning on demand, and more than an average cloud holds. It was an old military technique... what?" Because with the exception of Fluttershy, they were staring at her. "Okay, okay -- I know you haven't seen it before, but come on! It's a basic trick. We just keep the cloud factories around because they're faster and not everypony picks up this technique anyway."

"So you basically learned this so you could make your own beds wherever you went?" Pinkie innocently asked, batting her eyelashes.

Dash fell for it. "Of course! Wherever there's enough water in the air --" The cave rang with laughter. "-- hey! There's lots of uses for this, okay? It's one of the only ways to dry out the air: you make clouds so you can make rain and get the stuff back into the rivers. We can't destroy water -- and we can't create it. And with lightning, we can't create energy. Same thing with heat -- okay, not quite for either. There's always a little potential lightning in a cloud just from the energy involved in making it -- and when we exert ourselves, we generate a little heat and we can use that. But mostly, we just -- move things. From one place to another. Concentrate or dilute them."

Why didn't I ever think about this? Even after the switch and seeing Rarity's fumbles, I never considered how much magic would have to go into weather manipulation. How fine the changes would need to be, on a large scale or a small one. Just making a cloud -- that's an act of telekinesis on a microscopic scale. And moving heat...

It was a field, it had to be. It was another kind of field, one which worked on a finer level than even Rarity could dream of. It was possible that the only reason a mark-switched Rarity had been able to do anything was because the designer operated on a plane of field refinement well beyond what most unicorns would ever achieve -- and, because it was still nowhere near what Rainbow Dash had just casually done, hadn't been able to make things work right...

"So," Twilight tried carefully, "when you start or end winter -- what are you doing?"

Rainbow Dash shrugged as she made herself comfortable on the cloud. "Move heat out, move it back in. There's always heat somewhere, or a place which needs it -- most of the time. But you need the heat so you can move it in the first place. I couldn't keep warm when we were on the way to the Empire because there was nothing to use. And I'm better with cold than the rest of you: most pegasi are -- and I was still freezing. All I could do was keep my own heat closer, and -- I'm -- not so great with that. And when it's too hot, you need a place to shift things to -- there's always the upper atmosphere, but that can sort of backfire if you do it too much..."

Rarity looked at Twilight, then at Dash. "I -- almost remember some of this," she breathed. "As if it was a dream I had and woke up in the middle of... that there were classes I took at some point in another life..."

Rainbow Dash, still trying to get on a roll, ignored it. Half a memory wasn't enough to let Rarity take over anyway. "Wind -- is putting your own energy into the air. That I'm good at. You've seen me make funnels all by myself, like with the parasprites." Carefully ignoring how that had ended and probably still (with some accuracy) blaming Pinkie for it. "It's harder to stop wind than it is to get it going, though. The energy still has to move somewhere. You can -- kind of try to make it go -- inside, but it's hard to hold and you have to use it up or redirect fast or you get in real trouble. Breaking up a tornado -- usually you just try to unwind it. It takes an idiot to try and absorb it and -- most of them don't last long. Mostly you try to cancel force with force, you know? Equal and opposite? But if there's too much wind and you don't have time to counter it or enough pegasi for a big one... sometimes you've gotta try and absorb..."

"Can y'do that?" Applejack, fascinated in spite of herself.

Reluctantly, "Yeah. It -- kinda sucks. Honestly, guys -- clouds, making wind, and moving some heat. More than that usually takes a team. Setting up seasonal changes always takes a team -- I guess maybe the Princesses could do some of it on their own for a city or a region, but they don't... Canterlot's team is good, though. Really good."

"And -- lightning?" Twilight, who was now wishing for a new wing (no pun intended or probably extant) of her library and planning a raid on the Cloudsdale book exchange program.

Dash shrugged. "Oh, anypony can trigger that. It's the aim..."

Images of a ruined Town Hall flashed across several minds.

"Okay," Dash continued without bothering to ask for questions. "Flight -- that's something I want to talk about with Twilight later in private: the rest of you don't need that. We know she can fly, but -- I don't think she'll go too high. Fluttershy said that when she made a break for it, she stayed close to the ground. I think -- she's worried about the pain and her cycle, both at the same time. That she'll have a spasm and lose control, or her wings could -- shrink -- too much and send her down. What that mostly means for us is that she'll probably do anything to not go high. That would usually keep the clouds away from her -- but after what Twilight saw..." The pegasus took a visibly deep breath, probably one deeper than she'd wanted the others to see, didn't notice. "This is where we -- get outside my range. I know Luna can trigger from a distance. But for pretty much all of us, our magic is -- like unicorn magic. In that it's in -- specific places. Wings and hooves, mostly. And eyes. I guess there's a trace in our skin so we can lie down on clouds, but -- wings and hooves to manipulate with, and eyes to see what you're doing. But because it's wings and hooves, you almost always have to make contact. I knew one pegasus in flight school who could set off lightning from about a body length away. He was really proud of that, because it meant he could prank without being suspected -- in theory, y'know? But the reality was that it tired him out like he'd just done a Las Pegasus to Manehattan run in half the normal time and when the teachers saw him panting next to the cloud... "

Twilight suspected it was more than that: a field which didn't project away from the body in most cases, one that stayed in and just outside the skin, hooves, and feathers. Tactile telekinesis -- except in that case, how could the weather coordinator reach out to gather in more water for her cloud? Maybe it stayed closer for some things than others. And Dash's classmate had figured out how to extend his reach for lightning, but at a horrific cost to personal reserves. Incredibly simple -- and at the same time, complicated beyond belief.

She's moving things too small to see. Casually. Only there's something in her eyes and she can see them. Princesses, what does the world look like through pegasus sight? And she talks about it like every pegasus in the world could do all of it if they just wanted to practice enough. Not all with the same talent or strength because fields are always going to vary, but -- every trick potentially in every pegasus pony... Celestia and Luna, why didn't I study...

Because -- she'd been a unicorn. And unicorn magic was a subject which she could study for a lifetime without ever completing it. She didn't have any need for pegasus magic because she was never going to use it. Something in the background, a part of everyday life which she took for granted because somepony else was handling it. Magnificently basic -- and simultaneously, incredibly complex.

One lifetime to not even come close to full and true mastery of one -- now there's another -- and as for lifetimes...

...stop.

Rainbow Dash kept going. "That -- I guess kind of brings us to what she could maybe do as a pegasus. We know she's good with wind. Better -- than me -- for some things. She isn't flying around to create and maintain funnels. I could make a wind gust by flapping -- but not what she's doing. I can -- maybe -- counter a dust devil or two if I move fast enough -- I know I can do it for a normal one, but I'd have to see how strong hers really are. Or -- feel it. I think wind is our biggest problem right now -- it's what she might have the most practice with, especially given that stunt she pulled on Twilight. That was an awesome trick -- I'm not praising her or anything! I'm just saying that -- inner core stable, outer layer twisting -- it is awesome, and it's a great way to throw off a new flier. Just not -- who she used it on, okay? But I don't know how she's managing that. It's like she's got -- I don't know because I've never seen them do more than stand on clouds or just trigger lightning -- but maybe she is -- strong. Strong -- like them."

"...like that part worked," Fluttershy whispered. "...not an alicorn -- but as strong as one..."

Hearing her own fears echoed from the others didn't make Twilight feel any better about them. "She's not all of us," she told them with a firmness she wasn't quite feeling. "She's not every Element-Bearer put together. Keep going, Rainbow."

The pegasus forced a nod, again just a little too visibly -- and didn't correct for it. "Lightning -- I can stop that. I checked the weather calendar and talked to some of the local Bureau members at the bar last night: they don't do much in the way of night runs. I can clear out every cloud around the falls for a good distance without anypony noticing. No clouds, no lightning. I can't stop moisture, not with the falls right here. But if we see her weaving, we break it up." Visible relief from the group: it had been one of the biggest concerns. "Heat -- we haven't seen her do it yet and it's one of the trickiest techniques. Again: no clouds, no rain -- and no snow or hail. I can kill that before she ever gets started. But if she can move heat -- it's a warm night and if she concentrates a lot of it in one place..."

This was Spike's territory. "Could she start fires, Dash? Or -- put heat into a pony?"

Rainbow Dash frowned. The thoughtful expression was becoming increasingly familiar. "Not into a pony, Spike -- putting heat in a solid is just about impossible: it bleeds off too fast. I guess you could make somepony sweat or maybe faint, but that's about it. Starting fires -- it's easier with lightning. Getting a whole lot of heat into a little area of air around something really small and dry and keeping it there -- it's a party trick, and it's a pretty boring party unless you're using it for a hothoof." A subtle grin suggested she'd seen it done. "But -- you'd usually notice. It would take heat away from everywhere else. I'm -- more worried that she'll shift heat out. Do it fast enough, get it cold enough, and it's almost instant hypothermia..."

"What keeps the heat in the surrounding area from pouring in to equalize things?" Twilight asked. Physics was one of her oldest friends and often read her bedtime stories.

That got her the 'duh' look. "Magic. It's not easy magic, but -- magic, Twilight." With a distinct of-all-the-ponies-to-ask air, "That's why heat transfers aren't easy. All the other heat keeps trying to, you should excuse the words, horn in."

Ask a stupid question... She got up, peeked outside at the deepening darkness (which wasn't too bad: the Moon was coming out and heading with wonderful predictability towards full). Nopony yet, and back to start.

"Sugarcube, what's the worst case here?" Applejack carefully checked. "It feels kinda like you're givin' us middle of the road things, Dash, holdin' back -- other than the major distance lightnin', stuff some pegasi could maybe still do on their own. If it goes as far wrong as it can, what are we lookin' at?"

The pegasus winced -- and looked ill. Day Of The Baked Bads ill. "I -- Applejack, this is deep college stuff, I didn't go that far, but..."

She couldn't continue.

Rainbow Dash couldn't talk about something --

-- so somepony else saved her.

"...tornadoes."

The group refocused, stared.

Fluttershy whispered on. "...real ones, full size. Hailstorms with ice bigger than your head. Or even blizzards -- we can't get a hurricane, it would have to start over the ocean... things out of the history books, when pegasi -- attacked earth ponies and unicorns almost every day..." The others looked at her: she blushed -- but the fear was still prevalent and dominant. "...before the Hearth's Warming Eve Accords -- we weren't -- nice. And... even after... it took time for everypony to -- change. Sometimes I want to believe that -- Private Pansy was a real pony... that somepony among us really did make part of the first try and she isn't just a character in a holiday story... I want to think one pony was different because -- somepony had to be... We were horrible once, almost all of us were horrible. We didn't care about anypony else... or each other, we fought each other. It was all about who could hold the most sky, and take the most from the ground. Like we could own sky... and steal everything under it... You read the book, Rainbow, you talked to me about it and -- how sick you felt after. I know you don't want to scare everypony, not like that, or make them think of us like that... but they have to know... If it went as far wrong as it could, everypony, we'd -- be fighting for not just our lives, but the whole town. If she can do... all by herself... what the old armies and mercenary companies could do together... ponies die..."

Pinkie got up, walked over to Fluttershy, lay down next to her, pressed close and tight.

"...I hate who we were," Fluttershy trembled. (Pinkie held steady.) "Hate it. But -- that's not us any more. We're not like that. Ponies change. I don't want to remember... what we were either, a long time ago, Rainbow... but if she can do it... they have to know..."

Rainbow Dash took a deep breath. The cloud under her seemed to vibrate slightly. "If -- not knowing how strong she is, just guessing -- like if, absolute worst case, the Princesses ever..." And another breath, just as deep, but slower. "If it goes all the way wrong -- as bad as it could go -- Fluttershy and I won't be able to stop it. We could weaken it a little together, and maybe all the pegasi in town could unweave it, but -- without the Elements..."

They waited. Waited for the words they all knew would come.

"...the fastest way to keep it from building would usually be to knock her out -- and if we couldn't do that, or we did and it didn't work --"

And like the Moon waxing towards full, they came.

"-- to stop it -- we might have to kill her."

A peaceful evening of reading at home.

Quiet felt -- well, not completely relaxed: he wouldn't be able to manage that as long as her fate was unknown. He was carrying the Doctor's stress along with his own, and while it was a combined burden which his weak body could carry, keeping his guests from seeing the effort was an extra exertion in itself. But discount that -- as nearly impossible as it was -- and he didn't feel all that bad. He had, in fact, been enjoying the last two days on a very real level. Having the Element-Bearers in his home had turned out to be a treat, and the fact that the bit cost of every last treat would eventually be reimbursed had added icing to a suddenly-free cake. He was enjoying their company. A strange group, yes, an odd assembly, but -- personable. At least a degree of pleasure to be around across the board, even for the pegasus, once you got past the boasting -- which had taken an incredible effort. And Twilight...

...he did like Twilight. And she liked him...

Quiet chuckled wryly to himself as he turned the page. "'But for time,'" he quoted to the empty air. "'But for the cruelty of when, who could know what we would have been to each other? Another time, a sooner one, and there would have been nothing in the way, no obstacles but each other, and those cleared with eyelids raised so we could see into each other's hearts. But alas, when is cruel, and we cannot take it back...'"

Donkey stories. Well-written, some of them, if you could get past the fanciful, flowery, and frankly overblown language in the older tales, but there was nothing as depressing. And the quote didn't really sum up his feelings. He liked Twilight, yes. She liked him. But if they'd known each other when they were younger, before his marriage began to loom on the horizon -- well, certainly things would have been changed: his parents would have been thrilled by the idea of his forming a connection with the Princess' protégé, done everything they could to help. Except that -- he knew something of Twilight's school years. He'd heard Coordinator speak enough times to not only sense the lies, but the pattern in them. Quiet had a very good idea of the real reason Twilight had been alone throughout her terms, and he suspected it pretty much ran the town hall.

Quiet didn't like Coordinator. Not in the least. He was necessary -- but he was necessary in the same way that a cesspool was necessary. You had to have one. You never wanted to touch the contents.

Would he have been that strong? Could he have made herself approach and stay close, knowing what would have been coming? He wanted to think so -- but that was just want. He'd never been tested, and you never knew if you would pass or fail until the test was upon you. There was no way to tell.

Still -- the current when was now. And in this now, she did like him, and she was wonderful company. Not just for any answers she might be able to provide for The Great Work: simply a joy to be around. They were becoming -- friends. Quiet liked that.

He was worried for the Doctor. Kept hoping to find her -- or (and he had faced it early on, deliberately not spoken of it) her body. So much had already gone wrong: her vanishing, the loss of the house, Doctor Gentle's injury... and all of it still weighed on him, forced weak knees to make extra efforts before straightening. And he would never have wished for any of it to happen that way, would have stopped it given a second chance. But the events as they had unfolded had brought Twilight into his life.

It didn't pay for all that had occurred, not for him and certainly not for the Doctor: even if Twilight could help them complete The Great Work, the potential damage to his first friend and that friend's loss -- irreversible. But it was still something, a little light in the darkness, a --

-- sparkle.

He smiled.

"Lord Presence?" He looked up. Softtread, the head of the night staff, who had been with the family before Quiet's birth and thus still insisted on Lord. Quiet had long since given up on trying to break that habit. "The police chief to see you in the -- secondary study. With a -- guest."

Quiet nodded and got up, carefully marking his place before leaving the room. The primary study, of course, was the one below ground level and -- well, not a place to receive a guest without a name. And it was odd for the police chief to visit him for anything other than social occasions and full-scale meetings...

...which meant it could be news.

He accelerated as much as he dared.

Chief Copper looked over as he entered the cozy secondary study, took too long to place him. "...Quiet?" The answering nod was appropriately weary. "I'd like you to meet somepony."

But Quiet had already noted the other visitor. Coat the color of a fine white wine, unruly mane, tail and eyes all the same rich burgundy-red, although that last area unfortunately had some of the color currently showing within the whites. Cutie mark showing two tankards being pressed together. Steel tankards: probably not a good sign. Middle-aged and with all the years to follow prematurely rushing in. Listing slightly to one side -- and then the other side -- back again. And an earth pony. He'd been setting records for earth ponies in his halls of late.

"And who am I meeting?" he asked.

"This is Grape Indulgence," Chief Copper told him. "You said you were looking for interesting stories. Well, this one's been hanging around looking to bum drinks and trainfare off the locals with limited success -- so I brought him in for vagrancy. And I was going to send him on his eventually sober way, but he offered to tell me a story. After I heard it -- I thought you should too. And that you should hear it first." And that was clearly just about all he could risk with the earth pony in the room. "So here's the trade, if you want to take it. He tells you the story, and you pay him what you think it's worth. If there's anything -- interesting in there." Taking a chance on a little more, "I'm not sure it's what you want to hear -- but it is interesting."

Was it something? Anything at all? Or a drunk who'd somehow managed to figure out ponies were searching and decided to sell them something they could search for?

It wouldn't hurt to listen, other than from the harsh fumes pressing into his nostrils. "All right, Mister Indulgence," Quiet said. "I'll risk a few bits for your tale."

"...somepony -- somepony there?" the earth pony said as he jumped a little, peering in every direction but the right one. "Somepony in here with us...?"

Quiet didn't even attempt to repress the sigh. "Yes, Mister Indulgence. Somepony is here." He watched the bleary eyes slowly focus. "In your own time."

It took six drinks to get it all.

The last one was for Quiet.

Imprimatura

It was a trick Twilight could not do. And that was why she was convinced Rarity could.

The designer disagreed. "Twilight, I do appreciate that you think so highly of me, but I believe you're overestimating what I'm truly capable of..." There was just a little sweat in the white coat this time, and most of that was from frustration. It wasn't an exhausting spell -- just an incredibly finicky one that required a degree of field control which very few unicorns could ever hope for. Twilight had seen it accomplished all of once and had never been able to pull off the feat herself. But Rarity...

"It's not power," she reminded the unicorn. "It's control, Rarity -- that's all it is. You just have to push it a little off to one side or the other and then keep it there..."

The others were watching from a small distance -- what Spike had assured them was a typical safety zone for a spell which generally had no means of going wrong in a bad way, but he'd been with Twilight for all of her school years and seen too many students fumble things which should have been completely harmless in a very Cutie Mark Crusaders sense, so just in case...

(A large percentage of Ponyville lived in dread of Sweetie Belle starting that part of her education. A moderate portion had considered offering to help her parents pay for a distant boarding school. At least three ponies were simply getting ready to move.)

They were all still in the cave: Rainbow's lecture had wrapped up and it still felt too early to move out into their waiting positions (although some part of Twilight did realize there was a degree of luck-pushing in progress -- but this was still an hour when ponies were out and about, which meant she probably wouldn't be). Twilight had needed something to pass the time which wasn't obsessing about what might happen at the meeting, and she had promised Rarity classes in more advanced magic. Things which didn't require a lot of raw strength, but simply an amazing degree of control. In that sense, this spell was one of the most demanding she knew -- and she'd had to try and teach it without being able to demonstrate it. It was certainly taking time, and quite a bit of it.

"I don't even see why you would wish me to know this," Rarity said, brow furrowing -- and then visibly forced back: couldn't chance wrinkles, after all. "What use is there in such a trick? It only does one thing, a rather pointless thing at that, and it's so hard..."

"It's a test, Rarity," Twilight explained. At least in part. She knew what Rarity's school field dexterity scores had been (although she was still insisting to herself that snooping hadn't been any part of it) and what Rainbow Dash had explained made her think those numbers might have gone up over the years through constant exercise with the moving contents within a glow-filled shop. This would be the proof of it -- and if it worked, a sign of where she could take Rarity's studies in the future. "And it does have a use. Trixie would love this one..."

"Oh, her," Rarity just got out, managing to keep her tone polite -- barely: as far as the designer was concerned, that was a pony whom she might forgive -- eventually -- and Pinkie's soft muttering chorused those feelings. "And she cannot do this?"

"Not that I know of." Maybe not even with -- and stop.

"Well, I suppose I should try to demonstrate what somepony possessing restraint might possibly be capable of..." Rarity visibly redoubled her efforts, her corona staying at an intense primary level -- but with sweat and hoof-scraping against the cave floor increased, so focused on her attempt as to actually not be thinking about any residual dirt. "I don't understand... why does something which does so little have to be so difficult..."

...and Spike's eyes went wide, every bit as large as Twilight's. His exhaled words came out before hers could, with his sister caught staring in shock, awe, and delight, his own voice reflecting all of it and throwing in triumph for the pony he believed in second-most -- on the average day, with a perpetual option to move up. "Rarity -- you're doing it."

She blinked, false lashes meeting and parting again -- but did not stop concentrating. "I -- I am? I can't see it, Spike -- I don't think it's possible for anypony to cross their eyes that much..."

Twilight continued to stare. It was happening, it was actually happening... "Can you -- split your focus a little? Grab something and bring it closer?"

"Yes, that isn't a problem..." Rarity's field reached forward, surrounded a pillow -- Applejack instinctively moved into more of a defensive stance -- and brought it into view.

The glow surrounding it wasn't a soft blue. It was more of a blue-green, almost an exact match for Fluttershy's eyes.

"You're changing your signature, Rarity," Twilight breathed. A trick she personally couldn't do -- and it was happening right in front of her. "I had one teacher who could manage this... Keep pushing a little further in that direction..."

Rarity continued to concentrate. The blue-green slowly lost the aqua tones, moved to more of a verdant shade.

"Ah don't understand," Applejack softly said. "Ah've never seen anypony do this an' from what Twilight said, Ah know it's hard -- but why would a unicorn want t' do it at'tall? What good does it do?"

"Think about how Trixie operates," Twilight said, too distracted by Rarity's achievement for a full lecture, confident the farmer could work it out for herself from a hint or two, and also caught up in, if not the feeling of a tiny piece of her own burden dropping away, then at least that from having helped a friend. "What she might use it for... Rarity, I want you to practice this whenever you get some spare time. This also works as a pure field refinement exercise: it'll make everything that comes after that much easier." Smiling, "And Rarity? I never want to hear you say you aren't capable of something again."

"I will never be able to levitate an Eastern Red Giant, not even a sprouted sapling which Applejack and her family have been working on for a mere season," Rarity grumbled, "but I am no longer allowed to say it..." But she was smiling too. "Oh, very well... you know, this would add a certain something to a fashion show all by itself..."

And then Twilight was waiting by the pond.

She had learned to ignore the sound of the rushing and splashing water during her time in the cave. It wasn't working for the cold, a chill which seemed to radiate from the liquid and cancel the effects of the warm night. A trick for pegasi, to move enough heat in or out in order to stay comfortable in nearly any environment. Not something she could do -- and even if it was somehow within her eventual potential reach, flight would have to come first: there had been cyan-tinged insistence on that.

Rainbow Dash had already made the planned move, taking a few techniques out of her potential arsenal: the clouds over the falls (and for a good distance out) had been cleared away, allowing the waxing Moon to light up the area with a little more strength. That side effect had been a problem in itself: her friends and sibling had concealed themselves all over the area, and those hiding places had taken more than a little consideration to begin with. They'd had to think about the possibility of being sighted from overhead, or that their visitor could come from any direction on the ground -- although Twilight expected her to avoid one. The extra illumination hadn't helped. Still, they seemed to have managed the job -- at least, Twilight couldn't see any of them from her own spot.

She'd been waiting by the water for what felt like hours. It was getting late, had to be midnight or close to either side of it. Spike had brought along an emergency yellow diamond -- they affected him like coffee. Twilight hoped he would suck on it instead of biting into the jewel: they didn't need the crunching noise right now.

Twilight was still trying to figure out what she was going to say. What she could say. How to keep the focus on her. The adventures she'd had with her friends and sibling had taught her something about bluffing and making up stories in a hurry -- but she was no expert at running the long con or keeping a conversation fully steered to a single side. At some point, their visitor was going to ask for answers to questions Twilight wished had never been asked at all and was trying not to blame Pinkie for. Answers Twilight didn't have.

Well, it was like this. I got hit by several beams of light from the Elements. They sent me to a place which was a lot like the between while simultaneously being nothing like it whatsoever. I talked to the Princess. A little burst of energy came out of me and split up into pieces, which then started swirling around me while I levitated and I'm completely sure I wasn't controlling that last part. And then I was back in Ponyville, I had wings, and my life started to go seriously downhill from there, although not as badly as I'm guessing yours did. Which is not only pretty much all I've got, but I'm starting to believe it's all I'll ever have. So how did your attempt go?

...no. Just -- no.

And if Twilight couldn't keep the talk focused... if she became upset...

It was the cold coming off the nearby water which made her knees want to shake. Twilight kept trying to tell herself that. It wasn't working...

...her hyper-attenuated senses picked up the sounds of breaking twigs. Tiny pieces of wood cracking under approaching hooves.

Twilight turned slightly, faced what she thought was the right direction. If it was her, then they'd actually gotten lucky: she would be coming in on an angle which didn't come near any of the hiding places, and Twilight had believed she'd avoid the path and come in through the trees -- if she came by land at all. And a land approach likely meant she either wasn't within the pegasus part of her cycle at all or just not so far into it for managing flight. It removed several options for disaster --

-- and added others.

Possibly not a pegasus right now -- but that leaves two options, and one of them is --

She stepped out from the trees, came into sight under Moon. And for Twilight, the worst-case scenario was a mere fourteen body lengths away.

It was as Grape Indulgence had said. The blue which had been in her mane and tail was now in her coat. The tan had gone to the places where the blue had fled and additionally manifested in her eyes. And the horn -- deep purple, reaching towards black.

Unicorn. Oh, no...

Twilight had thought about it. Done everything she could to plan for this. But ultimately, having her come in this part of the cycle meant only one thing: she had no true idea of what could happen -- and too much of one for how much raw power might be behind it.

She forced herself to breathe, risked closing her eyes for a moment in order to better focus and gather her own strength -- then ordered herself to do what she had told her friends to avoid at all costs: looked directly at the visitor's mark...

...and Rarity had been right. The gold loop was closest to the top -- but not all the way there: there was still some distance to go. Similarly, the silver had not reached the absolute ascent point. Visibly in that portion of the cycle, getting closer to the heart of it, the brief moment of completely having transformed -- but not quite yet.

Which meant that she had timed this.

She had made sure she arrived when she was strong -- and the longer she stayed, the stronger she might become. When the silver reached the middle of the curve, once the loop was fully pointing towards the sky...

It had been a little easier to look at the mark this time, experience and bracing serving their purpose. But it was still an experience to shake a burdened mind -- and the knowledge Twilight had gained brought no comfort. She's not stupid. I can't risk thinking of her that way. Her words come out in broken sentences because it's so painful for her to talk. Don't fall into the trap of thinking it represents a mind which can't communicate any other way. I don't know how smart she really is, but she's not stupid and the instant I start seeing her that way, I've lost...

...she's so tall...

A full and accurate height comparison had been hard from the middle of the dust devil. But yes -- just about Luna's size.

Having to look up again wasn't helping.

The unicorn slowly trotted closer. Twilight focused, watching the horn. She had told everypony else to do the same if this happened, and they were all ready. In a way, the fight against the wild zone rams had done them all a favor -- because they all knew what backlash was now. And how to inflict it.

They were not to attack at the first sign of any spell: she might try to take the food Twilight had brought for her, out in the open a little distance to the left along the pond's edge. But if it looked as if a fight was about to begin, all of them had the same instruction: go for the horn. Make hard contact and keep making it.

If we only had a restraint... I should have checked Quiet's armory: maybe one of his ancestors purchased one. It would only take up to five days before I could find it. Couldn't ask the police, they would have needed to know why, even for a Princess and maybe even especially. Oh Luna...

...who couldn't help her any more than Twilight had helped Shining.

Closer still. She wasn't moving well: there were little hints of limp shifting from one leg to another, winces and tiny moans as she planted her hooves. The pain was etched across her face, and how many years had the agony used to try and draw permanent traces? What would she look like if she wasn't hurting? Twilight tried to picture it -- and succeeded.

She would be beautiful.

Somehow, that hurt nearly as much as her inability to invoke her own faith.

"You -- came," she said. Three body lengths away now. "I -- wasn't --" a deeper moan "-- sure..."

Somehow, Twilight managed a nod. "I -- brought food. If you're still hungry." She nodded towards the supplies.

"Not," the unicorn said -- and didn't leave it at that. "Don't. Trust."

Twilight blinked. "I don't understand --"

"-- drugs," the unicorn snapped. "Eat -- then sleep. Don't trust." She looked directly at Twilight, tan eyes on purple. Her horn, already longer than the average, seemed to project a little more. "Want -- to talk. Will talk. But -- not trust. Only. So. Far."

She'd thought of something Twilight hadn't even begun to consider, come prepared for a plan which hadn't been part of any checklist... No, she wasn't stupid -- and in this case, that intelligence could work against them, because she would not only think of things the Bearers hadn't considered, but could imagine fears which shouldn't exist and preemptively react to them. "I -- thought about trying to find some drugs for you. Something which would help with the pain -- but if you won't take anything I bring, then I can't --"

"-- no," the unicorn said, stamping her front left hoof against the pebbles along the pond's edge: another moan escaped. "Can't." Anger in her voice -- but her horn remained unlit, and her eyes --

-- she wants to. She wishes she could. She dreams of the pain going away, even a little. But she can't trust me.

Twilight was starting to wonder how much more soul-deep hurt she could take. And how it compared to what the visitor went through every second of her life.

"All right," Twilight made herself say, and couldn't add maybe later. "We can talk..." Which meant it was time for the first question of her own, just one of those which had been haunting her. "What's your name?"

The unicorn blinked. "...name?"

Later, Twilight would think about the expression she saw then, would revisit it too many times under Sun and Moon, see it during dark times within the nightscape. It was not a look of anger. No -- confusion. As if Twilight had asked a question which had no meaning, one no pony ever could have even thought of, something so instinctive that not even a newborn foal would need to search for a response. A question which was answered simply by the act of existing.

"...no name," came the answer. And it wasn't voiced in protest or fury that Twilight would try to get something which could identify her. It was a simple response to a question which was too basic to ask.

This blink was harder. "You -- don't -- look, I'm not trying to track you down, I swear." Which was a lie Twilight felt she was getting away with. "I just need -- something to call you."

The unicorn looked more confused than ever. "She. You."

With what was very nearly the bleakest of internal humor, If we're getting stuck on this, the rest of the night is probably a total loss. Try it from another angle. "What do other ponies call you?" Or rather, what name had they addressed her by before her cutie mark came and sent her into a life of agonized isolation -- or (somehow) worse?

"Other -- ponies..." And it seemed as if there was a bare second where she was about to give a response -- but then she shook her head. "No -- other. Ponies."

"I... I can't just..." Getting desperate now, "How do you think of yourself?"

Which got her an expression which didn't so much suggest Twilight's brain had momentarily ceased all function as directly state it before writing the words down and having Spike mail it to the Princess for eventual filing within the Canterlot Archives in a new wing built just for the occasion. "I."

...right... But Twilight couldn't make herself drop it just yet. She needed to identify this pony in some way, create a tiny bit of order. To name something was to remove it from the realm of the completely unknown, if just a little, and Twilight was desperate for even the smallest step in that direction. "Can I just give you a name, something to call you by --"

Anger. The horn stayed dark, the field did not ignite -- but the sheer force of the words hit harder than any spell. "No name! Names limit! Name not earned!Never name now!"

The burst sent Twilight staggering back a step, mind reeling, images beginning to rush through her --

-- and then her back right hoof hit the water.

Twilight yelped at the cold, jumped forward, nearly stumbled on the landing.

The unicorn's anger -- vanished.

She snickered.

"Cold?" she asked, and snickered a second time. There was no malice in it. Just pain -- and even that seemed somewhat lessened for the tiny duration of the sound. "We -- talk. Now. No name. She. Her. You. Always work. All. That's needed." More quietly, "Ever."

Slowly, folding her legs as if each movement might break them, the unicorn sank down to rest in the grass, her front hooves just barely touching the border of the pebbles. Her left front leg came up for a moment. The hoof touched an area just below her neck, pushed right. Went back down.

Twilight carefully moved, assuming a similar position. The pebbles weren't too uncomfortable under her body, and if they were -- well, other things definitely had first priority. "I want to start with you," she told the nameless unicorn. "What you did. You want to know -- how to make things go right. The first step in that is isolating what went wrong." Waited for the argument, for the unicorn to insist that they go through Twilight's own irreversible change first --

-- but it didn't happen. "Understand, but..." A tiny head shake, clearing thoughts or trying to banish pain. "Don't -- know. Did -- something. Something wrong. Or. This not. Happen. Don't know. Can't. Go back." She glanced down her own body -- at the mark. Words almost lost, "Can't fix."

And Twilight knew she had realized there was no cure.

She wanted to cry. Barely held back from it. "I'm sorry..."

"...my fault," the unicorn just barely managed. She was never truly still: little twitches, moderate spasms. "Not -- made mistake. Then. Not like. This. My fault. Always. Not --" stopped. Firmly, self-loathing woven into her very existence, "Mine."

Twilight marshaled herself, found a few last bits of strength somewhere. "We still have to figure out what the mistake was," and somehow kept it over a whisper. "Anything that would help -- the others." The unicorn nodded to that, and her horn seemed to lengthen still more. Twilight forced herself not to check on where the silver was. "Let's start at the beginning. How did you originally -- prepare for the attempt to change?"

A swallowed scream, the unicorn visibly forcing it back -- but it was just the twisting and not the question. "Study... Learned. About ponies. Magics."

Study? Okay... if you were preparing to become an alicorn and knew it, you'd want to learn all about what you could do as one. The irony that this one had arguably been more ready than Twilight was not lost on the librarian. "For how long?"

"Life," came the simple answer. Quietly, "Wasted."

Twilight shoved the horrors back again, made them get in line and take numbers. "Until you -- changed."

Another nod -- and then what she'd so hoped to avoid. "You? Study?"

"I -- learned about other ponies," Twilight carefully tried.

"Magics?"

How much can I lie? We need this answer and if I steer her down the wrong path with my own responses, she might come to a false conclusion on what went wrong with her, and that won't help the others or anypony else, ever...

And Twilight tossed the lies away.

"I studied unicorn magic," she told her. "For pretty much all of my life. But I never studied pegasus magic at all until -- after I changed." Watching the dark purple-black horn very closely. "And as for studying other ponies -- just basic history and culture, and -- I think I missed a lot. Lately -- I know I did. I never learned enough about pegasi, or thought too much about what they did because -- it wasn't part of what they taught in my school. I was focused..." Very close to a whisper, "Too focused. If you studied all the magics, then -- you did more." Waited, checking for the first sign of a field, the next burst of anger which would come with a wave behind it...

The unicorn blinked. Twice.

No anger. Just -- more confusion. "Not -- study? But..." and then a slow exhale which broke in the middle from a full-body shudder -- and when she emerged from that, the sound turned into an agonized sigh. "Many -- paths. Said --" another stop, and it felt deliberate. She visibly considered her next words before the broken voice resumed. "You -- took. Another. Can't -- help." There were tears in the tan eyes now. "Can't compare. Different. Roads. Same destination. You -- finished. I. Failed."

She slowly started to stand up.

Twilight shoved herself off the pebbles, scrambled to get back on her hooves. "Where are you going?"

The clearest words to emerge -- and Twilight saw that the silver was at the outermost part of the curve, the gold loop at its absolute peak. "To die."

Doctor Gentle blinked away tears.

He had been crying for most of Quiet's relayed story. Just tears. No sobs, no gasps. He hadn't even asked a single question. All he had done was listen and let the relief flow.

"Gold," he whispered, seconds after Quiet finished. "Gold, Quiet. The same gold as the shield. Metallic-hued fields are rare to begin with, and they run in families. The colors -- shifted about her body, but her colors. If his perception was correct, her height might have increased somewhat, but... gold..."

The tears came faster and Quiet moved in, let his first friend weep into his coat. Felt the moisture running down his right shoulder before it was fully absorbed by his fur.

Quiet put the smile into his voice before the words started. "'No -- and yes,' you said," and the laughter wanted to come, the explosion of joy and hope fulfilled. A lifetime... and now... "Failure -- and success. Not an alicorn. But a unicorn. She moved between --" and he couldn't hold it back any longer: the rapture erupted, visions of children laughing on his fields and in his halls, of birthing rooms where he would not pace outside, no, he would be there for every last second of it because on some level, he had feared he would never be there at all. "The most glorious possible failure imaginable --!"

The coughing came. His ribs heaved, tried to tear themselves apart.

Doctor Gentle was positioned within instants. The tapping hit there and there.

"Don't apologize," were the first words Quiet managed. "Don't. In all my life, that one was worth it more than any other. I would go through that a thousand times with ten times the pain just to have that emotion again." He could feel his own tears coming. "Let a million failures blossom across Equestria, let them all be as magnificent as this. Let there always be stallions and mares this enraptured to have not done something. I believe. I believe it was her. She lived, she's a unicorn, you were right, even in failure, you were right..."

The two friends waited for each other, wrapped in the mutual embrace and nuzzles of family. Waited until the surges of emotion faded a bit, until they could think again, until visions of the most perfect future under Sun and Moon were finally put aside to await the time when they would come to pass. A time that could finally come to pass.

"I was afraid," Doctor Gentle quietly said as he settled onto a couch in his granted bedroom. "Afraid -- she had died. You were as well, Quiet, and I know it -- but you tried to spare me from that fear by not voicing it. Thank you for that."

Quiet exhaled and let the last of that emotion go. "Your burdens were too great already. Just because I can't teleport doesn't mean I don't understand the danger. I kept picturing -- her arriving in the middle of a hill or mountain. And -- how fast she would have been moving when she came out."

"I imagined the same," Doctor Gentle told him. "And worse." He managed a smile. "None of which concerns us now -- and much of which opens up new worries."

At least Quiet had dropped one burden before adding more. "All right, Doctor -- let's try to talk it out together. Or rather, I'll mostly listen while you speak. I know you sometimes work best when you can bounce ideas off another." Doctor Gentle managed a rueful smile upon hearing that truth. "With this latest information -- what do you now believe happened?"

"Failure to reconcile," came the immediate answer. "There was no merge. When I saw her -- what I could perceive of the ascension -- she seemed to be shifting between the three races at an incredible rate. Unicorn, earth pony, pegasus. If I looked at her directly, there was a sense of overlay, as with watching multiple pictures go by at high speed, almost creating the illusion of all three having come together -- but it was three separate states. At the time, I thought that was her body incorporating the new, trying to find a balance. Ultimately -- that did not happen. At some point after her teleport -- or perhaps at the instant before it, when the process was complete and she found her magic -- she shed two of them. Leaving only a unicorn..."

Quiet wanted to laugh again, held it back. "A unicorn," he repeated. "One who broke an Eastern Red Giant. We're going to have to get her some basic training, fast. I hope her theories become skills in a hurry, Doctor -- she may not be an alicorn, but she wound up with the raw power of one. Luna's mane, the magics she might be able to accomplish..."

The Doctor smiled. "She's a fast learner. Have no doubt there."

"I don't," Quiet smiled back. "Just to have grasped so quickly..." But there were still issues to deal with. "He said she seemed to be in some pain. I'm hoping she didn't get hurt out there. And -- there's still the larger question."

A nod. "Say it." Sometimes the Doctor worked best when he heard what others were thinking first.

"Well -- we were lucky, obviously, and she was so lucky as to practically have had Celestia personally picking an arrival point. She barely went anywhere in terms of distance, and there's only so far she could have gone since then. We have an area to search which can be searched. But -- well..." A little more awkwardly, "How much does she know of the area? Would she have recognized the orchard and realized she was so close to my castle? If so -- why not try and come to me? She could have oriented on Sun or Moon, and she knows a few ways here which skirted the wild zone to start with. Why not -- try to come home?"

Nearly all of the joy left the Doctor's eyes. "Because... partially because... she knows something of the orchard from what I've said of it: I do know I've spoken to her about it. But she might not have associated it with Trotter's Falls. Disorientation again, and not just geographic: trying to reach some kind of terms with a new body is an experience... well, our visiting Princess can probably speak to that, but no more than three others could. I imagine -- it would not be easy or instant, and that is before considering the sudden arrival of feel. But more than that, Quiet..." His volume dropped, his eyelids half-closed. "...I believe she has not tried to come home -- because she is ashamed. Because she feels she has failed. The goal of The Great Work -- was not achieved. She would not see it as a glorious failure -- simply as a failure. She worked too long and hard for anything other than a total success to be acceptable. She might even feel -- that I would..."

These tears were of a different sort.

"...be disappointed in her," Doctor Gentle made himself finish. "Be afraid to come home because she would think -- that I would hate her for failing..."

Quiet closed his eyes, left them that way for too long. It was too easy to see. "Your feelings are anything but... I know that."

"But -- she may not believe that," came the sorrowful reply, words overflowing with pain. "She could so easily feel that anything other than the total success was -- wrong in my eyes. So many years of labor and struggle... she might simply see her achievement as a collapse of all hope and -- flee. Try to gallop to where I could never see how badly she had failed... Quiet, we have always needed to find her, but now..."

"Now you have to tell her," Quiet gently said.

The Doctor nodded. "That this failure is as much mine as hers. That we did not know -- and how could we, with something never done before in this fashion? That this is the most glorious failure possible. And -- that I love her, and will continue to do so regardless of how she might see herself and the end of her part in The Great Work. She has advanced the path for others, laid a trail for so many to follow. How many can say they have achieved so much in life? And her life is ahead of her..." Just a little smile. "But I think I will tell her I love her first. And when she understands that once again, she will say she loves me. We will forge ahead from there -- together." Orange eyes closed, remained shut. "So many miracles... Can you imagine the odds associated with not a single one of the search parties which were hunting for me coming across her? They surely would have tried to bring her in, and any fleeing unicorn in the wild zone would have been mentioned. One witness, with a reputation as a less-than-credible drunk... I am starting to feel Celestia and Luna were smiling down on us. With --" his eyes opened again and a twinkle of faint humor entered the pupils "-- perhaps a little currently-local accompaniment."

Quiet's groan was sincere. "Do not tell her that. I know she's having more than a little trouble with the concept. Her face when she was pulled back into the birthing room..."

A small smile. "She will adjust -- in time. But for now -- we have a rough area to search. Only a few gallops at best. We have a description. If only he had not been so drunk as to have difficulty remembering a mark... hard to look at. More likely there were visions of pink flying donkeys hovering within his eyes and blocking the view. But the rest will suffice. And our own searchers can call to her and say it is all right, and she can come home..."

"I hate doing this, Doctor --" and Quiet truly did "-- but I have to add one worry to the total. Our drunk said he had told his story to some ponies before giving it to Chief Copper. It's probably minor -- they may have been some of yours on their way out of town and we know they weren't any of ours here -- but somepony else got that tale. I'm hoping that it won't wind up meaning anything, but -- you had to know."

The frown managed to shove a few of the other emotions out of the way -- but not all. "Likely minor, as you say... was he able to identify the earlier listeners?"

"The most I initially got out of him was 'a bunch of mares'. After some more questioning, he narrowed that down to a number between four and eight, possibly inclusive, and that they were rather pretty at the absolute least. But... that brings up another concern -- and --" part of Quiet hated this as well, and it was not a soft-spoken one " -- I think you know what it is."

All of the other emotions were gone now. "Our guests." There was no darker note in the voice. The tone was calm, thoughtful, had a sense of planning within it.

Twilight, Quiet thought, and didn't need to wonder why. "We know they were at the bar, six certainly falls between four and eight, and 'pretty' would be the least of the words I'd use to describe the group. They might have felt pity for him and decided to buy the poor sot a few drinks, listening to the tale in fair exchange. I can see your eldest doing that -- Kindness, after all. It's certainly possible that there were other mares involved, but -- it could have been them. Too easily. And -- there's more." He almost didn't want to say it. He had to. "They went into the wild zone today. To the orchard. The earth pony brought back several apples to core for seeds so she could raise a new crop. There's only one orchard, Doctor..."

Still calm, still thoughtful. "So the question becomes motivation," the Doctor said, and no hint of anything else was in his voice. "Our new Princess and the rest of the Element-Bearers might have listened to his tale and decided to examine the site. It is certainly within the realm of their normal activities. They are Equestria's defenders: for a report of a unicorn with such power to gain their attention -- yes, that is very easy to see. But they did not discuss it over dinner. They have been very open with us about their purpose and doings here -- or have they? It is possible the Princess simply does not wish anypony to panic before she and the others have learned what is going on, but... yes, I think we must give some time to considering... other possibilities."

Quiet did not speak. Didn't want to.

"I did not give any thought to the speed of their arrival," Doctor Gentle said. "News can travel fast, ponies move much slower. Three days by train -- but our new Princess is involved, a known teleporter and the strongest caster of her generation. Able to move a party of seven over such a distance? Easy to picture. Of course, she has never been here before, has no safe arrival point and I now know even a Princess is subject to recoil -- but she could have gone to Canterlot and asked our rulers to send them. To that degree, I had worked out a story which they never told. The news reaches Ponyville: no great surprise given how quickly it reached every point we know of. As so many others did, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie decide they must come and join the search. But they have a resource others do not. No gallop or train or emergency air carriage for the Element-Bearers -- simply a word in the right place. We are under Sun: Princess Celestia smiles, and they are sent across the continent in an instant. Not to the house to sign up as a search party -- dropped off in the middle of the search zone to begin on their own. Perhaps a place our Solar ruler had as her own arrival point, with directions to reach the center. And then the wild zone greets them with something less than royal deference, a raccoon pack races off with most of their supplies, including all maps..."

A long pause. It was more than enough time for Quiet's own thoughts to intrude, insisting on ideas he didn't want to have.

"I pictured that so easily," the Doctor continued. "My eldest and most determined were happy to speak of their adventures on my last few visits to them, and there was frequently more than a hint of 'mis' applied to the beginning of the word. They have done so much, they are our nation's heroes -- but they are yet inexperienced. I did not give them the benefit of the doubt, Quiet, for there was no doubt at all. Two of mine came in search of me and brought their friends along. Perfectly natural. But now..."

Quiet didn't want to think about it. He wanted his brain to stop insisting on making him do so. His brain wasn't listening to him.

"Currently, I do not wish to think ill of our guests," Doctor Gentle stated. "Until we have more proof, I will not make the mistake of assuming that they came here to investigate something other than my vanishing. But that does not dismiss the possibility of their having stumbled onto something by accident and feeling they must look into it for the good of Equestria. And good intentions can often do more damage than anything else under Sun and Moon. We will have to try and watch them from this point on, Quiet, for as long as they remain in Trotter's Falls and when they wander the wild zone around it. We need to learn if they are investigating and if so, figure out what we will do about it. I will speak to mine tomorrow if it all possible, and then perhaps to our new Princess about magic -- and I would appreciate any efforts you made on my behalf. But -- I also do not wish you to worry unduly. Remember, it is quite possible they simply went to the orchard for apple seeds after not speaking to a certain pony at the bar. And in the end, we might be able to resolve things simply by finding her -- and then making formal introductions all around." The thought brought a brief smile to his face. "Keep the greater concerns in mind -- but do not let them rule. We have no real reason to believe beyond what has been stated. Paranoia should not completely have its day. Caution -- but not fear. And we will pay our own visit to the orchard tomorrow. If we are lucky, there might be some residual feel left from her effort. It has been days, but -- we have been lucky so far, and if such continues, it would be enough for me to begin learning her anew. A longshot -- but it would replace eyes with magic and shorten our hunt. Still -- I admit, I am not confident in finding anything left to use."

Quiet nodded at that. "I'll start notifying our own searchers on what to look for, then. Is there anything else I can do?"

The Doctor considered carefully. "We will need a meeting -- soon. In fact, almost immediately. The largest one we've ever had. I would hope to have found her before that... There is a certain difficulty here: arguably the best way to gather everypony in -- would be by using the party you have offered the Princess. But of course, that would mean she and the other Bearers are here. If they are innocent or simply tracking from natural concern -- then there is no fear. And if they are not -- well, the best time to discover the timber wolves are at your door would generally be when all your friends are on the other side, but... there is a shadow of wings here, and I would much rather keep it overhead. At the same time, however..." and he inclined his horn towards Quiet.

"...the best time to run is well before anypony would order the chase."

"Exactly. And to that extent, I am not afraid to -- take a chance, or even several. Better to know we have some difficulties than dismiss and return to comfort before hearing a hoof knock on the door. I do not believe you would object to leaving all this behind?"

Quiet's noisy brain didn't need a moment of thought for that one. Smiling, "You've given me my dream, Doctor. My title can go hang."

"Thank you, my most devoted -- but please understand: while I do not wish to dash your hopes, this is one result. We will likely have to try a second time, and a third or more -- to be certain. Still -- the impossible has happened once. Everything from here on is the possible -- and in time, the known." He smiled at Quiet. "You will have your heir -- even though you never cared if there was anything to inherit."

"It's less to deal with anyway," Quiet said. "There's something to be said for the life of a normal pony... all right, let me get started. We can discuss the rest in the morning --" he started towards the door "-- except for one thing." The Doctor, who had just been leaving the couch so he could return to the bed, paused. "I've been meaning to ask you this for years and given how many times you've hit everypony else with it, you have this coming. Have you picked out a name?"

Doctor Gentle's smile was honest and warm. It was the same smile so many had as their first view of the world. Of their first friend.

"Several."

And Quiet left.

He checked his guest rooms on the way out. They were empty.

He checked the cottage on his way off the grounds. It was empty as well.

And Trotter's Falls had a nightlife, and some of that nightlife ran late, and they were six young, single, and attractive-through-astounding mares whom anypony might be lucky to spend a night with, they had certainly gone out on the town once before and nothing stopped them from doing it again or even sleeping in beds other than the ones he had provided.

But he didn't know where they were.

Being completely out of guest rooms, he'd put Grape Indulgence up in the slightly-more-empty hotel: some of the Doctor's were still arriving and deciding to overnight before returning. The intent had been to put him on a train in the morning -- but he could question the earth pony after sleep had sobered the wine-taster up all the way: he might remember more then, although Quiet didn't like the odds after hearing the admission of having consumed to the point of unconsciousness. Still, there was every chance he'd have Twilight and the others cleared shortly after the Sun rose.

But they weren't in their quarters.

He couldn't make himself stop thinking.

Chiaroscuro

"NO!"

Twilight knew no spell which slowed time. One which allowed the user a few seconds spent in a frozen past, unable to truly affect anything and only setting up events to cascade into an abruptly (and temporarily) directed future -- a spell which could be used but once by each caster, her own single attempt foolishly wasted. But to influence the rate at which the flow moved -- not a one. A full day of study could not be compressed into a final desperate hour. Not a single known magic let that happen, although there were rumors of two lost in the streams of time: one to slow, one to accelerate. Unique spells which had never reemerged.

She could not speed the flow or hold it back. Which made the passage of the next few seconds into nothing more than a side effect of the fear and adrenaline flowing through her, turned the resulting memory into an extended exercise in self-delusion.

It did not take an hour. A year. A lifetime. Just -- a few seconds. And yet a lifetime was what it had almost been.

Twilight had turned at the sound of the yell, terrified heart already having recognized the voice.

Pinkie. Moving fast. Twilight always forgot just how fast the baker could gallop until she saw it again, somehow dismissed the knowledge that there was an earth pony who could keep up with Rainbow Dash when the pegasus was moving at her best low-altitude speed -- at least for short bursts. The speed Pinkie only displayed when truly upset. Twilight could see that emotion on her friend's face now, the concern and desperation which had driven her out of the hiding place and into the open, racing towards her and -- the unicorn.

The unicorn, who had thought the two of them were alone, also looked over towards the word. The unicorn who had wanted privacy, was so afraid of being seen. A unicorn who was suddenly very scared.

The purple-black horn ignited. There was a burst of gold, creating a nearly overwhelming sensory overload of feel in Twilight's mind. She was at her peak, completely transformed, as strong as it was possible for her to be -- and all of that strength had just been triggered. It was like having the Princess an inch away on one side and the Sun the same distance from the other, being between them at the exact moment of raising. The fulcrum point in an explosion of raw power.

There was resonance. Pain again and always, but welded to fear, terror, and shame -- with an immediate addition which overwhelmed all but the agony: desperation. A need to take it back.

But it could not be taken back.

The burst of gold flew directly at Pinkie.

Alicorn strength. Raw force, perfectly aimed -- but undirected. Power which could potentially do anything, and in Twilight's mind, every last one of those anythings added up to a single result.

There would be a body on the ground. Or there would be a space where a body had once been, smoke curling up from grass. The smell of burnt coat. Ashes too scattered for return. A vacuum against Twilight's ears where laughter had once been and would never return. There would be silence, and it would last forever.

No time to think. No time to plan. No time --

-- and a second explosion of magic lit up the night, pinkish hue moving faster than the gold, getting ahead, in front, intercepting, surrounding it.

It hurt. It burned. The feel was truly overwhelming now. Twilight was in direct contact with her magic, the magic which had been launched when the transformation was complete -- and it was still wrong. She had thought her magic's 'off' qualities came from -- blending. The aspects of pegasus departing or earth pony approaching which would have been in her cycle at almost any given moment spent with a horn. But this had come in that single instant of completion, and the wrongness was still there. Something within the field, something which was an integral part of it. Something --

-- Other.

The edges of Twilight's vision were going white. She could still see straight ahead, perceive her own field with the gold within, how the containment had stopped three body lengths away from Pinkie -- but continued straining to surge forward, to break through and impact. In the stretching of the seconds, it felt as if Pinkie had just barely begun to divert to the left, trying to dodge. She wouldn't be able to get far enough to the side.

Twilight was just barely aware of the screams. There were at least two. One belonged to the unicorn, and it was wordless agony and self-loathing and horror and a wish to make things not have happened. The other was her own.

The hideous strength pushed at Twilight. Tried to rip through her field as her corona intensified, as more of her vision was blocked by white, as her horn burned and feel threatened to take over all, the wrongness pushing deeper. Pain. Torture.

Twilight wrenched. Pulled the energies within along. Released --

-- and the gold, yanked off-course, momentum redirected, given a single opening to purposefully escape through, shot into the sky, lit up the night, a comet of power moving exactly the wrong way. Exploded into harmless shards of nothing above where the clouds would have been.

Time snapped back into its normal flow. Twilight staggered half a step backwards, not quite contacting the water this time. The unicorn was frozen in horror. And Pinkie finished her now-unnecessary dodge -- then kept moving forward, slowing slightly just before she jumped, front hooves extended.

The baker crashed into the unicorn, momentum and earth pony strength taking the larger pony off her feet, thudding down half on the pebbles, half on the grass, lying on her left side with Pinkie's body draped across her.

"NO!" Pinkie cried out again, tears streaming. "Nopony should ever kill themselves! We're not going to just let you go and die! There has to be a way to fix this, you have to give us a chance..."

The unicorn had been thrown off-balance in more ways than the physical. The appearance of a stranger, the breaking of the understanding (hope) that Twilight would come alone, the inadvertent attack which had nearly hit --

-- but now there was something else.

She squinted against her eternal pain and the fresh lesser hurt of having been knocked over, stared at the pink form lying on top of her. At the sides. The curl-topped head. Back to the rib cage.

"You..." she breathed. "What... what are..." Stopped. Blinked. The tears returned. And suddenly, "Sorry... so sorry... failed... failed you..."

Pinkie pressed her face into the unicorn's neck. "You can't die," she softly said. "Nopony should ever want to die just because they think they failed. Sometimes... sometimes the things you're supposed to succeed at don't even matter. Sometimes you have to find something new to care about. Death doesn't fix failures or make them go away. It just means you can't try any more..."

"But... failed... Can't be. Like this. Can't live. Failed. Broken. Defective."

Curls vibrated as Pinkie tried to shake her head without moving, and the unicorn's blue coat began to darken around Pinkie's eyes. Not from change -- from taking on moisture. "Never say that! Not that! I used to think it all the time, and I'm still here... You can't die. I won't let you..."

One blue leg came up slightly. Almost seemed to reach towards Pinkie. Hesitated, nearly vibrating in place. Tan eyes looked at the baker again, blinked away more tears before glancing up --

-- to find the shadow of a purple hoof held overhead.

The tan eyes widened. Twilight's narrowed.

The librarian's voice was soft. Far too soft for all the anger it contained -- and that was every last bit of fury which had been accumulating since the moment her wings had first unfurled. No frustration, no discomfort, no fraction of regret or desire to return to her former life had been left out.

This was a target she could take it out on.

"When you're a unicorn," Twilight said, voice all too close to one of Opal's luring purrs, the vibration which took over just before the claws swiped, "you have all the strengths of a unicorn. I've seen that now, and I know exactly how strong you are." It came as no consolation that both horns were steaming. "But you also have all the weaknesses. You know what backlash is, don't you? I can see it in your eyes. You're one of the fastest casters I've ever seen -- but I really don't think you can get a spell off before I bring my hoof down on your horn. Not when you're trying to cast one on purpose. And with your strength -- anything over the lightest manipulation and a backlash could knock you out on its own, couldn't it? Especially with how hurt you already are. Don't move. Don't try anything physical. And at the first sign of magic, I stomp."

More sounds of breaking branches. The others were beginning to emerge from their hiding places -- or rather, they were finishing doing so, had probably started to come out at the instant they realized Pinkie was making her rush. Seven against one now. One who was terrified, her pained eyes staring up at Twilight, pleading...

Twilight didn't feel like listening to any pleas.

"Twilight?" Pinkie, her tone careful. "Twilight, listen to me, please..."

"She nearly killed you, Pinkie." A plain statement made in that same soft near-purr. "She. Nearly. Killed you. We know she's already killed at least twice." A gasp of horror and shame from beneath her: she ignored it. "Maybe that's why she's hiding? If that had hit you..."

"It didn't! I knew it wouldn't!"

Knew? It almost got through. "Knew, Pinkie?" The laugh surprised Twilight: short, bitter, with no humor in it. "Pinkie Sense again?"

"No! I knew it wouldn't hit me, or that she wouldn't hurt me -- because you wouldn't let her." More hoofsteps from the others, moving closer. "Because I trust you, Twilight. I trust you with my life..." Strongly, with a firmness Twilight had never heard from Pinkie, words meant to carry, "And more."

The sound of the rushing falls. Splashing against the surface of the pond. A warm night but for the chill in the air from the water.

"Twi..." Applejack. "Twi, if y'jus' stay right there, Ah can use the rope..."

The unicorn's eyes were still pleading, and the broken voice joined them. "Please... can't..."

"You nearly killed her," Twilight stated. "You nearly killed my friend."

"Didn't -- mean to -- didn't -- want to -- tried to -- stop it..."

"She did." Rarity now. "I could see her, Twilight. She was trying to pull it back as much as you were trying to hold it. She simply -- did not know how to do so."

"Nothing happened!" Pinkie insisted. "Twilight, let her up -- please just let her up..."

"Pinkie, are y'out of yer mind?" Applejack yelled. "We've got her! We can wrap this whole thing up an' go home!"

"No, we can't!" Pinkie replied, her own volume sharply increasing. "Because -- she will just try to die if we take her like this! She'll kill herself! I'll run off with her before I let that happen! I'll take all of you on to get her free! She's not going to die, not because she hates herself!" Glaring around at the others, scrambling back to her hooves as she did so. "Who wants to fight me? Come on, Applejack -- you've wanted this for days! Let's go, you and me! Maybe I don't kick apple trees all day, but I used to push a lot of rocks! You kick, I charge -- let's see who comes out of that!"

The rest of the group froze. Shock had a way of causing that.

"Pinkie -- Pinkie, Ah can't --"

"You want to! Your lasso's already out!"

"Ah was gonna tie her up..."

From the ground, a soft, agonized, barely comprehensible, "Please..."

Another mirthless laugh emerged from Twilight. Her friends were fighting. Pinkie had switched sides without even having her coat greyed, was ready to battle for somepony who had nearly killed her. Plus of course, she herself was an alicorn. The world had moved beyond surreal, and the only way she currently had of dealing with it was laughter without joy. "Or what?" she asked, keeping her focus on the unicorn, the sudden anchor, the strangeness she at least had a few seconds of experience with. "You can't get a spell off that fast when you aren't just reacting, can you? And --" this thought was funny "-- what are you going to do if I keep you here long enough? All I have to do is hold this position for an hour or two, maybe more and eventually, you're going to be an earth pony. And then what's the plan? What are you going to do, grow plants at us? Oooh, that'll be scary. Suddenly the grass is four feet high, let's all run, everypony, or the giant dandelions will get us..."

Several things happened at once.

The unicorn's eyes went wider than any eyes Twilight had ever seen. Wide with the purest of fear.

Rainbow Dash snorted: no anger in it, just humor, trying to hold back a laugh.

Fluttershy gasped, a sound which made it feel as if she'd tried to inhale all the cold air over the pond in a single breath.

Spike started to shout something, as did Rarity. Sounds which could have been warnings.

Pinkie's contribution was a bare whisper of "...no..." followed by a sharp "...NO!"

There were sounds, ones Twilight only identified later when looking over her memories. A rope hitting the grass. A hat hitting the grass. Pounding hoofsteps, moving closer, getting faster --

-- and then Applejack vaulted the unicorn, head down, charging into Twilight's side. Impacted just in front of the left wing.

Twilight screamed at the jolt of pain, earth pony strength driving the hard head into her ribs, making it feel as if they were inches away from caving in. She was driven backwards, lifted off her hooves, flew into the freezing water, Applejack's momentum carrying the farmer into the liquid right after. There was shock from the cold.

More from betrayal.

"Go buck yourself into Tartarus, you bucking unicorn bigot!" Applejack screamed. "You don't -- !"

The farmer's right front hoof came up --

-- and Pinkie went into her.

Twilight's legs kicked as the battle moved into deeper water, tried to get her standing against as her mind desperately tried to find focus. The positional twisting of her own body as she tried to find purchase on the wet pebbles momentarily had her facing the shore and found Fluttershy frozen in horror, Spike and Rarity racing for the water's edge and Rainbow Dash, always the fastest to physically recover and adjust, having taken Twilight's own abandoned position with cyan hoof raised over dark purple horn, ready to inflict backlash at the first sign of any spell.

But none of that did anything for what was happening in the water.

Pegasus vs. pegasus, without their techniques figured in -- and sometimes with -- will come down to speed and maneuvering. Get your opponent out of the air. The most vicious fights will try to remove that capacity permanently. Go for the wings, try to drive the other into the ground. Use lightning and cloud cover and anything else offered -- but take away the sky.

As previously said, unicorn against unicorn often works out to who can target and reach the other's horn first. Physical damage is a part of the battle, but negating magic is the first priority -- sometimes foolishly, and on other occasions necessary just to live past the first blow.

Two earth ponies battling in front of witnesses is a horror.

It comes down to strength, experience, and willingness to let their blood speak from thousands of years in the past, long before there were Princesses or even Discord to try and rule, when it was all about holding land. When ponies did everything they could to accomplish that -- but with witnesses, with one who could barely feel and another who would not do it, the basics took over. Kick. Ram. Bite. Earth ponies were the physically strongest of the three races and on a daily basis, nearly all of that strength was held back. Oh, there were hints of it -- Pinkie could ram dancers into walls without meaning to with a simple hip bump, and they all knew what Applejack's kicks could do. But to see the two of them fighting, all that raw musclepower directed at each other, realizing that under Pinkie's slightly chubby build was pure steel, to see Applejack rearing back and letting her hind hooves fly without any restraint -- an impact Pinkie barely dodged -- was to momentarily freeze with fear at the raw savagery being unleashed, orange and pink bodies seeming to fly through the shallow water, freezing liquid splashing the banks and beyond, screams and yells and wordless shouts as civilization fell away under a single driving purpose: if I win, I'm right, and that was a goal both were seemingly willing to do anything for as curls soaked into straight falls (and it might have been more than just that), blue eyes spotted an opening, teeth snapped --

-- the loop of rope holding Applejack's ponytailed mane together was cut apart. The wet mass split, whipped on momentum, went into the farmer's eyes. Blinded, she stumbled back as Pinkie charged in with head low and knocked her over, the waterline splitting Applejack's body, half in chill and half in warm.

Pinkie reared up. Got her front hooves over Applejack's head.

"LISTEN TO YOURSELF!"

Came down.

Nopony moved. Nopony could move. Not even Applejack, frozen in place with Pinkie's front hooves having descended. One to each side of the bare head.

"Did you hear what you said?" Pinkie screamed. "Do you know what you even did? What's more important, Applejack -- ponies who've been dead for years or your friends, the ones who are alive right now? Why not just tell them to keep her here? Until the horn is gone, until the green comes up all the way, and then you could scare her yourself! That would keep the secret, wouldn't it? Seven can keep one if they're all dead! Who's your family, Applejack -- the ponies with centuries in the shadowlands or the ones under Sun and Moon? Or did you want a reunion to take the decision away? It's you or it's me, Applejack, it always was -- and now it is me! I will tell them everything, all of them everything, because they're all my family -- and what are you? Is it you, is it me -- or is it us? Last chance, Applejack -- last chance to decide who you really are! Element-Bearer? Another slave to something laid down by ponies who returned to the earth centuries ago? Or just our friend?"

Pinkie stepped away, trotting backwards, moved two body lengths towards the shore. Applejack stayed where she was. Some of the blonde mane was floating on the surface of the water. Some of it had sunk beneath. The broken loop of rope was drifting away, soaking up extra liquid, starting to dip. Green eyes dripped cold water as the farmer's head moved just enough to track Pinkie. Perhaps more than just cold water.

"I trust Twilight with my life -- and more," Pinkie softly told Applejack. "I trust all of us that way. But after this... maybe there's only one way we can ever trust you again, Applejack. Maybe they won't trust me either, because I held it back too. But I'm ready now. I think -- I've been ready for a long time. It just took this to bring it out. You can call it betrayal. You probably already have, in your head. I've heard that so many times, and -- it came from somepony who was wrong about everything. About the whole world and why I could never have any place in it. My place in this world is with them. And it should be with you, too, like it was for years, before Twilight came and the Elements and everything else. You told me we were family before all that happened... and if we're going to stay family, you know what you have to do. You have to -- beat me to it. Just let it out. Drop the chains, because that's all tradition ever is. Somepony does something, and makes somepony else do it, and generations pass until it's this huge iron weight tying us to stupid and nopony can remember why it had to be forged at all. I'm going to count to three, Applejack. And I'm going to turn around, and I'm going to tell them. Because if I don't, I'm betraying them -- and I care more about the family of my heart than the family of my blood."

Nopony else could say a word. None of them knew what was happening. Only that there was something here, something deep. The Element-Bearers watched, Spike helped Twilight out of the water, the unicorn stared in pain and confusion, not knowing what was going on at all. And it felt as if the world itself was listening.

Pinkie said "One." Turned partway towards the shore. "Two." Nearly facing the bank now. "Three." Looking directly at the group, tail facing Applejack, who was just beginning to try and get up again. Giving the farmer the clearest of shots.

But Applejack didn't take it. And didn't speak.

"All right," Pinkie said as her straight mane dripped pond water, her voice overflowing with regret. "Everypony --"

"-- she made the ravine."

Twilight couldn't move. Her mind wouldn't work. It felt as if the last bit of order in a sane universe was going away. And for once, that state had plenty of company.

There was barely any touch of accent to the farmer’s words, and her voice was nearly as broken as the unicorn's.

"That -- that's what happened. She did -- what it would've taken dozens of us t' do together. It's -- not just the Effect, it never was. That's earth pony magic. T' -- t' ask the land a question -- an' maybe get an answer. Ah -- Ah felt it when we arrived -- that somethin' big had happened -- but we can't tell, we can't ever --"

Applejack turned away, eyes streaming, and her legs splashed through the pond, beating towards the shore, away from the others. Broke out in a final splash and galloped towards the path, raced out of the clearing, unable to look at anypony. Leaving her hat in the grass.

Nopony could move. Nopony could stop her.

It was Spike who found his voice first, if just barely. "...Pinkie?"

"She needs time," Pinkie sadly told them. "Just -- give her time. It's -- easier for me, I think. I had a lot more reasons to question everything my family said. She heard laws and I -- saw chains. I don't care what earth ponies turned to dust think. If I ever do, you'll know it by the way I stop breathing." She was shivering in the water, mane and tail refusing to recurl. "I don't think I'm the first, Spike, not in more than a thousand years. Earth ponies born to unicorn and pegasus families... or just with really good friends... I think ponies talked before, and the ponies they talked to -- just kept the secret. But if I'm wrong -- then I trust all of you... and she already knows."

Twilight forced herself to blink. To turn, to look down at the unicorn again. The unicorn who would be an earth pony in a few hours. A few hours which, if they'd held her, would have brought them to...

"...you..." impossible impossible -- no. Possible. "...you -- did that? The whole ravine?"

"Didn't. Mean to. Was -- had to -- I... to not die..."

Twilight closed her eyes.

The Cornucopia Effect. Land responding whether it should or not. Equestria's means of food supply. Physically stronger than the other two pony races, with more endurance. What everypony knows about earth ponies -- isn't a lie. It's the surface, and the rest lies -- underneath the earth...

The world is insane. My life is insane. Nothing I ever learned was right, or I never learned the right things at all. Earth ponies can open cracks in the land. Pegasi shift heat. Ponies try and fail to become alicorns. Cutie marks move. I have wings. Pinkie and Applejack have magic I never knew about, never suspected, never would have guessed at.

My existence is chaos. Our friendship is being consumed by disorder. The world is --

-- discord.

"Pinkie?" Twilight could barely talk. It felt as if she barely remembered how. "Can you -- show me?" Demonstration. Experiment. Evidence. Proof. Order.

Sad, shivering harder now. "No... I -- can't do it. I'm sorry, Twilight, but... I can't do any of it. I never could. It's -- why I left the rock farm. Part of why. Applejack can do a lot of it, but -- she needs time. Twilight -- Rainbow -- please let her up? For me? And you -- please don't run?"

They did. Part of it was because a friend had asked for a favor, and potentially not one on that Discord level. But also because -- there were times when they had to trust Pinkie. When parasprites invaded. When laughter was desperately needed. When ponies were hurting -- that was when Pinkie took over. When pain that was more than physical needed to be stopped.

And she did not run. She got to her hooves, stood trembling and shivering nearly as much as Pinkie and moaning a little as her ears stayed flat back against her head -- but did not run.

Pinkie sighed -- and looked directly at the mark.

"I really don't know what you meant, Twilight," the baker said, smiling just a little. "It's so pretty..."

Twilight abruptly found her wet rump resting on the pebbles. Several other ponies also sat down suddenly, along with one dragon -- but not Pinkie. And neither did Fluttershy, who took her own opportunity to look. "...you're right," the animal caretaker agreed. "It's beautiful..."

Those words make Rainbow Dash take her own look, and she jerked her head away a split-second later, too shaken to pretend it hadn't happened. Rarity forced her eyes to stay in contact for as long as she could: five whole seconds. Spike frowned, as if he wasn't sure what the others were reacting to, and kept his gaze steady -- but with a sort of disinterested confusion laced in.

"...beautiful?" the unicorn asked, even more confused than the little dragon. "Don't -- understand... Failed..."

Pinkie walked up to her, face to face. Reared up to get the extra height, gave her a very wet nuzzle. The nuzzle for family.

"If you say 'defective' again," Pinkie whispered, "I'll kick you." Smiled.

Fluttershy forced herself closer, stood by Pinkie's side. Managed a smile of her own.

The unicorn began to shake. Weep. Sank to the ground again, trembled in the grass. Fluttershy moved into contact, checking for injuries -- then stayed next to the blue coat.

After a while, the others made themselves sit down around her.

They didn't manage to get anything else done.

She was still shaken by what had both happened and nearly happened. She also didn't seem to know how to deal with a group. She kept looking around at the five ponies and single dragon as if she'd never seen so many close to her before, eyes moving from one to another in near-constant survey -- but always coming back to Pinkie, whose mane was slowly starting to dry out. And once she calmed down enough to express herself again, she wasn't exactly completely thrilled about the group being present. "Said -- alone." The gold was tilting away now, the silver descending on the loop. Her horn was slightly shorter, and it seemed as if portions of her coat were beginning to darken -- although that could have been the Moon moving a little farther away, heading behind distant clouds.

"You're not the only one who had to be careful," Twilight apologized -- and used it to move into the rest. "I'm sorry. I know you didn't mean to attack her, and I believe Rarity when she says you were trying to take it back." It explained the second source of steam: reaching without knowing how... "It's just that -- you nearly hurt my friend." Six. So close to becoming five. "That scared me. And when I'm scared, I -- do and say stupid things. So -- I'm sorry. It was just... being afraid."

"Understand," the unicorn said, although she still sounded more than a little shaken herself. Accepting Twilight's answer -- but realizing how close things had come to being that much worse. "Not -- good night to -- continue. Should maybe. Try again. Later. After everypony -- rests. And -- orange pony... feels better?" She glanced at all of them again, seemed to be mentally counting. Went to Spike, whom she clearly had no idea how to deal with. Back to Pinkie -- then Twilight. "Afternoon this time? But -- different place. Orchard. Apples."

"You're -- willing to try going out in daylight?" Twilight asked. But if somepony saw her...

A nod. "Know way. Hidden way -- most of it. Rest short. Nopony see. And -- orchard in -- wild zone. Night -- bad idea. Can't come -- here -- too much. Have to -- vary."

Some small amount of irony tried to make itself known to Twilight: she made a point of ignoring it. "But -- there's traffic out to the orchard during the day, ponies getting apples. That's still a risk."

"Oh..." The unicorn frowned, looking as if the idea of ponies traveling for snacks had truly never occurred to her. "Then -- nearby. Signal you. From hiding. Place. Lead from there."

Pinkie looked worried. "Do you have a place you can stay? Food?" The unicorn nodded to both. "But... maybe one of us should come with you..."

Which got an immediate head shake, vibrating the short mane. "No. Don't trust. Not that far --" an abrupt stop -- then, thoughtfully, "Maybe -- little more. Than did. But. Not that much. Yet." She looked around at the others. "Not -- tell? Please?" They nodded.

"But I want to come!" Pinkie insisted. "I want to make sure you --"

"-- not. Kill. Self," the unicorn finished, with the last word half-scream as her horn visibly involuted. "Won't. Maybe not -- same road. But -- smart. Work out -- where my -- road broke. Save..." She squeezed her eyes shut, couldn't look at anypony. "Have to. Think. More. About that -- night. What... went wrong. Maybe together -- figure out. For others. Different paths -- but smart..."

How much do I trust her? How much of a chance am I taking on letting her go after what nearly happened to Pinkie? And on -- not having her take her own life?

Twilight looked at the baker. Pinkie nodded, just slightly.

There were times when Twilight had to defer. It didn't mean she liked all of them. But when it came to reading somepony's emotional state... "All right. If you avoid all other ponies and just run from any who see you. Shall we say -- five in the afternoon?"

"Yes," the unicorn replied to all of it, and stood up. "You come. Pink one -- also come. Maybe one other. And I come." She looked at Pinkie, and it seemed for a moment as if she might almost be trying to smile -- but then the pain hit her, and when the gasping ended, all she could manage was "Promise..."

Her left front leg came up for a moment. The hoof touched an area just below her neck, pushed right. Went back down.

She trotted away, the limp once again shifting from leg to leg as she moved. Twilight watched her go, wondering how much of a mistake she was making. If there was anything she could do which would not have been an error. How little she still knew about this strange pony --

-- how little she apparently knew about everything.

The unicorn vanished into the trees.

They all sat in silence for a while.

"Well," Rarity eventually began, "I suppose there are many ways in which that could have been worse..." She sighed. "And that's just for poor Applejack. Oh dear... Pinkie, is this because of me? Because I began to openly think and ask about your feel?" Clearly willing to blame herself, and not just to keep a little bit of burden away from Twilight.

Pinkie shook her head. The curls were about halfway back to normal. "It started when we were leaving the ravine. I wanted to tell Twilight then, but -- we had a fight. Applejack wanted to look for other earth ponies. We usually just -- take care of these things ourselves. I gave her the time, but..." She sighed. "We didn't know about Trotter's Falls..."

The things we don't tell each other...

Twilight didn't know if she was mad at Applejack. Didn't know whether she should or could be. Just that her side hurt. A lot. And... I'm not sure how I feel about anything right now...

She got up. The others followed suit.

"Pinkie," Twilight said, "there's going to be -- another class, isn't there? On -- earth pony... magic."

Pinkie nodded. "There has to be. But I can't show you anything. We need Applejack for that... there's nopony else we could ever even ask. Not here, and -- not when we can't talk to the Princesses."

Of course. Of course they can do it. But why didn't they --

-- undoubtedly for the same reason they hadn't told her anything at all and just thrown her back into Ponyville. Whatever that was.

It was knowledge. It was a secret kept through the ages. It was something Pinkie trusted all of them with. And Applejack...

...had spoken first...

...before running away as if fifty generations of earth ponies were chasing her.

"Pinkie?" Rainbow Dash looked oddly solemn. "If it's that important -- for whatever stupid reason anypony would want that kind of coolness to be a secret in the first place, then -- I won't tell. I promise. I'll even -- Pinkie Promise."

Rarity managed a small laugh. "So say we all, I think. This is hardly going to be a topic for gossip."

Fluttershy shivered a little. "...it's scary... knowing so much, but... thank you for trusting me..."

Spike smiled. "I can't teach dragon magic until I learn if I have any beyond what the Princess taught me. I'll swear, Pinkie."

Pinkie looked at all of them as her curls lofted higher -- then focused on Twilight. "This is -- really really serious, Twilight. When it happens -- everything we tell you comes down from other ponies. By voice, in stories. And some of those stories are -- why we don't tell..." Another shiver: they had to get her inside and dried off. "...but it's never written down. That's part of what Applejack -- was so scared of. If you promise -- you have to promise not only to never tell anypony else unless it's absolutely necessary to save somepony, but also not to take any notes, or send any letters to the Archives, or ever write any of it down. Not in a diary, or a personal journal, or research notes. Ever, anywhere -- not unless there's a day when just about everypony knows. And that goes for everypony -- you too, Dash, no stories or even hinting at it for a character and don't pout like that either. I trust you to keep the secret -- but for Applejack, and to help keep it a secret at all, please -- keep it the earth pony way?"

They swore. They Pinkie Promised. And they headed back towards the castle.

Pinkie brought the lasso. Twilight gently carried the hat in her mouth. The earth pony way.

They'd found Applejack asleep in her cottage bed, her pillow soaked with tears. She hadn't bothered to retie her mane. Quietly, they placed her things on the nightstand and left her to rest, what was nearly their last view of the night for the farmer cut off by Pinkie climbing into the bed to snuggle next to her. The last thing they saw was Applejack starting to cry in her sleep, trying to pull away from Pinkie -- who refused to let her.

The others wearily trooped into the castle, headed for their rooms.

"This," Spike sighed as he and Twilight went into their own, "has been one of the weirdest weeks of my life. And I turned into a savage brainless adult once... Do you think Applejack's -- going to be okay?"

Twilight could do nothing more than echo the sigh. "I think you're picking up a talent for understatement. I don't know, Spike. I hope she will, but..." What had it cost Applejack to get those words out? What had made the farmer charge Twilight in the first place? They'd all seen how much stress Applejack was under, but to have it break that way...

There hadn't been enough room in the cottage bed for a full-fledged ponypile. Twilight had thought about it. But there had also been long thoughts about how much time they'd known each other for. About Applejack calling Twilight family. About -- secrets.

If Discord assigned this mission to break us...

...how close had he come? Or...

...too much to think about... Carrying the extra burdens of knowing she had just let her go on Pinkie's opinion and incidentally, Twilight was personally about to take on the magical secrets of an entire race. No, Twilight would not have been good for much over the rest of the night. And her side still hurt.

They would see Applejack when they all woke up. Twilight hoped.

Spike just looked depressed. "I'm starting to hate this place," he told Twilight. "It's kind of a nice castle, our host is a good pony, and the Doctor is interesting even if his coat stinks -- but... I wanted to leave as soon as I saw Coordinator, Twilight. I wanted to just grab your tail and drag you away before he could do anything. It felt kind of good to see him scared like that, but -- I remember what he's like, and how we could never really -- close in. I don't think he's changed, and with him working here..."

Twilight nodded -- but stood her ground. "He hasn't changed, I'll bet on that. But I have -- and I don't mean the wings. He can't get to me any more, Spike. I won't let him. And my friends aren't ponies he can drive away. Let him do his worst -- I'm ready. I've seen all of it. There's no more worst he can do to me." Not compared to everything which had happened. The expectations others had for her. Blessing.

"I want to believe you..." Spike sighed. "But he was always bad news, and he's had time to learn new tricks too. I would have given anything to set his tail on fire once... but I feel like we've still got be careful -- oh! Wait a second -- I think --"

He burped.

Twilight's field caught the scroll at the same moment she recognized the fieldwriting on the exterior.

"Yes!" Twilight cried out with open happiness and more than a little relief. She had desperately needed for anything to go right, and with this... "I knew she could do it, Spike! She worked it out! Celestia's shoes, she must have stayed up all night trying to figure out how to send it back..."

Spike was smiling himself: the little dragon had been in need of something to help boost his night back up too. "I know you're not going to wait..."

"No way." Twilight was already removing the seal. "It's a longshot, but I'll take any chance I can get of help right now..."

She unfurled the scroll.

And ultimately, the results were something other than she would have wished for.

Dear Twilight,

You have no idea how weird it is to write those words together. 'Dear' and 'Twilight'. Really? Me? And I have to make that feel like I wasn't laughing at the time? Well, I wasn't. By the time I get this sent, I'll probably be too tired to laugh. Or even move. A burst of dragonflame, a scroll, and a vial. I wish you'd sent this a little later in the day, when I was on stage: that trick would have gotten me a few bits tossed from the audience. Remember, most ponies have never been on the receiving end of Spike's personal trick or have any idea it's even possible. They would have thought I did it. And of course, I would have been happy to take all the credit, followed by claiming I couldn't do it again for the rest of my stay in Trottingham. Any time you want to schedule one of these for showtime, just let me know in advance and I'll work it in.

But you're not writing me to ask about life on the road. You wrote to ask something which, honestly, I've been waiting for you to ask. And if we're going to be honest with each other -- we can do that now, right? A little? -- I've been dreading this.

I'm looking at this scroll right now, trying to think of something I can do which would keep me from putting more words on it. I could just lose the vial, I guess. Let it fall and come open by 'accident': no flame, no return. Or maybe it never got to me in the first place. What letter, I get to say the next time we see each other, whenever that is, and smile. You'd buy it. You have a little too much faith in ponies sometimes, especially when that pony is me. Maybe -- even extremely especially with me. One burst of fireworks doesn't make up for everything. Not even close.

You wrote me anyway. And you really thought I was going to answer -- not to mention that you thought I'd be able to figure out how from your notes, none of which give me the actual feel.

I guess I kind of have to respect that, huh?

I said some of what I'm about to tell you to Princess Celestia at my trial. Yeah -- my trial. I'm betting she never told you about that, right? Well, it happened. After I galloped out of Ponyville, I was intercepted. The Lunar Guards arrested me and put a restraint on my horn. I stood still and let them. I figured -- I had it coming. And a lot more. They flew me into Canterlot and I saw the Princess the next morning at the arraignment. She took me aside into her judicial chambers -- you know, the ones she barely uses, there was dust everywhere -- and we talked.

I'm actually on probation right now, and will be for a long time. Various Guards drop in on my shows to check on me. I have to sign some forms and swear I'm not doing anything stupid. It's... kind of the least of what I deserve. But you know me -- I'm not exactly going to throw myself at Her Royal Hooves and beg for exile time. She thinks probation is enough, the same way you think you can trust me to give you honest answers in this letter. It's not that I care about letting the two of you down or think that if I live up to your expectations, it'll show you up. It's...

...I don't know what it is.

I'd be lying if I said it wasn't fun to be the one with the answers you wanted for a change, though. But I can't win this without giving you the real ones, and as your self-obsessed wandering manestyle of a friend would say, it's going to make me look rather bad. For starters.

You asked about ways for a unicorn to make their field stronger. I know you're really asking about one thing. But hey, let's pretend for a few lines and work our way up to it.

There are three ways to do it. Two of them work.

First off, those books like Stronger Magic Fields On Six Simple Exercises A Day? Are horse apple smear. The best ones have some decent field refinement exercises in them and those do help with field dexterity, but they do nothing for raw power. So I can now move twelve things at a time. Big deal. Their weights still add up to my previous maximum lift.

(Incidentally, Secrets Of Mane Transfiguration just made my coat smell bad for a week.)

Booster drugs... I know you've heard of them, and you've probably seen a couple of students use them to try and get past exams. All of them think the visible changes won't be caught. Two ponies in my school tried it. They got caught. When the whites of your eyes turn black, it's hard to say 'I guess I stayed up too late' and have anypony believe you. So might as well admit it: yeah, I took them. Twice. I got about what I think was a fifteen-percent boost out of it, which is standard for the stuff which doesn't stand a good chance of killing you instantly. I've heard talk of mixes which go up to fifty percent -- but if it doesn't kill you when you take it, the strain you put on your body stands a good chance to kill you anyway when it all wears off. They're all good for about fifteen minutes when you will swear to any living soul that you are now Celestia herself and twenty hours of lying in bed with a sheet over your eyes because light just hurts that much. Also, your horn twinges. For three days. The first time I tried it, I figured I'd gotten a bad dose. After the second, I figured I was onto a pattern and stopped there.

I did some stupid stuff trying to catch up with you.

Which, I guess, gets us to what your letter is really about. Stuff your library doesn't and shouldn't have. All you got was the basics. The sanitized-for-your-protection edition. I have more. Too much more...

(I took a twenty-minute walk around my caravan before I started this next part. I don't know what it does for you, but me? Nothing.)

There's a whole bunch of legends about the Alicorn Amulet. Most of them are -- buried, which I guess is what happened to the real thing after the Princess got ahold of it. (She told me she was taking care of it herself. I'm glad she told me that.) I was desperate when I started looking in that direction.

No -- that's not a good word. I was stupid. I was addicted to the idea of beating you. I told you something of what happened after I left Ponyville the first time. Tomatoes in the coat really don't do much for self-esteem. And you know magic -- once you start to lose focus, it can be hard to get it back. Once my performances started sucking, they were probably going to keep sucking. Taking a job on a rock farm under an old bigot whose idea of a good time was scheduling my heaviest work hours for the biggest downpours was actually the highlight of my life for a while. When colts and fillies in magic kindergarten are publicly correcting you, there's almost nowhere left to sink.

Somewhere at literal rock bottom was the bucking Amulet.

I did a lot of research. I went to places you haven't gone and should never go. I read things... well, I'm starting to sleep again, more or less. And I put together things a lot of ponies said. Or screamed. Mostly screamed. In the end, I still may not know exactly what happened, and there's probably two ponies alive -- maybe three -- who do. I can never ask either of them about it. I know that. Maybe I don't really want to.

But you wouldn't ask unless you needed this, would you?

So let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time in the magical land of Equestria, there was a unicorn who was a great caster. The strongest of his generation. And for a time, that was enough. He invented spells, he created magics no pony had ever seen before and a few nopony ever saw again. The spells he didn't finish were legends themselves. An amazing talent. On par with you, actually. Obviously well above me.

The thing was -- it wasn't enough.

This caster lived right around the time history says the Princesses came into view for the first time. He was a contemporary of them, and I don't just mean living in the same period. He knew them, they knew him. From what some elements of the stories say -- and there are variations: I'm putting things together here and making some leaps which I think are landing on solid ground -- they were friends. There's even a hint that -- well -- with your own transformation, maybe you've thought about the idea of a before. I never did until I started researching this -- or at least I hadn't for a very long time. But dig deep enough and unearth that: the concept that for some ponies, there was not only a time when they might have thought about before, but there are stories which suggest before existed.

He might have known them before. Think about that. I did. A lot.

And he also knew them after.

He started to wonder -- why not him?

So he labored. He did -- something. I don't know what and nothing I read ever found any hint of it. It's like that was wiped from history. Pieces of the rest were missed -- but not that. Whatever he tried, it didn't work. He was still a unicorn. Still the most talented caster of his generation and stronger than any other unicorn alive -- but he wasn't them. And just being all of the previous wasn't enough any more.

He decided to try -- something else.

The darkest books -- the ones I hope you never have to see -- called it 'harvesting essence'. You don't want to know how it works. I have a vague idea -- enough that if I spent time working on it, I might be in a position to try. But I didn't do it. Even at my lowest, that would have been burrowing into the earth to places even the Diamond Dogs won't go. Let's just say the pony has to be dead. And if the pony isn't dead, they're close to it when you start and after you're done... It can't be used on somepony who's healthy, anypony who can resist. Just the concept of being able to fight back might stop it. You'd have to be horribly weak -- and once it stopped, 'weak' would have been a dream.

If you weren't dead already, having your essence harvested would kill you. I don't know how anypony could have survived it.

He took from the dead.

To start.

And I wonder why I can't sleep sometimes.

He harvested unicorn essence and -- bound it within what wound up as the Amulet. The idea was that by getting enough essence, he would get some of the magic. That essence, built up enough, would generate its own field, and the act of wearing the Amulet would sort of provide a perpetual casting of Gromway's Combiner. You'd be working through a pair of fields, and by combining enough essence in the vessel, the second field would be stronger than his own.

You might be wondering why he went exterior. Why he didn't just try to take the essence into himself. I did. All I could find was something about the concept of displacement. Like there was an absolute limit to how much essence a pony could hold. His notes -- yes, I found a couple of pieces from what I'm sure are his notes, you don't want to know the condition or where -- suggest there were ways around that limit, but that he couldn't personally use any of them. That if, in his current condition, he took new essence in, it would push some of his own essence out -- and it was impossible for him to even do that much. Something about timing. The fragments are -- just that. Some of them were destroyed, others are past reading, a few might be missing. It's all I have of that aspect. I should probably be glad for that.

So he had to keep the essence in something outside himself. Thus the spell lock where the wearer has to voluntarily take it off. About as close to a guarantee of keeping as it gets -- or so I thought.

All right. So he's got essence from -- a lot of unicorns. Don't ask how many. And it is generating a field. A really powerful one. He puts it on and the automatic Gromway links up with the most powerful caster of his generation. He now has the raw strength of an alicorn. Maybe beyond. He demonstrates his new toy to the Princesses -- still both -- and tells them how it was made.

They -- weren't happy.

Neither was the Amulet.

At this point, I have to tell you what essence is not. It is not a pony's soul. He wasn't wearing that around his neck. From what I could make out, it almost felt like the shadow cast by a soul, or -- something which could join with a soul under the right circumstances. And it's very susceptible to resonance. The reason you harvest and use it warps the essence. In his case, he had been gathering out of anger and a desire for power. So all the harvested essence took on an aspect of its own -- that of somepony who just wanted power and was angry about not having enough of it. And -- the fields were melded. When the Princesses rejected him and his creation, that resonance went through the meld and -- took over.

I thought... I thought I could stay on top of it, Twilight. I thought that even if the legends weren't exaggerated, knowing what was coming... I would be able to control it.

You tell yourself a lot of things when you're stupid. All of them were as dumb as I was.

The Princesses attacked him -- they didn't know about the spell lock yet. He put on a Tartarus of a show against the two of them, held his own long enough to get away. And then he -- or really, the Amulet by then -- decided it clearly wasn't powerful enough yet, so it started working on getting some more essence, and that's when it -- went after the living. Maybe it could drain from those who weren't on the edge of death, or would have been able to given enough time. Maybe it never got the chance. It went on a rampage for a while, it tried to carve out its own little empire in the southwest of the continent while the Princesses desperately tried to figure out what they could do to save the wearer, and --

-- well, that's where the legends go vague. I can tell you this, though: he didn't take any notes about the final battle. Because you can trick the wearer into taking it off -- or...

...the Amulet needs a host. It can only exert its own field through melding with that of a living pony. If that pony dies, the Amulet goes inert and stays on the corpse until it turns to dust.

So really, there's two ways to remove it. Funny, huh?

Did they kill him? I think it's possible. Given that it's the Princesses, maybe they just put him into exile somewhere he couldn't hurt anypony until he died of old age. Like I said -- vague. But they never got it off his living self.

After that... the Amulet kind of fades in and out of history. I think they must have tried to destroy it at first, or -- maybe by the time it was off, Princess Luna was gone and the Princess couldn't manage it by herself, as hard as that is to see. She must have at least tried to lock it away. But one legend says she did and somepony who was desperate for power stole it -- so here we go again.

You'll see the hoofprints here and there if you look carefully. Little empires. There was a fairly successful one off the west coast which took over an island chain for a while.

It wants to be worn. If you can't personally use it, it'll nudge you to get it around the neck of somepony who can. Admittedly, it seems to do so according to your nature. If you're generous, you give it away. If you're a shopkeeper, you charge through the nose. The longer you have it around, the stronger those nudges seem to become. I knew I could get it away from any pegasus or earth pony just by finding their terms, and if a unicorn had somehow been able to resist putting it on, they might not be able to resist getting rid of it.

I thought I was too strong for it to control me.

I thought so many things.

And then it was changing all the thinking.

You never asked me -- what I remembered. All of it. Every last moment. But not always from my own eyes. There were a few times when it was as if I was standing a little away from my own body. At first, I was enjoying it. Then I started -- protesting. Snips and Snails, I didn't want to do that, the little goobers might have been the only fans I had left.

Then I started screaming.

The Amulet -- I hope I can make this clear -- beyond the resonance aspects and desire to be worn, it has no personality or intellect of its own. It borrows that of the host for everything else and to that degree, reacts the way the host would react. That's why you can trick the wearer if you're lucky. In my case, the Amulet, if it could think at all in any real way, might have been considering how to take your fake version and drain the magic from it, combine that with its own. Or maybe the version of me it had partially created was doing that. But it had to have a taste first, and -- it didn't think, not about what that momentary removal would have done. And it wouldn't -- couldn't -- hear me. Trick the host, trick the Amulet -- and free me.

I don't know what Princess Celestia did with it. I hope she destroyed it, her and Princess Luna together. It shouldn't exist. If I did nothing else, at least my stupidity eventually brought it back to confinement.

Ultimately, nothing I did with the Amulet was irreversible. But it could have been. Maybe ponies only lived because -- I like showing off. I still do, I always will. And you can't show off without an audience. The Amulet took on that aspect of me and left ponies alive to applaud -- or else.

The only reason Ponyville and everypony in it are still standing may be my ego. I laugh at that sometimes, when I can't sleep.

Twilight, if you're in a situation where you of all ponies, Miss Newest Princess In History, need to think about how field strength can be increased, please -- don't be me. Don't be that stupid. Do not seek out the Amulet, if it even still exists. Don't try the drugs and ignore the books beyond the field refinement exercises which you probably already do. If you're in that much trouble, tell me and let me know where you are: I'll get there as quickly as I can. If it was just intellectual curiosity, tell me that too -- and fast. I can't tell what your emotional state is when Spike writes the letter: his clawwriting isn't your fieldwriting. But the fact that you're just asking the question has me -- scared. I admit that. It's a lot easier to admit that stuff now, because I know what happens when I don't.

And there's a punchline to this -- one I've been holding back until now, because I know it's going to hurt you. And that's not the reason I concealed it this far, I swear it isn't, Twilight... but you have to know. You have to know so you'll never think about trying to refine the essence harvesting process or ways of getting around the resonance or send the EMS any notice about it at all. You need to stay away from this for the rest of your life -- no matter how long that might be.

I researched deep into the Amulet's legend, Twilight. I told you that. I told you I found some of his notes. Aren't you wondering who made this nightmare?

The so-called greatest caster in Equestria's history did it. One of your heroes. You're always trying to keep your friends from pretending to fall asleep when you talk about him and in his honor, you dress up as him on Nightmare Night.

Star Swirl made the Alicorn Amulet.

Think about that, Twilight.

And if you ever see me or anypony else reach the point where they would think about hunting for it or making one of their own -- stop them. And that includes stopping yourself.

Because if you don't, those who care about you will have to stop you -- no matter what it takes.

We owe you no less.

Your friend mostly in spite of herself,

Trixie Lulamoon

Failure -- and success.

It is, perhaps, a theme of his existence.

He does not recognize that, not now, not in the nightscape. But he went to sleep on that idea, and it has brought him back to a time when he recognized both qualities happening simultaneously, sent him into a wild zone again, calling out a name the bearer doesn't want to hear.

It has been nearly a moon since she vanished: he got that much when he spoke to her father, if what he does with that party can ever truly be called 'speaking'. What came back at him certainly wasn't and before it ended, words were replaced by what he had been waiting for since he first met the stallion: attempts at kicking hooves and snapping teeth. He hadn't put up with it for long. Attacked by a grieving parent -- yes, that happens to him, especially when one or more have been lost, and he takes the blows unless doing so would mean his own end. This parent had not been grieving and after a time spent dodging, he had done what he'd wanted to do for years, only much more quickly. In the end, all it got him was a best guess at a direction.

He has been searching on and off for three days. He has appointments to keep and teleports off to them when he must, but memorizes safe points in what he is guessing as the right portion of wild zone (no way to truly tell, he may be deluding himself, he has hope and virtually nothing else) and comes back to them at every opportunity. Over and over, he calls out. He desperately wishes he had learned her essence, but -- where was the need? She was where she was, and would have remained there for the rest of her life. What little other magic he can bring to bear on the search, he does -- but it has been nearly a moon.

In his heart, he expects to find a body. Or a place where a body had fallen.

So on the third day of his search, the twenty-sixth after the date he was told she had run away, it comes as something very close to both the relief and shock of his life when he comes back to one of his safe points, a natural vegetation cubbyhole near a slow-moving stream where a thirsty pony might try to drink -- and the first thing he sees is a lank fall of darkish pink tail hair.

It is a miracle. He does not waste those.

"Pinkamena?"

She jumps, spins partially around as she does so. It lets him see what her father had described as the unnatural, the supposedly-hideous mark --

-- which is three balloons.

He truly doesn't see the horror there.

"Doctor?" she gasps. "Doctor Gentle? I --" and then she turns back towards the stream. Looks as if she's making ready to try and jump, get away from him. All she has to do is move deep into foliage. He cannot teleport-chase to where the plants are thick, and a small pony with a desperate head start could easily escape by squeezing through areas where he cannot gallop.

"Pinkamena -- don't... I'm -- not here to take you back. I swear that. I'd rather stick a hoof in my own eye than haul you to the rock farm against your will."

She will not turn to face him. "Then why were you looking for me?" It comes out in her usual tone: a sad voice, perpetually defeated, the sound of a pony who has never scored even the tiniest victory in her life.

"I was worried about you. Pinkamena, you ran away -- into a wild zone -- when you'd never left your farm before... I thought --" He has to tell her. "-- I thought you were dead, and that was the last thing I ever wanted. I had to try and find you..."

She does turn. The fall of mane obscures much of her face. The cutie mark came and still nopony thought to cut it.

"I care about you," he tells her. "I always will. I care about all of mine, but you -- you're my most determined. You've been surviving in a wild zone for nearly a moon -- there is no pony among mine more determined to live than you..."

'Surviving' is the way to put it. She has lost weight, and she was always thin to begin with. (He had suspected her father gave her less to eat as punishment for whatever her failures were. He didn't learn the natures of those failures, but he got the deliberately small meals out of the stallion during the fight and put in an extra kick for it.) There are thin trails of blood dried into her coat. Numerous small scars. Bruises here and there. The wild zone has been putting her to the test and so far, she has passed all of them. Many older ponies would be unable to say the same -- or, after so much time spent in here, anything at all.

"All I want," he continues, "is to know you're okay. And you will never be okay on that farm. Not if you ran away. I know you well enough to understand you never would have fled without a reason." Also that the nonsense her father screamed at him could not possibly have been it. Stretching for any lies and not even bothering to invent plausible ones. "If you don't want to go back -- I won't take you back. I promise. But you're a little pony still, Pinkamena, and -- you have to live somewhere."

"I live here now," she whispers. "It's -- better."

She is being sincere.

She truly feels the Tartarus of the wild zone is better than her home.

He wants to find her father and kick him again. Ensure that one will produce no more children who believe in their deepest heart that this is better than that.

"It's not," he gently insists. "There are places -- no, not an orphanage, I couldn't do that to you, even with the company you'd gain. Maybe -- a town."

"A -- town?" She barely seems to know the word.

"A place where lots of ponies live. All kinds of ponies, not just rock farmers. Somewhere pegasi and unicorns live. But one with lots of earth ponies too, so you'd have something to start with that you knew..." Which is a lie and he knows it. Anywhere he could bring her would be a massive culture shock after a life in that place, but having her stay with earth ponies couldn't hurt. "I can talk to some ponies, find somepony who would be willing to look after you." Mixed town -- well, certainly not Trotter's Falls -- earth pony majority...

Yes, he has a candidate, and part of that is based in geography. "I can't teleport with you," he tells her, and it is the truth: he has yet to learn the art of escorting another through the between. "So I'll have to stay with you until we get out of here. But we're not as far away from a settled zone as you might think. There's a town named Ponyville three days away -- two if we're lucky." Is his schedule that free? Yes -- and if not, it'll have to be. She needs him. "You went far, Pinkamena... farther than I thought you would have been able to. But once I get you there, I can find ponies to take you in, and a school for you, a real one, colts and fillies to play with..."

Her blue eyes go wide. "You -- you would do that? For -- me?" Her voice does not suggest she doesn't feel she's worthy. Her entire being says it directly, and it makes him want to weep.

"Always."

There is a long moment of silence. She looks at him. At the stream. At the vegetation beyond. He can almost feel her weighing truth. Wondering if he is about to bring her back to the rock farm and all that might mean.

He smiles at her. "I kicked him, you know."

Disbelief. "You -- did?"

He nods.

"I -- I did too..."

He laughs.

She slowly turns away from the stream again, trots closer to him. He leans in, bends down.

Experimentally -- as if she'd never been able to try it before -- she tries to nuzzle him. The nuzzle meant for family. He returns it.

And then she is crying into his coat.

He remembers that clearly, finds it easy to bring back in the nightscape. The majority for the day's remainder would require much more effort, and so the dream skips over most of the time they spent moving forward, oriented on Ponyville now, fighting off the hazards of the wild zone together. (It is easier with his magic brought to bear in her cause, and he is even more amazed that one so young has survived without it. His most determined, indeed.)

Forward -- and they have camped for the night. They had found a clearing, one easily defensible, with only a single entrance and rock against their backs. He started a fire for her: she was amazed by the process, only knowing earth pony ways to do so. She has been steadily cheering up throughout their travels. It has amazed him almost as much as her survival, for this was one he never believed he would see happy, and her increasing joy has been infectious.

"We should have a party!" she tells him. "A Going To Ponyville party!" Her pink curls flounce as she giggles at the mere idea. "Wherever that is, wherever we are... we should celebrate just because we're going, and we're alive, and --" more slowly, as if she still can't quite make herself believe it completely "-- things might be -- different."

"We probably should," he replies. Yes, he will help to keep her spirits up, especially when they're higher than he's ever seen them. "So how do you throw parties in a wild zone, Pinkamena?" Certainly not in the way her father had accused her of, the lying horse apple smear.

For the first time since he has known her, she laughs. "Wildly!" He laughs in return and watches her as she races around the edge of the clearing, a bright pink blur in action. She is grabbing low-hanging vines and yanking them down, stringing them using her mouth, working green between drooping branches. Flowers are delicately woven into what's mostly a pattern by sheer random accident -- but he can see the skills developing, the talents embodied by the mark coming to bear and with more time and practice, perfection will emerge. She's decorating, one tiny subset of her overall grouping. He is thrilled to watch it. There are more spectacular marks and talents, certainly -- but for this mark to have appeared on her... it is wondrous indeed. He truly has no idea how it could have come to pass, not from a life spent on that rock farm with her father and the rest of the family shouldn't be taking home any prizes either.

She is living. He never thought he'd see it.

More flowers are woven into the developing quasi-structure. She pulls down some large leaves which have natural shallow depressions in their centers and pours a little water from his canteen into them. Streamers are thrown about. A party hat is jammed onto his head with the elastic gently tugged under his chin: it makes him laugh again. Step by step, she is turning the little defensible clearing into something much more --

-- wait.

He is -- not thinking of something.

He knows it.

Something just -- happened. And his mind is ignoring it -- or rather, most of it is. But he has been through too much over the years, traveled to so many places and asked questions which most ponies never come close to considering in his quest to do the needful. Something happened and most of him is trying to ignore it -- but the part trained by travels and experiments and sheer drive cannot overlook it.

So what was it?

He slowly moves a hoof up.

There is a party hat on his head.

There are streamers woven into the vines.

She had no saddlebags when he found her. No supplies of any kind. She took nothing that was not hers when she left -- on purpose, given why she left at all. And there was virtually nothing which was hers to begin with.

He had packed no such things. Why would he?

Something has -- happened.

Something which should have been impossible.

He looks at her. He forces himself to see her. The bright pink coat, the bouncing curls of mane and tail. Those did not exist when he found her by the stream. There was a small pony of darker hue sporting a pair of straight long falls, the same as there had always been.

The hat and streamers...

"Pinkamena?"

She stops. She looks at him. She is still happy.

He touches the hat. Carefully, trying to stay focused, letting the questioning portion of his mind remain in control when every other part wants only a return to watching. "Where did this come from?"

She collapses.

It happens all at once. The curls drop back into the lank falls he knows so well, darken along with her entire body -- a body which falls to the ground, hind legs curling in to project her abdomen, front legs over her face. And the voice drops as well, turns into a sob and almost blends into a single word. "NopleaseI'msorryIdidn'tmeantoI'msorry..."

He stares at her in shock.

And then he knows.

He knows he should have kept kicking her father. Just for starters.

He knows why she was accused, and that all the accusations were false.

He knows he is looking at a miracle.

The amazement has to wait. The fulfillment will have its time, it must, as will the hope. He will find a place to shout to the Moon and those echoes will travel the land until they bounce off a rising Sun. But she needs him now.

"Pinkamena?"

She is trembling, eyes squeezed shut in fearful anticipation. She is waiting to be kicked. "Oh Celestia, that hidebound..." What can he do? What will she respond to? What can he say...?

"Pinkie?"

Her eyes open, just a little. There are still tears leaking out. "...Pinkie?"

He nods. "Pinkie is somepony else's name. It's the name of a little filly who's going to live in Ponyville. A filly who -- doesn't get kicked for doing the right thing. For having fun and making ponies happy. Pinkie is the name of somepony who's loved."

Her hind legs come away from her body a little. Her eyes open still more. "I can be -- Pinkie?"

"If you want to be."

"I..." She is trembling still, but there is something new in the shaking. Excitement. A desperate hope. "...you don't hate me? You're not going to..."

"I never hated Pinkamena. I'm just meeting Pinkie now," he tells her. "I always loved them both."

She untucks her body all the way, rolls partially over until she is lying down with her belly flat against the ground, staring at him.

Slowly, her coat lightens. Her mane and tail rise and spread.

"Pinkie..." she breathes. "Pinkie Pie..."

In time, she comes to him. They have the party, and it is one of the best he's ever attended with the greatest host he ever could have asked for. And when the little filly is sleeping against him with the tired smile still on her face, he stares up at what he can see of the night sky and wishes he could shout without disturbing her. But she needs her rest, and will need so much more than that in the moons and years to come in order to fully restore her heart from a life of ordeal. She will need friends, and he will have to be certain she ends up in a place where she will find them.

She is not just hope, a sign that the path is progressing, that the effort put into the Great Work is bearing fruit and the destination might eventually be within reach after all. She is a miracle come into his life. Perhaps -- the first of many miracles to come.

No miracle should be wasted.

Scumble

It was supposed to be a good day.

Things have become still worse. She has fully realized she is beyond cure. The success took a different road and her only hope -- one becoming increasingly faint, one she completely gave up on for a few seconds until the pink pony rushed forth -- is that together, they can work out where hers broke and save the others. She nearly killed the pink one. Nearly killed one (an unexpected one) who was only trying to help her. One of those she was trying to save. Somepony who...

...looks like her. Or at least like she used to look all the time.

She had never seen anypony who looked like her before. Not even in a memory.

And she came within a few body lengths of killing her. Tried to take it back and couldn't. The magic might have done anything and if not for the success... all she could imagine before slipping into the nightscape was a body on the ground, if the blast had left any body behind at all.

She is a horror. A monster waiting for tales to be written. She barely understands how the others could have made themselves stay so close to her by the falls. How the pink one would have voluntarily touched her. She should not exist.

That thought went into the nightscape with her, and it has taken her back to a time she had been looking forward to, barely restrained for weeks at the mere idea of meeting somepony other. And this would be an extra-special visitor, because it would be somepony she would be introduced to -- as herself. No false name to assume for the duration of a day. Full open honesty and the pride in his eyes as he told the other pony all about her and that one's upcoming role in The Great Work. There have been so few of those. And while some of them look at her in ways she does not enjoy thinking about after, the experience of getting to be herself on one of these visits makes the visit into something beyond rare and special.

Weeks of waiting. Too many weeks, he grumbled, especially given that this pony lives in town and seems to have been, in his opinion, making excuses to postpone. Busy with work, indeed. She suspects he does not like this pony very much. The word he has used most often about her upcoming visitor is 'necessary' and it strikes her as something less than a fully polite term. But the day came and she donned her dress, spent what felt like an hour working on her mane, paced about the rooms in her place as she waited through the final endless minutes, and then --

-- there was a new pony.

The subject of the day is administration. He has told her that when The Great Work is complete, there is an excellent chance that she will find herself in a position of some authority. Therefore, it is important that she know about how to delegate, instruct, and -- fill out paperwork. He has called it a boring subject with boring books written about it by ponies whose mere presence can induce comas at five body lengths and, while he had forced himself to go through several of those texts before picking out two for her (which have been, predictably, boring), he still felt the final touches on this topic should come directly from a pony. The new pony who is here right now.

She tries not to wriggle with pride as he introduces her as herself and mostly succeeds.

The new pony -- looks at her.

The look is...

...quickly replaced with something more favorable as the original is banished, present barely long enough to register at all.

"I'll have to leave you two alone for a time," he tells them. ('Two': it nearly makes the thought of that first look completely go away.) "Somepony was coming in just as we were arriving... well, you know how it goes. This may be quick, or -- well, it probably won't be quick..." A rueful smile. "I know you have questions about what you've read and the practical application of those details -- and I also know you're in capable hooves. I'll come back when I can."

There is a flash of light, and he is gone.

She smiles at the new pony. "If you're ready, sir?" she asks. "I have a sitting room over this way, for guests as special as yourself. There's also some snacks, should you care to indulge. He brought in Hentucky Blue -- I was told it was one of your favorites..."

"If you must," he yawns. "Let's get this over with... there are far more important things I should be doing with my time. In fact, I can hardly think of anything which would not qualify as being far more important..."

She manages not to frown. Is she doing something wrong? This isn't a standard reaction to her practiced etiquette. "I -- all right," and leads the way. It can't be her, can it? She isn't varying from her lessons, so the difference almost has to be on the other end.

They move into what she views as her sitting room. It also serves as the library: the books she studies from, some copies of her notes which he has had bound. A reading table plus an extra for snacks and waiting stacks of tomes. A pair of comfortable couches (with a third brought in from elsewhere for this occasion). Multiple light sources which respond to voice commands. She likes the room very much, although there is one other which is her special favorite and always has been.

She positions herself to face the writing table, makes the standard adjustment around her neck after the inevitable shift, then opens to a fresh page of her administration notebook and begins to ask the questions she has carefully been memorizing for weeks. He starts to answer, droning on in a very bored tone which manages to provide what feels like the correct answers while in no way being even remotely interested in the words which are coming out. It is by far the single least interesting visit she has ever had and so far, what she is sure will be the second least memorable visitor. Getting this memory to become clear and accurate afterwards is obviously going to be something of a challenge. But he has come here to teach her, given up what he keeps referring to as the time which is so much more important than hers in order to do this, and she will respect that.

She keeps respecting it for some time.

And then the boredom begins to drop away from his face.

"This," he slowly says, "is pointless."

He had halted in the middle of an answer to say that. A query about buffering layers and why it was necessary at all for somepony else to take blame for one's own actions.

"No..." she carefully tries. "It's something I was really having trouble with. Isn't it more important for a Princess to take responsibility for her own mistakes? I know ponies need to have confidence in anypony who winds up in a position of power, but I kept thinking it was better for citizens to realize their rulers were capable of failure. Like it would make those rulers -- easier to relate to." It's just a theory, but it's one she's been working on for days. "Not that I'm going to wind up ruling anything even after The Great Work is complete, not in the sense of the whole country -- but even for any small area or even concept which I might be given charge over --"

"-- have you ever truly listened to yourself?" He smirks. "I just realized -- I'm being quizzed on the finer points of my skills by a parrot. You've been taught all these things to say and the words emerge on the proper cues -- but you don't understand any of them. You aren't capable of it. A mistake is asking me about mistakes and isn't smart enough to realize she is one which should have been fixed long ago. That's the funniest thing I've heard all moon."

She blinks.

She has the distinct feeling that they have moved beyond the realm of every etiquette lesson she's ever had.

"I'm trying to learn," she replies, careful to keep her tone under control. If she's done something wrong, she's not seeing it and he's not telling her what it is. She has to at least try to stay within the teachings. "This is something he felt was a crucial subject, sir, and that you were the single best pony to teach me. I would hope you would be flattered by that."

"Oh, certainly I'm the best," he agrees, making a small gesture with a brown-and-white speckled front right hoof. "But you? You're a mistake. The fact that you're even breathing can't count as anything except an error. An error which he's spending a lifetime trying to fix -- under what I can only think of as The Great Delusion."

At first, she cannot speak. No, there are no lessons for this. There are words she wants to say, things rising on their own and demanding release, but she is supposed to follow the rules. She should never do anything to offend a guest...

...but this pony has just spoken against him.

It seems to be an occasion for new rules.

"It is The Great Work," she slowly insists. "The process by which it is possible to --"

"-- spend an entire lifetime in a happy part of the nightscape waiting to wake into a dream manifested within reality," he smirks again. "A dream which is delusion. Again, because you're clearly too stupid to have understood it the first time and there's a tiny chance repetition would get it through: you are an error. A taint. Walking sin. Your very existence is a mistake. He thinks there's a way to correct that mistake. How very -- special. How very -- idiotic."

Her heart seems to be beating much more loudly than it should.

The pony leans forward slightly. His face works into an expression she's never seen before and will have to consult many books and memories on later before identifying it as a sneer. His words seem to emerge on a slow vent of steam. "You shouldn't exist," he states. "If you were in any way mine -- well, that would never happen because unlike anything to do with you, I'm pure. But if by some Tartarus-sent nightmare, it happened to me -- well, he's spending a lifetime trying to fix a mistake. I would have done the same. But I would have fixed it in your lifetime. Which would have been about twelve seconds. Maybe one day he'll wake up and realize what a waste of time you've been and stop wasting his own life via the simple act of ending yours. Some would see that as an act of mercy, I suppose, not that you deserve any after what you did..."

Her skin seems to be too tight. It feels as if her muscles are pushing against it from the inside, like her blood is getting hotter and looking for a way to vent its own steam. She's completely sure she shouldn't be shaking.

"And you know you can't tell him any of what I've said, don't you?" he lightly laughs, the joke reserved for him alone. "No witnesses, you dumb clod. Your word against mine, and I'm the very special teacher he's been trying so hard to get for you, the only pony he wanted to teach you about still one more thing you'll never get to use. He'll never believe you -- never take the word of a mistake over that of one of his own. He'll wake up one day, you know. He'll realize the dream is just that and can never come true. And on that day, he will fix the mistake. With his own field. I give you about eight seconds there, personally -- and that's if he decides to show the mercy you don't deserve. If it was somehow me -- well, I'd make it last. Dealing with you would be a rather special experience, after all."

He relaxes on the couch, spreads out a little. His dull grey field surrounds a bit of the imported grass and brings it closer. He takes a bite, chews thoughtfully.

"I wouldn't mind coming back for that," he says. "Maybe he'd even let me watch. I've never gotten to see a pony take that kind of righteous vengeance before upon taint -- I imagine it would be a treat. Especially after what you did..."

No matter how hard she tries in the days and moons and years to come, she will never remember moving. All that will come back to her is his face. The sudden burst of terror. The field around his horn winking out and grass drifting to the floor.

Her front hooves have landed, one to each side of his body. He is trembling between them. His horn sputters dull grey sparks which will not focus.

"How dare you!" she yells. "He's a great pony! The delusion is yours! He will finish The Great Work, and when he does, you'll be the first to -- apologize! I'll stand there and watch while you come up to him with bowed head and say how sorry you are for all the things you said about him and the work he's tried so hard to complete! This is about all those ponies, and you don't care about any of them, do you? You're just --"

She has no words. None of her lessons ever covered the things she should say next. She is well beyond the realm of any teachings and making it up as she goes along --

-- she has broken so many rules, she is going to be in so much trouble when he finds out...

Slowly, she forces herself to pull back and drop down so that all four hooves are on the ground again. She should not make things any worse than she already has.

"I think," she makes herself say, as politely as she can manage, "that I might be best off concluding my administration studies using books after all. I know you have many more important things to do with your time -- you've been saying so, after all. So it's clearly best that you go and do them. After all, that's your job, isn't it?" A spark of recollection intrudes, something he had told her. "The only one you'll ever have?"

The pony stares at her. His lips pull back from his teeth, his ears go even farther back -- but the field won't focus. He knows she can see that, and visibly hates her all the more for it.

His expression is the same as it was when he first saw her, face hidden from his gaze. He wants her to die and regrets only his lack of ability to cause it himself.

"You..." he just barely gets out. "I look forward to the day when he finally deals with you, the way you should have been dealt with all along..."

She leans very slightly forward.

He scrambles off the couch, gallops from the room, the first pony she's ever seen running and therefore the fastest. And then the brown-and-white speckled unicorn is gone.

Her return to her own couch is halfway between a shuffle and a slink as her body seems to cool and her blood returns to normal liquid, leaving behind only the chill feeling of failure. She is in so much trouble. She is listing rules and the tally of those she didn't break seems shorter. Nothing like this has ever happened before. What can she tell him? Surely he'll know something went wrong. Right now, the other pony could be telling him -- anything. Anything at all. And she cannot follow to give her own tale, she's still not entirely convinced she didn't do something wrong to start what happened...

...no.

She didn't. She's sure of that, at least for now. But... will he believe her? Another has his ear, and she is helpless in her place with no way to intervene...

She sinks down. For lack of anything else to do, she attempts to study. The boring nature of the book doesn't help.

And then it is later. He is back. There is no expression on his face. That makes things all the worse.

"Tell me," he says.

"I -- I don't know what he said to you..."

Calmly, "And I do. But before you hear any of that, I want to know what you will say to me."

She tells him the truth. (She has almost never done anything else, and not when the subject is The Great Work.) He listens to all of it, only stopping her to ask for repetition and emphasis on certain events.

And when she is done, he sighs. "Let's just say -- his version was not that one." He raises his left front hoof, cutting her off. "No -- don't. There's no need. I know which of you is telling the truth."

He gives her the nuzzle meant for family.

She feels as if she wants to sob. "I didn't do anything wrong -- I know I didn't..."

He nods to that. "You did not. The fault is in that one. He is the best there is at what he does, the single best teacher for the subject -- but that is the only qualification he has in this life. I knew some of his feelings and had hints of the deeper ones, but I thought..." The trailing off leads into a sigh. "It should have been another. And for that, I take the blame. There will be no punishment -- there never could be, not for this. I hardly expect you to stand still and allow yourself to be beaten without resistance."

Her eyes squeeze shut, and she can feel the moisture against the lids. "What are we going to do?"

"Very little." He nuzzles her again. "He will not speak. Part of his story -- and I will give you the whole thing tomorrow, you'll need rest before going through that much laughter -- concerned how much he believes in The Great Work and how sorry he was that I had chosen... well, tomorrow. For now, let's just say he very much wants to remain some part of it. He does not believe in it, I know that now -- but he is willing to place a wager of a single bit on what he sees as the greatest longshot in any race. To that degree, he was trying very hard to stay on my good side, not to mention that of those who do believe. And because he is virtually always taken at his twisted word -- I will believe him, at least as far as he knows. When I see him tomorrow afternoon, I will agree with nearly everything he said and deeply apologize for his pains. He remains -- necessary."

She sighs. "You say that word like a curse."

"Sometimes it is," he affirms. "But know this -- no matter what I say to him, you are the one I believe -- and believe in." A warm smile. "I think you can cease your studies for the day. Do something which will relax you... it's more than deserved. I'll make something special for your dinner tonight. And while I realize it will be impossible to never give him another thought, give him no more than he deserves. He is gone. The next time you see him, The Great Work will be complete."

Her smile is more than a little rueful. "Will you forgive me for what I'm about to say?"

His own smile turns into more of a grin. "Not without hearing it first, no..."

She manages to get the words out. "That almost feels like an argument for not completing it."

Much to her relief, it only makes him laugh. "Perhaps -- but we move forward regardless, correct?"

She nods, for it was only a dark joke, and watches him as he begins to walk out of the study --

-- but then he turns back, eyes twinkling, expression thoughtful.

"But of course," he muses, "on the day The Great Work is complete -- he may no longer be necessary..."

And he is gone.

She waits for a time, and when she is certain all is clear, she moves. She has a memory to make, and she does not want to lose a single detail. It is not one she wishes to keep -- but this too is necessary, if not perhaps in the sense he just used the word -- one she doesn't understand.

It is created quickly. The details are becoming increasingly exact, even if she has a hard time keeping the anger out of it, much less the pain echoing within her head.

She shouldn't exist.

She shouldn't exist.

She shouldn't exist.

What she did.

Twilight was starting to wonder if she'd ever have a good night's sleep again.

Sleep had come -- eventually -- but hadn't felt the need to stick around for more than thirty minutes at a time. Apparently she just wasn't very good company. And the things which had intruded into her nightscape, some of which she did remember...

She had been talking to Star Swirl. She often did in her dreams, especially when she was stuck on a tricky piece of spell research: her subconscious would conjure the legendary caster for a consultation. This time, she had asked him a very basic question: why had he kept bells on his hat and robe?

He had told her it was field refinement practice. To keep them so still at all times that their ringing would not betray his presence, to always keep that part of his field hidden so that no pony would know how it was being done -- or that it was being done at all. Star Swirl and his soundless approach, bells which should have rung remaining silent. An extra element of mystery and intimidation. She'd said she'd understood.

And then he'd told her it was also so he could let the bells ring when they needed to. When the ponies whose essence he'd stolen approached from the shadowlands, so that the sound could scare them away. The weakest of them. For the stronger ones...

Twilight didn't remember much of the dream after that, and was thankful.

How much do I trust Trixie? To tell me all those things... some of which might have just been meant to hurt...

Unfortunately, she had an easy answer for that.

She'd been in semi-regular correspondence with Trixie since ten days after the Amulet incident. It had begun for the same reason so many of the bonds in her life had been initiated: the Princess had asked her. Gently told Twilight that in her opinion, Trixie was lonely on the road: a life spent moving from town to town with no connections lasting beyond a week and no friends waiting for her to approach or return. That the Princess felt some of the perceived solitude had contributed to what had happened. And certainly there was a topic they might discuss, two students of magic comparing notes on spells. Trixie wasn't a match for Twilight in strength and never would be even with the most potent of booster drugs, but in the Princess' opinion, she was an excellent researcher and understood spellwork on Twilight's level, even for those things the performer would never personally be able to cast. And so the next time Twilight was truly stuck -- she should write Trixie and ask for a second opinion, for the viewpoint of another might be just what she needed to jar her own away from the dead end.

All of it had been phrased as a suggestion. Typically, Twilight had taken it as an order.

Ten days after the Amulet, she'd gotten stuck again and wound up dictating the single most reluctant letter of her life.

Four days beyond that, a reply had arrived via express airmail, with a special stamp indicating that the postage had been placed on the government's tab. There had been no greeting or signature. Just notes. Five pages of carefully-worked proposals with references to experiments conduced on the other end (both successes and failures) along with how the results might be applied to Twilight's own current issue. The then-unicorn had looked over everything, found nothing which appeared to be sabotage, put up every safety measure she knew how to build or borrow anyway, and tried it out.

It had worked. All of it had worked.

Things had slowly picked up from there, as postmarks literally flew in from all over the continent. Twilight had written Trixie with more notes on spell improvements and blocked avenues of research: the same would come back. Then Trixie wrote her first with a query about phase shifting (something neither of them could do) as applied to escape artistry -- a topic good for three exchanges. Names began to appear in the letters. Closing salutations. Twilight found herself talking about life in Ponyville, Trixie would mention what things were like on the road. Oh, they mostly kept it to spell research, magic, and each other -- Trixie visibly had very little affection for the rest of the Element-Bearers and tended to go casually snide whenever the others were brought up -- but they were talking. Twilight had very nearly written Trixie to ask about Star Swirl's mark-transfer spell -- and, given another day with no solution, not only would have sent the letter, but might have tried to bring her in personally as an extra voice, viewpoint, and presence to work on the problem with. The performer had been among the first ponies she'd contacted after her transformation, included in a packet with her favorite teachers and one author she'd always wanted to thank for her influence on Twilight's own work. In Twilight's eyes, Trixie had very nearly become --

-- a friend.

Not the closest of friends, nowhere near on the level of the other Bearers. But somepony she could talk to (and about more with each exchange of letters). Somepony whose opinion she even valued.

On the night when she came as a pegasus, Twilight had been thinking about ways for unicorns to make themselves more powerful. Even after the encounter, she'd briefly been holding onto a scrap of hope for hidden magic combined with illusion spells. And so she had made the decision to consult with the one pony she could contact on the subject of field strengthening who would have some very personal knowledge of the topic -- a pony whom, when it came to thaumaturgy, she trusted.

Trixie had never told her about the trial and probation. Not until the most recent letter. How much did the performer trust Twilight to let her know about that at long last?

'Your friend mostly in spite of herself'...

'Your friend'...

Trixie had never used that word before.

Twilight rolled over in bed, stared out the window at the barely-risen Sun.

I trust her. I trust her for all of it. It was Star Swirl who made the Amulet. She'd probably show me the notes if I asked her. I know his fieldwriting, I could test their age. Star Swirl...

And then the memory hit her. Luna. Nightmare Night. The Nightmare Night.

"Thou even got the bells right."

Twilight had been thrilled. Finally somepony who got her costume! And then she had turned back to face Luna and seen --

-- pain.

Sorrow.

A wound which had been bleeding for a thousand years and would never heal.

At the time, she'd thought it was just the sadness of isolation, having been rejected by the townsponies, the younger of the Diarchy unable to find a way back into pony society and hurting from the sheer loneliness of her restored life. And that had been part of it -- but not all.

She was thinking about him. My costume reminded her. She knew him. They were friends.

Her mind would not stop working. Her own thoughts scared her and refused to acknowledge it, marching forward without care for how much of her faith was being stomped beneath unrelenting hooves.

He knew her before, didn't he? There was a before. Luna -- was another kind of pony once. So was the Princess. He knew them before and after. They were friends... and then he tried to become an alicorn. He didn't make it. Then the Amulet -- and they fought him...

Luna was looking at me dressed in the clothing of a friend she had to kill.

Twilight had accompanied the junior Princess throughout that entire Nightmare Night while wearing the skin of a companion's corpse. And Luna, with nopony else to turn to, had stayed with her, made herself remain close to a memory of what she and the Princess had done...

They killed him -- because it was the only way to stop the Amulet. Or they exiled him to where he would be harmless, or found a way to imprison him and just waited for him to die. Star Swirl... fell. And Luna had to watch it, knowing it started because she and her sister changed and he'd wanted that, wasn't able to do it, went for any road he could find or make...

Harvesting essence. She wanted to learn just enough about it so that she'd be able to spot when another pony was doing it and stop them.

Two ponies became alicorns and something horrible happened because somepony else tried to follow. I change and -- she comes, even if it happened before I ever heard of the Elements... she still tried, failed, and became something horrible. How many others will react because of me? How many did things because of the Princesses? How many horrors are buried in history -- or wiped from it, out of fear that more would try to follow?

Why did they let me change? Why didn't they stop it? They knew what could come after. It already had.

Why couldn't they just let me stay me?

Twilight shifted position again, looked down the left side of her body. There was a large bruise in front of the wing. It had been aching for most of the night. Impacted by earth pony strength with no chance to move or block.

A bruise in front of the wing.

If Twilight had never changed -- would there have been a mission? Could a single lack of event somehow have echoed out like that? Or would they still be here, facing her down as a party of seven containing a dragon and two from each major pony race?

Would Applejack have charged her?

Would they all still be friends?

No. I can't think that way. I'll see Applejack later...

...would she?

She looked at the wing again. It did nothing. It just rested against her body, tucked into a rest position, and probably would have no matter what she asked it to do.

She's stuck. She can't be cured. She will be what she is for the rest of her life.

Will I?

It was too early to get up. But Twilight had no other recourse, couldn't stay in bed any longer with those thoughts, and so quietly forced herself off the mattress, letting Spike sleep off his too-long night. She took a few minutes to pack saddlebags: Trixie's letter, the Royal Vouchers she only carried with her when the Fund was active. Trixie's spell had sent the letter back -- but not the vial: there hadn't been enough flame to carry both a second time, not with whatever modified technique the performer had completed on the other end. If Twilight was going to keep this system going, she'd need new supplies, and a unicorn-majority town had to have something Ponyville lacked: a thaumaturgy supply shop. (If only she'd been able to figure out and replicate the means by which the Princess sent letters with no dragon flame involved at all -- but that was a puzzle which hadn't broken over nearly three years of desperate attempts to place pieces. Only having seen the arrival stage hadn't exactly helped.) An early breakfast, and then she could go out by herself for a while, wander the streets of an empty town and be alone with her pain-inflicting thoughts. She left the guest room.

Much to her unhappy surprise, there was already a pony in the hallway.

Much to her delight, that pony also qualified as a target.

"Princess," Coordinator tightly said. It would have been a greeting of sorts if he had been able to look anywhere near her.

"Coordinator," she replied, and her memory pulled up a checklist of Things I Wish I Could Say To Him. It was several years old and had only added its first partial completion marks at the burn site. "What brings you sliming in at this hour?"

His shoulders visibly tensed, and the pile of papers within the dull grey field dipped two inches. "As the Doctor will be staying here for some time, I thought it would be effective to bring him a grouping of the paperwork he requires for each new birth, rather than having him galloping between here and the town hall in his current condition."

"Oh, yes," Twilight smirked. "Because we all know how much you care about the comfort of other ponies... well, please don't let me keep you. I'm sure you have so many things you need to be doing later, all of which are so extremely important that I don't have a hope of listening to you completely explain them before falling asleep."

She was delighted to see the field briefly flicker: the papers nearly dropped out.

"I," Coordinator half-spat, "am doing my job."

"I," Twilight smiled, "don't care."

There was a yawn behind her. It was a very familiar yawn. Most of Ponyville's residents heard it several times a year, especially if they lived somewhere close to a well-hidden pillow.

Twilight turned. Rainbow Dash was -- awake. At sunrise. Blinking away sleep, looking as if the last thing the pegasus wanted in life was to be on all four hooves and even remotely ambulatory, but -- awake. It was enough to make Twilight question if she'd ever gotten out of the nightscape at all.

"Oh, good," Rainbow yawned again. "You're up... okay, let's get going."

That was deserving of more than just a hard blink, but the eyelid motion was all a shocked Twilight had to give. "...going?"

"Yeah. We've got to go do the thing. At the place. With the stuff." The pegasus looked past Twilight, stared at Coordinator as if trying to figure out whether they had a witness or if one of Quiet's sculpture rooms had simply overflowed during the night and released Still Lack Of Life With Bureaucrat. "Let's just go already. We can stop at the kitchens and see if there's any wake-up juice we can grab... maybe all of it... I swear, I know the Princess has to see this hour every day, but I have no idea why she wants to..."

Twilight, with no concept of what was going on and no way to get it out of Rainbow in front of an extremely loathed spectator, managed a bare shrug and followed the pegasus out -- after a final smirk thrown back in Coordinator's direction.

The bureaucrat watched them go. Glanced in Twilight's guest room, noted the presence of the sleeping little dragon. Moved further down the hallway.

It wasn't so much that Rainbow Dash didn't want to answer Twilight's questions as that she wasn't capable of it. The pegasus wasn't used to being up early -- no, that was an understatement. The weather coordinator (a term which currently wasn't sitting well with Twilight, mostly due to the second half) ranked full awareness at this hour of anything other than presence in a bed as an unnatural event on the level of parasprites lacking appetites, Zecora speaking without rhymes for more than one sentence at a gallop, the Cutie Mark Crusaders doing something intelligent, and Angel Bunny being polite. It meant Twilight had to wait patiently as they worked their way through the now-empty hallways of the castle to raid the kitchen in front of one early-rising and politely-startled servant, eventually making their way out to the grounds just as the first bits of wake-up juice were beginning to kick in.

"All right," Dash yawned. "Maybe you can't move all seven of us, but I know you can teleport with one other pony along because I was there as part of two plus Spike. If it's just me going along, do you think you can reach the ravine?"

As an expression of shock and surprise, the blink remained inadequate. "Sure, that's in my range and I've got it memorized --" and then some "-- but Rainbow, why do you want to --"

"-- tell you there. Okay, ready when you are."

Twilight's giving up took the form of dual flashes of light as they both entered the between --

-- and then they were at the point where the mission had originally began. The start of the middle. A gap in the earth which she had forced open for reasons unknown -- except that she had said it had been done to save her life...

Twilight frowned. "Okay -- now that we know how this got here, maybe we do need to look at it again. But I can always ask her this afternoon, Dash -- and if we're checking it out a second time, knowing even a little about what happened -- we really need Applejack." If the farmer would talk to them. About anything at all.

"Huh?" The pegasus woke up the rest of the way. "Celestia's sunny butt, no! I am not crawling all over this place an inch at a time again! You want to come back with the others and do that, go ahead and I'll just keep lookout from someplace I don't have to do anything else!"

Twilight tried (and failed) to ignore one of the more unique blasphemies she'd ever heard. (She was also momentarily held up with images of ponies applying similar terms to her own rump. None of them seemed plausible. Or polite.) "Then -- why are we here?"

"Because she's messing up our times! Midnight meetings, afternoon meetings, every hour, any hour and maybe even all of them... But nopony's doing anything right now, at least not if they're sane, and that means this is when I can train you." She swished her tail in a vaguely directional way, failing to notice the way Twilight was starting to pale. "It's not ideal -- but it's open space without too much in the way of interference. I've just got to filly-proof it a little -- hang on..."

The pegasus went up. Clouds from the overcast morning rapidly began to come down --

-- and within ten minutes, the river, most of the ravine floor (excepting a radius of a body length around where Twilight was standing), and the walls up to a height of four Celests had been covered in vapor. "There! Good thing it's so dreary this morning or I would have been weaving forever. Okay, Twilight -- that gives you some crash cushions. I worked on the consistency: you'll bounce, but that's about it. As long as you don't go any higher than the padding, you can't hurt yourself trying anything, and I'll make sure you don't veer off for any greater altitude unless I follow you up and stay close. Trust your teacher."

"Um..." How to explain this? "...Rainbow?"

"Yeah?"

"I -- can't touch clouds, either."

The pegasus rolled magenta eyes. "Do you remember that cloudwalking spell you used on almost everypony before the Best Young Flyers competition?"

"Of course I do!"

"No, you don't!' The last word was almost a bark, Rainbow's traditional style of instruction manifesting with enough strength to echo from the cloud-shrouded walls. "Or you would have cast it already! Come on, Twilight -- I'm not asking you to do everything at once! You can take care of cloudwalking yourself the unicorn way for now -- the pegasus part will come. Today, we're working on flying and flying alone. Just get the spell going and then we can talk about how to start."

Even the field looked disgruntled, the normally-smooth edges showing small spikes. "Fine..." It took a few seconds before Twilight could fully recover the proper feel, but it came in the end: Rainbow Dash boosted her to stand on top of the covered river and then spent a few seconds closing the last ground cover hole.

"Okay, Twilight," Rainbow said. "The first part's easy. You've tried to fly a few times between the coronation and now, right? Besides what happened in the clearing?" Without intentional malice, "Or you wouldn't know just how much you royally buck at it."

Maybe I should just start testing myself for Twilight Sense. "Some."

"Right. So -- talk to me. About flying."

"What?" It was about as eloquent as she felt herself capable of being just then.

"Talk to me! About flying!" More slowly, "When you try to fly -- what are you thinking about?" With a reluctance that Twilight completely missed in her rising eagerness at the suddenly open invitation to lecture, "In detail."

And Twilight, her entire morning very nearly redeemed, talked.

Aerodynamics came in first. This led directly to physics, which had a brief illicit affair with gravity that resulted in several foals, all of which left home to start careers in the sciences. Biology shortly came into play on the family tree and brought some friends known as anatomy, musculature, and calorie burn rates, all of whom seemed to be having sex with each other. At one point, time dilation occurred, but it turned out to be no part of the flying process: just an incidental side effect of the lecture. Quantum tried to get involved and wound up wandering off while nursing a migraine.

Rainbow Dash slumped to her belly and softly beat her head against the cloud.

About thirty seconds into the steady drumming motion, Twilight finally noticed the position shift in her audience. "...but then I always have to refigure for any incidental lensing from -- Rainbow?"

"Uggh..." came from below, which was as articulate as the pegasus felt like being. "Oh, Sun and Moon... Twilight, that's the whole bucking problem."

"...what is? You asked what I was thinking about..."

"And I got it." Rainbow Dash groaned. "Luna's star-tangled tail, I got it... Twilight, you're being -- Twilight."

Which told the librarian nothing she had any hope of working with. "Could you -- narrow that down a little?"

Rainbow forced her head up. "You're thinking."

Frustrated, "Of course I'm thinking! I have to think about how to fly because I don't know how to do it! I'm trying to work it out!"

Another, slightly deeper groan. "Look -- I'm not saying it isn't possible to think and fly at the same time, okay? No matter what some jerks laugh about. But mostly you think beforehand, and that's just when things are about to get super complicated. Maybe. When I'm working out a stunt, I plan it. I even tried some diagrams a few times until I realized just how bad I was at drawing." And amazingly, she didn't say anything about drawing being lame. "But once I'm in it, I react. There are times when you have to think when you fly -- but it mostly takes too much time. You have to do things. You let your instincts take over. Thinking -- gets in the way, Twilight, more than it helps. And it's like I said in the clearing -- all you ever do is think. You're thinking about flying -- which means that when you should be doing it, you're still planning it out and by the time you should have put those plans into motion, literal motion, it's too late. You've already blundered through the thermal, or gotten thrown by the shift layer, and you didn't feel either of them because you were thinking. You're being Twilight. And that's what's blocking you. As long as you keep trying to fly like a unicorn who's spent practically her entire life thinking about stuff, you won't fly at all."

Twilight opened her mouth, words rushing towards the gap, syllables that would correct Rainbow Dash once and for all, tell her just how stupid that sounded and how thinking was so absolutely necessary that --

-- she silently counted the number of crashes, collisions, and moments which would have come close to bankrupting Murdocks outright if taken across several publications with full photo spreads and actual bits involved --

-- sank down to Rainbow's level and shut up.

Rainbow looked across at her. "Part of the reason newborns fly so well, besides having their Surges, is because they haven't really learned to think yet. They do everything on instinct, and it makes them some of the best flyers in the air for their speed. Keeping up with foals... my dad told me some stories about stuff I would try, even when I was a few moons old... well, I know I'm not the reason for kid leashes, but he keeps insisting I had the first one... Twilight, you have to try and stop thinking. Or at least, you have to stop thinking like you. You have to react. Let your senses take over. Do the first thing that pops into your head, and then the second, and keep going from there and if you change your mind, go with that too. Anything that's coming in is what you're working with. Take your brain out of the way and -- fly."

It made no sense. It couldn't work. It was just Dash's weird view on the world coming through...

...the viewpoint of the best flyer Twilight had ever known.

But...

Twilight sighed. "Rainbow -- I'm me. I think about everything. I -- even know I think too much sometimes. This morning... I got a letter from Trixie which I'm going to read for everypony later, and... I really wanted my brain to shut up and let me sleep. It didn't happen. I can't stop thinking just because I want to. I always think about things, even when I wish I didn't have to." Neurotically. Obsessively. Compulsively. "How am I supposed to stop?"

"You don't think about everything," Rainbow quietly said. "Not always." She adjusted her position on the cloud a little, spread her wings and stretched out the muscles, ruffled feathers. "Last night, with Pinkie. Saving her life. Did you think about catching that magic?"

Twilight looked back. "I -- I'm not sure. I don't think so. I didn't have any time to plan -- I just reached..."

Softly, "Because if you'd taken the time to think about what to do -- there would have been no time left to do anything."

Twilight closed her eyes, saw the curl of smoke coming up from empty grass. "Yes."

"That's what I meant about you in fights," Rainbow told her. "Sometimes you're so busy thinking about ways to block a kick that by the time you pick one, you've already got a hoof in your ribs. Or when you go on offense, you run through every spell you know trying to get just the right one for the occasion and too late! You've been tagged six times and the fight's over. Everypony has to learn how to fight, at least to start -- but once you learn, you let the instinct of what you've learned take over. You automatically react in the best way for the situation. Flying's just -- a little bit beyond that. But you don't have the foal memories to build on, you hardly ever work on instinct -- and you're thinking too much. You're so busy working out your next move that you don't notice the air working six on you. Fight's over -- crash landing."

Twilight sighed. She couldn't make herself open her eyes yet. The curl of smoke wouldn't go away either. "But I'll never have those foal memories, Rainbow. I can't fix that part."

"I know," the pegasus quietly admitted. "It's a problem. But -- the thing is -- you're an alicorn."

She felt her lips quirk into the faintest vestige of a smile as she opened her eyes again. "Don't remind me." And was surprised at her own words. Not the thought -- that they'd come out at all.

But Rainbow reacted with a sigh, a rare sound from her. It seemed to be sincere. "Yeah. I know we all pretty much saw -- just the awesome stuff at first. Like actually becoming a full-fledged Wonderbolt -- and then trying to go out in public casually and getting autograph seekers surrounding you for six ponies out. It's fun at first, but -- your mouth gets sore with gripping the quill.... Twilight, alicorns are -- part everything, right? Except maybe crystal ponies, I don't know how the buck that works. You started as a unicorn -- but now part of you is pegasus. And not just the wings, it can't be just that, because the Princesses have that and -- they can make it work. Something in you is pegasus. I think what you have to do is -- listen to it."

Two blinks weren't much more effective than one when it came to self-expression. "...what?"

Rainbow smiled. "Stop being Twilight. Try being me."

Relative helpfulness of a triple blink: none. "I don't --"

"No, I mean it. Just -- pretend you're me. If you have to think, then think like me. Work your brain into that. Take as long as you have to. Stop being Twilight and just try being -- awesome."

Twilight tried not to take it personally. It was another failure in what was looking to be a very long series. "Rainbow..."

"Try."

Twilight sighed. This did nothing.

She closed her eyes again. The action formed a chorus with the original result.

Think like Rainbow Dash...

...I am an insufferable braggart whose only reason for existence is seeing how many ponies I can get to admit I'm the greatest thing ever. My mouth is forever writing vouchers my wings can't cash and there, I've got it already. I never saw something I couldn't boast about being able to do better than anypony else, even if I think it's lame and if I can't do it better than anypony else, 'lame' is the least of what it is. I am totally obsessed with becoming part of a stunt flying troupe because I have deluded myself into thinking it's a form of immortality and a thousand years from now, somepony as crazy as me will look at my statistics and realize just how awesome I was all over again. Furthermore, I have the single worst poker face in the history of card play and will never realize or admit it, which makes it so easy for everypony else to take me under the table in every game that if I ever got into a professional match, I would be bankrupt within an hour and my friends have been trying to save me for nearly three years without my knowing, right down to throwing me a few groupings so I don't go broke at the casual games, not that I'd ever admit to it if I found out because I can never admit when I've come up short on anything whatsoever and just displace every problem and issue I ever have onto somepony else...

Apparently she was still more than a little tired.

Try again.

...I can have overarching goals, but any plans I make beyond them are lucky to reach so far ahead as to make it into next week and 'next moon' is unheard of. I would make a ridiculously good Diamond Dog. I'm very lucky that I pull down a great salary for a job I can barely be roused to do and that hardly ever on time because my spending just about matches my income to the tenth-bit and 'savings' is a concept I am never going to master...

All things considered, starting a few hours later probably would have been a really good idea.

Restart.

I am loyal.

Sure, that was helpful. When in doubt, go back to the Element. It made just as much sense for somepony else to describe Twilight by saying she was Magic: to wit, barely any. It was the one of the dominant facets in Rainbow's personality, but it wasn't the totality of her any more than casting made up the whole of Twilight. She was looking for that part of Rainbow in herself and not coming up with --

-- wait...

'What would a brave pony like Rainbow Dash do?'

Charge.

She -- did have that, didn't she? At least a little? Rainbow had been teaching her from the moment they'd first met. She'd even openly invoked it at least once.

If I have to think -- then think like that...

...something is threatening me and there is no time to react. I act, rushing forward to stop it. Maybe it won't work, but it doesn't have to. At the very least, I'll always buy time for the others to do something else and maybe I'll even come up with something on the way. Or it could work. I won't know unless I try and I always try. Even if it's impossible. Trying the impossible is what I do because that's how you get to possible: by making it happen anyway. I refuse to say something can't be done. I just keep trying to do it until either it or me gives way, and I'm not the one who's going to break.

I'm loyal, but it's never a conscious choice. I don't make decisions on who or what I'm going to be loyal to. I just am. There are no questions involved. Loyalty isn't something you think about, it's something you know and are. Why would I ever question something I am at my core? Something I do on instinct? I will do anything for those I care about without thought or concern for myself. What else could anypony ever do?

I am the sky. For others to look at me is to see things as a single concept. Some see ego, some hear volume, just as most perceive the sky as just that: 'sky'. But what they see as a one-element totality is made up of thousands of layers in constant motion. The atmosphere is not the same at every height, the wind changes, things move within the flow and never stop. I evolve because it is the only thing I can do. I change because it is the only way things happen. I started as one thing, but I am not that any longer and few would notice any long-term shifts at all, but change has taken place and always will. I would sooner die than not change, because to remain the same, locked in stillness and lack of motion, is to die.

(there seemed to be movement within her closed eyes, as if something behind her irises was shifting forward and sliding into place)

I am hardly ever still. To move is to prove you're alive. I seldom alight on the ground for long, not because it brings me down to a level with others and I feel that diminishes me, but because it means seconds spent in not celebrating freedom. I am more free than any pony I know, and my flight is the way my body expresses the throwing off of bonds. Gravity can only pretend to hold me as long as I pretend to let it. I stay in the air not only because it is my first and best home, but because it makes me free and I wish so much that other ponies could know that freedom. They don't even know how trapped they are and I can't bear to tell them. One of the best moments of my life was having a friend toss off those shackles to become my flying buddy and I will give anything to get her in the air and make her understand how free she now truly is.

I do what must be done because I can't do anything else.

I move without thinking because it's the only way to get things done in time.

I am loyalty, trust and bond without thought.

I am the sky, endless change and variety mistakenly seen as a whole and defying that perception with every moment of my existence.

I am Rainbow Dash...

She opened her eyes.

And for the first time in her (memory) life, she saw the sky.

"Oh, Celestia... Rainbow... it's so beautiful..."

There was another voice. It seemed to be coming from a very great distance. Listening wasn't always important, as long as the general sense of the words came through. "Hold it, Twilight... just try to hold it..."

"How -- how can you stand to see the world like this all the time? It's so beautiful, it almost hurts..."

She could hear the smile. "I don't know any other way... don't think about it, Twilight, just look..."

Twilight looked. Up, at the sky.

There were soft glows moving through the air. Subtle shifts of color, thicknesses and breadth of air masses, and she knew the intensity of each shade represented a combination of the layer's power, density, and speed. The closer to red as a base hue (or was it red at all?), the hotter. The more blue, the cooler. Tiny twinkles within --

water, I'm seeing water dissolved into the air, that's humidity

-- and the clouds above, moving in to close where Rainbow had made her holes, were millions of fireflies dancing around a central cluster of surging power, the lightning waiting to be unleashed. Some had more of that internal voltage than others, but all had at least a little waiting for just the right touch of hooves to come along.

Swirls and spikes of shading battled along the boundaries. Red twisted here, negated a bit of blue there -- but itself came all that much closer to blue (or something she could only describe as blue, a color her mind had no word for) in the process. It made the twinkles gather closer here and spread further apart there. It made the power inside the clouds dance. She wanted to dance like that. She could dance like that if she only tried and if it turned out to be impossible, then she'd just try again.

Twilight forced her gaze down. Saw the true nature of the surface she was resting on. The cold of the flowing water beneath it. The little bits of heat rising from her friend, from her own hooves...

"The river," she breathed. "What is it doing to the air?"

"The water's cold -- it negates some of the heat around it, evens things out. You can see the shift, right?"

She thought she'd nodded. She wasn't paying that much attention. "And the trees?"

"Wind flow -- little eddies off the leaves and branches... Everything touches the air, Twilight. You can't swim in an ocean without shifting the water... you can't live without influencing the sky... Everything that moves, breathes, and exists adds its own touches. That's just the world..."

Twilight was on her hooves. She didn't remember getting up. She didn't care. She wanted to fly.

Somepony was scrambling up in front of her. Probably not important. "Twilight?"

"I've got to get closer," Twilight insisted. "I have to..."

"Twilight, you're moving too fast --"

Now that was funny! Twilight laughed: there was no other choice, not a single alternative option to consider and if there had been, doing so would have been a waste of time. "Listen to the source! Come on, Rainbow, I'll race you up! First one to that northern flow mass wins!"

"Twilight, calm down -- you're sky-drunk -- this happens to a lot of ponies in flight camp on their first runs, you have to --"

Listening to any more would have been an even more unforgivable waste of time.

Twilight spread her wings. There was no tentative flapping: just a single huge push using the natural slightly higher densities of the lowest air layer and cloud cushion to give her a launching boost.

And she flew.

She cleared the ravine within seconds, was above the bordering trees even faster. She moved around one layer which she didn't like the looks of so that she just skirted the edge while giving it a little wing sideswipe to show it she knew she could boss it around if she wanted to and might be back later to do just that. A rising thermal was used for a little bit of extra speed and to give her turn some extra sharpness on the angling. The northern flow mass (so beautiful, the not-blues and the twinkles and the tremendous power within those clouds, the clouds which she was starting to understand for the infinitely complex latticeworks they truly were) was getting closer and she was seeing electricity or the potential for same, she was getting the first look a unicorn ever had at --

-- what are those, negatively-charged ions? Or are they waiting for a positive charge to come into contact? Is that what would happen if I touched down on them? Do I send the triggering energy into the cloud? Actually, was that positive or extra negative ions? Am I using balancing energy or overloading what's already there? How is that supposed to work again? This should be basic physics and energy flow, but I haven't reviewed this in a long time and who uses electricity in a casting anyway? That's a pegasus domain if I ever heard one and --

-- the colors vanished.

She couldn't feel the air.

She was at least six hundred feet above the ground. More for the ravine.

She couldn't fly.

Twilight's wings refused to take direction. To keep her up. They locked.

She fell --

-- half a Celest, into Rainbow's outstretched forelegs.

"Like I said, followed you up, rookie," Rainbow grinned: she'd caught Twilight in such a way that the two were facing each other. "You know, for somepony who's been a student pretty much her whole life, you take teacher direction about as well as your average horse apple smear."

Twilight blinked several times, which seemed to work out perfectly for expressing confusion. "I -- I think --"

"Well, there's your first mistake."

"-- I think there were colors... it's -- it's hard to remember -- Rainbow, why can't I remember? I saw colors and I can't remember what they were..."

The pegasus frowned. "I guess because -- the part of your brain that processes this stuff is still pretty new. You're not used to using it and you've never had to pull memories out of it. You're learning stuff maybe three ponies had to learn before this -- not just how to use a brand-new kind of feel, but retain what you get from it." (So she too had been thinking about a before.) Rainbow's own wings were flapping, carefully bringing them back down into the ravine. "That's probably why you couldn't keep what you got from that flight after the coronation: you didn't know how to sort this stuff out. And after -- you were just thinking. Is that what happened just now?"

Twilight winced. "I started thinking about the ion charges in the clouds, and I -- lost it -- oh, no -- Rainbow, is that a choice I have to make every time? Thinking versus flying? Am I going to lose it every time I start -- thinking like myself again?"

This got her a strong head shake. "I said you can think and fly at the same time. Part of the problem is that we're trying to get you back to some kind of basic instinct level, something you can build on -- so what might be happening is that you're running on almost pure instinct right now, kind of like a newborn foal. And that means everything else just -- gets in the way, and when you put too much in your own path, that's when you lose it. Eventually, you'll be at the point where the instinct is running on a background level, and then you can mostly be all Twilight and stuff without crashing into things -- too much." A grin. "But for starters -- yeah, it'll probably be a tradeoff for a while. Sorry, Twilight -- it's the only way I could think of to teach this, and I --" She stopped. It was a familiar break for Twilight, the one which said the pegasus had been perilously close to admitting a doubt or deficiency and had caught herself before that near-ultimate level of personal blasphemy had slipped out.

Which didn't keep Twilight from trying to finish the sentence. "You weren't sure it would work."

A slow nod. "Yeah." They touched down on the cushioning clouds just before the overcompensating verbal backlash hit. "But -- hey, it obviously worked, right? You got up there! You flew, Twilight! Not too bad for a first time -- well, okay, there were some mistakes and we've got to work on your skimming, like today and tomorrow and maybe for about three moons in a row, but -- you flew. You got up there and I'm the one who boosted you. Not bad for a flight school dropout, huh?"

Twilight didn't have to work very hard before managing the grin. "Not bad, no..."

"So you were really pretending to be me?"

"Yeah."

"How did it feel?"

"AWESOME!"

He got up shortly after sunrise and went to the orchard.

It wasn't a place he'd been to all that often overall, especially during his career. Oh, like just about every pony in Trotter's Falls -- at least, any who would admit it -- he'd gone out there to get a few free apples as a youth (and still more luck in this, that either nopony had gone there for a few days or all who had decided a single broken tree wasn't worth mentioning). Others used it as a place for dating, letting the danger of the wild zone fringes add a touch of extra spice to their meetings. He'd done that too, and frequently, especially towards the end.

Afterwards, it had become a reason not to go.

He hadn't come to the orchard in -- years. The last time was --

'just a few weeks now'

-- not something he cared to remember.

He'd had to walk: it had been far too long for any teleport-worthy memory to still be accurate and even if he trusted his recollection that far, there just might be a recoil-inducing trunk parked on his arrival point. Given that and knowing he had at least one scheduled appointment fairly early in the day, he'd needed to start shortly after the Sun came up.

There had been a check of the castle guest rooms. It had made sense, as long as he was passing. Three sleeping including the young dragon, two missing. He'd run into a paper-hauling Coordinator, which had been no great pleasure and in fact was barely a tolerable experience at all -- but that had let him learn the missing castle pair had gone out to do the thing at the place with the stuff, which seemed to be an exact quote and made him wonder about the pegasus' authorial skills. Or it could have been an amateurish attempt at a coverup, he'd planned his own rather simple story as the standard one of just wanting some apples -- but in the light of the events he had learned about under Moon, it could be anything. And they had left too early for anypony to track them. Something to consider.

He had wondered whether he should have headed to the orchard immediately after hearing Quiet's pass-along tale -- but night travel into the wild zone turned the slight (to the young, thrilling) risk of a fringe voyage within daylight into something much more. There was a chance his hesitation had cost him the last bit of feel, but -- he knew something about how fast it faded, even with workings done by the most powerful. The odds had been overwhelming that even a night trip would have already been too late. And dead ponies had trouble searching, at least in ways where the findings could be relayed to the living. Even alicorn strength more than likely would have been gone by then -- so he'd waited. He was hoping it hadn't been a mistake.

And in fact, there was feel left at the site.

He walked around the area several times, checking every detail.

Here: cart tracks. It was easy to find where the earth pony had watched from. He nearly stepped in the final evidence.

The fallen trunk itself. It took a long time before he could look away from it, and still more before he stopped running internal calculations along the Celestia Meter (Adjusted), trying to work out just how strong she was. There had been no mention of a double corona, let alone any greater effort. To him, that said there was a good chance she had done it on a single -- and if so, it would put her at alicorn strength. A glorious failure indeed, and he longed to tell her so directly.

But...

...where was she standing?

She would have -- pulled the apple directly towards her, yes? A first grip wasn't going to involve standing off to the side and then making the fruit perform aerial acrobatics to reach her. No, it would have been the most direct possible route. In front of the apple and yank it towards herself on a straight line. Which would have meant the trunk in turn fracturing in such a way as to be pulled down on top of her. And she'd left the orchard intact, the drunk had been sure of that.

Could the earth pony have missed a teleport? Was it possible that she'd brought the tree down towards her and gone between to get out of the way? The witness had missed a mark -- but the bursts of light from entrance and short-range exit? It seemed unlikely.

Which left him considering the feel again.

Somepony had moved the trunk, all right. A powerful somepony. It was magic he'd recently had a very direct experience with. He'd been suspended within it -- and the sensitivity of his feel had only improved since The Great Work had begun. It had been enough for him to get a rough sense of her, and that impression was all over the wood.

The Princess had been here, all right. And had seen the need to act, if only by shifting the fallen trunk some distance.

Why would she have done that?

What were the Element-Bearers looking into?

How much did they know?

It was still not the time for paranoia. But worry... that was beginning to become due.

However, two of the Bearers were his. One was a good storyteller, but the other wasn't exactly a natural liar. He would talk to them. Their lack of words might say more than anything else.

"We have come so far..." he whispered to the wild zone. It deigned not to respond.

Quiet was willing to run if necessary, as was he. But he wanted to run with her.

He spoke again, this time with more volume. "Where are you?" Still no answer.

She needs food. The wild zone barely has edible grass, for a horribly low value of 'edible'. If she came here once to eat, she might do so again...

Something to consider.

And perhaps something to act on.

Scratchboard

They didn't fly back.

The training was having an effect -- but after that first burst of flight, most of what Twilight learned centered around just how many more lessons would be necessary. And that amount was, at a minimum, 'lots'. She could enter the pseudo-Dash state and was starting to work on getting it down to a meditative mantra -- but it wasn't instantaneous. Rainbow had timed her: on average, she needed a good two minutes of focusing before she could slip into the mindset required for takeoff. And that state was -- fragile. At some point during every flight, the considerably older part of her mind would peek out through the prismatic haze and start wondering about how those heat-color interactions were working, what the colors truly were at all, move back to the lightning trigger question, begin to ponder what the pegasus had said about everything in the world affecting the sky... Her newfound (and short-lived) abilities raised thousands of questions, and the vast majority of Twilight's brain wanted to take an extended look at every last one of them, generally in midair -- which then inevitably became a disrupted query impacting the surface of a very bouncy cloud.

Twilight could fly -- but not for long. Rainbow had timed her on that too: her best extended hold didn't reach three minutes, and all but one had ended with either her friend catching her or a slightly-built purple body slowly losing the last bit of trampoline rebounds against reinforced vapor. (On her eighth attempt, Rainbow had managed to talk her into demonstrating a landing in the name of showing off, and that had gotten her down just before she'd started paying attention to the river again.) Maintaining the instinct long enough to reach the castle was currently impossible. There was just too much to think about... and not all of that was related to the mysteries of flight, air mass interactions, heat, charged ions, and all the wonders revealed by pegasus sight -- none of which she could retain for more than a few seconds after snapping back to herself.

Too much to think about, far too much for a mind trying to sort a thousand worries into some kind of manageable checklist and a back which hadn't seemed to give up an ounce of burden to the first lesson's small degrees of success. And some of that was tied to the ravine itself.

Eventually, she brought it up to Rainbow.

"How does this save her life?"

The pegasus frowned. "That doesn't sound like a me thing to say, Twilight." They were on the base-coating clouds again, with Twilight supposedly getting ready for a final attempt before heading back to the castle for a more formal breakfast. "Come on -- our time's almost up. We've got to hook up with the others soon before anypony worries. And before all the food is gone."

"I'm sorry, Rainbow -- but we're here, and it's something she said. That she created the ravine to not die -- saving her life. How does making a huge crack in the earth do that?"

Rainbow shrugged. "It's kind of obvious to me, Twilight -- maybe because that's just another part of how the pegasi in the days from -- that book -- used to fight. Something was threatening her and she made it drop. Just not air to ground -- ground to -- well, lower ground. This thing's deep enough to really hurt something which fell in -- maybe even kill. Even if you hit the river just right -- it's flowing so fast, you might not be able to get out before it swept you past the opening. And then you'd be underground. Unless this goes into a cave system in a hurry and you could get out there... anything which was facing her might drown before it could escape the water."

Twilight could picture it, and there were any number of other things she rather would have imagined. "Which would bring her count up to at least three," she sighed. And so close to being four... "But we don't know what was facing her -- and it probably did hit the river. We never found any blood or other signs of impact, and given how new the ravine was... I know it rained a little, but it didn't wash all the blood off the tree. Even if something -- collected the body..." She closed her eyes again, tried to get back into the quasi-Rainbow state. It wasn't coming. There were too many other things in the way.

"What are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking about --"

"Trick question and wrong answer! Come on, Twilight -- one more try!"

She sighed again. "I want to get this out of the way before I get in the air again. So it doesn't hit me when I'm twenty Celests up and you wind up having to catch me. You nearly got a wing in the eye that last time."

"Fine..." the pegasus grumped. "Get it over with if you've gotta... still on her?"

Twilight nodded. "It's just that -- as a drop, it feels like overkill. Why not just make a smaller hole and drop whatever it was in that? Anything big enough to need the ravine for a fall probably would have been at least Ursa Minor sized -- and she'd have a hard time hurting something on that scale with that kind of plummet."

"She doesn't have a lot of control, Twilight," Rainbow pointed out. "She gets freaked and -- stuff happens. Something freaked her, and this happened."

And we let her go. On Pinkie's word... No, that was a thought she had to keep out of the way for a while. She had to trust her friend -- especially one who had just trusted everything on her. The secret magic of an entire race. "It's scary to think about," Twilight admitted, at least for one of the other fears. "Not just that she can do it and can't stop herself. But that the Princesses can. And earth ponies working together..."

The right side of Rainbow's mouth went up: a quirked half-smile. "So we're going to be afraid of Applejack now? With that bruise, you've got a pretty good reason to start already."

Her reply was all too close to a whisper. "What I'm mostly afraid of with Applejack is that we'll go to breakfast with the others and --" no, she had to say it "-- she won't be there." The first train out. Not even bothering to wait that long and just twisting away from Pinkie long before the Sun rose, galloping away through wild zone with fifty generations of earth ponies on her heels, the shadowlands pouring forth cries of betrayal and promises to punish same.

"Yeah," Rainbow quietly admitted. "Me too. But Pinkie won't let her get away that easy, Twilight -- you know that." A small (but full) grin. "And now I know who'd win in a fight..."

"A physical fight," Twilight distractedly replied. It didn't look as if anything huge had clawed its way out of the ravine either -- and how could anything that big have fit in the incredibly dense forest at all? There was a strict upper limit to the size of anything she might have encountered because after a certain point, nothing would be able to work between the trees without knocking a few hundred of them over instead. Maybe it had just been alicorn-level overkill after all. "Pinkie said she can't do any of -- whatever the earth pony magic range is." Why? Is her field -- whatever an earth pony field is like -- just that weak? Is it a field at all? "If Applejack fought her that way, she probably wouldn't be able to stop it. I don't know how you stop earth pony magic." The last three words still felt slightly off when assembled in that order. "I can counter spells at least some of the time, especially when they're directed straight at me -- try to negate their energy. You said equal and opposite for wind..."

Rainbow nodded. "Or unwinding -- for clouds, you break them up or unweave if you really need to scatter the moisture, but it takes forever with a big one... the techniques are there, Twilight. There's even a really tricky one for -- well, you can't stop lightning, but some pegasi can sort of redirect it as it hits them. It's one of the hardest things there is, though. You have to be sort of --" Her face went into 'there is a word which exists for this and if I can't come up with it, somepony's going to suffer, and it'll be me' mode. "-- neutral." Twilight didn't get it and said so -- which meant she got a frustrated "Blank? Empty? Like you don't have anything in the way inside... maybe I should just find you a book... anyway, yeah, we can at least try to stop each other. And --" Stopped. Winced. "Well, you remember that first Running Of The Leaves, Miss Fifth Place. If I can't move..." Her tone suggested a level of personal horror which was somehow nearly beyond Discord's temporary removal of her wings. "...it's hard to do much of anything. And -- sometimes... depending on how little I can move at all, not just my wings, but everything... it gets worse."

Like having my horn covered by a restraint. Block the field, stop the spells. Immobilize a pegasus and take out the techniques. Two of the three races had visible and (now) known weaknesses balancing out their magics. But how did you stop an earth pony...?

...and that's part of it, isn't it? If you don't know they have magic beyond the Effect, you won't be thinking about how to stop it. You're not going to be afraid of somepony -- growing plants at you. The memory had quickly turned embarrassing and was now starting to move into a near-permanent self-humiliation. You're not expecting anything other than the physical. No idea of what's coming or how to deal with it once it starts. You won't know you're in that kind of fight until after you've already lost it.

It was a benefit from having the secret be -- The Secret. You couldn't make plans to stop something when you didn't even know it existed. But was it the reason for the silence?

The pegasus shrugged, seeming to momentarily revel in her capacity for even that simple motion. "I don't know, Twilight... maybe she has to be in direct contact with the land? Even if she's just in a house, the floor might get in the way... I don't know." She groaned. "Great, now I'm thinking like you... Can we just get one more try in already? Or do you want to head back and make sure Applejack's still there?"

Twilight didn't have to think about that. If Applejack had made a (second) run for it -- then it was already too late, and that applied for a large number of things. Back to something less hurtful.

The ravine is the start of the middle. What does that mean? Is it the first place she used magic on this kind of scale? The first time she wasn't restrained in some way? The first place she killed?

Questions for the afternoon. Right now... "One more try," Twilight decided. If nothing else, it was a way to try and stop thinking for a little while, when there was just too much to think about -- and nearly all of it hurt.

It took four minutes to bring herself into instinct. She was able to hold it for just under eight seconds.

And when she finally stopped rebounding and came to a wing-splayed stop, Rainbow helped her up. "Okay, fine... this is obviously going to be a lost cause until we clear some of the other stuff out of your head. Where are we popping back in?"

"My bedroom -- no, the porch." After that encounter with the pegasus twisting of her, Twilight had made sure to memorize both. "We should be fine as long as nopony's cleaning it, and that's a lot less likely to cause recoil if we come in outside."

"As long as we're still in time for a real breakfast," Rainbow grumped. "And you've got to eat too. I don't know what your metabolism is normally like or how many calories magic burns, but you probably used more energy than you usually do, unless a four-hour reshelving is like doing a seven-gallop run as a one-day flight..."

Twilight did feel hungrier than usual. "Here we go..." She took them between --

-- and was immediately glad she'd aimed for the porch: there were two servants visible in the otherwise-empty bedroom, tidying up and putting fresh sheets on her bed. One of them looked up at the flash and hurried to open the door. "Princess!" An Official Royal Greeting Stance did not follow: Quiet had told the staff that a single assumption of the pose on first meeting had been enough. "We didn't know you'd gone out! Is there anything we can get you? Breakfast will be starting in a few minutes, but if you need something else --" and stopped. The small beige unicorn mare was staring at Twilight's left side. "-- you're hurt!" There was an unspoken 'again' somewhere in that. "Did somepony --" and another freeze as the thought of somepony attacking a Princess refused to complete itself. "I can get help --!"

"-- no, that's okay!" Twilight verbally rushed in. "It's just a bruise! If you have any mild painkillers, that would be nice, but --"

-- and both servants were gone, galloping out the door and down the hallway, presumably moving towards the medical supplies.

She could feel Rainbow grinning next to her. "Anything else you want them to do, Twilight? Write a few letters? Serve as test subjects for a new spell? Finally teach you how to actually dance?"

"...oh, shut up."

Rainbow didn't.

In a way, it was almost comforting.

And of course they had to go over it at breakfast as well -- but that wasn't the worst of it.

Applejack wasn't there.

Pinkie looked up at Twilight as she entered the dining room, guessed at the internal question. "She's taking a bath," Pinkie assured her. "I heard her in there... she'll be in when she's done." Twilight tried to accept it and the fact that nopony was watching Applejack just now. It wasn't easy. Pinkie had faith that the farmer would appear. Twilight was having considerably more trouble with her belief and couldn't make herself invoke anypony. Not Celestia, not Luna, and never herself.

The thin grey unicorn stallion -- oh, right! -- at the far end of the table had other concerns. "...Twilight? What happened to your side?" He started to get up, looking as if he was about to move in for a closer inspection -- then stopped himself. "Has anypony taken a look at that yet? Your ribs... how did that happen?"

Twilight and Rainbow had worked on the story before coming down (and after the first gentle numbing effects of the painkillers began to settle in). They'd quickly decided on something easy to believe -- a blending of recent truth with total lie, told in the locally certain knowledge that their host wouldn't laugh or pass it on, and the librarian's faith that he would simply understand. "Flight training," Rainbow answered for Twilight. "My -- fault." Although some parts of the lie were easier to get out than others. "I didn't see that one squirrel jumping off the tree branch and then when it whipped into her..."

Quiet blinked. "Flight -- training...?" And again, harder -- before his eyes briefly widened and he inclined his horn towards her wings. "Oh -- yes, they don't come with instruction manuals, do they?" Twilight ruefully nodded. "Well, at least you have one of the best teachers on the continent." (Rainbow looked as if she was about to start striking victory poses on the spot.) "Nopony can fault you for missing that, Miss Dash -- but Twilight, if you're sure you're all right... the Doctor can look at that when he gets back, if you like. He may perpetually insist that he's only a midwife, but he's picked up more than a little knowledge of general medicine along the way."

"I already took some mild painkillers," Twilight assured him. Fluttershy had examined the injury before they'd left the falls and pronounced her ribs intact. "And I'd know if I broke anything. I'll be okay, Quiet -- I just need to bring Fluttershy along the next time so she can talk the branch jumpers into staying put..."

Fluttershy blushed and nodded, which was her typical contribution to many public stories.

Quiet sighed as he watched Twilight and Rainbow Dash take their positions along the table. "Even so... I'm doing my best to be a good host, but I feel like the town and area itself are battling me. Go ahead and start in, everypony. The Doctor, against my advice, decided he wanted to try and stretch out that leg a little this morning. Something else which qualifies him as a true physician: he's a horrible patient. He'll be in when his body finally talks him into what I couldn't. As for Miss Applejack -- far be it from me to cut a bath short. We'll just make sure to save food for her." He looked around the tables as the Bearers began to collect food from their plates. "Although we may have some trouble holding back enough wake-up juice. Do I want to know what time you broke up the party in the cottage last night? Miss Fluttershy seems fine, but gentledragon, you look as if you could pull your basket up right here and fall asleep in the sapphires."

Spike glanced down the table, tried not to yawn before starting his answer, failed. "We --" another yawn "-- didn't really look at the clock..."

Pinkie took over. "Parties end when parties end! We just started talking and playing around and fun takes as long as it takes! You can't put a schedule on joy!" An old, familiar light glare at Twilight. "Or a checklist."

Rarity's own yawn was distinctly ladylike, although her field's grab of wake-up juice came across as slightly less so. "There are certain perils in having a professional party planner in one's circle, not the least of which is that they will insist on exercising their talents to the fullest regardless of typical pony considerations -- with 'sleep' rather high on that list..."

"I'm not a professional until I charge somepony!" Pinkie pouted. "I didn't even ask for a single bit from the wedding!"

"You charge," Rarity yawned again. "You have taken the cost out of my coat several times, generally in the uneven state of my fur after I wake up the next morning -- or mid-morning -- or worse. Also, to date, you have billed me for approximately one hundred and twenty hours of lost sleep, all of which you have always insisted I pay immediately --"

-- Applejack walked in.

Ponies stopped chewing. Spike's current sapphire only got to mid-crunch. The Bearers who had known her longest stopped breathing. And Twilight, who had wanted to internally rejoice at the farmer's presence, celebrate potentially not having lost a friend, was instead frozen by absence.

Even Quiet, who had known Applejack for a couple of days, could see it. A pony who barely knew her realized something was out of place. And lacking the connections the other Bearers had, the ones which kept them from speaking until they could (somehow) find a way to talk about it with her in private, he became the one to voice it.

"Miss Applejack -- where is your hat?"

The farmer hadn't replaced the rope loop which normally bound her mane: some of the blonde hair fell about the back of her head, with extra amounts overlapping the normal amount of front rest along with never-before-seen plummets to the sides. The hemp circle which typically kept her tail under control, the loop which hadn't been broken in the fight, had been removed, and the result was a puff of yellow that nearly approached Pinkie's curls just by sheer weight and volume. None of it had been styled in any way: both had just been allowed to dry and naturally splay. And her head -- was bare.

A waking Applejack only took the hat off for a few minutes at a time, when there was something extra-important to say, a formal doffing to move through, if she needed to protect it from damage. The other Bearers presumed it had hours free of her head for cleaning and the occasional bit of temporal reversal through its own version of spa treatment at Ponyville's haberdasher, and they knew Fedora was the best around: Applejack praised the mare to the Acres' apple-laden canopy every three moons. There were nights when Applejack slept in the thing and it never seemed to fall off when she did so. It was a permanent portion of their internal image for her, part of her body.

She wasn't wearing it.

The other traumas and upheavals of the mission were nearly relegated to a very distant second place.

"Ah -- didn't feel like puttin' it on," Applejack softly answered. She settled into her position at the table, slightly off-angle. Tail hairs went everywhere, formed a blonde carpet over the woven rug. "Didn't seem appropriate today."

Her words were comprehensible, even if they were so soft as to barely exist on the edge of hearing. The accent was far lighter than it should have been.

"Applejack," Rarity tentatively began, "I of all ponies would normally applaud the desire to try out a new look, but -- that is your hat..."

"It's not mine." And those words had no accent at all.

Rarity blinked. "I don't understand, dear..."

"It's not my hat." Not 'mah': my. "It's my daddy's. It always was. I just -- keep it." The accent was beginning to move east, heading for Manehattan. "And today, I didn't think I should wear it. It's probably not appropriate anyway, wearing it to a formal breakfast in a castle, right?"

Which got another blink out of Quiet. "Miss Applejack, I assure you, I don't exactly have a lot of regard for the supposed formalities at my table --"

"-- I didn't feel like wearing it." She slowly looked around the table, and the weight of her gaze sank deep into seven pairs of eyes. "Can I just eat now?"

They all nodded. Applejack started into her food, took in the fuel she needed to keep her body running as if that element of the meal was the only consideration she had at all. No talk about taste, no questions on how any dish had been made or where it had come from, no chatting with the others whatsoever. She just ate to keep herself going.

There were still far too many things about pony social interactions which could throw Twilight, letters waiting to be written with lessons she wouldn't know needed to be learned until after she'd been taught. But she knew something about family. About feeling as if she'd let everypony down. The myriad ways self-loathing could manifest. Not every personal experience had made it into a scroll (and there was at least one she never allowed herself to think about), but they remained lessons learned, still enough to recognize with.

Oh, Applejack... what is this doing to you?

Twilight thought about the scroll which had launched the mission. The strange feel, the one she hadn't investigated.

She had wondered if Discord had assigned -- or somehow created -- the mission to break them. And now she didn't know if he was a seventh of the way there.

"So what are the plans for today?" Quiet finally asked them once the too-silent meal had mercifully wrapped up. (There had been no sign of the Doctor, and one of the few sentences spoken after Applejack's entrance was their host vowing that if the older stallion didn't turn up by lunch, he was going to find out just how much Quiet had learned about the formation and distribution of search parties.) "Anything particularly interesting, or at least events I should take out of the party plans -- yes, I am still going ahead with it. Unfortunately, it seems the townsponies are holding me to it as well, Twilight. And a bit beyond, as the news of your presence has spread somewhat and several of the not-so-locals have been on my tail for invitations. I'll try to give you a little more warning once things solidify, but I think it'll be within the next few days. I do want to stall until my spouse returns, at the very least..." Which made Twilight more than briefly curious: while the idea of a formal party for her to meet the locals (and not-so-locals) wasn't exactly a pleasant one, she was becoming steadily more interested in meeting the lucky mare who had Quiet as her very special somepony. "But that's not much longer now. At any rate, if there's any warnings I should issue about residents whom you're planning on dealing with before then, now would be the time for me to give them." He inclined his horn towards Twilight in a gesture which left the 'So?' hanging in the air.

"I could use some directions, at the very least," Twilight admitted. "Quiet -- I'm guessing Trotter's Falls does have a thaumaturgy shop?"

He nodded. "Of course -- casual supplies, some more exotic goods for those in town who like to do their own research, school items for fillies and colts studying during the holidays or needing to restock before the boarders head off again... I'm seldom in there myself, but I know the overall selection is excellent, even if it leaves one wishing for the ability to conjure their own bits. Ponyville doesn't have one?" Twilight shook her head. "Is there something in particular you were after?"

"A few Fawkes Vials," she honestly told him. "Spike and I have been doing some work with dragon flame, and I have to store samples -- it's one of the few things that'll do the job long-term. They hold it as well as they do virtually everything else. I thought I'd keep working on that while I had some -- quiet time." He smiled -- and suddenly, surprised by how serious her own words were, "I hope we're not imposing, being here this long..."

"You're not," he assured her. "None of you are. It's nice just to have the company, Twilight. With my parents gone, my grandparents moved away... when my wife is traveling and the children go home, it's just myself and the servants on a lot of nights."

"Parents gone?" Applejack, very quiet, accent still missing.

Quiet closed his eyes for a moment. Steadily, every word kept in that state by great silent effort, "Deceased. Four years ago. An air carriage accident -- there was a problem with the air path. The pegasi had to divert, found a storm in the wild zone, tried to go around that -- and went into another." A long silence, time enough for the sounds of imaginary thunder and crashing metal to echo in every imagination. "I'm as prone to euphemism as any pony, I suppose."

Softly, "I understand. Mine are -- gone, too."

Each new word now carried the weight of empathy. "Not the same reason?"

"No... but... sometimes, 'gone' is the word I still use first. It took me moons to stop thinking 'away'..."

"I know the feeling -- and I am sorry, Miss Applejack."

"Nothing you did, Mister Presence, and nothing you have to be sorry for -- but thank you."

Nopony talked for a while.

Finally, Quiet visibly forced himself back to his previous rate and tone of speech, picking up a little more of the original flow of banter with each word. "Not that I'm ready to take the Doctor on as a permanent guest... he hasn't had a middle-of-the-night call yet, but I can feel it coming.... Believe me, if I decided you were freeloading, I'd let you know. Politely. From a great distance. Yes, Miracles Limited should certainly have those: they're still required items for fourth years and up, aren't they? Unless the teachers have found a few more failed methods of keeping things from ultimately exploding." He provided the directions. "But that won't take the whole day by any means, not even if you get completely lost in a book section which you probably have replicated four times over in your library."

Twilight shook her head. "No -- I'll browse a little, but I was going to go out this afternoon with Pinkie and Fluttershy." As the ponies seemingly most comfortable around her -- Twilight had no idea how they'd been able to mutually pull off their lie about the falsely-claimed beauty of that mark -- they were the best companions for the orchard: one requested, the other chosen.

"Anywhere in particular?" Quiet casually inquired.

"Wandering," Twilight tried. "We'll know when we get there."

"Well, in that case.... Miss Pie? Miss Fluttershy? If there's nothing terribly important going on for the two of you until then, would you mind staying in this morning? The Doctor has no appointments and if we are very lucky, none will suddenly schedule themselves. He has been waiting to speak with you..."

Fluttershy smiled. "...I can stay for a while... I've wanted to catch up too..."

Pinkie laughed. "It's not like we don't have new stories! The last time we saw him was before the Empire!"

"Somepony should go to the shop with you, though," Rainbow Dash told Twilight. "Spike at least. This isn't -- before, Twilight. It's not going to be ponies coming up to you at the bar looking for -- stuff. It's going to be ponies looking for autographs -- maybe more."

Twilight managed to hold back the sigh. "Spike?"

"I'm going," her self-assigned bodyguard proclaimed. "Anypony else?" Hopefully, "Applejack?"

The farmer laughed. There was no humor in it. "What am I going to do in a 'thaumaturgy' shop? I don't even know what that word means."

"The working of magic," Twilight automatically supplied. "It's sort of the science of spells, Applejack."

"And how is an earth pony supposed to do anything with that?" No challenge, no bitterness. Just a plain statement. "I can stand around and watch sparkles. That doesn't really do much for anypony, does it?"

Rarity allowed herself to get away with a frown. "Applejack, Twilight simply requires somepony to watch her other flank. It's not as if any of the locals mean her harm, but you saw how -- intrusive -- things could become when we were first on our way to the castle -- and before that, in Ponyville as well. You can gently discourage as well as any, can you not?"

Applejack sighed. "Fine... but it's not like I'm going to buy anything."

The unnatural flow of letters and presence of typically-missing consonants and vowels would have gotten on Twilight's nerves if it had somehow managed to displace any of the worry. "Rarity, do you want to come?"

The unicorn nodded. "I may not have the same research needs you do, but there are a few things I hardly mind at least checking out styles and revamps on. Plus the latest conveniences can be a treat and experimental ones do tend to appear in such places first... actually, now that I think about it, I do have a use for some silver wire: that's a standard stock item as well. Dash?"

The pegasus got out of that one in a hurry. "Three's enough. I have some -- stuff to do upstairs."

"Stuff?" Rarity gently inquired. A little more teasingly, "Bar 'stuff'?"

"Stuff with -- commas. Okay?"

And the slowly-developing art of being somewhat less wantonly cruel to them. Twilight smiled. "Sounds like we're at least set for the morning. Quiet -- did you want to come along?" Like so many of her words, those last seven had just slipped out -- but they seemed so natural. "It's your town... you could show it off a little."

It got her a smile back. "Unfortunately, I have to wait for the Doctor first, or I would take you up on that. Perhaps I'll catch up with you later."

"I hope so," Twilight told him, and meant it. "Okay, everypony -- let's get started!"

Three with her. Two waiting together. One heading upstairs for the pain, torture, and self-inflicted murder that was editing. And their host alone in the dining room, finishing up a bit of imported pomegranate, waiting...

...but not for long.

"You had me worried," he told the arriving older stallion. "I know you felt we'd be best off splitting up early and I realize you can teleport back at any time, but it's still the fringe and you, first friend, are still injured."

Doctor Gentle settled down in front of his own postponed breakfast. "All is well, Quiet... the orchard is almost always peaceful, especially once the Sun has been raised. How went your end?"

Quiet tried to keep his own burden from visibly impacting shoulders and hips, partially collapsing withers and poking against docks. He felt he'd mostly pulled it off. "The only thing that went right was getting him on the train. If you've ever wondered just how drunk a pony would have to be before he failed to remember talking with a Princess, I think I may have found your answer -- presuming he ever spoke with them at all. Not even morning sobriety was enough for him to recover the memory, and I wasn't falling for any 'one drink, maybe seven, it might help' tricks. But in the event that he had a more-or-less private audience with the Bearers, he somehow completely failed to either register or retain the fact that one member of his audience had wings and horn both. Now there's a weaving argument against overindulgence... Yourself?"

"The Princess moved the tree."

There was a short silence while the Doctor prepared his next words and Quiet tried not to think about the first five.

"None of her feel remained," Doctor Gentle continued, "but there was feel yet to be had. I studied the site, Quiet -- she would have brought the tree down on top of herself. Either she teleported out of the way -- short-range, as you told me, the witness said he saw her gallop out -- or she threw it over her body. The Princess shifted the trunk to be closer to the stump, so that it would look more like something else. On closer inspection, I found some burn marks -- lightning, perhaps added to dragon flame. The pegasus, no doubt, unless our newest Princess has mastered that technique. It appears they were trying to make it look like a breaking strike, a brief tempest in the wild zone along the lines of their windstorm. But they can only trigger and aim the lightning itself -- they cannot control the grounding. And the scorches, inspected carefully, show the bolts hit the trunk after it had fallen. The puzzle pieces, mentally assembled into the whole, did not match. A good attempt, and one which would pass casual examination from most unicorns -- but not mine. As said -- they are yet inexperienced."

"So --" and Quiet hated saying it, despised having to think about the increasing reality of it "-- they're hiding something. Any idea what?"

"At the very least, the idea that somepony was responsible and not natural forces," the older stallion told him. "Lightning would not have sent the trunk so far from the stump. At a guess, the drunk did not overlook the dual flashes of a short-range teleport. She did toss the wood over herself. So they were covering where she would have been standing. What they know beyond that -- there is no way to say. They are investigating, though. At the very least, they know there is a unicorn capable of doing such a thing, and they are looking into that. And that alone is something we could still solve with a simple introduction, if we can but find her... but should there be more..." He allowed the trailoff to speak for him.

"No word yet from our own," Quiet told him. "Not since you left."

The Doctor sighed. "So the partially false search for my own presence becomes a dress rehearsal for the larger play. What did the Bearers tell you about their activities last night?"

And now they were at the part Quiet truly loathed. "They lied. Their claim was that they were in the cottage partying."

"So they are concealing even on that level -- but possibly still to protect," the Doctor concluded. "Very well. And where are they now?"

"Four to the thaumaturgy shop: Twilight wanted some Fawkes Vials. The dragon, unicorn, and earth pony went with her, just in case any of the locals started badgering her again. I suggested to yours that they stay for your talk, and they agreed: they may be freshening up first. The pegasus is working on her manuscript."

"And you stayed here." It was not an accusation. It was a statement.

"I needed to update you first," Quiet said without insistence. "Twilight is expecting me later -- I told her I might catch up in town after I made certain you were all right."

"We could have caught each other later as well." Another statement, still plain and unflavored.

"You've been wanting to talk to yours," Quiet reminded him. "I kept them here waiting for you, which I wanted you to know so you could take advantage of it -- and now I can go. And Fluttershy doesn't exactly strike me as a skilled liar. If you work up to it carefully, go through their last few adventures with them before reaching the current one..."

Doctor Gentle smiled. "That sounds as if I would have said it."

"We do spend a lot of time together," Quiet pointed out. "So I believe you do have an appointment after all."

"As do you."

Quiet nodded and got up, heading out of the dining room. Doctor Gentle watched him go, then turned his attention to the saved meal.

Twilight, just for the sake of having something to say, told her current companions about Trixie's letter. It was a repeat for Spike, but he put up with it. Rarity listened carefully. Applejack simply trotted along in silence.

Twilight didn't know how to ask Applejack for an apology. How to apologize herself, or how much of that she had to do beyond one for 'grow plants at us', which seemed more insulting with every internal refrain. She didn't know how to talk about the previous night. So she read the letter and hoped talk would come from it.

"Interesting," Rarity finally concluded. "If you enjoy not being able to sleep at night either, and I'm not certain she objects to having created the company... Twilight, I am sorry. To hear that about your hero..."

Applejack just kept looking ahead at the road, didn't glance back at them from her point position. "So you believe her?"

"Well -- not all of it," Rarity admitted. She'd been having trouble bringing up the fight as well -- but at least now they were all talking about something. "For example, I have some small amount of difficulty believing she referred to me as 'your good friend Rarity', especially given the way Twilight hesitated at that section." The librarian winced. "But for the rest? She has very little reason to lie. Most of those would have typically centered around making herself look better, and she hardly managed that. She could not have made herself sound worse if she tried. For the parts about this essence thing, I rather do believe her. Also that she managed to make her own coat smell bad for a week." That with no small amount of pleasure behind it. "But Twilight, I am slightly confused as to why you are sharing it. I know you have been trying to convince us that she is, if not reformed, at least making an attempt to improve herself -- but that is your relationship to pursue, not ours. I respect that you are beginning to see her as something of a friend and she is apparently coming to think of you in the same fashion. But I am not there yet. She is hardly writing me. I will not stand in the way of your friendship with her and I would hardly argue against it, but I would require many words of my own before I forgave her -- and I have not been approached, in person or writing. Nor have the others. Pinkie in particular might need a slumber party and a full essay."

"Because of the essence harvesting," Twilight told them, trying not to think about how much it might take to persuade Trixie into writing the other Bearers. "Trixie said there are ways around the internal storage limit -- that thing about timing which she couldn't pin down with the notes that still existed. And if you harvest it for a bad reason, that adds up in the resonance. Enough essence generates a field, at least for unicorn essence... I was wondering if that was part of what she did. Got a lot of unicorn essence together and found some way to exceed the limit in her own body. It strengthened her field -- but because of why she did it, that's part of what went wrong. And if she threw pegasus and earth pony essence on top of that... The resonance might have broken whatever method she was trying, all by itself. Or maybe that was the method." It was an idea, something which didn't need the Elements -- however required (or not) they might be. One more thing to think about on the current tally of Far Too Many -- but this one was necessary.

"Resonance is hardly always negative, though," Rarity frowned. "According to -- Trixie..." ('Her' was currently reserved.) "...Star Swirl gathered essence from desire for power, and that desire was created through envy and resentment -- yes, not her exact words, but it is how I am seeing it. Suppose she wished to become an alicorn from -- generosity or charity? To help others? Remember, she has more than implied there are many ponies on her path. If she was blazing the first part of the trail, she might have also tried to harvest from invention or the thrill of discovery. How would that touch the gathered essence? And we are still dealing with her age... I imagine this is not a magically simple process. To have mastered it before gaining her mark, let alone traveled to find it..." She shuddered. "...although a well-stocked local cemetery might have been enough..."

"You're both making a bad assumption," Applejack softly added. She still wasn't looking back at them. The continuing presence of the full '-ing' felt unnatural, as if it was a rather exotic means of cursing.

"What's that?" Twilight asked, both curious and desperate to have the farmer involved in the discussion.

"You keep thinking she was a unicorn. Before it happened. Sure, that would probably put her in the best position to research and if she has to cast spells to make her way work, she'd almost have to be, unless she had something like that Amulet which would work with anypony regardless of race... but it's not necessarily where she started. Twilight, on the way back from the orchard, you said she might have had somepony around at some point -- somepony to put a restraint on her. Well -- they'd have to keep putting it on, right? Every time she lost the horn, it might slip off. She could put it on herself, but then she wouldn't have had those first spell signs with the tree... unless there's some device that clamps it on for her, she'd at least have practice with moving it onto herself, and -- is that possible? To put the thing on yourself without somepony or something to do it for you?"

"Hard," Twilight said. "You'd need a very stretchy chin strap and to get that on first. But once you started covering the horn, you'd begin losing the field. If you had it lined up right, it would sort of -- snap onto your head." She winced at the thought.

"I've seen one which was a little like that," Rarity mused.

"I know," Twilight sighed. "I got a really close look." That wasn't one of her better memories either and came with the lingering phantom feeling of water in her face plus a memory of blood rushing to her upside-down head.

"Well, to be fair, Rainbow put it on you..."

Applejack nodded, still not glancing back. There was no hat to not shift. Her mane, unaccustomed to the current degree of freedom, went everywhere. "So maybe somepony was with her all along," the farmer quietly proposed. "Somepony who kept her from using her magic in all three parts of the cycle. Restraint when she was a unicorn, immobilized for a pegasus..." She stopped, and her tail did not swish: it simply hung limply, hairs scattered. "And then maybe that pony -- died, and she had to go out and find help because there was nopony left to take care of her and protect other ponies from her, and she'd forgotten about how to use magic in the meantime because it had been so long, but she got it back in a hurry. Or that pony -- messed up. Didn't get a restraint on in time, or did it wrong, and she got that pony without meaning to." There was a little sadness in those words -- but it had been in virtually all of them since she'd begun to talk outside the castle at all. "Same situation -- she's got to get help, but now it's more urgent. And she keeps hurting without wanting to... she almost got Pinkie..."

Spike broke the silence. "Applejack?" The question mark made it feel as if the little dragon needed to be sure the pond hadn't been a mirror pool of its own.

"I don't think she's a bad pony, Spike," Applejack told him, eyes on the road, accent trotting closer to Manehattan with every step. "If she is -- she's a great actress. But even if she's that... I think she's scared, and hurting, and desperate, and -- suicidal. Maybe it's the pain, or the failure, or both. But she wants to die. Pinkie was right... if we'd captured her last night, she would have tried for it. At some point, I think she's still going to try for it. If we find her answers, and she helps those others and can't save herself... how long does she hang on for?"

Still more nightmares being brought under waking Sun, and Twilight wished for a way to divide nightscape and the real world once and for all. It wouldn't happen. "Applejack, we'll do everything we can to help her..."

"What can we do? What she did to herself -- is done. There's no way to take it back." The next words should have been a whisper. They weren't. They emerged as normal speech and carried all the more pain for it. "There's no way to take anything back..." And there was no time for a response. "We'd better drop this -- the town's getting close. We don't need to be overheard right now. Or ever."

They closed in on Trotter's Falls, with no time for more open words -- speech which wouldn't even begin to touch on the questions in Twilight's heart.

Are you all right? At all? Even -- maybe especially -- at'tall?

Is there anything we can do?

Are we still friends?

It was rather easy to find his. He just followed the sounds of the argument.

"It's never justified!" He seldom heard Pinkie that insistent. Or angry. It took a lot to make the baker genuinely mad, and he wondered what his eldest had brought up to create the reaction.

"...it is." Considerably softer, with only the strange acoustics in this part of the castle allowing him to pick up on it at all, but just as insistent. "...I have to do it, Pinkie... too much. It's part of my job, and I hate that part, I hate that everypony knows it's my job and that I have to do it, but -- nopony else will..."

He was starting to get an idea of the topic.

"It's about life!" Pinkie's insistence was getting louder.

"...quality of life," Fluttershy whispered.

"As opposed to what? Quality of shadowlands?"

"...yes."

He knew Pinkie well enough to picture both the hard blink and ensuing look of outrage. "Are you serious?"

"...yes..."

"HOW?"

"...Pinkie... sometimes when there's that much pain... going to the shadowlands is a relief. I know you'll say... as long as you're alive, there's time for somepony to find a cure... there's hope... but it doesn't always work out that way... it never has for me... they're hurting so much, there is no cure, no hope of relief, no drugs that won't eventually do worse themselves in the doses it takes to make the pain go away... they bring them to me, always me, never her, and... that's part of the cycle too..."

Much more quietly, but with none of the insistence lost. "That's animals."

"...friends." A word on the verge of tears.

And Pinkie knew it. "I'm sorry... I didn't mean to say they were anything -- lesser, Fluttershy, you know that. Not with Gummy. Not the way I feel about him. I love him, you know that..."

"...I introduced you to him," Fluttershy said. "...it took you hours to pick him out..."

"He was the only one who could keep up." A brief, audible smile. "I just didn't hold a contest to figure that out. But -- as much as I love him -- I know he's not a pony. He thinks, he cares, he loves -- but he's not a pony. None of them are, Fluttershy -- even your friends."

"...I know."

"So are you saying that same decision applies to a pony? That it's justified when you can really think about it for yourself, and you have pony friends who want you to be around as long as possible? That it's possible to suffer so much that leaving everypony behind to miss you and mourn and hurt is better?"

"...maybe... I think sometimes, when it's just that bad... I think it's their decision to make... it's their life, right down to the end..."

"And what if somepony else tried to make that decision for them? What if they hurt so much they couldn't think right any more, or for themselves at all, or something happened to their head, or -- just pain, Fluttershy, pain like..." And now it was Pinkie's turn to whisper. "I couldn't make that decision for somepony else. You're making it for animals -- even animals who are friends. Could you make it for a pony?"

"...I..."

And he entered the sitting room. "Do I want to know why you two are discussing this?" He smiled -- but it was a worried one. He knew Fluttershy struggled with that aspect of her duties, had felt her crying into his coat when he had visited on a particularly bad day. If his were on this of all topics, given both their histories...

They both jumped: his eldest more than his most determined, of course -- but the reaction came on both sides. "Um..." Pinkie blushed. Her coat, mane, and tail were what he had come to think of as normal, so things hadn't gone that far in the argument -- or at least hadn't had the time. "How much did you hear?"

"Starting from 'It's never justified'," he honestly told them. "The topic -- is suicide, isn't it? Taking one's own life when pain is too great to bear? Or even doing it for a pony when they were no longer capable of the actions required?"

They both nodded. There was a strange touch of relief to it, perhaps because they didn't have to deny the discussion at all.

He sighed, held off from taking a position on the couch. "My young ladies... please tell me -- and know that I will be very aware if you're lying -- that the pony in question is neither of yourselves."

"...it isn't," Fluttershy softly told him. "...neither of us is sick, and for emotional pain... I told you... I haven't felt that way for a long time..."

Pinkie gently nodded. "I haven't either, Doctor. Not since -- the Cakes took me in. I promise."

And then he let himself get comfortable on the cushioned surface, being careful with his injured leg. He didn't think he'd made the strain any worse by going to the orchard. He hadn't helped it either. "I believe you both. But -- you understand why I would be concerned." They nodded. "And not a friend or family member?" Another nod. "Then what did put you on that horrible subject?"

"...just pain," Fluttershy said. "...just thinking about... all kinds of pain. Some nights I... can't stop thinking about it. I wish I slept more... but it would just come in my dreams..." And she said no more, clearly wanting to be finished with it -- at least until it inevitably returned to haunt her again.

She was holding back.

He knew it.

Yes, they had been talking about pain. But -- why?

He looked at Pinkie. She didn't say anything either.

No... I cannot allow myself to fall into paranoia. Yes, the drunk said she seemed to be in some pain. But not everything is about her. This is a hard subject and the Princesses know Fluttershy has reason to confront it every day. Just being able to face it at all makes her stronger than most ponies ever suspect. Having turned away from it makes her even stronger than that. And Pinkie...

He was still proud of them both. He always would be. Two of his -- Element-Bearers. Other than her, could there be any greater proof that the road had been worth every step he'd had to travel?

"Doctor?" Pinkie focused large blue eyes on him, looking oddly (and rarely) serious for her normal hues. "What do you think? About a pony who was in -- too much pain to live? Do you think suicide is ever justified, when living just hurts too much to go on?"

"You do not," he stated to Pinkie, and she slowly nodded. "And you," he told Fluttershy, "are struggling with it." The coral mane shifted. "My own position... and this is all I wish to say about it before we move onto happier tales. For yourselves... it is your mutual perspectives coming into play. Pinkie, you embraced laughter and the joy of life -- so you associate life with that joy, and picturing why anypony would surrender one is to ask yourself why they would give up both -- something you cannot see. Fluttershy deals with the end of the cycle -- too often. But that is part of her duties. However, as Pinkie said, Fluttershy, along with the companions of those loved ones, is making the decision for those who cannot truly decide for themselves -- not on our level. For a pony..."

He gave it thought, and was not surprised by how serious those images were. They had asked: they deserved the best answer he could give.

"I have always believed," he said, "that life and hope galloped side by side. I suppose it is possible to be so sick or pained or bereft of senses that travel to the shadowlands and the restoration found there would be a mercy. But it is a one-way trip -- at least, most ponies believe so. Some claim that we are visited, others say we come back in new bodies to live again and learn a second time from fresh experiences -- and a third, a fourth, and so on. I have always found that last belief endearing, even if I could not fully accept it. I wanted to think that those I have lost over the years would gain another chance... but in that, my faith remains slightly lacking. A desire -- but not a belief." His smile was more weary that he would have wished, too many funerals weighing it down. "I do wish I believed that much..."

They listened. They always listened to him.

"So for me," he continued, "the important thing has always been life. That while you are alive, you have the chance to change things. To make a better world for yourself and others. A pony in the shadowlands lacks most to all of that capacity. So for myself... I would wish a fight to the last. And if I was no longer capable of saying or thinking so, I would hope those who loved me would continue that fight on my behalf, knowing I supported them in the battle. Even if it was just holding out to hope for a miracle. Perhaps a miracle only comes one time in a million or less -- but imagine the value for the one it does come to. I would not be egotistical enough to claim ownership of that 'one' -- but I would hope... But I cannot make that decision for another, and would wish never to be put in such a position. In that, I have been lucky. Mothers have died in front of me, as have foals, and I feel the pain of every loss. But never was I put in a place where I could only save one and would have to decide who that one would be. I have my own nightmares about that choice, ones I could hardly ask the Princess to deal with. And if that situation escaped from its chains in Tartarus to land on my birthing table -- I would still insist on fighting for both. In hope."

He sighed.

"To the last," he told them. "There is your answer, my young ladies. For myself, a struggle for each second in the hope that it would lead to more. For others -- I would fight on their behalf, but to decide for them... I don't know if I could. It is a test I have never been put to -- and I hope never to take it. Perhaps not the answer you expected or wanted, but it is the only one I have."

Fluttershy's eyes were wet. "I understand, Doctor." Although she did not say if she would take that answer for herself. Or what her own was.

Pinkie sighed. "I do too." Nor did she, although he had rather a better idea. Pinkie was too in love with life (now) to give it up, not for herself or any other pony. However, Fluttershy dealt with the cycle...

But there were cheerier topics ahead of them, tales to be told, questions to subtly ask -- and perhaps secrets to uncover. "Now -- can we stop depressing ourselves for a few minutes? And do not wish for the world to bring depression for you: that desire is almost always heard..." Pinkie laughed, and he was relieved. "When I last saw you both... Celestia's mane, that was right after Fluttershy played her part with the water transfer team." Yet another (if lesser) reason to be proud. And Snowflake as well, such an achievement... "Which means I have personally heard no truly accurate accounts of what happened at the wedding and while I have your letters, Murdocks is making it harder every day to trust something in print." Fluttershy giggled a little -- and with that, they were back to normal. "Let us begin there."

They talked. He listened, because he always paid as much attention to them as they did with him. And prepared.

Kenlijckheyt

Somepony else.

They were waiting for Rarity, who had headed for the dress shop intending what she had promised would be "Just a moment, dears --" with a subtle emphasis on the plural "-- I only need to learn what has happened to what I had believed an adequate suggested price structure, not to mention how well it might be working..." And then she'd gone inside, with the others understanding that said moment could be anything from a few seconds to the better part of an hour. Several minutes had already passed and there had been no audible indications of complaining, let alone whining.

Spike was on extremely short-range patrol, roaming the borders of whatever Royal Bubble was meant to exist in the morning traffic of Trotter's Falls, carefully telling the local ponies that the Princess had certain things to do that day and would be available at the party -- which at least distracted the inquiries by sending them onto new paths leading to date, status of invitations (sent or non, some of those questions becoming frantic as ponies tried to learn whether they were On The Outs), the possibility of formal dress requirements... That last sent more than a few ponies into the shop, which meant their best current hope for keeping things under five hours was that the owner wouldn't allow Rarity to consult on any emergency designs, also known as 'completely taking over'.

Applejack was also dissuading contact, but her methods were considerably less varied. "She's thinking," was the most frequent redirect overheard when she spoke to those few who would deal with her or intercepted a few of Spike's. "Just let her think." And if it went beyond that, she just asked ponies to leave Twilight alone for a while, or simply to keep moving, and too many of those glared at her, gave her looks which would have damaged manestyles and pushed hats a few inches to the side -- but the farmer had neither to worry about, and so quietly watched those frustrated ponies trot away.

Twilight still hadn't found the words which would start the conversation between them, approach the issues which had to be dealt with -- and if those utterances even existed, they couldn't be brought out in public anyway. And so she was thinking -- and the thoughts kept going back to the same place.

Somepony else.

Yes, that thought had come earlier -- but it hadn't stayed for long. Twilight had quickly gone back to believing she had to be alone, and must have been so for years. And in retrospect, that thought had been another insulting one. There would have been danger, and there would have been horror to go with that, but...

...nopony emerges from vacuum. She didn't walk out of a mirror one day and collapse in spasm in somepony's living room. She had parents once. Maybe she had friends, siblings, other relatives, teachers... there's so many ways for other ponies to have been around her. Somepony knew her before she changed. There might have been ponies who helped her. She tells them she wants to become an alicorn, and maybe -- the reasons are good ones. She wants to help other ponies. She wants to find the key for discovery, for invention, for learning, for reasons which would only touch resonance with positive things. She lets her family know, her friends... not necessarily everypony around her, but it's more than possible that somepony could have known. Or even could have assisted.

Applejack's right. I keep thinking she had to start as a unicorn because whatever path she tried to follow or create would have included spells -- ones she would have been casting. But first spell signs... no, Applejack's wrong there. You don't forget like that. You can get out of practice with some things and need a few minutes to recover the right feel for a spell. But basic grasping? Once she had that, it would have started to become instinctive -- and that would have stayed with her forever. If she was a unicorn, then her magic came very late, she made the try early...

...or maybe there was somepony else.

Somepony who cast the spells for her, if spells were needed at all. Somepony who believed in her. Somepony helping her. And that pony could have stayed around for years. Maybe she didn't go into self-imposed exile. There could have been friends hiding her. Family giving her a place to live, out of sight, bringing her food, possibly even medicine to keep the pain down. But if that's the case, what happened to them? Did she -- get them by accident? How many has she killed? Or did they just help her try to transform and when it went wrong... she could have done something then, or they might have run and tried to forget it ever happened...

Somepony must have known her before. Even if they're dead now, she must have had somepony around her once. If I only knew her name --

-- if she only had a name.

'Names limit!'

Doctor Gentle had called naming one of the moments of destiny -- not as great as birth or the appearance of the mark, but a significant one. Had she agreed with that school of philosophy and discarded her given name, believing that existence without one removed that limit from her and allowed a better chance at forging her own way? And when she became an alicorn, she would take a new name, one to signify the achievement, a name that had been earned -- and since it had gone wrong, given up on the idea of having any name at all?

Or...

...no. She was born. She had parents. She could have had friends and other family. She would have been named. Somepony knew her. Maybe somepony stayed with her. Food, shelter, medicine. Helping to restrain her in every part of the cycle, keeping her from doing accidental harm. But then something happens, and that pony -- or ponies -- can't help her any more. She comes out, hoping for one last desperate chance. Even when she knows she can't be cured, there are others.

And who are they? How many other ponies are involved in this? Is she thinking of a theoretical future? She creates the road and then watches proudly as other ponies trot down it? Is she one of many who were all trying at the same time and it just went wrong for her first -- so they stopped, and she ran? And if that was the case, what happened to those ponies? Are they going on without her? It's likely that nopony's succeeded: it isn't as if there's been any news of a fourth -- fifth alicorn emerging...

Too many thoughts. Too many questions. Too heavy a burden.

Twilight wanted to start her Rainbow Dash mantra, let that kind of instinct take over for a while. Instinct which wouldn't be thinking. She wanted her own brain to shut up and leave her alone, or at least just let her focus on the sounds coming from the dress shop, noises which she sincerely hoped were not from measuring tapes being unrolled, not ones held in a soft blue field -- although given that Rarity would practice that spell, Twilight really needed to expand the chromatic range of things to be hoping for. There were times when she thought too much: she couldn't argue that. And recently, there had been more than a few when she found herself wishing she could stop.

But thoughts always came. They just weren't bringing answers with them.

I have to save some of this for the afternoon. Maybe all of it. This time, I have to confront her, at least a little as soon as the chance opens up. We have to pin down not only what went wrong with her own attempt to change, but who these other ponies are. If she's just trying to blaze the trail, that's one thing and we can deal with that as it comes. But if those ponies exist right now, if they're getting ready for their own attempts...

...somepony knew her once.

Somepony loved her.

Somepony else.

"Collector's items." Rarity managed to make the words sound like a particularly noxious breed of Poison Joke, one which just made mane and coat fall out. "Something is no longer being produced, so therefore it is worth more. It has not moved out of season or had the public's taste shift away from that trend -- it is simply more valuable because less people desire to own the piece. It is not just me, correct? This concept is inherently idiotic in and of itself?"

"It works for some things," Spike assured her. "When something becomes popular after it's no longer produced. An author catching on about three books into their career, with the first two having small print runs... that's part of why a first-edition Daring Do collection is so hard to put together. For clothing... if your dresses became vintage, Rarity, it could happen."

"Those pieces are from two seasons ago," Rarity pointed out. "The tides of fashion turn, but they do not move that quickly, Spike. It typically requires a minimum of seven years for backflow to occur. To keep a few leftovers hidden within inventory while hoping... yes, I can perceive that. But to raise the price on something and declare that because it is more expensive, that automatically makes it better --"

"-- this is the place." Applejack, tone far too placid. "Miracles Limited." She looked up past the sign, examined the upper edge of the main window. "And somepony just had a unicorn colt."

Twilight glanced in that direction. Sure enough, copper buntings. "I wonder..." She headed inside.

The little bell set over the door rang as she opened it. Also, a small light came on above the main counter, a soft whistle permeated the air, and a quiet voice whispered "Customer, unicorn, female..." somewhere towards the back. And all of that was casual effects. Installing anything more major was frequently considered to be too risky.

Thaumaturgy supply shops don't always stock a lot of actual magic. The majority of them carry those items which are commonly used in during school terms, some pieces which are always in demand by the casual researcher -- dedicated ones almost always wind up at the point of custom orders or just making their own equipment -- along with odds and ends that just keep cropping up on the special request forms. Fawkes Vials, a necessity for storage of volatiles at fourth year on up? Guaranteed to be in stock at any time except just before terms start, when the orders are heaviest -- or a little into the start of vacation, or just before the end of it, when students trying to tackle their take-home work inevitably find the not-quite-sealed jade stopper on the other side of the house and a long trail of very narrow destruction between it and the actual hematite. Silver wire, useful for conducting certain kinds of energy, can always be had, along with platinum for those needing a higher degree of refinement and willing to sign the reams of forms indicating that they now own it, exactly where they're taking it, and what the typical emergency response time should be for all attending parties. And new devices -- yes, those turn up, mostly because those who regularly browse in a thaumaturgy supply shop also comprise the two percent of the market which qualifies as first adopters for fresh products. Such unicorns will invariably take a recently-minted convenience home. And then they will inevitably experiment with it. Then on it. Taking it apart to see how it works is almost mandatory. Pushing it until it breaks happens more often than not. An embarrassed, sheepish, and lightly-singed visit to the manufacturer while carrying a scroll filled with Things I'm Pretty Sure I Did Wrong is a rather helpful follow-up. (It's possible to make a convenience very nearly idiot-proof, but nothing has been found which will stop The Quest For Knowledge, up through and including giant labels all over the product reading We Are Not Liable Once You Get The Cover Off, Idiot.) Testing of new devices takes place in the lab: perfection inevitably falls to the consumer -- and sometimes on. The central result is that the second version typically contains extra warnings in even larger fonts.

But take those untried, unproven, and currently-intact innovations out, and there generally isn't much in the way of true spellwork within such establishments. There are things which hold magic, channel it, teach and confine and redirect -- but items which are magic in and of themselves? Not too many, and outside of those new inventions (which the shop owners are paid to carry -- risk money), most of it is minor and refined over generations to be as harmless as unicorns can make it. Sometimes, when first-years, enterprising researchers of all ages, or just unicorns who have never learned the dangers of What Does This Do? get involved, even that isn't enough.

You don't keep a lot of magic in a thaumaturgy supply shop for the same reason you don't keep a lot of high explosives in a forge. In both cases, sparks fly.

"Greetings!" the presumably-proprietor called out from the back. A few seconds later, a horn poked out of the curtain which separated shop from stockroom, shortly followed by the rest of the pony: a stallion in early middle age, light green holding swirls of soft yellow, blue eyes to match mane and tail, mark showing an intricate platinum wire cradle. "My apologies -- you're my first customer of the day and I was just checking in some new inventory --" and the mandatory blink. "-- Princess?"

"Hello," Twilight tried. "I'm sure you can help me -- I just need a few --"

-- and the stallion raced out into the shop's central aisle, galloping towards her, Spike couldn't get in front of Twilight in time, Rarity and Applejack were too far away --

-- pulled up to a stop right in front of her, just as her horn was beginning to ignite, and put his chin on her right shoulder. He leaned his head in until it just contacted her mane, rubbed gently once.

"Thank you," he softly said. "For everything you did. For my son. Thank you, Princess..."

Twilight blinked as the unicorn held the position of gratitude, refused to move. "It was Doctor Gentle," she protested, knowing the tone wouldn't get through. "I just -- attended, sir."

"And through attending -- you blessed." He pulled back, warmly smiled at her. "I'm Weaver Shine, Princess. You've met my spouse -- and my firstborn. There is no way I could ever repay that -- but let me at least make some kind of attempt. Is there something you need from my shop today, or did you just want to check on my son?" That last with some hope. "He and Glory are at home resting, but should you care to drop by later --"

Oh no... Not blessing again, and now a requested follow-up visit after not having done anything... Twilight could feel the blush coming in, and it hadn't seen fit to bring any words along with it.

Which was why Rarity stepped in. "I'm afraid we only have time for a little shopping today, good sir -- and may I congratulate you on your son as well? A most handsome coat, and the patterns rendered in his darker hues -- well, I can see where he gets them from. His first crushes will come at his first play date, and it will be your job not to let them go to his head. But for now, all we can do is accept your thanks and offer you our trade. However, should you be able to attend the party, we'll certainly have some time for you then..."

For Twilight, it just brought up the twin questions of what a royal 'we' was and if that had somehow been it. But with Weaver, the words had been enough. "I will be in attendance -- and I'm hoping to bring Glory with me. Dusk will stay home, though -- an infant at a party is a recipe for disaster, or so I used to tell all my friends when they threatened to bring theirs..." He laughed. "I guess I'm supposed to be changing my mind about that now, but I still feel like I had a point."

Spike's scales were just beginning to settle again. "We'll see you there, sir. But for now, we really just need a few Fawkes Vials, some silver wire, and to take a look around at whatever's new."

Weaver nodded. "It'll be my pleasure --" looked down. Blinked. "-- you're a dragon."

"All my life," Spike managed, and Twilight could hear him keeping the frustration out of his voice. Yes, he was the only one currently known to live among ponies. It was natural for his presence to get the occasional -- frequent -- actually, just about mandatory reaction. It didn't keep him from getting sick of it, especially since Ponyville had gotten used to him and, after post growth-spurt forgiveness had settled in, treated him as just another citizen. He had become used to being just another part of the population -- which made the rude shocks of fresh stares and starts from the new arrivals that much more jarring. And travel always got things going again, with some of the reactions heading past surprise and well into the realm of the impolite before all too often stopping in Second-Class Non-Citizen for the most restrictive of occupancies. Some ponies didn't know how to deal with Spike as a sentient, others refused to mentally grant him the rights allowed to a pony -- and a few downgraded him to animal right in front of his face (including one majestically ignorant vet), which left them dealing with a dragon who had been taught to fight back. Most of that was verbal. Some -- wasn't.

But he was always willing to give a pony the chance at openly assigning an exact status before reacting, and so Spike continued. "Personally, I need some spell notation scrolls. Beech bark with belladonna infusion would be my second preference, but that's because you probably don't have redwood and mistletoe. It's my experience that I can hardly ever get redwood and mistletoe. Either way, about twenty should do it. Also, ink and quills. Ideally, I want them to match up. I usually get the best results with cockatrice, but manticore works for me. I never use phoenix: personal taste. I won't take lower than zanzustach, and only if it's the absolute last thing you have in stock and no other deliveries are due for three days." He looked up at the pony, blinked once without letting his nictitating membranes get involved. "So if you could show me where you keep the beech ones?"

Which took Spike out of curiosity and landed him dead-center in customer. "Redwood?" Weaver blinked again -- then laughed. "Celestia's shoes, do you know how long it's been since I've had somepony with the taste to request redwood? And of course it's using the mistletoe infusion: what else would anypony of knowledge want? Most of my customers ask for beech and a few settle for pine -- I really don't even know why I carry pine: it barely holds for more than a decade -- but you clearly know what works best, young sir. Yes, I carry it: you're in Trotter's Falls! Cockatrice ink and quills, I can do -- but I admit, I'm low on the ink. I have one customer who uses practically nothing else and he's the only pony I typically stock it for: he was in four days ago... well, I may not have enough for twenty full scrolls: we'll have to check. As for the rest of it -- who requires what?"

"The vials for me," Twilight told him. "Seven should do it." Actually, that number was frankly overkill -- but she couldn't be sure how long they'd be in town, how many letters might be sent, or if Trixie's method would ever get to the point of sending one back. For that matter, Twilight might have been relaying too little flame in the first place... "And then just a little browsing." She normally had to rely on catalog shopping or wait for a Canterlot trip to keep her own lab stocked: getting to simply look around a shop for the pleasure of it was a rare opportunity. But she had to be careful with her expenses. The Royal Vouchers were necessary, essential mission supplies -- but they were not to be abused. She needed the vials in case she needed to follow up with Trixie (and at least had to tell the performer that Twilight wasn't working with essence or trying to strengthen her own field), and Spike needed the scrolls for the same reason. Anything else had to be her bits, and she had very few with her. The Princess had never questioned her on the use of any Voucher -- and Twilight wanted to keep it that way.

"The wire is for me," Rarity added. "I'm not certain as to how much I might need -- this will be a feeling-out process. I will simply need to gauge your supplies to see which spool is the most supple."

The shopkeeper nodded, beamed, and turned his attention to the third pony in the shop, who was examining a shelf of crystal balls with something close to complete disinterest. "And for the lady...?"

Another blink. This was shortly followed by several more just like it.

Twilight watched his eyes move across Applejack's forehead, noted the gaze sifting through the mass of hair as if hoping that the weight of the stare could push some of the fall aside and reveal anything underneath. Instead, Applejack, aware she was being addressed, turned to face him -- and that movement stirred enough of her mane to show that there was no horn hiding within blonde strands.

The librarian wasn't sure why Weaver's eyes then wandered to Applejack's sides. Perhaps he was just being thorough.

"...we don't get many earth ponies in here," he just barely managed, and there was more than a hint of blocked stammer vibrating the fifth and sixth words.

"Yes," Applejack distantly replied, turning back to examine the quartz spheres again, gazing at her own distorted hatless reflection, "and at these prices, you're not going to get many more."

The silence fell hard enough to take out several shelves and most of the buntings.

After three endless breaths, the laugh came again, mostly from being forced through the curtain with horn prodding it all the way. "Oh, don't worry about prices! For the Princess -- the one who blessed my son... well, I'm not about to lose money on this, but I have no intention of making much. Now -- who can I help first?"

The vials were easy: standard stock item, school terms not interfering. Twilight kept it simple and went for the ones without the runic embellishments spiral-running around the exterior, which she had always found both purely decorative and ridiculously stupid, especially given that their carving just subtracted the amount of hematite in the vial and made the whole thing less secure. Spike picked out his scrolls and ink -- there was enough cockatrice to get through fourteen of them: manticore filled in the rest -- with the eye of a connoisseur and a nose accustomed to sniffing out oak being passed off as something else: happily, no nostril flares got involved in this purchase. That left Rarity with the silver wire -- and typically, the unicorn was being fussy about it. Spools were unrolled slightly, with samples passed over. She would bend the wire. Twist it. Straighten. Repeat. Frown thoughtfully. Ask to see the next, go through all of it again, then politely request the first again so she could compare and that one, yes, that one over in the corner, was that one of those alloys she'd been hearing so much about? Yes, let's see that one too... And she wouldn't tell Twilight what it was for. Given any idea of the enchantment Rarity wanted to try working, Twilight could have recommended purity, fineness, and channel capacity within a heartbeat -- but no, the designer insisted this was a secret and Twilight would see what she had in mind along with everypony else, no sneak previews, no matter how much anypony insisted and yes, Spike, I know you're more familiar with this than most graduates, but that includes you too, don't worry, I won't be much longer...

And through all of it, Applejack just stood in the aisles as if waiting for somepony to attach a price tag to her mane.

Nopony would have inquired about the newest stock item, even with a Blessing Discount getting involved. Other customers came into the shop while Rarity continued to examine what was hopefully going to become her eventual -- any minute now -- maybe hour -- purchase, and all of them noted the relative strangers being attended to. Several tried to greet the Princess. A few just -- looked at her. Strange looks, dark expressions, somehow familiar ones, contortions she hadn't seen in years, something she couldn't quite pin down and part of that was because her burdened mind didn't want to be looking at those memories right now on top of everything else. And then those few would leave, picking another aisle of the twelve available or sometimes even departing the shop entirely. Twilight didn't like those looks -- but at least it was a few less ponies to try and deal with, especially since Weaver was more than happy to tell everypony around about how gracious the Princess had been in blessing his son, she couldn't stop him, didn't have words to make him understand that all she'd done was stand around and feel thankful that the Exception wasn't needed for a second time, and so many of them left with dawning belief in their eyes...

But everypony looked at Applejack.

They stared. They too would openly examine her forehead in the event that a horn had somehow manifested since the last time somepony had done it. Some of them gave her wide berth as they went past in the aisle. Others chose another walkway to trot down. A few bumped into her, and some of those were hard. And throughout it all, Applejack just stood there, eyes occasionally going over a price tag and silently tallying up bits she had no intention of kicking over. Not talking, not moving, not reacting. There were no visibly restrained thoughts of bumping back twice as hard, or feinting with a little half-kick, or even just slightly pulling back her lips in the universal pony sign of Back Off. She was an orange statue which had recently had parts removed by vandals, and one of the things knocked off had been her personality.

It reached the point where Twilight couldn't watch it any more (and Rarity had never noticed at all in her pursuit of the perfect spool, with Spike only looking out for those approaching Twilight), couldn't call out protests on Applejack's behalf when her friend (still friend?) kept treating everything as being of no importance at all, and being in the same aisle as the farmer simply became too painful. It was as if Rarity's endless non-selection of wire was being wrapped around her own legs, tighter and tighter, metal cutting into skin before severing the invisible bonds between the Bearers. And so she moved to another part of the store, wandered up and down aisles while staring at shelving, the overhead lights helpfully strengthening as they rotated to highlight whatever she looked at, trying to think about the offered items so that she wouldn't have to think about anything else -- if only for a few precious minutes.

Spike came along. He frequently did.

"So what's this one?" he asked with some trepidation. After checking out the books offered and realizing that as always, there was nothing there which Twilight didn't already own, they had reached the New & Experimental area of the store. It had been easy to find: you just checked the walls for emergency shield-generating devices and then followed the pattern to the thickest cluster. (Such devices worked, but they tended to be short-term: one explosion, five seconds, the charge runs out, the shield drops, and the owner replaces it -- quickly. A typical thaumaturgy supply shop goes through about a dozen of the expensive devices per year. In the case of the establishment two blocks away from Canterlot's School For Gifted Unicorns, that number is daily, before lunch.) Peering closer, "It looks kind of like that dishwasher the Cakes tried out last season..." Which made him take a step back.

Twilight just winced. "We never did figure out where the dishes went."

"It's not where the dishes wound up," Spike groaned. "It's where those things which replaced them came from..."

"They were still dishes."

"They glowed in the dark."

"So they were glow in the dark dishes."

"That floated two inches above any surface on their own? You just don't want to think about it because you couldn't work out how they were doing it."

Twilight sighed. She'd ultimately bundled the strange tea set up and shipped it to the Archives just to get the faintly-humming crockery out of her lab: the undertone of the noise had been making her ears twitch even in the loft. The last she'd heard back, three researchers had quit, one had transferred to Ancient Artifacts followed by barricading herself in, and a fifth had developed what she considered to be an unnatural attraction to coffee. (Twilight had tried it once. Zecora had served her what had been promised as an exotic blend which would be kind to virgin taste buds. Twilight had held her post-drink smile just long enough to get out of the hut and then teleported directly to the spa for an inquiry about tongue treatments. Wake-up juice was just about as strong and didn't make her want to eat her way through six bars of soap.) "Maybe..." She moved closer to the silver box and read the label attached to the pull-down front panel. "Oh! This is interesting, Spike! It is a washer of sorts -- but this says it scrubs magic! It takes residual traces off items and renders them null so you can do experiments where you need untouched equipment without waiting for the last bits of energy from the last handling to fade! It means I wouldn't have to keep cycling through things all the time, keeping a null set in reserve while the last field-gripped bunch is still clearing! This is handy!"

Spike frowned. "Two questions. First: how much is it?"

Twilight looked. "It's -- um..." She blushed again. "...staying right here." Even at normal prices... actually, the wholesale might have been out of her reach. Still, if she saved up for a while and calculated the cost versus the savings on backup pieces...

"Good," Spike seriously replied, "because that means I don't have to personally worry about the answer to the second question: is it somehow negating the magic it takes off things -- or is it storing it?"

This time, Twilight took a very long, extremely squinty look at the tiny fine print. "Let's see... negating would be tricky, wouldn't it? Natural fading is easier that way, and asking a device to null something out, especially given the variety of signatures and strength of residue across the population... oh, there it is! It's storage, Spike. This says it soaks up the magic -- how does that work? -- in a special retentive sponge, which you then throw away once it's full... oh, that doesn't null out: weird... and the device tells you when it's at capacity. I guess that keeps bits coming in for the inventor, because you always have to purchase new sponges."

"You throw the full sponges out." A stark statement.

Her own best inadvertent Fluttershy imitation. "...yes."

"Sponges which are soaked with magic. Energy which won't ever null out."

"...right."

"And nothing bad happens from having a whole lot of discarded magic sitting around in one place, which is probably the part of the recycling plant where all the failed experiments wound up."

They both thought about it for a while.

"...I'm going to write the inventor."

"I'll help."

The third voice came from behind them, a familiar one, gallops out of place and perfectly merry about having turned up where they would least expect it. "And I'll let that pony know a Princess is going to badmouth her invention to deprive her of the fundamental pony right to earn bits!"

Spike jumped, spun in midair, landed facing the newcomer. "NO PICTURES!" he roared. "I forbid you to take a single one of me or Twilight! And since you can't do that, you can just get out!"

The smirk was more than audible. It had weight, pressed into Twilight's ears even as she turned and tried to bring them back against her skull. "It's a public shop, dragon. Maybe I want to try out a new Kryllian lens for my camera: some of these places stock them. I just might take a look around -- after I have a few words with the Princess..."

Twilight finished rotating, and her eyes gave her the confirmation she didn't want. Unicorn mare. Green and brown. Broken scales. And far too happy.

"Surprise!" the reporter grinned. "Got a ride in, Princess. Always nice to have friends, isn't it? I don't have to teleport as long as I know somepony who can escort me, somepony who lived here when she was a filly... I would have been here sooner, but it took a while to get within her range and then the last part? A split-second -- and now we can catch up right where we left off. Sure, no pictures, dragon: I can live with that. I'll let my words draw the image. So what are you doing in Trotter's Falls, Princess -- somewhere I'm betting you don't have routes memorized for the fountain yet? I saw other Bearers three aisles over: is the gang all here? Did you manage to do something which meant you had to leave Ponyville before we all found out about it and brought your cronies along to help establish the cover story? Are we slumming out in the woods? Or is there something else involved, something where you just had to sneak away under the guise of what was supposedly a mission, one where nopony in the Corps can get a word out of the Solar or Lunar courtyards about any mission going on at all? Is there something bringing you here -- or is it somepony? Are you and the farmer out on a little romantic getaway? Must not be going well: she looks like somepony broke up with her -- or like everypony did. Maybe this would be a good time to finally confirm the group marriage, Princess, especially since you seem to be down a member and I'm sure there's going to be applicants to replace her lined up from here to Manehattan, mostly because there's just that many ponies in the realm with no taste..."

Twilight had no words. She almost wanted to blame Rainbow, believe that the temporarily facsimile of that mental state had also duplicated the inability to find the right speech at the right time -- but that problem had always been hers as well: it simply manifested under different circumstances with nearly all of those at the worst possible moments. No cure had been found in books or lessons. And it was blocking her again, exactly when she needed something which could get rid of this.

A tiny degree of peace had been shattered. Even with her involved, the horrors stemming from all that and more arriving the longer she thought about it without being able to stop herself, there had been a measure of privacy in Trotter's Falls, a portion of trauma left behind --

-- one which had just caught up. A lesser nightmare which had followed her across the continent, and it was the kind of dream where she found herself unable to scream.

Spike still had working vocal cords. "She doesn't have to answer you!" the little dragon shouted, clearly trying to project his voice. "Nopony ever has to!"

The reporter shrugged, smirked again. "Leaves me free to guess whatever I like and write it down, scaleface. Where is the rest of your posse, Princess? Did they all come here with you after the Bearers teleported out together? A romantic getaway for the group? One last fling before you broke it off with everypony? I heard you went bar-hopping the other night, and there's more than a few ponies claiming you pronked home with them. How many do you think are telling the truth? Unless you can give me some proof I'm willing to print, I'm going to guess at all --"

"-- you are going to back off now."

And they all jumped, the reporter spinning around to see --

-- not Rarity. Not Applejack. A thin, small, grey unicorn stallion, about Twilight's own age, with a cutie mark she couldn't make out beyond the fact of its presence, somepony who --

-- Quiet? When did he get here? I didn't even hear a bell! But she was right in my face, I could have missed...

He took a few steps forward, moving past a shelf full of slowly rotating gyroscopes. "It is a public shop," he calmly said, advancing steadily towards the still-startled reporter. "And therefore, as a member of the public, I'm asking you to leave it. Whatever reasons Princess Twilight has for being here are her own and no business of yours. She is welcome in Trotter's Falls, and those who only come here to harass her? Are not. So if that is your only purpose in traveling here, then consider it accomplished -- and get out."

The reporter was now beginning to recover and went on the offensive in the usual way: the field-held notebook came up slightly and flipped open to a new page. "And who would you be?"

"And why would you care?" Quiet softly challenged.

"I'm a reporter. The Princess is a public figure, and ponies have a right to know anything and everything they want about public figures -- including the identity of any ponies who would try defending them." She looked him over. "Not what I would have figured for her taste if she went for stallions at all --" and the smirk grew wider "-- or does she actually look in that direction? You know, we all assume that because she's always surrounded by mares and nopony's been able to track down a single verified date with a stallion in her life... well, she really could go for anypony at all, couldn't she? Is the farmer so upset because there has been a replacement? Here, let's show all of Equestria just what kind of stallion the Princess goes for -- one who barely qualifies for the title!"

The camera came up.

Quiet's left front hoof went through the field, knocked it to the ground.

The replacement Bell & Hooffall (same model, same age, same degree of cheapness) broke into eight pieces.

"I'm pretty sure I owe you some bits," Quiet placidly said. "Or at least some fractions of same. Oh, and -- no. Or was I supposed to say that first? I read about the new law, but I've never had to personally put it into practice before..."

The reporter was staring at him. "I'm going to find out who you are," she softly vowed. "You're going into an article --"

"-- no, I'm not." Still placid, perfectly calm -- but there was a glance over the reporter's right shoulder, one aimed directly at Twilight and Spike, carrying a message which only strengthened in crossing the distance: let me. "Now -- I believe your basis for hassling the Princess is that ponies have the right to know everything about public figures?"

"Yes! I have every right to ask her anything, and you --"

"-- how old is Murdocks?"

She froze. "...what?"

Quiet tilted his head slightly to the left, smiled. "Murdocks. His age. I've been curious about that for some time. In the rare editorials he at least claims to write himself, he comes across as a fairly old pony -- but at other times, as if he's trying to make himself sound older in order to appeal to that generation. There are certain -- well, never mind that. But as long as we're at it, what kind of pony is he? Unicorn? Earth pony? Pegasus? A crystal expatriate who spent his life hiding among us? Is that why he never allows himself to be seen? Why he's sent representatives to speak for him at every hearing? Surely with the Empire opened up again, he would feel free to step forward without fear -- oh, and incidentally, is 'he' even the right pronoun here?"

The reporter was starting to tremble. "You -- you can't..."

"Can't I?" Quiet took a half-step closer, stared at her in a manner which approximated Fluttershy. "He's a public figure, isn't he? I would hardly call the owner of the most extensive newspaper publishing business and leader of its press corps anything else. It seems to me that by your definition, ponies have the right to know anything and everything they wish to concerning him -- and I am a pony who wishes to know. Now while we're at it, about sending all those lawyers out on his behalf in the cases where he always turns out to have paid with counterfeit bits with no idea how they possibly could have come into his possession -- why has he never considered purchasing a device which detects them? They're not all that expensive, you know. Most store owners around here have one, and you don't need to be a unicorn to use the things. Is he somehow allergic to magic?"

"...I..." The trembling was getting faster. "...you don't understand, I can't, none of us are allowed to --"

"-- oh, and about his political positions," Quiet continued. "The ones he never quite finishes explaining, at least in print. He claims that there is a need for a voice other than that of the Princesses, one who can argue the opposing point of view and beliefs. Very well. But the Princesses believe in Harmony. What is the opposite of that? Because I truly want to know. And I have every right to ask that question, and follow you until I get an answer, or perhaps just trail you all the way back to wherever the headquarters is and confront him with every last one of them myself. And should he answer me, I also have every right to buy a printing press and start my own newspaper to publish his answers -- or refusals to provide them -- within. Or, optionally, if you and he -- it is 'he', right? -- refuse to give me what I have every declared right to know, I could just --" and now his lips pulled back from his teeth "-- guess whatever I like and write it down..."

The reporter's horn ignited. Twilight's and Quiet's followed.

Her field surrounded the pieces of broken camera, brought them up.

"This..." It was almost a stutter. "...this isn't over..."

"Bets?" Quiet asked.

She began to make her way around him, trying to make it look as if she wasn't retreating while in the middle of doing so, not breaking eye contact while desperate to do exactly that. "I'll get your name -- I can print a story about your hanging around the Princess..."

"Yes, I suppose you can. In theory," the stallion said. "I'd wish you luck with that, but..."

"...ponies will know who you are..."

He didn't laugh. But one side of his mouth went up in a half-smile, and he tilted his head slightly to the right.

And she was gone, a bumped shelf of buzzing Hemlat Boxes vibrating in her wake.

Quiet trotted up to the siblings. Softly, "Are you all right?"

"Yes," Twilight tried out. The word felt like it fit. "She just -- bombarded us. I wasn't expecting her... I thought they would all be back in Ponyville..."

He sighed. "I could say something about the town battling me again, but that was a rather unwelcome import. Has it been that bad the whole time?"

Spike answered for her, one word: "Worse."

Quiet briefly looked as if he was trying to picture what 'worse' entailed, then as if he'd succeeded, and finally as if he was trying to get rid of the successful image once and for all. "And now it's here. Luna's mane, Twilight, I'm sorry... I know it's nothing I did, but -- I'm sorry anyway. This was a haven of sorts, wasn't it? At least for a little while. And now -- Twilight?"

Whispered, "Yes?"

Carefully, each letter overflowing with soft concern, "You're shaking."

She pulled together her remaining bits of strength. There seemed to be less to gather than before, and it was just barely enough to stop. "I'm okay..."

"And you're also lying. When I saw that other stranger blocking off your friends with his horn lit, I initially thought it was another one of the Doctor's -- but he was too old, and then I saw his mark. Running interference for his partner so she could hit you with her idiocy without having them break in. I should have tried to get their attention first, but my instinct was to come find you..."

"It's -- all right." And that was no lie at all. "I'm glad you did." Or that.

"A little advice, Twilight," Quiet gently told her. "Those who desire secrets most are typically the ones most concerned over whether their own will be exposed. Cockroaches run from light. Don't be afraid to turn one on."

Twilight nodded. The words had registered. It would take some time for the full meaning to sink in. "Thank you."

He smiled. "Let's get you back to the others." With a soft groan. "I should have come along in the first place, but I was worried about Doctor Gentle... All right. We know there's two of them about, and she more than implied a third with the one who teleported her in. I'd love to believe the count would stop there, but I don't have that kind of confidence -- so let's get our own reinforcements before theirs arrive. And if her partner is still lurking about, I'm going to have a few questions for him as well."

Quiet escorted her back towards the wire spools, Spike staying close and looking at the sort-of-Lord with something which wasn't so much approaching admiration as already there and picking out a good location for the base camp. Twilight stayed within a few hoofwidths of his flank and there were moments when her wings started to tremble, extended a little away from her body, brushed his side.

And Quiet kept his ears open. He watched the other customers as he brought Twilight back to her friends, looked to see if there were any he didn't recognize, checked marks -- but for those he knew, he paid careful attention to what they were saying. Listening had always been one of his greatest skills, especially when others didn't realize it was happening at all.

There was the usual assortment of reactions. Confusion. Gazes sliding off him and landing on Twilight, with occasional moves to the gentledragon. Some awe at being in the presence of a Princess and all the ways in which that manifested.

But from a few -- those who turned away, the ones who headed for the door -- there were muttered words. He caught a few of them. They were words he had held before and recently, he had dropped them on the floor as a precursor to stepping on them until they died. And there they were being said again. Twilight hadn't heard them: he was sure his senses were stronger than hers there, and he was glad for that. He hoped she would never hear them -- and knew that wish was in vain.

He felt his lips pull back from his teeth again, took as deep a breath as he dared, settled them back into their normal position.

"Stay close," he whispered.

She nodded, drifted closer still. Her wings brushed his side again.

The cruelty of when.

The cruelty of now.

"I wish to be certain I have this absolutely correct. You had to impress the sole pony responsible for determining if the Empire would receive the Games. Everything depended on your presentation to her working out exactly as planned. And in order to go forth and greet that pony, you all galloped down to the train station with the following means of identification at your disposal: her luggage. Not mane, coat, tail, and eye colors. Not race. Not cutie mark. Luggage." He was trying not to laugh. "I know everything worked out in the end, but I do want to backtrack on this much: how in the realm -- and in this case, beyond -- did that wind up as your lone piece of information?"

Fluttershy giggled. "The pony who delivered the news jotted down a few details to give Princess Cadance. Twilight read the note before we left for the station -- but... The Empire is still adjusting to -- catching up, I guess. They use our alphabet and spellings for most things, but Twilight said there's a bit of a regional dialect. Some words get confused. Horrible mouthwriting plus some really old word uses and slipping into Ancient Crystalia on a few of her nouns... the luggage was just about the only thing Twilight could make out!"

Pinkie laughed. "She apologized later. She really thought it would be enough. After all, it wasn't as if the Empire had a lot of tourist traffic yet! How many ponies would have been getting off that train to start with? There probably would have been only one carrying a floral print most of the time..."

Doctor Gentle smiled. "And the language problem was also part of why Rarity had so much difficulty with the manestyle?"

His eldest nodded. "Some of the words just didn't come across. There were diagrams, and that's what saved it in the end..."

Pinkie shifted on her couch, stretched out her front legs. "At least Dashie was happy. Not seeing the Games in Cloudsdale really hurt her. More than I thought it would. But cities try so hard... when it doesn't happen, you almost feel like you failed. I felt that way when I thought we'd cost the Empire their chance..."

He adjusted his own position, tried not to wince as his injured leg protested. "It is rare for a pegasus city to host the Games, my young ladies. For starters, it requires a massive magical effort. Very few unicorns can cast the cloudwalking spell, and all those who can need to be gathered. For weeks, they do very little else but. Facilities need to be constructed on the ground, and those take longer than the ones built in the sky... There are simply issues which, while they can be dealt with, make it easier to look at other sites first. In my lifetime, only two sky cities have hosted. It may be some time before one does again."

"Ground is just better for some things," Fluttershy sighed. "It's easy to get a temporary flight stadium over a mixed city, or an earth pony town or unicorn one which has all the other arenas -- but doing everything in reverse..."

He nodded. "But I understand the pain. When Baltimare hosted, Trotter's Falls applied to take over some of the smaller competitions. We were hoping to acquire a few of the unicorn events as a satellite venue. It didn't happen. I was but a colt at the time, but I remember the elders dragging their hooves for a week after the refusal... Still, the Empire will have much to celebrate, and it will be Equestria's first true chance to become reacquainted with them. I intend to travel there myself before the Games start and acquire a safe arrival point." Openly reminiscing, "I haven't been to the Games in decades..."

'And afterwards, we can'

There had been a reason for that.

"We're going back then," Pinkie told him. "Maybe we can all get together there!"

"I will do my best to arrange my end," he assured them -- and carefully began to slide the topic over. "And of course, I would love to meet Princess Cadance. In a way, this will be a test of her rulership as well -- hosting the Games is no task for the fainthearted. So many ponies in town, interacting with a culture they know nothing of -- and her own populace trying to figure out Equestria's citizens. There will be clashes and misunderstandings over more than mouthwriting. The duties of a Princess will include keeping everything on track while resolving all of the inevitable incidents without real damage being done. It is not a casual or enviable task."

Another sigh for his eldest, and the typical hesitation dropped back into her speech. "...I know. Twilight's been really worried about her... she's been writing her, trying to get updates, but Cadance has so little time, the letters back are short... Twilight knows Cadance cares and isn't brushing her off, but she'd still feel better if she knew more or could just help out herself... but Twilight's so overwhelmed already, ever since -- she changed..."

And she was doing part of the work for him -- or would if this was the topic he wanted from them. Still, there was no harm in exploring it somewhat. "I was surprised she hadn't been given any additional duties," he honestly admitted. "With Princess Cadance -- in retrospect, I suspect Princess Celestia was waiting for that chance of the Empire being restored. But if rumors were to be believed -- and no, I am not asking you to confirm or deny things you would have no reasons to know -- Princess Cadance was in training for that chance for some time. With Princess Twilight ascended, I had thought that at the very least, she would have vanished into more private classes in preparation for the next opportunity. Education on government, bureaucratics -- all the burdens of leadership. But perhaps Princess Celestia feels that for now, representing Magic within the Elements is enough?"

They both went silent for several breaths, visibly looked to each other for support.

"...Doctor?"

"Yes, my eldest?"

"...I'm worried about her. She's... not used to it, to any of it. All those ponies... wanting advice, pictures, interviews, the press is the worst, some of them tried to get at me when I was working at my cottage, they wanted me to say things about her that they could put out of order or just distort..."

Gently, "What happened when they did?"

"...my friends didn't like it."

He pictured it and smiled at the image. Yes, there were multiple hazards in dealing with Fluttershy on her own ground, and that was after you factored the rabbit out. "I assume they were slow to return."

"...they haven't tried again yet, not at the cottage... but when I go to town... most of the time, I just fly away, but some of them are pegasi and I can't always get away fast enough, I can't hardly ever..." Her eyes squeezed shut for a moment, the old pain claiming a moment for manifest. "Rainbow has to save me, or somepony else does, and then they just get it..."

Pinkie's smile was weaker than it normally would have been. "I get some of it too, but I can usually find places to hide."

And some of those places would be strange ones. "But the Princess -- doesn't she just teleport away?"

"Sometimes." Pinkie admitted. "But that's mostly back to the library -- and when it's open, there's ponies there all the time, when it's closed, they cluster around the shield and yell because she put one up so she could try to sleep at all, they finally started to give up and go home at night, but..." And it was her turn to sigh. "Those ponies are everywhere, Doctor. And some of them really do need help, but she can't always do something. They think because she's a Princess, that she has power -- not magic: power like Princess Celestia and Luna have. She doesn't. And they don't want to believe that. Some of them come into Sugarcube Corner afterwards, confused or complaining or believing she was lying to them, and I can't make them listen to me any more than they listened to her..."

Which were all things he had anticipated and trained her for -- things the world's fourth alicorn (with no fifth coming, not yet, but it had been a glorious failure and he so needed to tell her that) had not been educated in. Had Princess Twilight possessed any anticipation that her own Great Work was about to become complete? What had her path even been? He had assumed one in particular, but without any actual word...

He felt he could push a little further. Kindly, caring about the pain of their absent friend, "She wasn't ready for the change, was she?"

Coral strands of mane shifted: the one visible eye went half-shut. "...no."

And another hoofstep. "Did she -- even know it was coming? At all?"

Pinkie sighed. "I thought... when the beams from the Elements hit her, she started looking around at all of us, and she was scared, like she didn't know what was happening -- none of us did, Doctor."

The Elements.

It was right there. His most determined was talking about it. Answers sought over decades were being delivered into his hooves on honest words...

"But then she put her head down, just a little," Pinkie continued. "And -- she smiled. A little one. I asked her about it after, and she didn't even remember smiling at all. But it looked like..." She glanced at Fluttershy.

"...acceptance," his eldest finished. "Like whatever happened... would happen... and she was ready for it. And then she vanished, and the floor of the library was scorched in the shape of her mark..."

Sun and Moon, they were there. They may have been part of it...

He had to keep himself steady. He had to stay under control. But he still found himself leaning forward somewhat, and felt it was the natural reaction. "Were you all there? All of the Bearers?" They nodded. "And you were all wearing the Elements at the time?" Again. "Was there a mission? I know the only times you remove them from the vault is when something is happening, but we received no news here. Admittedly, any such event might have been lost in the wake of the coronation --"

-- and he'd pushed too far.

The expression on Pinkie's face was familiar to him: it was one he'd seen most often in the days when Pinkamena had been the only name she'd known, a weary sorrow which said I have to think about how much I can say and I already know that's nothing at all. From Fluttershy, a sudden shrinking, her body curling up more tightly on the couch as her tail swished in to shield more of her form.

"I'm sorry, Doctor Gentle," Pinkie sighed. "But -- Princess Celestia... we told you more than we've told anypony, and -- I trust you to keep it secret, you know I do -- but she asked us not to really say too much. I wish I could tell you everything, I really really do, but -- we promised. I just didn't think about that when I started telling you, and -- I'm sorry... I'm sorry because I gave you only part of a story, and I'm sorry because it's the Princess and I just messed up..." Her head sunk down, went between her outstretched forelegs. "I feel stupid because I said anything and stupider because I wish I could tell you everything and I can't..." But that was as far as the reaction went, which meant that the promise had not been the Pinkie variant with capital letter attached. She was embarrassed -- but it wasn't tipping into self-loathing.

"...we all promised," Fluttershy whispered. "I did it too... but it's so hard not to talk with family..."

He managed a smile at that. Conspiratorially, "I won't tell if you won't," and was glad to see Pinkie's head come up again, with Fluttershy's tail moving back out. But still -- close, so close, but of course the Solar Princess would have wanted those details protected... and he needed them to see he understood that. "I can see why, truthfully," he went on. "I imagine the Elements are already at risk every day. There are ponies who would love to study them, and not necessarily in ways which would leave them intact -- although I have a hard time imagining anything which could destroy them. Or enemies of our nation looking to steal them and remove that weapon from Equestria's arsenal. If ponies knew they were instrumental in the ascension to an alicorn state -- yes, then they would be facing increased dangers from within and without." The next thought was new. "I can even picture somepony trying to make it work in reverse -- dethrone Solar and Lunar to replace them with their own chosen rulers... yes, having Princess Celestia ask you to keep the secret is perfectly understandable. But it must be difficult not to discuss. At least you all have each other to turn to if the need to talk becomes too great."

Fluttershy sighed. "...I wish Twilight would speak to us more, Doctor. Not just about the change... about everything that came with it..."

"She's not happy," Pinkie added. "But I've been trying to get her to talk, and so has Fluttershy, and she just won't let any of it out. We're worried about her."

And this, perhaps, was another form of chance. "Is it possible that -- it is because you are all so close? Because she does not wish to make her burdens your own?"

"...I can take it," Fluttershy whispered, and he knew her words were sincere. "...I can take more... for her..."

"I can too," Pinkie sighed. "But she won't talk... and if she did, it would all be so much easier, I just know it would..."

"Then -- let me try." They both blinked, focused on him. "This will sound odd, my young ladies, but I am a stranger to her still -- and sometimes, it is easier to unburden yourself with somepony you do not truly know. There is less of a connection, a diminished fear that by sharing your own pain, you will transfer some of it. I am supposed to speak with her about magic -- and I would like to do that tonight, after dinner." According to Quiet, their local Princess had asked to eat considerably later than usual: their mutual host had readily agreed. "I will not bring up what I know of how her change occurred -- but I will -- shall we say, conjecture as to some of the aftereffects. It will not hurt to give her the cue. If she refuses it, then I have confidence that you and the others will find the path on your own. But should she choose to take the topic up -- then I may be able to make some headway simply through virtue of not being so familiar to her. Just a pony she met for a few days and perhaps runs into moons from now in Ponyville when I come to visit you again. A passing acquaintance. She can give her burdens to me and I will trot away with them, the weight never to be seen again. It is a strange concept, but -- it works. Not all the time, but often enough to try. The things parents have confessed to me... Will you allow me to make the attempt?"

Another one of those mutual glances, the communication silent but visible. He had often seen them do it, and wondered if more than simple sight galloped down the pathway. It was possible: they were close, and had so very much in common.

"...yes," Fluttershy expressed for the pair. "...if it would help her... if there's any chance..."

He nodded. And if fortune was truly with him, then perhaps Princess Twilight, as keeper of the secret, would be the one permitted to give the full version out. "I will do my best," he promised, and decided to take up the next angle. "I imagine this trip must have come as something of a relief to her. Not the search for my own missing corpus, of course -- the chance to rest after that search ended. Even those ponies who know or discover where she has gone would need time to cross the distance. Those in Trotter's Falls are, by and large, being polite, at least in the sense of waiting for the party so they can ask their questions in a more formal setting. Being here is a chance for things to become a little closer to what used to be her normal -- but then, even that included missions and quests and battles to save the realm."

Pinkie smiled -- but this one had a touch of sadness to it. "Rarity spent about three days in the spa after Discord -- the first one, Fluttershy." The animal caretaker understood, and Doctor Gentle knew what his most determined was referring to. That had been in a letter which had the topic all to itself -- a very long one. If the Solar Princess had asked for any secrecy on that matter, the airmail stamp had beaten it out. He had been immensely proud of his eldest -- and had given the contents of the letter long thought, consideration which took him deep under Moon and nearly back to Sun again...

...but Pinkie was still talking.

"And -- it took a while for all of us to -- be all right again. Even after Twilight restored us..." It was clearly a painful subject, one so weighted by emotion as to press upon her mane. "...we held together long enough for the fight, but -- Luna came to our dreams, each of us, for weeks after, and... We got there, we all recovered, it just -- took a lot."

Fluttershy shivered twice, said nothing.

"The missions take their toll," he gently said. "I've seen that in your letters. You all boost each other, bring one another back -- but the stress of being Equestria's defenders remains stress you feel every time the Princess sends you out and lingers after you return. It is because you all have each other that you come through it so well -- but there is still something to come through. And you two are vital in keeping the Bearers together and returning to themselves each time, for Laughter and Kindness are the Elements to be drawn back to. In that, you are the most important. Not always during each mission, but every time after they end. Never doubt that. And it is why you are so hopeful to take some of Princess Twilight's burden -- because it is your duty under those Elements, along with your simple hope as her friends."

He let them sit in silence for a moment. Words weren't always needed, and Fluttershy's closed eyes told him all he needed to know.

"I saw your stress when you came here," he told them, and it was a partial lie. There had been none when they found him, simply relief and joy and love, the same as it had been for all the others. But since then... "And part of that is because you are trying to carry some of her burden, even when she will not give it to you. Some is because you cannot take it. But while I can only present myself as a near-stranger to Princess Twilight, I would hope that I am something more to you..." A look from eldest to most determined, his eyes kind and patient.

"You're family, Doctor," Fluttershy told him with no hesitation whatsoever.

"You know that," Pinkie gently insisted.

"Thank you," he sincerely told them both. "And as family, my young ladies -- is there any burden I can carry for you?"

They exchanged glances again. He could almost feel the words going down them. There was a moment when he felt the phantom exchange was almost audible, written in posture, position shifts of their legs, a change in the speed of breath, little movements of both tails and for one, the most familiar vibration of her wings.

There was something. And they wanted to tell him. He had done his best to always be there for them, had done so since the very first moment of their time under Sun, and now they wanted to give him something back --

-- but they were hesitant.

There were ties of friendship in the way. Bonds of duty. Perhaps even the connection wrought from Elements -- or the ones which had allowed those Elements to attune at all. And still, they wanted to talk. Because they were family, all of them, in more ways than they knew.

Fluttershy got up from the couch.

The motion surprised him, and continued to do so as she slowly trotted up to Pinkie, leaned in, whispered into her right ear.

His eldest's mane obscured much of her face at the best of times -- but even on a side viewing, it could not hide all of her mouth. The words remained unheard, but his best guess at lip reading gave him what could have been "...any help we... "

Pinkie looked uncertain -- but, after three long breaths, nodded.

Fluttershy turned to face him directly.

"...Doctor," she carefully began, "we --"

-- and a cyan near-tornado blew through the room, rammed into Fluttershy's just-vacated couch, nearly knocked it over.

"In here?" she shouted. "Is it in here? Has anypony seen it?" Frantically glancing around, magenta eyes refusing to rest on any target for so much as a second, her sleek form taking off again from the cushions and doing a high-speed circuit of the room's perimeter. "Please, guys, tell me it got in here somehow, please...!"

Pinkie gasped, jumped off her couch, tried to race beneath the pegasus and keep the pace well enough to talk to her friend -- something she was perfectly capable of doing indoors, although the cornering around the furniture was giving her some trouble. "Rainbow, what's wrong? We can't tell you if we've seen something if we don't know what's missing!"

"I've been all over the castle," the weather coordinator called out. "Tried not to come in here until last -- wanted to let you all talk -- it's got to be in here, unless somepony stole it!"

"Dashie, you have to tell us what's missing..."

Fluttershy took off, positioned herself so that she was very nearly in front of the pegasus, stuck out her left wing just enough to let a single yellow edge feather brush against the blur as it made another circuit.

It was enough to get her friend's attention. The movement slowed, and the frantic eyes settled on them for that lone second.

"My manuscript! The first half of Volume One! It's gone! It wasn't in my room, the servants swear they didn't take it but some of them could be lying, he -- he -- whoever he is, he said he took on all those temporaries to help host us, one of them could have walked off with it, my manuscript..."

And that put an end to the meeting. There were apologies, and still more apologies, mostly from Fluttershy (who had spent her life making it into an art form), followed by all of them flying and racing out of the room to help their friend search. After a long pause to collect his thoughts, he followed to give what help he could.

Close. So close...

But he could not allow himself to openly regret it, and gave only a little time for the internal expression. The meeting had been worthwhile, and there would be other chances. For now, he would content himself with having learned much. The Bearers were up to something: he had known that already, but the confirmation hardly hurt. Better still was that he knew there was no suspicion of himself or Quiet: it would have been visible -- and should it have existed, those thoughts would have kept his from wishing to speak to him. And they did want to speak. Given another chance, later on -- they might. For now, they would help their friend, and he would assist in that.

No help in finding her or in discovering how much they knew there -- but still, he had learned, and that knowledge was precious beyond measure.

Six Elements. One alicorn.

The original path -- the one he'd had to abandon -- worked.

They needed the meeting, and they needed it quickly.

It will have to be the party.

And so it would be.

Bloom

"We have an infestation problem."

The brown-and-white speckled unicorn looked up at him, and the expression Quiet had walked in on -- that of somepony in the middle of deepest headache and trying to force themselves to continue with the activity causing it -- shifted into a deep smirk. "Very true. I believe you're currently allowing it to reside within your grounds. As such, you should be the one to take responsibility for the cleanup. Do let me know when you've managed to get rid of the last lingering scents: I'm not particularly good at holding my breath and visiting you is becoming a rather unwelcome exercise in endurance."

There were ways in which Quiet was used to their interplay. When the two of them were in the same room, with no other ponies to observe, the sharpened edges of syllables were unsheathed. It could easily turn into a verbal war to first blood and beyond -- if Quiet cared enough to participate. He didn't do so every time. He knew what Coordinator was trying to prove: you may be the supposed Lord, but I'm the one with the true power around here. And that was what it was always about: power. Coordinator always felt the need to wield power, enjoyed it on a level Quiet fully recognized -- but the bureaucrat seldom had the chance to use it openly. Those chances were relished, and Quiet suspected Coordinator took them into the nightscape and relived them at leisure, at least until the dreams of greater power inevitably took their welcome turn.

But ultimately, Quiet didn't care. Coordinator was -- necessary. And to that degree, he continued to deal with the pony who effectively ran the town hall and by extension, so much of Trotter's Falls. He let the other have his say, gave over a few victories more or less by default, and simply moved on with what portions of the Great Work which Quiet could personally assist in.

However -- not caring didn't mean he enjoyed their meetings. And there were times when he let the sting of his own vocabulary enter the battle, a reminder to Coordinator that even if the other stallion didn't care to believe any of it, the bureaucrat ultimately had only petty power -- and it was something which could vanish at any time.

Quiet often felt Coordinator was incapable of understanding that. But there was a certain pleasure in watching the denials. And given that as far as verbal battles went, he'd just been through a rather intensive warmup exercise...

"The Bearers will depart -- when they depart," he told Coordinator. "If you want to directly tell a Princess that she's overstayed her welcome -- and we both know that's not going to happen, don't we? Direct isn't part of anything you do. You keep to the shadows more than Princess Luna, and there are times when you almost seem to do a better job at creating them."

That got him a slight nod. "I do my part, Lord Presence. And you're quite correct -- I'm not going to be the one to tell Twilight Sparkle she should be moving on. Speaking of which -- would you happen to know where she is now?"

"Outside with two other Bearers and the dragon." Quiet noted the most subtle degree of pulling back that came upon hearing the last word. "I told them I needed a few minutes to deal with some forms regarding the upcoming party. Notices of bands playing during the night just in case I wanted to book the entertainment and not worry about our local law enforcement dropping by to say a few words about unsanctioned decibels. They'll wait for me. We have time -- to talk about the infestation."

"Again -- your castle, Quiet," Coordinator smirked. "And therefore your problem."

Quiet took a steady breath -- no extra pain came from it -- and used the moment for looking around the grey office, a hue he came far too close to automatically blending in with.

It was -- organized. Arguing that it was too much so would come easily for most ponies right up until the moment the occupant directed them to fill out the complaint forms in a minimum of triplicate. And at the moment, there was something else to complain about -- for the standard had visibly slipped.

There were file cabinets. The sheer quantity of them meant they were often mistaken for two of the walls.

The diploma from the Gifted School had a place of prominence. Pictures of ponies Coordinator had special knowledge of were carefully displayed on what Quiet sometimes thought of as The Wall Of Blackmail, with the images carefully ranked from left to right according to just how much they could do for the functionary. Every so often, the order shifted. Rows were added. Once in a great while, a picture would be taken down. Quiet had walked in on the removal of one image, casually asked what the occasion was. Coordinator had, with great bitterness, told him that the absent pony would be unable to continue sorting out what should have been her best priorities from the shadowlands. And then the frame had gone into the trash.

The desk was generally covered in paperwork, but in a very meticulous way. Typically, documents were sorted from station to station, piles shrinking by the exact degree which others grew. Multiple inkwells were in play at all times so that Coordinator could criticize, rebuke, and reject in considerably more than one color. One cherished rack held special stamps to be used on the front page of anything summarily destroying all hope. A lesser-used one contained the finest of quills, for when somepony required that special flourish of fieldwriting which said Coordinator wanted something from him. Another, more commonly utilized group, magically negated the lingering unique signature from the feel of any field which held it and, combined with an even more special flourish of writing, kept the recipients of those letters from knowing just who was making the initial effort in the quietly joyous attempt to ruin their lives.

And that was why the desk had caught Quiet's attention this time, because it was covered in papers -- but those papers were scattered. Disheveled. They seemed to have come from a dozen different qualities of reams, had twice that many hues of ink covering them -- and that was before he threw in what might have been crossouts, revisions, second drafts begun on top of the first...

They weren't forms. It would have been impossible to fill out any form that way without having the paper spontaneously catch fire in order to escape. But Quiet wasn't sure what they were: from his perspective, they were upside-down -- and even without that to confuse the text, the quillponyship was horrible. If it had been produced by a field, then the unicorn was just getting past the spark stage and if a mouth had been involved, the writer had no patience for the fine details of lettering, or the rough ones, or possibly much of anything else.

It was more than merely unusual to see such raw chaos on Coordinator’s desk. But it wasn't the problem. The infestation was. And in Quiet's opinion...

"Actually -- I'm pretty sure it's yours," Quiet said.

Another smirk. Not that the first one had truly faded. "Are you?"

"Well, that's why I came here. To ask you -- in your capacity as official press representative." Quiet didn't take a step closer to the desk, preferring to keep the standard three body lengths between them: he simply shrugged and let the motion of his shoulders cross the distance for him. "That's still one of your roles with Murdocks, right? You put in your opinion columns -- wherever you're having them mailed from these days -- you ask for no pay of any kind, just the joy of writing -- and part of what you get in return is that you are that representative, at least for his press corps. If there's a story -- you cover it. Or rather, most of the time, you don't. And nopony else shows up from his group to cover anything."

"As said -- I do my part."

"Apparently you're not doing it well enough."

"I only have influence with a single organization," Coordinator pointed out, far too casually. "The Doctor's absence was news -- to some. I told Murdocks it was a non-story, especially since there was no real way to write one about his having fathered every last one of the children he delivered and a very large number of ponies would have become angry at the attempt. Not just all of his, but their parents, and -- well, you recognize a few of the levels of power in play there, I'm sure, even though it leaves you looking up the whole time. But if anypony else from another newspaper came into town, I can hardly flash a badge I don't have -- and even should I get one, saying I was here first --"

It was more than enough. "We have three flanks displaying broken scales in the streets right now, Coordinator." Quiet was beyond certain that the bureaucrat had known that already. "And those were just the ones I saw. Why are they here?"

An answering shrug. "Influence -- which regrettably is not full control. I'd imagine some of the Doctor's got off the train in their own settled zones talking of the visitors who had come to ours. The Press Corps is very interested in the activities of all Princesses, you know that -- especially if there's any chance to use those actions against them. For Twilight Sparkle to be in town -- naturally they're curious to find out if she's here to do something, or hiding from something else." There was a brief pause. "Perhaps she's even sticking around to be near somepony. Wouldn't that be interesting?"

Placidly, "If you're into that reading about that sort of unsourced gossip thing, yes."

"And -- are you?"

This breath was slightly slower. "Gossip isn't to my taste."

"Then you should be more careful about avoiding situations which could create it," Coordinator calmly said. "A married stallion -- one who is not part of a union which would welcome expansion into a larger group -- brings six well-known single mares onto his property and -- puts them up for a time. While his wife is away. It's the sort of situation which could easily have ponies talking, Quiet. And you know how ponies love to talk..."

"And how much reporters love to listen," Quiet allowed. "So you feel they simply followed the flow of tales back here?"

"Inevitably," came the calm reply. "And I doubt I'll be able to talk them into leaving. Saying 'Hello, I am the local anonymous unpaid source' lacks a certain something in the way of proof, especially since I don't have copies of any pay vouchers which never existed. Complaining to Murdocks that others are stepping on my territory will only draw questions as to why I wasn't filing the story -- in fact, I'm expecting to receive something like that very soon no matter what I do. The good news is that as a volunteer, he'll have some trouble firing me -- and I believe I have enough goodwill built up to avoid any lawsuits, at least beyond the first round of threats."

"Do we have more than three of his?"

"Your news is the first count I've had, and I've been in the office all morning -- since before the Sun was raised, actually. When you get an exact tally, let me know?"

And with that, Quiet grew tired of the dance. "Coordinator -- do we really need somepony poking around Trotter's Falls right now?"

"That would depend," Coordinator countered. "What is the value of 'we' in play here?"

This time, Quiet did take a step forward -- and let his corona go to a full primary. The office was well-lit, even if the grey tried to absorb all the internal illumination it could while denying Sun as much as the occupant did (along with denying the Princess who made it work): he was sure Coordinator could see the sparkles. "The one which includes you and the role you so expertly play in the Great Work. She is out there, Coordinator. We're looking right now. You're directing some of that. The press knows the Doctor has been found, or will if they care to listen to any recent events at all -- which, when they find out how our currently-local Princess factors into them, they just might. If they get any wind of a search going on, they'll know it's not for him and I'm hardly going to ask him to disappear twice just to play the role. I'm also going to have some trouble having any other pony retroactively vanish. We're keeping things on a low level -- but given how much of the town is part of this, we would normally have relatively little to fear from a minor slip. In this case, we have the Bearers. I'm handling that. But now we also have the press. Which is supposed to be your department."

Coordinator was silent. The lack of words by no means indicated submission: it was simply waiting for Quiet to finish and using the time to plan his own response.

The quasi-Lord went with it anyway. "I may not read as much of Murdocks as you do -- it's not to my taste, although I do have respect for your talent in excluding all other viewpoints from what never winds up as a true debate. But I do know the general style. News is what they do to fill page count space between scandals. So they're slow to seek the former, but they'll always chase the latter. And if they should somehow get any hint, stumble across a single clue... which do you think we have more of here, news or scandal? Especially if they found out how far it goes? How many ponies are included? And once they reach your name..."

Very slowly, "My name?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Quiet lied. "Is there another brown and white unicorn stallion in this office?"

"Nopony," Coordinator said firmly, "is giving up my name. There's no reason to do so."

"Pretend you're drowning."

A sneer. "Whatever you're talking about --"

"-- blackmail," Quiet cut him off, "is your art."

Coordinator didn't even blink, which robbed Quiet of at least half the satisfaction.

The grey stallion began working on getting it back. "I realize you're trained to never admit it. But if it gives you any comfort, pretend I said the word 'hypothetical' about twenty times in random, yet appropriate places. It's a pity your mark doesn't reflect it, really -- but that would be something of a giveaway, wouldn't it? Still, it's part of your role with us. You use your skills -- and you are skilled -- to assist. There are times that means paperwork. Redirection. A subtle suggestion to the right twitching ear. Or the discovery of facts. Facts which ensure silence. If facts don't exist, then they're created. Blackmail is the art of bombarding ponies with the knowledge of their own deeds -- or those conjured for them -- until they feel as if they're drowning. And then, having flooded the grounds and stirred the current -- offer them a succession of temporary float supports. They'll always be in the water -- but somepony will control whether or not they sink. How many 'hypotheticals' have you used so far?"

This silence was slightly different.

"The problem with drowning," Quiet continued, "is -- well, now we have to move into the real for a moment. Most ponies are poor swimmers. We're fine in the shallows with slow currents. As divers? Frankly, we're pathetic. And any water moving quickly -- there are many reasons so few go out on the ocean, and most of those center around a desire to avoid the chance of not coming back. Still, ponies do find themselves in situations where they could drown. Earth ponies have the most resistance on the whole." He noted the automatic expression of distaste, then watched as it went beyond that. "They can fight the current, tread water for longer than unicorns can manage. Us? If we can teleport, we're fine. Self-levitators get clear of the water and try to reach land. Most of the rest are in rather more trouble. And pegasi -- it's the stuff of fiction, really. Given how often they have to fly through storms, I have a hard time imagining the weight of water soaking into their feathers enough to drag them down, no matter what the stories try to say. There's a chance they might have trouble taking off, but I'd have to see it. But ponies have drowned. Other ponies have watched it happening. Many tried to save them. And sometimes it worked. Unicorns with sufficient field strength --" and the open hate took on a new tone "-- pluck them out of the water or loop ropes to drag them out with, pegasi swoop and lift. But others have to go into the ocean after them. And those drowning will cling to their rescuers as best they can. Sometimes they flail during their attempts to do so. Kick. Injure. Drag the other pony down with them. Where one drowns -- two can die. So tell me something, Coordinator... all those ponies in the water -- how far away are they? How strong are their fields? Do their forelegs press tightly?"

And then he took a breath, noted the increased ache -- and waited.

There was a clock on the wall. It was an odd sort, powered by gears rather than magic. One of Quiet's ancestors had purchased a similar model and he had carefully failed to keep it tuned in any way: the thing was horribly finicky, considering a good day to be one where it only forget one hour in every ten. But he had to admit, the sound it made was slightly comforting, a regular pattern of metallic clicks, each one driving a single second -- more or less -- into the ground and pinning it there...

"Your language becomes too fanciful at times," Coordinator said. "I suspect it's all the donkey so-called literature you peruse. If you're implying that you have concerns about them finding her -- then look harder. Try to beat them to it. I'm doing my part there, and it would only help -- in theory -- if you joined in. Unless you feel 'handling the Bearers' is more important?"

Quiet -- shrugged again. Smiled and took half a step back. "You're right. It's not. I'll stop right now. Let me just go tell the Princess that all my handling is over and she shouldn't consider any of my suggestions ever again. In fact, in a minute, you'll be able to tell her yourself, because she so wanted to come up here with me and see what you'd made of the place and as soon as she stops considering that..." He turned, headed for the overly-polished grey door --

"-- you're lying."

"You're worried."

"She has no reason to come up here."

"Being such great school friends should be reason enough, shouldn't it?" Quiet inclined his horn towards the well-lit diploma. "The eternal bond between graduates..."

Twenty clicks locked time into its proper place within the cabinets.

"So when is the party?" Coordinator asked.

"Two, three days," Quiet answered. "I can't see it being anything beyond that. But I can't move it up any more, either -- we're using the occasion to bring ponies in, and some simply need the time to travel. As it is, we won't be able to get everypony. But we won't be missing very many."

"I'll get your paperwork through. Just be careful about the noise level. I know how far you are from other residences -- but sound carries, Quiet. It always does."

"I've noticed." He took a step towards the door. "I heard some familiar ones today. Echoes, really. They must have taken years to reach the point of bounce-back, and more to make the full round trip."

"Oh?"

"And the odd part? They were all echoes of things you'd said. About our guest Princess. Strange that they'd be arriving here again at this point in time, isn't it?"

"Not really," Coordinator opinionated. "I've spoken to many ponies about her since leaving school. Now that she's here, some of them are simply -- remembering my words. The visual appears -- reminding them of my experiences -- and they repeat things to themselves in order to be sure they have them right. It happens all the time with other ponies who might enter an area after the population there has heard about them in advance. It's just as natural to have it occur with a Princess -- perhaps even more so, given what an inspiration she is to think about such things at all."

Quiet, still facing away from the bureaucrat, nodded. "You're right -- that is natural."

"Very."

"And no fault of your own, having ponies bringing those words back on such an obvious cue."

"None whatsoever."

"Incidentally -- what's that on your desk? Did the school ask the youngest children to submit their best guess at what a form should look like for your professional grading?"

"This?" The sound of papers shuffling, followed by an audible wince as the headache settled back in. "Just a little -- light reading."

They were heading back towards the castle. No real degree of tour had been taken. Quiet had told them that the castle was still secure -- living within a giant stone pimple, complete with fortifications, did have certain advantages -- and he also had full authority to keep others from trespassing on his grounds. Given that, the best thing to do was get inside his territory while everypony tried to figure out what could be done with the press. If anything could be done at all beyond what Quiet had already publicly accomplished -- an action Spike fully approved of.

"Sometimes being a dragon hurts," Twilight's little brother sighed. "And sometimes it just feels like it keeps me from doing anything."

Rarity frowned, adjusted her saddlebags so that the wire within sat more evenly. (A final choice had been made -- eventually.) "Spike, you should never feel that way. You are a citizen just as we are, with the same capacities which the rest of us possess -- allowing for a few minor differences, of course -- and once those factors are -- actually, largely ignoring those factors, you can do just about anything we can and a number of things we cannot. Those differences are something to be proud of, and if you but think for a moment --"

"-- Rarity, it's not about pride or being the only dragon who lives with ponies," Spike sadly stated. "It's about -- doing things. Like back there with that reporter, the one Twilight managed to throw out of Ponyville... well, she left one town..." A deeper sigh, and his shoulder scales tilted with badly-repressed anger. "In that kind of situation, I usually get two options. One is Yell and the other is Fire. And if somepony ignores Yell, I can have a really hard time justifying Fire. I've gotten ponies to do things with words sometimes, but what Quiet did... he took her apart. I want to be able to defend Twilight like that. And I can't."

Quiet gently smiled, trotted a little faster so as to walk next to Spike. "Gentledragon, I --"

"-- Spike. Please -- just Spike."

Quiet tilted his head slightly to the right as his ears fully straightened, looking vaguely surprised -- and bemused. "All right -- Spike."

"And while we're at it," Rarity called forward, "I will make you a deal, Quiet. You shall no longer insist on putting 'Miss' before my name on every use and not only shall I not recite your full title at every turn, despite the glowing way Spike described your exploits at the thaumaturgy shop while you were personally inside the town hall, I will somehow refrain from adding 'Captain Of The Dawn Guard' to it. Shall we agree to that mutual accommodation?"

Which produced a slight stumble as Quiet's right front hoof landed less than evenly. "Celestia's mane, I think you just found the one thing which could make it worse... no offense, Twilight, but we've already been over my total lack of desire to wear armor and I don't even want to imagine what kind of design -- all right, so Rarity will probably wind up handling the designs. I'm sure they'll look spectacular. Gem-studded. Streamlined. And heavy. Can I finish my sentence for Spike now?"

Twilight giggled for the first time in what had been starting to feel like weeks. "I think you'd better. Refusal of my Captaincy -- you'd better speak to him because there's a good chance he's going to be the only one still talking to you. Turning down the honor... I don't think that was ever a criminal offense, but I should still check just in case..."

"I'm a Lord," Quiet protested. "Sort of. Guarding you is too much like work. Pointless work because it's already being done by six others who can manage more than I ever could short of my somehow becoming a dragon... You already have the Dawn Guard. And from everything I've seen, the travel opportunities are sublime, the chance for advancement is somewhat intriguing, and the pay is horrible --"

There was another giggle, an almost inaudible one, immediately cut off as soon as the pony making the sound knew it was happening at all.

"Miss Applejack?" Quiet looked back. "I -- do still get to use that 'Miss'? Or is there Eastern Red Giant fruit about to take the express route to my head?"

"The pay isn't horrible," Applejack softly stated.

"It -- isn't?"

"No. Sucks is a much better word."

Twilight clenched her jaw, squeezed her eyes shut as little bubbles of sound broke from the corners of her mouth, wings vibrating as her sides shook...

Quiet stared at her. "Twilight? Is something --"

"I don't want -- to laugh..." she half-gasped. "It'll only make you laugh... Luna's tail, the pay does suck... it's half-off your library fines and all the lectures you can stand..."

"Oh, are we getting to limit the lectures now?" Rarity brightly asked. "In that case, I am putting in for an immediate cease and desist to the series on Field Efficiency And You: Loving Your Primary Corona As If It Was Your Only One, especially given the often hypocritical nature of the pony who keeps delivering it..." And then she was pursing her own lips, the repressed sound trying to escape as a series of tiny, rather unladylike snickers.

"Celestia's shoes, stop!" Twilight gasped. "I can't keep this in -- I don't know where to tap his ribs, I don't want to hurt him..."

And Quiet moved in front of Twilight.

The colorless field reached out, surrounded her right front hoof. Brought it up without resistance. Touched it to his thin torso.

Wide purple eyes stared at him. The gasping stopped -- but Twilight's breathing became faster. The others were looking at them. She could feel Rarity's stare, the amazement inside it. Spike's acceptance. And from Applejack -- she couldn't tell. But at least the farmer was looking...

"Here," he gently said. "And here."

Her skin seemed too small for her body. Feathers vibrated without her consent. Ears rotated and twitched, eyes refused to blink.

"And even if there was nothing to be done," Quiet softly told her, "nothing anypony could do -- what would hurt more than anything else is knowing that you were afraid to find joy because of me. Never feel that way, Twilight. Ever." The field released: her hoof stayed where it was. "Now -- laugh..."

She finally blinked. And after a moment, the laughter came. Rarity joined in, but her tones now carried something else within them, an emotion Twilight didn't recognize. Then Spike, more sincere and joyous. But Applejack just stood off to the side and watched, head slightly tilted to the right, ears shifting as if trying to sort out her mane using nothing more than a series of twitches.

Quiet stood silently in the middle of the path, listening to Twilight laugh. Smiling.

Twilight watched the conversation resume as they crossed the last three hundred body lengths leading up to the castle.

"-- I just have more experience with words, Spike. And while I've been lucky in not dealing with that exact profession until now -- and I didn't know just how lucky I'd been until it ran out -- the principle is the same as for dealing with too many others whom I do have to encounter on a sadly-regular basis: the ponies in my own supposed class. Nobles who feel they're in the right on all things simply because they have a title which somepony else attached to their names through the random luck of birth. Ponies who feel that blood substitutes for education, reason, logic, and thought. They're not so different from those of Murdocks -- actually, given some of the political views I've been forced to suffer through at extended dinner parties, some of them are exactly in that mindset, if you could even invoke the word 'mind' with it. Believe me, those are experiences I also would have been lucky to lack... but they carry through into other areas."

"Not all nobles are like that, though," Spike almost protested. "Twilight and I had to deal with more than a few like the ones you're talking about, but it's not everypony."

Quiet sighed. "No -- just all the ones I break bread with... all right, nearly so. There are exceptions, but I swear most of them move away just to escape from the majority. Still -- it's about having gone through something similar before and working out how to adjust it to a new situation. The truth is that with Twilight as a Princess, Spike, you're going to be getting more reporters, not unless you find some way to permanently stop them -- and I'm having trouble thinking of anything which would work. Many of those experiences are going to be ugly. But you'll learn from every one -- and after a while, it'll give you more options than 'Yell' or 'Fire'. 'Humiliate' and 'Terrify' can work wonders, although you have to be careful: it's too easy for them to come back on you. 'Embarrass' has some staying power, especially since no amount of time ever seems to make it completely go away..."

"Twilight." The voice was a whisper, the lightest possible breath against her right ear. It also came with an accent no other pony had ever possessed and the flutter of false eyelashes against the side of her head. "Before we step into the palace -- drop back for a moment?"

Surprised, Twilight slowed her pace, drifting out of casual overhearing range for the two males, allowing a stoic Applejack to pass her without the farmer taking any recognizable notice of the change in their marching order, and finally found herself at the rear of the pack, with Rarity having matched her every step of the way. Keeping her volume low, "What is it? Did you have an idea about --"

"-- I have an idea," Rarity carefully cut in. "Perhaps more of one than you are currently allowing yourself."

"I don't understand --"

"-- no." The word was gentle, as were those that followed it. "No, you do not. Twilight -- he is married."

She kept the laugh soft, and it somehow made the sound come out as being certain. "I know that!"

"Intellectually, yes. For everything else..."

"He's -- my friend." It was the first time the words had emerged into air. "A stallion friend. Maybe my first one. Brothers don't count and Big Mac and I never do more than debate philosophy for ten minutes when he's operating the market stand by himself and sales are slow. And he usually loses me after the first five. Actually, I bet he knows about moments of destiny. When we get back, I should ask --"

"-- you are straying from the topic. And whether you recognize it as such or not, Twilight, you are doing so deliberately."

"Rarity, you're overreacting -- I'm just happy to make any new friends at all after -- changing. To meet somepony who can still see me. So what if he's married? We're just friends."

"Twilight -- I am sorry if it sounds in any way as if I am repeating myself -- but after all we have been through during this, and before -- you realize that I care about you? That I truly wish to see you happy and never desire harm to visit you in any way? And if I say something which might hurt you, that was not my intent and the words are only meant to help, even if it does not feel that way when you first hear them?"

Confused. "Of course, Rarity -- you know I understand that, even if I get -- stressed sometimes, and... need reminding..."

"I spoke to Fluttershy this morning. While you and Rainbow were practicing. She was reluctant to -- but she needed to speak with somepony, and I was there."

"...about?"

The designer sighed. "We do not have that much time before we're inside: I shall be relatively brief. These are the words she wishes she could say to you -- the ones she is afraid will hurt you too much, with all the stress of the mission and the change added into having to hear this. But I feel it will do more damage not to listen -- and so it falls to me on her behalf. No matter how it sounds -- no matter how it may make you feel -- please remember I do this as her friend -- and yours."

"Rarity -- you're scaring me..."

"Twilight -- dearest -- you don't say what's going through your head. What happened at the ravine had clearly been building up for a while. And if any of it had come out before that in more standard portions, through conversation, discussion, simply letting us know what was going on... there would have been no explosion of pain. Perhaps there would have been less pain, with hopes of none. There's a lesson I'm sure you may have written down at some point, but you haven't put it into practice: you need to talk to us. You keep too much inside, Twilight. You always have." More slowly, "And it -- is the one thing we all have in common, isn't it? Fluttershy said such to me, and I did not wish to believe her -- until I said it to you. None of us talk when we should, we know it -- and yet we still don't."

"I... I don't understand...."

"Look at me." The unicorn sighed. "I take all your revisions for the Gala dresses and incorporate them because I cannot bear to tell you what is happening to the final results. Had I said a single sentence to the gathered group? That disaster of a first show never would have happened. I cannot balance my desire to integrate myself among what I was seeing as Canterlot's elite and the time to make your birthday dress -- it was supposed to be so much more elaborate, Twilight, what I gave you was all I left myself strength for, a stage on the way to completion -- but do I confess? Not until this moment. Even after you realized I was trying to divide my time between the parties, when you tried to help me do so -- I still allowed you to think I had simply grasped a love of simplicity until this moment. Did I tear myself away from the center table in the town hall rotunda and dash to your balcony so I could inform you that your three minute date idea was not working? Could I approach Fluttershy early enough to save her from the pain of her brief modeling career -- a sojourn she never even saw real income from, given that there was a hidden clause in her contract which stated that should she leave before the full term was completed, that damnable Photo Finish could legally keep most of the bits..." The blue eyes closed in pain. "Shall I go on? Because I can. There is every chance I could manage to stay on this humiliating topic without repeat for hours. And that is simply keeping it to my own misplaced silences."

"Rarity... I'm -- I'm sorry, I --"

"Whatever for? They were my silences. My stupidity. A lesson I have not fully learned, one I continue to repeat while never truly taking it in. But I am asking you -- to recognize that in yourself. That there are times when you must speak and do not. This moment could be one of them -- and should not be. Look at me, Twilight -- and tell me that you see Quiet as nothing more than a friend."

There were a mere eighty body lengths remaining before the entrance to the castle.

Then seventy.

Sixty.

"He's -- married."

"And if he were not?"

Fifty.

"It's so hard... to even think about asking... I don't know how..."

"Are you saying that you would have wished for that? Or hoped that he would ask you?"

Forty.

"...yes."

"I am hoping -- that he is truly a gentlecolt, Twilight. I accept all the forms of love our land offers and recognizes. But I suspect that as with the majority, his marriage is a singular one: stallion, mare -- and no others shall be welcomed. Even in the very rare times when invitations remain open, the spouse must fully accept the new arrival. But I do not believe he is in such a union. It is himself, and the mare who married him. And a gentlecolt -- would recognize your feelings, before gently telling you that friend is all there could ever be. A gentlecolt -- would be loyal to the one he had chosen. Equestria recognizes so many kinds of love, Twilight -- but none of them are called adultery."

"He doesn't feel the same way about me."

"And you are saying that because...?"

"Nopony ever has."

Twenty-five.

"Twilight? Do you know how I realized what you were feeling? I looked at your eyes when you touched him."

Abashed, but with a touch of challenge. "And?"

"Yours were not the only eyes I regarded."

"He can't."

"Quiet has treated you -- normally. Something you have been craving. Even with the reason we are here -- with all that has happened -- he has made you feel as if things were somehow more stable than they truly are. And that is precious to me, Twilight. I am thankful for him. For you to find any relief in this time... I would welcome him as your friend. But you have said that part of you wishes for more than that. I feel there is more than a little in him which desires the same. Those who say that mares and stallions cannot simply be friends -- at least for those of both genders who are attracted to ponies in the other -- speak falsely. It is possible, it happens, and for one who is married to truly befriend another that happens to be single -- even that takes place. But where there is attraction, any degree of connection..."

"He doesn't think about me that way."

"Twilight -- even if you truly feel that nopony has ever looked at you simply for yourself -- and with what you went through in school, with those now seeking the favor of a Princess or boasts to spread about their conquests, I can understand why you would both believe that and to some degree, almost want that belief -- it does not mean it will never happen. Even that it has not happened before. Or that it is not happening now."

"But nopony --"

Twelve.

"-- Twilight, you must listen." Speaking more quickly. "I have very clear memories of what happened when Fancypants decided to take me on as a secondary student, behind Fleur. The newspapers were quick to accuse: the gossip columns began with 'adulterer' and moved on from there. His part in having been attacked... he laughed it off, said it happened nearly every time he spoke to -- a beautiful mare -- and I should only see it as a compliment. But the words, and the battle against those who believed them... He did all he could to help, but the struggle... And now there is this with you. As an Element-Bearer, as a student of Princess Celestia, it would have been bad enough. Now, with you as a Princess, with Quiet... even friendship will be twisted by some of those who observe it. You could deal with that: I have faith in your strength. But if there is anything more, anything you cannot bring to that level, should you be unable to accept that being his friend is all that can exist between you -- if he cannot do the same..."

The barest of whispers. "...Rarity, what do you want from me?"

"I want you -- to be happy. Always. And he makes you happy. He gives you an oasis in a desert you never wished to cross. As your friend, I welcome him. But can you accept that even his friendship may be hard at times -- harder than it was when you first came to us, simply because of the ponies who will refuse to see it that way? Can you make that connection be nothing other than friendship? Can he?"

Eight.

"I don't know... how am I supposed to know what he's feeling, I didn't see his eyes, not that way, I don't know how to recognize it..."

"You do. You will. When you try. It will look like nothing else in the world. And you will know."

"But --"

Five.

"-- you have to talk with him, Twilight. There is no other solution. And you will have to do it soon."

"I can't, Rarity..."

"You must. Because I can see it and I assure you --"

Two.

"I can't..."

"-- when his spouse returns -- she will see it too."

Zero.

Atelier

She wanted to make a memory.

The reasons were not what they had once been. There would be very little need to revisit it, because there was likely almost no time remaining to do so. Once she and the one who had finished, (plus those around her, ponies who had traveled at her side on that other road, companions and friends and -- whatever the orange one was) worked out where things had gone wrong...

She had promised not to kill herself, for the sake of the others. But when they were taken care of, made safe, fully protected from her fate... the pain would still be there. The failure. A waste of a life, and one which would (should) never be taken back by the one whose time she had thrown away on the pursuit, because in spite of the wonders which should have sprung from his instruction, his labors, his Great Work, she had still managed to get something wrong and became...

...this.

Given that, she had no real reason to create one of the memories. But... it was something to do. Something she had not done since the event. And she did need to make one of the event, because doing so might help her work out what had happened through the process of review. Given the typical creation time required, she might be able to do that before she had to leave for the meeting -- plus one other. A warm-up, because the event was going to be a very complicated memory at best and creating a simpler one might let her approach it gradually, along with allowing her to learn if she was still capable of creation at all.

The pain...

She didn't know.

But the cycle had reached the point where she could once again feel the shield, although not every aspect of it. Even to her agony-distorted senses, what little of the information she was able to interpret seemed -- incomplete. As if it both was and was not her, or at least the version of 'her' which existed at the moment of detection. The signature was distorted, warped in the same fashion as her body, and part of it trailed off into something which was currently invisible -- an aspect she would only feel when the twisting wings began to return, long after she'd lost the rest...

She had created the shield during the event, without conscious thought, while things had -- changed. She suspected there was some degree of layering involved.

But for now, she could feel the shield on the other side of the hidden way once again. Opening the door was a trick she'd been doing for years, and it didn't require any kind of magic at all. Passing through -- more difficult with a larger body, plus there was something in the way at the far end. And parting what was on the other side of the little tunnel -- she could not negate the pegasus aspect from the combined working, but several minutes of struggle eventually allowed her to open a hole she could pass through, one which closed itself behind her as she entered.

There was more than a little fear in an approach which took place more slowly than it had since the very first day. She hadn't tried to get through before because... she had been afraid to see. As long as she didn't see her memories, she could pretend they were all still intact. She thought she had protected them and him, knew the second (and far more important) part had been a success, but it had only made her more fearful of viewing the first...

...they were safe.

Those which were public. The hidden ones. Every memory untouched --

-- including that one.

She looked at it. There was very little choice, for she had put it in a place of honor, one of pride -- and that was something which now sickened her.

Had that been the mistake? The memory itself? Had creating any of them been wrong, and that which was in front of her had simply been the final insult? She didn't want to believe that, but -- it was potential evidence, something she had to consider. One of the last things to happen before the event, and therefore a possible trigger.

But making memories... that had never felt wrong, even when it took her away from her studies. Memory creation was natural. He had said so. She knew that thinking too much about it hurt him, and that was part of why she'd always been so careful about finding the time, getting to the special place and getting out before he came to check on her. For a long time, she'd never wanted him to know that she was making memories at all, because she never wanted to see him in pain.

But on that worst day of all, the day of the event...

...she had been proud.

She had thought... it would help him. Make him feel better. Bring a smile, or a tear of joy. And so she had...

...no. The pink one first. Then the next.

She had to work quickly, but she was used to that: only the reason for the time pressure had changed. Stay too long, the green loop would begin to come around -- and then she wouldn't be able to leave for hours, missing the appointment...

She began.

It was so much harder than before. She couldn't always prevent herself from twitching, and there were harsher pains which made bringing the outer reaction down to a mere twitch impossible. And the pain was constant -- but it had ebbs and flows. Tall spikes and extremly shallow ditches. It never went away, but there were moments when it intensified, and she was beginning to learn some of the signs which indicated a foreshock. She listened to the horror of her body, and found moments when it warned her to step away before it was too late. At others -- the signals were too subtle, or drowned out in the chaos of a twisted sensorium, and then she had to fix a mistake. A process which gave the pain chances to create other errors, and things easily compounded from there.

But it was a learning process, much as memory creation itself had been. The longer she forced herself to listen, the easier it became. The pain never went away, the ebbing would need immense amounts of charity before it could even be described as 'minor' and the only true moments of partial relief were the brief seconds of peak. She could not live with the agony (and just the physical kind), not for a full lifetime, and pretending it was possible to manage, existing only for those times when the silver was at the top of a loop and it was possible to imagine she had done no more than recently fracture several ribs... no.

For now, though... she made errors, more than she had in years, and all of them were ultimately her fault. But she also managed to correct a few of them, and the memory gradually became clearer as she went along.

Every so often, she would stop and listen, for she always had, just in case he came by unexpectedly. (In fact, he tended to drop in on her unexpectedly so often during memory creation that on a subconscious level, she'd learned to expect it.) This was added to something entirely new: glancing up. The novelty of seeing something other than a ceiling wore off quickly.

The special place was no longer a fully protected one.

Sun did not touch the memories, not truly: it had to pass through a pair of shields, and the public ones were thus doubly discolored in tone. She had initially found the results insulting: the magic had no respect for the sanctity of memory. But there was nothing to be done about it, and the offense faded quickly. Her own shield had saved them, the secondary one kept everypony else away, and she could adjust to the alteration of light. She had privacy... but still, she would stop and listen, or look up to see if somehow, somepony who had managed to get through the weaker construct (and she could feel just how weak it truly was) might be staring down at her from the rim.

Nopony there. Again and again.

Every so often, she found herself looking at that one. Hating herself for having created it, wondering who else had seen it (for surely somepony had stared into the hole), and wondering if --

-- no. The private memories were still hidden: nopony else had gotten through her shield. There was safety here, at least for now, and the shield itself might outlast her life. She would make sure to take care of her own memories before she died. And as for that one... she would not touch it. Even if it had been the mistake, the thing which had triggered her irredeemable failure... even when all of her others were gone and only the public ones should have remained, she would leave that one behind. For there was every chance it was the final signature of her mistake, writ large for all to see...

...but she could not destroy it, for it wasn't her memory.

It was his.

And she had made it so.

Rainbow had a certain way of getting to the point, and that method reverberated through the castle. Nothing was easier than tracking her down on sound alone, and few things would have been harder than getting her to stop.

"It was you, wasn't it?"

A stumbling, half-stuttered "...n-n-no..."

"I know it was you who did it! Own up!"

"...n-n-n-no... I didn't d-d-do anything..."

Those particular protests hadn't come from Fluttershy: it had been far too loud, the tones were all wrong -- but the brief, locally-inaudible gap before the next burst was quickly given a source. "Fluttershy, I don't care! It wasn't you and it wasn't me, it sure wasn't Pinkie or the Doctor, nopony else was around but them! So that means it's one of them! There's only so many suspects in the book, nopony's brought in a hidden character -- the butler did it! Because it's always the butler! What's your name?"

"Softtread," came a remarkable steady stallion voice.

"So you did it!"

Calmly, "I did not."

The arriving group briefly glanced at each other. Hoofsteps accelerated.

"Prove it!"

"How did you wish me to prove I have not done something?"

"By... you can... I... you're trying to trick me!"

"Miss Dash, I promise you, I take the sanctity of this household and those whom Lord Presence welcomes as guests very seriously."

"Not seriously enough!" Rainbow shouted. "Because it's gone!"

"You are certain you have not misplaced --"

"-- stop asking that! I know where I left it! Somepony must have moved it! And --" her volume did not drop so much as lock wings against ribs before plummeting from a suddenly-calm sky "-- I understand, I really do. Because somepony was curious. They just wanted -- a sneak preview. I'm sure nopony here would ever want to take it and claim they'd done all the work. Just... flipping through it so they could get a direct look at all the awesome. Perfectly understandable." Conspiratorially, "I might have done it myself if somepony as awesome as me was in the castle. So... maybe I should just -- turn around. Face the wall for a couple of minutes. Not really pay any attention to who's going in and out, you know? And if I turn back and it's suddenly here... then it's over. Because I get it. I really do."

Pinkie now. "Rainbow, I don't think --"

"-- turning around now!" The words were almost cheerful. "Counting to a hundred and twenty!"

They were now close enough to hear Fluttershy, if just barely. "...Rainbow, it's a big castle... there's a lot of rooms..."

"Fine," Rainbow grumped. "A hundred and fifty it is. Better start galloping! One -- two --"

Which was when the shopping group reached the study.

Twilight, the last in the procession, found herself frozen in the doorway. It wasn't the sight of Rainbow facing a bookshelf, eyes squeezed tightly shut. Adding an openly-worried Pinkie and Fluttershy to that did nothing for her. The sight of every single servant in the castle -- long-time employees and temporaries alike -- crammed into the room, some nervous, others near-frantic, and more than a few dripping lightly with sweat -- gave her some concern, but only because of what some of them might drip on, and she briefly considered yelling out in a desperate attempt to order them away from the shelves.

Instead, all that emerged was "The books..."

Quiet, who had been approaching Doctor Gentle (at the left end of the servant inquisition line, tending to a mare whose sweat had been rapidly transitioning into froth), glanced back at her. "Twilight?"

"Your books..."

The shelves rose to the ceiling. They were on every wall. There were extras over the doorway. One window was under encroachment, and that was simply a more polite way of saying 'siege'.

The contents gave off the scent of dignified age, that special tang of paper which had been loved over the course of centuries added to aged binding glue, mixes no longer used and still holding (as long as the reader was careful, and Twilight was never anything but). Each spine showing the discoloration of long life was visually loved in turn, for they had earned every age spot and Twilight longed to ask them about the story behind each one.

There were names she knew by heart, and she thought well of Quiet for having them present. There were things she'd only heard of, and she longed to ask about his sources. There were rumors on those shelves, crystallized gossip which had previously only existed as desperate wishes passed back and forth by those who knew there would never be anything more than want, and they were real, solid, and right in front of her...

She did not swoon, but only because Rarity more or less held the local copyright on the action. Staggering forward by a single hoofstep, however, seemed to be more in the public domain.

"Twilight?" Quiet carefully asked.

The servants, none of whom were trying to get through the occupied doorway (and there was still room to pass her), watched, their eyes taking on a fresh layer of bewilderment, one Twilight frankly didn't care about. It wasn't important. The words Rarity had said on the way in could wait. The mission had a few hours before it had to be picked up again and that was still important, even if she was having a little trouble thinking about just how important it was.. but her priorities were in order. All she'd done was shove some entries around on the schedule in order to create new space, then written some very important things down.

Twilight went straight for the first fresh instruction on the revised checklist. She didn't have time for anything else.

"Whatever everypony's doing... could you all please pick another room for it?" There was a dazzle in her voice, as if her very words were failing to blink away teleport flash.

"Fifteen, sixteen... oh, no..." Rainbow groaned, turned away from the shelf, wound up waiting for Applejack to pass as the farmer claimed a quiet corner towards the back. "Twilight, I'm glad you're back, we need the extra eyes and any magic you might know for this, I'd really appreciate your casting it, but what I'd appreciate almost as much right now is if you'd take a second and blink."

"The Teerantinto," Twilight non-replied. "Why is that spiral-bound?"

"It's his notes," Quiet said. "Twilight, I think --"

"-- you have his notes."

"...yes."

"I'll give you five thousand bits."

Rarity's groan was a soft one, and no less pained for the lack of volume. "Twilight, dear, you do not have five thousand bits. I do not keep a particularly close eye on your finances, but I am not certain you generally have five hundred to spare, especially given how you have been so very carefully saving up so you can take the six-pony version of the escort test..."

"I'll use a Royal Voucher."

"This is not a mission expense," Rarity carefully tried. "Nor is it any aspect of our stay in Trotter's Falls which the palace would naturally understand and sign for. You cannot --"

"-- installments. Five bits per moon. For a thousand moons. Or we could do it faster. It's all just details." Her field was aching to flow forward and seize the volume, but she had to formalize the transfer first... no, wait: she'd just realized there were additional negotiations to throw in. "And that's a Fortreeze next to it. You have a Fortreeze. Out of the entire print run, there are supposed to be only two Fortreezes surviving in the world. The Princess has one and the Archives have the other. That isn't either of them."

"It's his fieldwritten first draft," Quiet helplessly said. "He bound it himself to see how it would look once it was published. Twilight, I think we need to find out what's going on here before --"

"-- his first draft."

Spike's groan chorused with Rarity's.

"Yes," Quiet said.

"The one he wrote himself."

"...yes. And bound."

"I'll give you my wings --"

-- which was the point where a multiply-offended Rainbow threw herself in front of Twilight's frozen gaze. "Twilight!"

She blinked.

"...what?"

"Books are important, right?"

She nodded.

"More important than anything?"

"...sometimes..."

"Fine! Then let's talk about mine! Because I'm pretty sure somepony stole it!"

The vocalization of near-ultimate blasphemy made her blink twice. (For his part, Quiet added an extra three.)

"...oh."

"Yeah."

"I'll help you look."

"Thanks."

"Has anypony searched this room yet? I'll start taking things down. Just in case it was accidentally shelved somewhere in here. Or stuck behind a book. Or maybe inside one. I know it was pretty thick, but some of those books might be able to hold it. Plus your binding wasn't that good, Rainbow. The pages might have gotten separated. There could be a single one inside every other volume. Somewhere. Which means somepony needs to turn all these pages. Carefully. While making sure some of the text doesn't match. You know, that would be really great to see in a mystery novel -- Pinkie, pass me the hat... So everypony head out, I don't want anypony getting hit by floating volumes and there's just so many volumes, I'm going to need some space..."

Twilight grumbled to herself as she prowled through the latest in the series of castle corridors. She had only been trying to be thorough. There had been absolutely no need for her friends to shove her out.

She had no magical means of tracking the composition. If Rainbow had been fieldwriting, then there would have been a signature to reach out for, but... pegasus. It left her with the same method everypony else was using: lift, turn, flip, make sure nothing had been tucked under anything else, and try not to leave any stone unturned -- or, given the way Quiet's ancestors had tended to shop, any drawer unopened. And there were a lot of drawers.

The servants continued to swear that none of them had taken the manuscript, and Quiet had eventually released them to join the hunt (with Rainbow muttering about how that at least gave the thief a chance to change their mind). He and the Doctor had remained in the library to search it themselves, and Twilight was trying very hard to convince herself that Quiet wasn't using the time to move some of his volumes to safety, things he would be claiming he'd never owned in the first place -- but she didn't think he would ever do that to her and besides, it was too late: she was certain she had at least a twentieth of the best ones memorized and, based on what she'd already seen, could project the possible inventory for another seven percent, and that was a number which she barely would have believed in if she'd seen the results in her nightscape...

They would be talking later. A very long talk. Not about -- the things Rarity had said, because there was a fresh priority, one she clearly had to work out immediately before anypony of intelligence found that room and made a better offer for the treasures within. But for now... she had to help in the search. Because friends came first. And Twilight was genuinely upset. The manuscript might have been -- well, she had to be frank: Rainbow's writing needed a lot of help, and some of the assistance on the earliest efforts might have needed to take the form of a divine intervention which she was no longer able to pray for. But Rainbow's efforts had also been sincere. And from what Twilight had seen of the manuscript, there had been a slow improvement in progress as the pages had gone by. Coming to grips with the material, slowly learning how to work with it at all, letting the subconscious lessons from every successive journey taken at Daring Do's side come that much closer to reaching the actual page. Rainbow had no skill at punctuation and just a little more when it came to the concept of paragraphs: if her work had been rendered into Ancient Crystalia, it would have fit right it. But as for simply expressing herself through the written word... Twilight felt she would have gotten there in time. Moons of it, filled with hard instruction, harsh edits, and more than a few non-adventure books field-flung in her direction in the hopes that one of them would teach her what a semicolon was for.

And even without that... even if it had truly been the worst thing ever written in Equestria's history -- it was Rainbow's manuscript.

Twilight was sure Rainbow wouldn't have misplaced it. And for somepony to steal a book...

She had been fuming her way through the corridors and after the first two, only a little of it had been about the blocked study.

Next room...

Her field coated the lever, opened the door. She glanced inside --

-- oh.

I shouldn't...

...I can't...

...it's his bedroom...

It couldn't have been anything else. The little freestanding shelf and beautifully-carved bookends -- Celestia's mane, they were the same as her mother's set -- told her who slept there. Invading his sanctuary...

...well, at the very least, she should inspect the reading material and make sure some servant hadn't accidentally put the manuscript there, plus there might be something else to make an offer on and surely it wouldn't hurt anypony if, say, she gave up twenty seconds for a particularly interesting page. Possibly forty. Was five minutes too --

-- it was Quiet's bedroom.

Her body had slipped all the way inside without her conscious notice. She was in his bedroom.

He had excellent taste in furniture, or somepony had before him. The metalwork on the headboard was unexpected: most ponies went with wood -- but there was nothing wrong with minotaur art, and Twilight gave up a second to appreciate the pattern of the twists and turns hammered into the cold iron, suggestions of leaves and branches, hints of birds, a cricket here and there. One large currently-closed walk-in closet off to the side, then a smaller (and ancient) wardrobe next to that. There was a winding ramp in one corner and from Twilight's memory of the castle, it would have to be heading directly for the observatory. Look towards the bed (and there was so much room in the bed, perfectly made but that had probably been the servants, a little dent in the mattress for the side closer to the shelf) because that was the way to get back to the books --

-- there was a small, ornate pearl-edged pillbox next to that little shelf. She hadn't noticed it at first, lost in the shadow of a first edition which...

...he probably takes something. For whatever's in his blood. It can't be cured, but there are some things where the right medicine can at least moderate the symptoms. I should ask how often he has to take them. Maybe I should carry one or two, just in case he gets caught away from --

-- and next to the pillbox...

Twilight looked at the picture.

She could have spent some time on the frame. She could have cataloged it: surely it was several centuries old, and the scrollwork around the edges deserved appreciation. That was within, however... that had been there for less than a year.

Quiet's captured image was on the left side. She paid it very little attention.

The mare on the right had her full focus.

Somewhat taller than Quiet, with a solid build. A leaf-green coat, a shade she instinctively associated with a plant which Fluttershy had once warned her away from. The eyes were almost the same shade, but seemed to have a touch of muted orange around the fringes, and the mane and tail took that further into an elaborate curl of orange-white, one Rarity might have tried out for herself if those instructions turned out to be legible.

The wedding dress was beautiful, especially given the white roses which almost seemed to be growing from the headdress, setting off the elegant-seeming horn. The pony wearing it looked... passive. Not particularly concerned about smiling for the camera. Almost -- bored.

A quick glance at the left. Quiet had been smiling. But... only a little. To Twilight, it looked like the smile worn when somepony had just been told to do so by some level of authority, a mask put on for a situation which those above you insisted you attend, and you just stood there pressing hoof after hoof after hoof while longing for the chance to get out of sight, end the whole thing, just end it so you could take the mask off...

...or he might have just been smiling.

Back to the right.

She's prettier than I am. No great surprise, especially as Twilight generally thought every mare in the world had her beaten -- but this one was much prettier. Almost on Fluttershy's level, but with what felt like a haughtiness added to that beauty...

...or boredom...

She kept looking at it. Not the pillbox, much less any contents. There was no searching for the lost manuscript. Just the picture.

Twilight had no idea how long she stayed there, didn't care to find out. It was just her and...

...the picture.

It wasn't a very good picture, really.

Actually, the more she thought about it, it was a horrible picture, especially for one taken on a wedding day. She hated it...

...and she left. Somepony else could search this room.

She hadn't even checked out the rest of the books.

It took some time to fill his first friend in on all the details and thankfully, every last moment of it was conducted in privacy. Nopony else was supposed to come near the study, and two servants were stationed at each end of the approach corridor to make certain Twilight didn't come back.

"Necessary," Doctor Gentle finally said, his field tugging at a book before pushing it almost all the way back, working on the illusion of a complete (if not to 'flip every page' level) search. In a more weary tone, "Necessary..." Quiet, who was also using the chance to do a little reshelving, glanced over. It got him a tired smile. "It is becoming a mantra, Quiet. I am experiencing a certain need to remind myself why Coordinator is part of this at all, and I somehow doubt you have been able to get through this day without thinking the word at least once..."

Quiet wearily nodded. "There is no doubt in my mind that he's the one who told the press where she was. I never paid that much attention to his school stories, at least not to where I would have had them memorized. Having horse apples stuffed into my ears never struck me as an appealing way to pass a party. But I got the general drift of them. I knew he hated Twilight: I even had some idea as to why. Because he couldn't completely control her. For somepony like Coordinator, that's a sin. I think he made her life miserable in that school -- and now he's proving he can pick up exactly where he left off."

Doctor Gentle sighed. "The emotions of an angry first-year who has been told that while he can play with and even break every other toy in the playroom, there is one he should be careful with -- and so he forgets all the other toys even exist. A tantrum stretched over more than half a lifetime. I knew he was a petty pony in so many ways, and yet he still finds means of surprising me."

Starkly, "We have to get them out. There may be very little chance of their actually discovering anything and there's probably a few whose first instinct on finding out what was going on would be trying to sign up. I can just imagine Murdocks' reaction if he decided there was a way to supplement all the screams of 'Depose!' with somepony he could depose with. An actual replacement to go on the thrones, and possibly the ability to make his favorite candidate into a personally-controlled Princess..."

"Except," Doctor Gentle quietly said, "that such has never been what this is about. I am aware of how many among those who support us cherish such dreams... and I am not about to hand so much as the offer of a stronger fantasy over to that one unless there is truly no other way forward. I am certainly not about to grant him any chance at the reality. But it would be all he could see... all so many have chosen to perceive at all..."

"Plus," Quiet wryly pointed out, "we would need a reporter who would stay bought."

The elder managed a smile. "Even with, shall we say, enlightened self-interest involved... difficult."

"Very. Other than hoof-stomping on their shells, which just tends to summon more to the site of the crushing... any ideas on how to clear up our infestation problem?"

That produced a sigh. "I was hoping you had one. And the pony who might have the strongest notion of how to deal with it is the one creating it. The only concept I have is forcing a story somewhere else, something they would all have to leave and cover -- but I'm having some trouble imagining what we could create which would warrant taking their attention away from a Princess. Not without actually hurting somepony."

"Don't even count on it then," Quietly dryly said. "Injured ponies are news. Twilight is gossip... We'll just have to keep thinking about it, and ask everypony else if they can come up with something. At worst, Chief Copper might be able to manage a little harassment -- as if that wouldn't make headlines, but it'll be a distraction -- and we can all try to keep an eye on them, steering them away from anything risky. But there's still a major element of luck in this. One bad moment, one sighting..."

"Fortune has been on our side thus far," Doctor Gentle admitted. "But I am not about to count on retaining that favor. The two things we know we can control are excluding them from the party invitations, then keeping them from sneaking onto the grounds. We may need some extra security, but no cancellation should be necessary. We keep all of them outside the castle, Quiet. Nopony is going to acquire an arrival point in the corridors. Add that to regular patrols and our own knowledge of just who is not welcome here, and the meeting will work as planned."

Quiet exhaled, allowed his field to position a bookmark for later. "I'm comforted... at least for that. I just wish I had something else for you. Getting rid of press... I swear, I'm feeling sorrier for Twilight by the day. All the ones she dealt with before coming here, having them invade, and it's not exactly going to stop after she leaves..."

He had been trying to think of a definitive solution, anything which would guarantee her privacy and peace of mind for whatever her lifetime would be. It hadn't happened and despite his total lack of responsibility for the creation of the issue, that particular failure felt like a completely personal one.

"There is a price to pay for every gift," was the steady answer. "That has always been known, ever since the first days. But in this case... the gift she has gained outweighs that price, and so it shall be for all whom we help."

Quiet nodded. "So for the press..."

"We keep thinking. If nopony thinks of anything, we conceal, we redirect, we do what we must. And hope it is enough."

"And -- Coordinator? I don't think we can force the issue with him on the press, at least not just yet -- but what about the manuscript?" Doctor Gentle had told the group that he'd woken up shortly after Twilight and the pegasus had, spoken to Coordinator on their mutual way out the door and thus seen the bureaucrat leave without any papers at all. The Bearers had believed him without question.

Immediately, "Let him keep it for a time."

Quiet blinked. "Because?"

"Because -- he is necessary, at least for a while longer. And where things have been written down... there might be lessons to learn. You recall what the pegasus had been writing about?"

He sent his memory back to the previous night's dinner, sorted through the self-involved words launched across the table until he'd extracted some actual information. "It sounded like she was trying to record some of their early adventures..."

"Yes," the older stallion calmly said. "Adventures to which 'mis' might be applied..."

Quiet turned away, faced a different shelf. His field sorted, rearranged.

"If there is nothing there -- we find the manuscript in a day or so, and there is no harm done," Doctor Gentle continued. "But until then... let him practice his art, and see what kind of path he might paint for us."

The younger male nodded, continued the pointless search. "Two days, maximum. We may have to move the party up a bit -- the end of that second day. We may be hurting our chance of getting a full gathering, but the faster we do this, the less time the press has to get their teeth into anything. We can return the papers just before everything starts."

A smile, unseen. "I have faith in Coordinator's ability to finish reading by then."

"We'll know how fast he's going by the painkiller stock drop rate in the pharmacy."

They falsely labored in silence for a few minutes.

"Five thousand bits," Doctor Gentle said.

"Yes."

"What was the actual value? Because I would guess she was attempting a drastic overbid in the hopes of getting it away from you before you came back to your senses."

Quiet smiled. "You know, I honestly have no idea what it's worth? It was on the shelf long before I was born. I only check the prices on things I'm trying to acquire..."

"Given that you're hardly planning to sell off, I understand that completely."

"Well... maybe if we have to run. I can always grab a few pieces on the way out. Things rare enough to sell immediately, but not so scarce that anypony's going to question a bunch of them hitting the market at once." He gave that some thought. "I should start pulling a few things. Just in case."

"Very sensible," Doctor Gentle complimented him. "But from the sound of it, that would leave the Teerantinto and Fortreeze out. Will you take them with you?"

"Do you know how many books it takes to overload a saddlebag?" Quiet managed a shrug. "The answer is generally at least five books less than you figured on, especially with my hauling. I might just -- mail them off to a dedicated collector. Somepony who'd appreciate them..."

With a smile, "Which costs you five thousand bits."

"We'd never be able to cash the Royal Voucher anyway."

"And -- teasing now "-- the wings?"

It didn't even require a moment of thought. "Pass."

They worked, for creating the illusion of a thorough search involved just as much effort as the search itself. They talked to each other in privacy and safety, with much of it working out to be the simple casual jokes which so often passed between friends. Neither paid any attention to the clock, for the effort took as long as it took, and ended when it ended.

And so neither had any knowledge that Twilight, who had been keeping an eye on the time, had headed off the grounds, taking two of the Doctor's with her so they could all reach their appointment...

Pentimento

He is sleeping.

He is hiding.

He knows every last passage of the castle: the public ones, the original group intended to be fully private, and a few which were installed somewhat more recently, which took more than a little bit of work, especially when it came to moving the furniture in front of what would ultimately become the access points. And after his parents... well, the doctor knows of more than a few entrances and exits. But he believes himself to be the only living pony who still knows them all. And after the trip into town, and what happened at the thaumaturgy shop...

His body is weak. It always has been, and always will be. And the thaumaturgy shop... there was a certain amount of unplanned exertion involved there. There might not have been any overt outward signs of such, physical or magical, but exertion there was, and so with the false search over for now and his primary guest seeming to have slipped out of sight again, with no ready way for him to follow -- he decided to take his cue from her. He exerted himself, and after such efforts, it's generally safest to rest. Yes, it wasn't a particularly major effort on his part, but still... for safety. He has lived with the limitations of his body since birth: finding out where the limits of his magic intersect with them is a discovery he would only force himself to make if there was truly no other choice.

And so he did as he had done for so many years: slipped into the passageways, trotted to a comfortable spot, laid down, and gone into the nightscape for whatever refreshment might come -- after casting the spell which would keep that voyage a private one. But... when it came to the category of workings which affected his own nightscape, the dream shielding spell was the only one he was able to learn. Unlike the doctor, he has no ability to deny the manifestation of a subject and must go through whatever chooses to appear, hoping that his mind will spare him, or that he can somehow wake up in time before the worst of it comes.

There is recovery in sleep. But with the way events have transpired, endless reminders of secrets... it has sent him back, locked the nightscape into a place he knows all too well, one he regularly returns to regardless of all desires to stop. He dreads such journeys -- and at the same time, welcomes them. Because the doctor calls him the most devoted, and there is a need to remember why that devotion must exist.

He must always remember.

But to relive...

...it's not much further. He only has to stay out of sight for a little while longer, and it's generally something he's good at -- but there are a number of extra factors working against him on this night, starting with the fact that he's awake under Moon. He's supposed to be in bed. The doctors have told him that he needs rest, needs more of it than most colts, and that's why he can't really play or gallop with the others or -- much of anything, really. He's mostly gotten used to it. A huge castle (or so it feels to a younger pony) offers endless diversion for those who care to look for it, and looking has become a considerable percentage of the fun, with taking full advantage of what's been found making up most of the rest. But lately, he's been promised a new source of entertainment, and from everything he was able to piece together through simple listening (he feels he's rather good at listening), that source is arriving tonight. It doesn't care that the Princess has raised the Moon, or that he's supposed to be asleep. It doesn't care what the hour is at all, and so at least for tonight, neither does he.

The castle under Moon (with the passages so wide, everything so much bigger than he is and seeming as if it always will be)... offers something he'd never really seen within it because he'd never ventured out at this hour: shadows. Every bit of furniture in a darkened hallway provides an echo in which to conceal himself. His coat helps there: true black generally stands out within the veiled wisps created by the arrival of night, but his own grey... that seems to blend, and he happily slips between nonmagical illusions, moving from the flat false casting of a dresser to the shield provided by a two-dimensional cabinet.

He is listening for sounds. Those created by prowling servants: as far as he's concerned, that is what he must truly be cautious of, for he is supposed to be asleep, and they care about his welfare, look after him when... well, they look after him, because they know there are times when he pushes himself too far, is still learning his limitations, and often receives the harshest lessons when he ignores his body's warnings. What they want him listening to is the doctors, and their own warnings, and -- his heartbeat. His breathing. They tell him he must always be careful of both. And yes, his breathing is a little fast (although he's trying to slow it: panting is too easily picked up on) and his heart is pounding a little against weak ribs, but that's just the excitement. Because he's never done this before. The castle under Moon is a place of renewed mystery, potential discovery (especially since he feels he's getting close to exhausting the possibilities of the day), and on this of all nights...

I'll always be there.

A pause, and a servant goes by, one of his favorites, and so he tries extra-hard to hold perfectly still, because he wants to spare the stallion the embarrassment of having to tell them about the catch. Going by quickly, actually, at something closer to a gallop than the dignified adult normally moves at, but it's just one of those nights: even the most reserved must be feeling it coming. That's his best assumption, especially since it's the way he's personally treating it and the servant was in too much of a hurry to activate any of the lights. The castle, at least for the portions everypony travels, can easily be negotiated on memory alone -- after a while -- and so many of the staff move through a narrow corridor between shadows, never paying any real attention to what might be concealed nearby. It's a lesson he learned early, and often practices under Sun, but seldom with this much success.

It's a lesson he'll have to teach.

Listening. Ears rotating...

...off to the left: adults. Odd sounds, some of which might be -- pain? No, that can't be it: he's just getting distortions from the stone. But definitely adults, and so he carefully heads in that direction, planting his hooves in ways which won't create echoes, trying to remember that the pounding of his heart is in his ears alone.

Moons of waiting. Moons. He's certain he's never waited for anything so long in all his life (which admittedly doesn't cover all that much time), and knows he's never looked forward to anything as much as this. And if it's happening at night for whatever reason -- then night is when he'll have to be awake for it, no matter what the doctors say. He's going to be there. Because so many of the servants are good and caring ponies, who truly watch out for his welfare and...

...admit he's there.

The servants told him. The other two... there are whole weeks where they don't seem to look at him. And his favorite servant, while telling, he had said that they were... trying again. And then he'd looked ashamed for having said that, so much that an approach and little rub against the adult's legs had been risked. It had triggered a blush, and a quick word on what was appropriate behavior to show when dealing with a young Lord's inferiors. But still... it had been allowed to happen, and it had made his entire moon.

Trying again. And...

...he doesn't play with other colts and fillies, not in the ways the rest of the youths play. And when he can't join in that way, and they're watching... they look embarrassed. Humiliated. And they think he doesn't notice, but he looks and he listens and he knows that they consider the weakness of his body to be -- failure. His failure.

There are weeks where they don't seem to look at him. Moons where they look through him.

But it's all right. It's a big castle, and so much bigger for those who are small. There are servants to speak with, and books to read, and games to invent within the passageways. And after tonight...

Admittedly, he's a little confused on some of the finer details. He asked servants about how the trying again was arranged and was told about cabbage leaves, magic mirrors, and pegasi dropping off bundles through the chimney, following up on basic mail order with a ridiculously extended shipping time. And after he got tired of being lied to, he did what he so often does: tried to work with the castle's more public library, but... certain shelves which he'd never been interested in before suddenly became very interesting, mostly because they'd suddenly been emptied. Truthfully, he still doesn't understand the process, although he's assuming the weight gain she's been showing is some part of it. But he heard the servants talking when she was rushed away after those sudden grunts at dinner, and... it's tonight. That's all he has to know. And he's going to be there, because they don't look at him so much of the time, or talk to him, or -- anything. Which makes his being there the most important thing ever, because... it'll mean somepony will be there from the start. And on the day he truly understood what was going to happen, he swore a silent promise on Princess mane and tail and hooves altogether, offered up to an attentive Sun. That he would always be there.

You don't break that kind of promise. Sun would remember.

Slowly moving forward, and there's more noise than ever now. He still can't make out words, but the tones are starting to come through, and there's... anger? Worry? Desperation? No, he must be hearing it wrong, because none of those emotions could possibly be associated with tonight. But it lets him identify the door...

He stops. Waits for his heart to slow again.

I'll always be there.

Forward. His small body nudges at the wood, carefully pushing against it, listening for the first signs of any creak. But as the opening widens, the words emerge, and the volume drowns out any sound he might be making. Some of them are words he doesn't understand yet, others are things he's never heard before, and --

-- there they are.

It's just them, which briefly seems odd: surely the servants would want to be there? But there aren't any, and now that he thinks about it, his favorite was going in another direction. But right now, it's just him and her and the midwife. (Not the doctor. He likes the doctor, who comes to see him every once in a while, who sees him. But he heard the two of them talking, and knows the doctor will be out of the settled zone for a time -- so it's the substitute midwife from the other settled zone instead. He's still trying to work out what a midwife is.) They're -- angry? How could they be angry? Why are they yelling at each other? Why does the midwife look...

...scared?

I'll always be there.

There's so little light in the room. Only one device was activated, and it's glowing overhead, but the angle isn't a good one. There's shadows everywhere, especially on their faces. She looks like something just hurt her very much and he might have just been kicked, they're yelling and the midwife is backing away, but he made a promise and...

...there. The little low-set basket. All he has to do is slip closer, nopony's paying any attention, and...

...he made it.

He rears back onto his hind legs, braces his forehooves on the edge, gazes down. Gently, as gently as he can, he stretches his right foreleg out until it makes the only contact he will ever have. And he smiles.

Then he looks closer.

And the wonder of it breaks through all his attempts at stealth. The curiosity.

The next words will be the greatest mistake of his life.

"Where is it?"

They freeze, but only for a moment, and then they turn. They see him.

He can feel them looking at him. It's okay. He's there, just like he promised. And as long as he's already spoken... "Does it come later?" Maybe there are pegasi involved and part of the shipment got delayed. "Or does it grow? Will it be here by tomorrow --"

"GET HIM OUT OF HERE!"

A nearly-colorless field envelopes his body, jerks him into the air, and he is pulled along behind the gallop, seeing only her angry face, pulled away from all sight of the basket, pulled in the wake and he tries to resist, he struggles as best he can, but his body is weak and his magic has yet to come, he has no way to fight and within minutes, he is nearly flung into his bedroom. And as he lies gasping on the mattress, he hears the sounds of furniture being pushed against the door.

He's awake for hours. His heart is pounding too hard to sleep. He doesn't know what happened. He doesn't understand what he did. He moves from shadow to shadow, tapping on walls, searching yet again for any passage out which might have somehow manifested in the time since all the other failures. But in time, his body betrays him, sleep comes, and when he wakes, the blockage is gone. And so he fearfully heads into the Sun-lit castle to find out just what he did wrong, and to -- be there.

The first pony he encounters is his favorite servant. He asks if everything is okay.

And then he is lied to.

Shocked, disbelieving, he seeks out and finds another. The same lie. Over and over, the same lie. Some of them look away from him when they say it, but they say it over and over. And when he finally runs out of servants, goes to them as the last reluctant resort, he merely learns where the lie came from.

In the days to come, he will watch certain pieces of furniture being removed from the castle, never to return. Nopony will talk to him about it, unless it's to reinforce the lie. The lie which they keep insisting is the truth, that he was never there (when he'd promised to be, when he'd kept the first part of that promise), that nothing ever happened, certainly not what he saw, what he knows he saw no matter what anypony tries to tell him. And the more he asks, the angrier they become. They don't want him talking about it. To anypony. Ever again. And they look at him, they seem to see him more than ever now, and the furniture was taken away and --

-- it's the way they look at him.

The way it often feels as if they're looking for him.

It makes his breath come too fast. It makes his heart pound, his ribs hurt, and

he has to hide

he has to hide

he has to hide

Twilight peeked out from behind the tree, checked the path ahead. Nodded back to Pinkie and Fluttershy, then carefully moved a few more body lengths towards the orchard.

There were many problems involved in sneaking around Trotter's Falls. Normally, two of the largest would have been permanently attached to Twilight's sides, but the path to the orchard was well away from the heart of the settled zone, and so there was no pony traffic to spot a Princess whom they could ask for advice, pictures, blessing... (She was trying not to wince every time she thought the word, and her success rate was... less than perfect.) But when moving away from the core of the town...

It had been a little over three years since Twilight had originally been sent to Ponyville (and nearly a moon since the change): enough time to learn. Admittedly, it had taken moons before she'd felt comfortable with regularly venturing forth from the library, and longer than that until she stopped making library rules exceptions for her own borrowing and put the last emergency atlas back on its shelf. But she knew her settled zone now, even better than she'd known her birth home. She was familiar with the smaller streets and a few of the back alleys, could lead a pursuer on a merry chase or follow Pinkie during one, at least until the baker found another one of those hiding places which nopony ever should have fit in and once again just about won the game by default. When away from the center of town, she could pick out any number of back paths to the Acres and cottage, along with knowing the safest routes for reaching Zecora's. And she could avoid any and all Crusade staging areas, mostly for the sake of sanity. For Ponyville, Twilight could just about sneak around like a native, at least when there weren't press constantly watching for anything moving within the purple part of the spectrum.

But with Trotter's Falls... she didn't want to be too close to the path. She didn't want to venture too far away from the path, because there were times, even in the fringe of a wild zone, that out of sight could turn into out of hope. Fluttershy could always go up and get them reoriented from the air, but all that potentially did was give somepony a chance to spot a decidedly non-native pegasus...

Twilight didn't know Trotter's Falls, and it made sneaking around hard. The current total lack of late afternoon local pony traffic moving along the orchard path arguably made it pointless, but all they needed was one native to come along at the wrong moment, especially when they were about to meet a pony who was so very easy to scare...

But their luck held, all the way into the orchard: nopony to spot them, question them, wonder what they were doing there at all, right up until they reached the broken, fallen, and recently-adjusted trunk --

-- and stood there.

Waiting.

"Twilight?

"What is it, Pinkie?"

"She said she'd meet us near the orchard. I remember that."

Of course you do. "Yes."

Thoughtfully, "A lot of things are near the orchard."

"I know, Pinkie."

With deep consideration, "When you think about it, the castle is sort of near the orchard..."

Twilight sighed. "I know. I should have gotten her to say something more specific before she left, but with everything that happened..." She began to trot a little. "She also said she'd signal us. And I don't know how that's supposed to work either! She could do anything, anything at all, any kind of magic, and if that gets out of control, she could wind up signalling the entire town." The trotting accelerated slightly, moved into a familiar (if subconscious) pattern. "All we can do is wait."

"...it's after five now," Fluttershy decided, glancing up at Sun. "...she's probably looking for us."

"So should we go searching for her?" Twilight asked as her companions went by on her left. Then they went by on her left again.

"...no... we should stay still, or we could just wind up moving around each other until Moon is raised. Twilight?"

"What?"

"...you're kind of... going in a circle."

"I know."

"...does it help?"

"I thought the dirt would wear into a groove faster than this --"

-- her right forehoof stubbed a rock.

There hadn't been much of an impact, and so instead of true pain, there was only a moment of being startled, accompanied by a little jump backwards and momentary flare of wings (which didn't actually do anything other than throw off her landing a little). "HEY!"

"Twilight? Are you okay?" The sudden speed of Fluttershy's words was matched by that of her approach, quickly swooping in to check on any fresh medical emergency. "Did you hurt something?"

"No -- I just hit a rock." Twilight automatically glanced down. A hoof-diameter (and double hoof-height), near-black specimen, although that last detail was just barely possible to make out through the coating of --

"-- that rock," Twilight softly said, "wasn't there a second ago."

They all stared at it.

"...are you sure?" Fluttershy asked.

"I would have hit it about sixteen times."

Pinkie took a slow breath. "That's fresh soil on it, Twilight. Deep soil. You only get that kind of color when you've gone down a ways... or when it comes up..."

And then Twilight couldn't stop staring.

The last of the three. Nowhere near close to the least.

Earth pony magic. I'm looking at it. She's somewhere around here and she brought the rock up to signal us. She's an earth pony right now, deep enough into that aspect to use their magic, and she moved this rock. Up from beneath the earth.

It wasn't a very big rock. Just about any unicorn in the world could have moved it. And with a starting point hidden under the ground, even with a basic rock-detection spell to tell them where it was, every last one of them would have hit differentiation at the moment they tried to bring it up to the surface, some pushing themselves to the point of passing out in their futile attempts. None would have succeeded. But she had just ignored the universal (or nearly so, discounting the Exception) inability, in what Twilight was presuming had been a completely casual effort...

"It's real," she whispered. "It really is..."

And Pinkie was smiling.

"Twilight? You look kind of... surprised."

"Pinkie, do you know how hard that would be for a unicorn to do? Star Swirl -- keep your eyes open! -- couldn't do that! Nopony I've ever heard of could! Not fetching from underground! And she just did it!"

The smile widened. "And you also look kind of impressed."

"One rock," Twilight breathed. "One impossible rock..."

"Oh," Pinkie lightly declared, "if you think that's impossible, then look to your left."

Twilight looked.

There was a perfectly straight line of recently-surfaced little rocks leading off in that direction. Into the denser part of the orchard, the thicker shadows, where a pony might be able to hide...

...but right then, Twilight was still staring at the rocks. At the complete dismissal of the most fundamental magical movement rule she knew. "Pinkie -- can every earth pony do that? Every earth pony in the whole world can just ignore differentiation whenever they like, without even trying, without thinking about it at all --"

"-- no," and Pinkie's voice was soft. "Not every earth pony."

Twilight glanced back, and found the blue eyes weighed down with something more than lecture avoidance.

"I'm -- I'm sorry, Pinkie. I didn't think about --"

"-- you just found out, Twilight. Last night. And even Applejack forgets sometimes, and she's known for years and years..." The words were still soft. "Sometimes I like it when Applejack forgets. It makes me feel a little better, because forgetting means thinking of me like -- everypony else. Come on -- she's telling us which way to go." Pinkie oriented her body, began to trot forward, following the line. "I want to make sure she's okay. I know she didn't hurt herself, because then she wouldn't be here at all, but last night was hard for her, Twilight. It was hard for everypony -- but everypony includes her." A brief glance back, gaze unexpectedly serious. "And you have to remember that, okay?"

Still more than a little stunned, and with so many reasons for that jostling for the first position on the checklist, "Remember what?"

"That she's a pony," Pinkie calmly answered. "That we're all ponies. And nopony has the right to leave her out of that. Let's go."

Slowly, Twilight and Fluttershy followed Pinkie, with the former taking frequent glances backwards. The rocks kept right on being there -- until the moment she looked back and they were not. Just a few tiny remaining disruptions to the local soil, and the ones towards the rear of the former line, near what hadn't quite become a workable groove, weren't even showing that much...

It's real.

What can Applejack really do?

What can she do?

And mostly in a deliberate attempt to get herself focused before a thousand questions about freshly-uncovered magic could completely take over, What does she even look like right now?

The answer to the last one came quickly.

She carefully stepped from behind the Eastern Red Giant's trunk, the limp shifting from leg to leg. And once again, the colors had shifted about: tan mane and tail, both short-cut. Blue eyes. And a deep purple coat, nearly shaded into black in the shadows of the canopy.

Twilight had seen all three aspects -- was that the best word? -- now, and so was finally able to compare them. Facial features remained very nearly the same across the transformations: the pegasus aspect was slightly more streamlined, while the unicorn appearance might have had a little more forehead projection: the little bit of layering on the skull which made up the base of the horn. Height was fully consistent, but mass changed: the pegasus aspect had been thinner, the earth pony was visibly the most muscular. On the whole, anypony with no knowledge of what was going on, if looking at pictures of the stages at their absolute peaks, would have likely concluded sisters first, closely followed by illusion or near-impossible makeup, especially as the latter concerned the wings. But knowing what Twilight did (and still wished she didn't)... part of her still desperately wished it was merely siblings.

But the voice hadn't changed. The pain was identical. The same pony.

"Thank -- thank you," she got out, and forced another step. "For -- coming. All three. Alone. Know you're... alone. This time. I..." She stumbled a little as her right foreleg spasmed, began to pitch forward --

-- and Fluttershy was there. Braced against her forelegs, holding her up.

"...easy," the animal caretaker said. "Don't move if you don't have to."

The earth pony closed her eyes. "Holding still... worse. Sometimes. Can we. Trot? Slowly. Not too. Far. Staying in..." A gasp. "Shadows..."

Twilight just managed a nod, one which meant forcing herself past her own imagination, which insisted on asking her how it would feel if such a simple movement required having to get past the agony of rearrangements within her own neck. "You set the pace."

The earth pony got in front of them, slowly shuffled forward, Fluttershy staying close. Twilight took a deep breath, then forced a glance at the mark. Approaching peak again, getting close to her maximum strength in this aspect. But the longer the talk went on... eventually, that peak would come, and then the pegasus aspect would begin to approach. It struck her as the most painful of the transformations: the one with the most changes involved, and dealing with that pain while trying to answer questions at the same time...

But they probably wouldn't be out in the orchard with her that long. Eventually, Sun would be lowered, and the danger of the fringe would increase. Quiet was expecting them back for their late dinner a little after that, and Twilight suspected she wouldn't want to be an extra guest.

They all trotted in silence for a time, Pinkie included. Nopony seemed to know quite where to start. She simply led the way, blue eyes often squeezed half-shut from pain, or wide in agony -- but whenever possible, in any moment for which focus could be found at all, she looked around. At the dappling of Sun through leaves, at the apples flourishing overhead. Shadows and light and colors: everything had her attention. A quiet fringe, one where the only current threat was the pony trotting within it -- but one which seemed to completely fascinate her.

There was a chattering sound from above them. She spun, hunting for the source.

"What? What was --"

"...it's a squirrel," Fluttershy quietly said. "In the tree. He's just saying hello."

"Oh..." She took a slow breath. "Squirrel... And that?" Her snout tilted towards a nearby tree trunk.

"...it's a leaf beetle."

She watched it crawl.

"It's -- pretty."

And back to trotting. Pinkie close on her left, Fluttershy keeping an equal lack of distance on the right, Twilight a little further out in that direction.

She was proud of her friends. Keeping company couldn't be easy, and they looked as if it was just so natural.

"How did you know we came alone?" Twilight asked. It was as good a place to start as any. "We couldn't see you until you stepped out, which meant you couldn't see us..." Unless there was some way to look out from the soil -- oh, stop it, how does that make any sense? Under one of the other hooves, however, given the way things had been going on Discord's mission, it might have made just about as much sense as anything else...

She glanced over to Twilight, and the pained expression was laced with confusion. "You... walked."

"I know we walked. But you're an earth pony -- right now." And was immediately embarrassed by the qualifier. "You couldn't have seen us from overhead, or cast a spell to detect --"

She stopped. A large left forehoof briefly came up -- then went into the soil, just hard enough to produce the faintest touch of vibration.

"You walked," she repeated. And that agonized snicker came back.

Twilight stared at her.

"I..." She swallowed. "...think we have to pick up from last night." It got her a nod. "You said this was about the others. That you were trying to help them."

After a bitten-back scream, "Yes..."

"Do you know how many ponies were trying to change?" A new thought pushed its way in. "If any did change?"

"Yes," the earth pony immediately said.

Twilight blinked. "Somepony transformed?"

"Yes." A pause. "You."

Twilight just held back the wince. Pinkie giggled. The earth pony glanced down, managed a small smile. "Have to. See the joke. Sometimes. But. Others... so many others..."

The fear began to grip Twilight's heart. "How many are trying right now?"

And the earth pony shook her head. "Others. Need. To change. Haven't. Some... some always try. Over centuries. Four... succeed. But. So many -- failures. Over and over. I was..."

The deepest breaths the earth pony could manage, four of them, and every one sounded as if it was breaking her ribs from the inside.

"...supposed to -- guide them. Create a path. Means. To change. They need..."

So if she's telling the truth, then she was trying to blaze a trail. But there could be other ponies waiting on her results, and there's so many reasons to try and change in the first place... So many questions, and every one led to the same word.

Softly, "Why?"

And it came out as one word. "Broken."

Pinkie immediately looked up at her. "If you say 'defective' again --"

"-- truth," she insisted. "Ponies... broken. Change... would cure. So. Tried to find. Way. But -- many paths. And... knew one worked. But impossible. Couldn't..."

Broken how? But there was a more pressing question in front of them. "You know a path which works? And you couldn't use it?" A slow nod. "What -- what is it?"

"Yours," the earth pony softly said. "Path of Elements."

She stumbled again: Pinkie caught her this time. After she stabilized, she took a slow breath. Her left front leg came up for a moment. The hoof touched an area just below her neck, pushed right. Went back down.

"Proof. Trotting. Not flying. Not yet. But -- proof. You. Your wings. Your life. Elements... work. But -- couldn't reach. Couldn't find. You -- found. And then -- attuned. Once bonded... life. Only way to separate... death. Of Bearers. And... wouldn't. Won't kill. Not to change..."

But you have killed, Twilight's reeling mind got out. At least twice. But those could have been self-defense, they had to ask at some point...

One checklist, with new questions arriving at every second, fighting to hold the lead entry. And any time Twilight thought there was a bruised and battered order to start working with, she said something else --

-- and while Twilight was still trying to sort through the latest pile of query bodies, Fluttershy took the lead. "...you searched for the Elements? Before we found them?"

It got a long pause. "-- there was search. Failed."

"So Twilight's path is the Elements," Pinkie carefully said. "Do you know any others?"

"Know failures. Many. Failure of Amulet. Failure of -- theft. Of switch. But successes -- not sure. Of one. Three -- the same. Know that. But one -- before you -- don't know. Nopony... Couldn't learn. Nopony knows. Just that. It -- happened. Eldest... sold lie. Lies ponies -- told themselves. That was -- born. Or discovered. Ponies believed. Nopony had. Seen her. Until -- alicorn. So ponies thought -- alicorn. Nothing else. And nothing written. Nopony talked. Don't know. What. She did. Might never..."

She stopped, breathing heavily after the longest speech Twilight had ever heard her make, closed her eyes for a few heartbeats.

"And nopony asks," she painfully concluded. "Ever."

"And --"

-- Twilight tried to say the rest. Tried to get the words out into the open, make them heard, make them real, because she had only thought them until now, and knew some of her friends had been thinking about them too. But to say them... the words stopped in her throat.

Because to say them was to give up the last of her faith. Forever.

The earth pony was staring at her. "And?"

The same faith some ponies are going to have in me.

She felt the first of the tears beginning to coat her eyes, and found only one reason for them. For with all her soul, Twilight wanted nothing more than a single wish. One which had never worked. To make things not have been.

Her throat hurt.

Her heart hurt.

"...and the -- sisters?"

And the words confirmed, verified, destroyed the last of Twilight's belief. "Your path."

Pinkie and Fluttershy stopped moving. Twilight stopped breathing. And the first tears fell from six eyes.

The earth pony stumbled forward for two extra hoofsteps, noticed the lack of company, glanced back. Blinked.

"-- you -- really -- not know?"

"The Elements?" Pinkie just barely managed. "The Princesses -- they -- they were... they were really normal ponies? Bearers?"

"Six," the earth pony softly replied. "Like you. There were six. Six Bearers. And -- a companion. Only -- two changed. The two. Who were. Broken. Other four..."

She began to trot again, and to Twilight, it seemed as if she was moving more than her legs ever would have allowed, as if the ground was breaking apart, islands of earth shattered from the power of the words, everything drifting away...

"Star Swirl," the earth pony said, both pain and words completely matter-of-fact. "Unicorn. Magic."

Pinkie's eyes automatically began to close -- then shot open. She stared at Twilight. "He -- Star Swirl? Twilight, you didn't know? Everything you've told us about him, all the legends, and you didn't know he wore the weird crown thingie?"

No, no, please, please stop talking

She was beginning to pass a new Eastern Red Giant, one with oddly low branches: it was just about possible for a pony to get fruit through an exceptional vertical leap and well-timed nip.

"Zephyra Hurricane. Pegasus. Honesty."

Fluttershy gasped. "Commander Hurricane -- was a real pony? She was a Bearer?"

you're breaking my world...

Twilight's legs pushed, hooves impacting the soil in a way the earth pony could probably feel, she had to get closer and she wasn't sure why, part of her wanted to hear the rest from close up, close enough to see the earth pony's face and look for any lies, but there was also a portion which never wanted to hear anything again, she closed in and --

-- it hit her.

It hit them, and she wouldn't realize that part until it was too late. But it was waiting, right under the lowest-hanging branch, the easiest to reach, waiting for a pony, and because she'd caught up, they triggered it together, she was too distracted to try and counter, too torn, it felt as if her soul was hanging in pieces and she couldn't focus enough to stop it and

home

I want to go home

I want my parents. I want to look up and see how much taller they are than me, how much stronger and greater. I want to stand in their shadows and be safe. Their coats absorb my tears, their fields stroke my fur, they whisper that everything's going to be all right and I know they're telling the truth because they're my parents and that makes them strong, strong enough to fix everything, because I'm little and they're big and they know everything and the first thing they know is how to fix things, how to make it all better.

I don't want to be here.

I don't want to be alone.

(but I'm not alone)

I don't want to be out here in the cold world where nopony loves me

(my friends are right there!)

I just want

(it's a spell, it's resonance, it was waiting for somepony to trigger it, it's projecting one emotion and it's so strong, I have to fight it, I have to counter, I)

I want to go home.

(Ponyville is home!)

( WHEREVER MY FRIENDS ARE IS HOME! )

and broke it.

Twilight just barely felt the shredded thaums fading out around her. She was focused on the ground, the air, trying to anchor herself to anything real, unable to fully shake the last feelings of homesickness from her heart --

-- and then she heard it. Hooves. Pounding the soil. Pinkie and Fluttershy calling out, desperate, trying to get Twilight's attention, simultaneously trying to reach her --

-- Twilight looked up, just in time to see the tan tail whip out of sight behind another giant tree trunk.

NO! And just like that, she was in full gallop, trying to give chase, trying to catch up, but an earth pony body came with earth pony strength, she couldn't get a clear line of sight for a field grab or a teleport which would have taken time anyway, and the mare she was after was moving so fast --

"-- it was a spell!" Twilight gasped, and lost a step through giving her breath to the words. "Please, you have to listen! It's thinking for you! Fight it, please, fight it or you'll --"

Fluttershy and Pinkie passed her, one in the air, one on the ground, but the earth pony was getting farther and farther away, Twilight wasn't fast enough, only one pony was fast enough and --

-- I am loyal, I --

-- she couldn't do it. Not on the gallop, not under this kind of pressure, with all hope vanishing into the wild zone. All she could do was run. And in the end, she couldn't run fast enough.

The earth pony was gone.

She slumped against one of the huge trees, panting, feeling the sweat run off her coat and into the bark. Stayed that way for a good two minutes before Pinkie and Fluttershy came back to find her.

"We couldn't catch her!" Pinkie unnecessarily gasped. "Her hoof speed... Twilight, what happened? You were yelling about a spell --"

"-- a bomb," Twilight panted out. "A resonance bomb."

"...a what?" Fluttershy landed, confusion radiating from her one visible eye. "You've never told us about --"

"-- I've never felt one! It's a war working! You have to hide the field so that casual feel won't pick it up, and that's hard to do! Then anypony passing through has to actively hunt for it, and I wasn't searching for anything! They -- project an emotion, Fluttershy, put it in your head so it's the only thing you can think about, and if you can't shake it, you act on it! The battle ones... they were supposed to project fear, panic, cowardice... but this one... it made me homesick. For my birth home. I got out of it by remembering all of you, but she..."

The signature: was there enough left to try and identify the caster? She hadn't gotten any sense of who had worked the spell when it had hit, but she'd been so overwhelmed, there had been a hidden field at work and that didn't always help things, plus they'd have to double back and hope they could find the right tree...

Somepony placed that spell. How long would it last without renewal? Were there any wars in this area, and casters strong enough to create something which wouldn't fade for centuries, waiting until somepony finally triggered it? Or did somepony plant it there recently, not as a prank, but to try and send somepony home. A parent looking for a runaway, or...

...somepony else.

She's going home.

Hamartia

It wasn't the kind of social gathering which baths were usually meant for, but it was the best way of getting together they had: a collective excuse added to privacy and -- least, but after her time in the fringe, still a factor -- a chance to feel clean, if only on the outside. Doctor Gentle had a patient to see -- and, shortly before dinner actually started, she had a filly: a process which had begun before the trio had returned, thus sparing Twilight from any requests of blessing. The servants left them alone while they were washing. And... somepony -- Quiet just hadn't been around when they'd trotted back in. It had made it easy to gather the others, get the water flowing, lower her body deep into the warmth and try to pretend some of it was actually soaking in.

Well -- they were mostly gathered, at least in that everypony was physically present. But Applejack was rather listlessly floating off to the side, and her form sometimes disinterestedly bumped against the border wall.

"Somepony else," Twilight repeated. "We really have to start looking at things from that angle. Somepony planted that bomb. There's a chance it was coincidence, somepony just looking for anypony who's run away, or a working left over from long ago -- but it's not a strong chance. I think somepony was looking for her, and they placed that spell hoping she'd trigger it and -- it would make her go home..."

Rainbow looked oddly -- thoughtful. "How long would it take to cast that?"

Twilight considered. "I've never seen it being worked and I don't know who cast this one." There hadn't been enough feel left at the backtracked site to even begin getting a sense of the unicorn behind the bomb: Twilight's personal dispelling had been strong enough to shred more than just her own entrancement -- but by that point, she had already been well out of range. "But they have to be charged, and casting something so that it won't usually register on background feel can make things take longer. I think the caster would need at least a few minutes, Rainbow. Why?"

"Because," the pegasus slowly said, "you hadn't met her in the orchard before this. Nopony knew you three were going there -- as far as we know." She looked up at the walls, towards the doorway, ears twisting as if trying to pick up on the subtle sounds of concealed eavesdroppers -- at least until Pinkie shook her head. "But somepony knew she was in the orchard once before this, Twilight. We talked to that pony. And I was wondering... if we weren't the only ones. If he told somepony who knew her -- or if you guys were just followed, spotted, or overheard. If somepony helped her, Twilight, and that same somepony's been looking for her all along... we don't know who that pony is. But that pony probably knows us. The whole town already knows we're here, and lately, it's been kind of hard to miss you..."

She adjusted her position in the water, began to preen the feathers of her left wing, seemingly without any awareness that she was doing so at all.

"So you think," Twilight carefully said, "somepony either might have seen where we were going, gotten ahead of us, and planted at least the one bomb while we were all still looking around -- or found out that she was in the orchard, and left the spell there just in case she came back."

A slow nod. "Yeah. Grape Indulgence sold us his story for some drinks. I just bet that once he knew how much he could fetch for it, he just kept trying his luck on the liquid market. Or maybe -- maybe she went out there all the time, Twilight, that's one of her favorite places, anypony who knows her would plant something there, waiting for her -- there's just too much! The plot twists aren't spaced out enough in the book, not for an adventure! There's too many possibilities, I don't know if we've thought of them all or even the right ones...!"

Her wings beat at the water in frustration, and Rarity yelped as she dodged the splash.

"...I don't think she goes out there that often," Fluttershy softly said. "...I'm not sure -- she goes much of anywhere very often. And not just since she changed, Twilight: I don't know if she ever did. Because... at first, I thought she was just scared. Afraid that any sound was another pony, somepony who might see her. But now... I'm not sure she knew what a squirrel was."

They all stared at her.

"How is that possible?" Spike asked. "Everypony would know --"

"-- I didn't," Fluttershy carefully broke in. "Not for a long time, Spike. We don't have them in the clouds. We don't have -- much of anything, really."

"So now we are working with the theory that she began as a pegasus?" Rarity looked as if she was trying the concept on for size and finding it in need of some rather significant adjustments. "I suppose it is... somewhat possible. If somepony else had been doing any required spellwork, she could have begun as anything."

"She probably wasn't a crystal pony," Spike decided -- then held his ground (or at least his portion of the pool) while they stared at him. "Come on, guys! You've been hearing the same stories! Ever since the Empire came back, half the time, when something weird happens, somepony starts talking about how there must be a crystal visitor just out of sight, because nopony's sure about their magic yet and it makes them easy to blame, even in a joke. Or they say it's an expatriate, a crystal whose family got out before the Empire was cut off and they've been living hidden among us for generations..."

"While somehow completely overlooking both the lifespan of the average pony and the need for a rather large number of other hidden expatriates in order to guarantee that their restored refractive coats would reach the modern day," Rarity crossly replied. "Or at least some rather frequent occasions of completely unexpected birth arrival due to a rather interesting early family tree. There are days when I would be rather endeared towards any conspiracy theory which brought a touch of logic to its boundless imagination, Spike. It is not impossible simply because so little truly is, but that still leaves it firmly within the boundaries of the extremely improbable. You might as well say that she was once a buffalo who decided to become a Princess, and managed to at least reach a trio of pony states."

Twilight sighed. "I really don't want to start thinking about crystal magic right now. I'm having enough trouble with unicorn magic, if that's what was used. And pegasus magic, and..."

Her gaze instinctively moved towards Applejack --

-- and the green eyes came up. "Having trouble saying it?" Neutral.

After a too-long moment, "...yes."

Which produced an oddly calm "Good. That's how it should be." Back to floating.

"And the other magic," Pinkie quietly said. "The -- necklaces. And the crown thingie. And -- what it means. For them to have been -- normal."

They all went silent, and it stretched out like ripples across the bathing pool, sapped the heat from the water. For Twilight had told them. It had been necessary to tell them, because figuring out what it had been included removing any item from the checklist for a method disproven. For somepony of exceptional magical talent to get past Twilight's security spells, get into the vault... she had seen it within Rarity's realm of remaining extreme improbabilities. But with the attunement of the Elements added to that, the inability of anypony else to use them or for any of the Bearers to activate the wrong ones... and now that had been totaled with her word. The Elements had not been involved in any way other than a failed search.

Except that they had been involved. A long time ago.

Rarity's breath was oddly shallow, and still managed to work in an impressive amount of shudder. "They -- do not hear, do they? The Princesses. When we say our vows, invoke their names, swear upon and by them... they do not know. And... I have been thinking about that. For some time. If it is possible to continue swearing upon them now, or -- what I could swear upon at all, and..."

Her eyes closed. A false lash slipped, and the soft blue field did not automatically flicker to put it back.

"...I hate this mission," Rarity whispered. "I hate what it is taking from us. To call Luna any level of friend... I was proud of that: I still am. But I had thought of it -- as a point of special pride. To be the passing acquaintance of --" three deep breaths, all made while her gaze looked inward "-- I shall say it. A goddess. Twilight as the student of a deity, to have divinity marry into her family -- and --" tears were beginning to leak out "-- for Twilight to have -- I am sorry, Twilight, I am, and I swear to you, I shall never say this again, because I know it will hurt you and I never wish to see you suffer that wound from my horn a second time... For Twilight -- to have become divine."

And Twilight began to cry, for the white horn had stabbed her heart.

"I kissed the hooves of the Princess because it let me touch divinity," Rarity forced out. "A divinity which was never there. And how must she have felt in the presence of my devotion? Did I wound her? For she is but a normal pony with a different shape, one who has no power to hear my invocations, even in the most desperate of times. I call upon them and nothing happens, nothing can happen, and every word they become aware of long after the need was not met is a new wound, a crisis they could not intervene in, lives they could not save, while ponies believed..."

And she wept. She wept while Spike went to her side, the others closed in, let presence press against wet fur, as their own tears came...

But not all. The ponypile had been formed -- but there was a gap.

"What do I believe in?" Rarity whispered. "What did I ever believe in? What can any of us still believe in? We offer up our prayers and they do not hear. Is there anything which hears at all? Are there even shadowlands awaiting us when we die? Do the final plains and grass fields hold our loved ones waiting for that final reunion, or is there simply nothing, darkness without even the awareness of that dark, a stop to all we ever were, and when the last pony who knows to say our names goes into that dark, we are gone, truly gone, I am survived by dresses moldering in a museum where nopony ever bothers to glance at the dedication plaque..."

"You're Bearers," Spike said, and his words were as helpless as the gentle strokes of his claws through soaked mane. "Nopony's going to forget you --"

"-- Zephyra Hurricane." The two-word counter stopped him. And the tears were coming faster now. "Two names: I never knew she had two. We see her as merely a character in a play, all bluster and arrogance. We know nothing of what she was truly like. Only that she was Honesty, and... my faith is gone, Spike. I have nothing left I can believe in, for that is what this mission has taken from me. I have no faith, and no hope for the persistence of memory. Stories may last, but they will become distorted over time. Will I be nothing more than a character in a play to be performed in front of every schoolhouse on Return Day? How will the audience be made to see me? Pompous, egotistical, caring only whether her hooves stay clean, with no mention of my actual phobia. No faith in divinity, or memory, or friends..."

They all stopped breathing.

"Rarity," Twilight surged with the first gulp of oxygen she was able to temporarily seize, "we're right here..."

"You are." More miserable than anypony had ever heard her, all of them wishing for it to have come from that frequently-misplaced sense of drama, with everypony fully aware that every tenth-bit of it was true. "I can feel you, Twilight. I can identify everypony pressed against me, simply through warmth and breathing, the textures of scales and feathers and fur. A narrower rib cage here, a stronger body there, the presence of new wings. Which means I am more than aware when somepony is missing. Fluttershy, I know the words hurt you, as much as some of mine have hurt Twilight, and I am sorry -- but they still must be said: I hate Discord." She kept speaking, the soft words failing to drown out the gasp. "I loathe him in this moment, and do not know if it is possible to ever feel any other way. For this is his mission. Perhaps everything which has happened was his intent. That we would lose faith, and memory, and friends..."

And to Twilight, it felt like a cue. A signal for one final body to press against theirs, warmth and silent strength from the most gentle and physically powerful of them all, her presence reminding them all of a friendship unbroken.

But five surrounded one. And the last would not approach.

"Nothing to believe in," Rarity wept. "Nothing and nopony. Never six, never truly six. Always seven, no matter what anypony wished to believe. But now it is six, Twilight, because she is right there listening to all of it, and every moment of her still silence gives agreement that it is six, forever six, perhaps was never even seven to begin with, and as time passes, it will become five, then four, and time will dismiss us as it counts its way down to --"

Splashing.

Silence.

"I -- Ah -- I'm not gone yet."

Contact.

"...Applejack?"

"It's -- taking a lot," the farmer softly said. "It could take more before this ends. But -- Rarity... I... I -- talk. To --" and with the second-greatest effort of her life, "-- the earth. Something hears me. Something says yes. I believe in the ground under my hooves, in -- the contract, and... I can't ask you for much. Can't ask anypony for much any more, maybe not even my own kin, not after this. I sure can't ask you to believe, not in something you've never heard. But I... just want to ask you... t' understand. That Ah'm hurting too. That it took -- almost everything, and... I need time, everypony, please, it hurts and I need time..."

The seven remained still in the water. There seemed to be very little need to move.

"Will --" Rarity took another breath, tried again. "-- will you wear your hat to dinner?"

"No."

"I am putting in a request. As official fashion advisor to the Bearers. I believe you all remember what happened when you ignored my intentions for your garments the first time?"

Starkly, "Don't deserve to wear it."

"Then... I suppose that will let me know."

"Know what?"

"When it stops hurting."

Eventually, the ponypile separated, although perhaps only physically.

"Very well," Rarity finally said. "I believe I shall require some extra time to freshen myself before dinner: please do not be surprised if I am somewhat late to the table -- and if you would make my excuses for me should such become necessary, I would be grateful: there is something other than myself which still needs a few finishing touches before it becomes presentable." The dripping body carefully made its way out of the pool. "And everypony, even for those who do not generally use makeup --" an inevitable glance at Applejack, which then moved to Twilight, followed (with a touch of amazement that every last result was natural) by Fluttershy "-- please do your best to conceal regardless. We do not wish any of this day to be visible to our hosts."

"Maybe we do." And it had come from Pinkie.

They all focused on her, and the baker took a deep breath of her own, shook a little water out of drying curls.

"Discord... he said we were allowed to get help. Local help. Anypony we could. And -- I promise we didn't say anything about the mission, Twilight, but -- I've known Doctor Gentle my whole life. And Fluttershy's known him longer than just about anypony, at least by about a year. And he's really really smart, he knows a lot about magic and he sure knows the ponies in town, he's lived here his whole life. After the book hunt started --" a still-frustrated Rainbow fumed "-- we decided we didn't want to do it without you knowing, then we wanted you to be part of it, and we finally decided to wait and let you -- decide." The sincere blue eyes held a steady gaze, lit with a lifetime of adoration. "If you wanted to tell him what's happening. So he could help."

And Twilight thought about it, as the others watched.

"He is smart," she readily agreed. "And he would probably know as much about Trotter's Falls as anypony, so if she didn't flee to here, if she's a local... he might know." With rising hope, "Maybe -- maybe he even delivered her. He did say he remembers all of his."

"...he wouldn't have," Fluttershy softly said. "I'm eldest, Twilight, and she's a little older than me. About two years or so."

"Ponies don't always look their exact age," Twilight lightly protested.

"...I know, but I'm still pretty sure..."

"The Princess doesn't look a thousand!" Rainbow declared. "Over a thousand. I don't know how much -- how old were they? When they changed? How do you even ask? Come to think of it... Pinkie, how many tiers would you need for that birthday cake? I bet it reaches the palace roof! Ponies might look at the fire from all those candles and decide Sun had set in Canterlot --"

"-- focus, Rainbow," Twilight said with a grin, one which didn't feel completely forced, and it got her one in return. "I'm supposed to talk to Doctor Gentle about magic tonight. Let me see how that goes, okay? I think it's a good idea, but..." A slow breath. "...it's what Rainbow said. About Volume Twelve. Expanded universe series."

Which instantly put another expression on the pegasus' face. "That the whole town could be in on it?"

An even slower nod. "It's something you only find in books, Rainbow, but after what happened at the orchard -- unless we find some kind of proof that it wasn't associated with her..."

Somepony else.

"He's not like that!" Pinkie protested. "He's a good pony, Twilight, he's the best pony I know!" Fluttershy nodded, with the motion much stronger than usual. "If anypony would be willing to help, he would! He always helps!"

"I understand," Twilight replied, because she knew what hero worship looked and sounded like, even felt like because she had the Princess and -- she'd had faith... a faith Pinkie and Fluttershy still had in one decidedly non-divine stallion. "But let me just talk to him first, okay? Give me a chance to see how good he is, even more than I have already. And after that -- after we both know each other a little better -- I'll ask him."

Fluttershy smiled. Pinkie beamed. And they all went back to their rooms.

"And now that we've been waiting forty minutes," Rainbow announced, "I'm saying 'still fixing her makeup' is off the board! So unless she directly says otherwise and we get some proof that she messed up on top of it, 'still fixing her makeup' is a loser, Pinkie! What's everypony got left?"

"Curling her tail," Twilight immediately replied.

"You're still going with that?" Quiet asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I've seen her tail. And I still don't think she had enough in her saddlebags to create a completely new dress, Fluttershy. To finish one of the pieces she brought along, yes, but not starting from scratch. So I really don't know why you're staying on that."

"...have you been in her room yet?"

Twilight frowned. "No..."

"...so you haven't seen the curtains." Fluttershy shyly smiled, at least from the part of her mouth currently visible past the manefall. "And their fabric."

"No -- oh, no, she wouldn't..." Who am I kidding? "...she would. Quiet, I'm sorry..."

It got her a raised eyebrow. "She's done this before?"

Spike took that one. "Never with somepony else's possessions. But she loves good fabrics, and... well, when she gets an 'I-dea!', she's kind of hard to stop. It's never happened -- but it could." With pass-along embarrassment, "She'll pay for the curtains, Quiet, I know she will..."

And that produced a small chuckle. "I'm rather more curious to see the results than worried about the compensation, Spike. I've never pictured those particular draperies being worn. Although now that I think about it, that shade of green... well, certainly not with my spouse's coat."

It got Twilight to look up. "Does she -- wear dresses a lot?" Does he like ponies who wear dresses a lot? "You said she had two of Rarity's designs."

He nodded. "She's generally dressed up, even when in privacy, in case a potential audience happens to drop by. I admit, I'm curious to see what she wears to the party."

She blinked. "She'll be here? But I thought you said --"

Quiet sighed. "It's a coincidence of deadlines. She decided to come back a little early: I just got the word a few hours ago. And as for the party -- the day after tomorrow, Twilight: that is not only what Coordinator's permits are willing to allow me, they are all which was surrendered. I've revised the invitations so many times already -- and of course, the one date he gave me is a day -- and night for which he claims to have no ability to request that our local weather coordinator do anything to save me..."

It got Fluttershy's attention. "...that's the storm. The big one. And nopony will reschedule?"

Another sigh. "What little influence I might be able to exert in this town stops well short of reaching the sky. I don't have the pull to get it done myself, and since my least favorite bureaucrat suddenly can't seem to remember where all his forms are... I'll just do what I can to have somepony set up drying spells in the entrance hall. I'd have somepony else build a temporary pavilion over the approach path, but if it's not sufficiently anchored, it'll be blown into the wild zone before we even get to the less awkward dances."

"You know," Rainbow carefully began, a dangerous twinkle beginning to dance in her eyes, "you don't always need authorized changes..."

He smiled. "While I appreciate the offer, we're going to have Bureau members -- and bureaucrats -- at the party, all of whom will see that the weather's not quite as the calendar dictates, and the local version of the violation fine is breathtaking by just about everypony's standards. We'll just have to work around it."

I have to ask Rarity for a new dress, Twilight quickly decided. I know she brought that one to finish, but that's supposed to be for standing near the Princesses. I need something which looks good near leaf-green. Looks better when it's near leaf-green, better than anything she's going to be wearing. Maybe I'd better go into her room and check out the curtains, assuming they're not already taken. Green on purple, though... well, Rarity would know, and she'll work on it for me. Maybe she can even do two dresses. Or three. Three's probably the limit after what happened that last time, but as long as I just trust her on the designs and don't get involved in any way other than making sure they'll all be ready on time because she's working efficiently, I can just change throughout the party, just keep showing off new looks which are better than hers, and I'll --

"-- Princess?"

Visions of properly-done impromptu fashion shows broke up in front of Twilight's eyes. "Doctor?"

With a twinkle in his voice, "You were missed today."

She managed to internalize the worry, mostly because she'd been creating new space for it hour after hour and as long as she kept clearing out room at the same rate as the concerns stampeded in, she was probably okay. "I don't understand what you mean, Doctor. Was somepony looking for me?"

"From the first contraction to the last," he smiled. "I swear, if they knew how to do it, we'd have a few of the town mares speeding up their pregnancies just so they could finish before you left. Half the questions I asked my most recent patient were answered with queries about when you were coming in..."

Twilight sighed. "Doctor -- I know you feel it -- motivates them, but -- I don't do anything. You do."

"Belief is powerful, Princess," he calmly replied. "A pony who believes there is a greater power looking out for them will sometimes accomplish amazing things on their own before misassigning the credit. You do have an effect, and it is a positive one."

Except that I still don't do anything, can't, any more than the Princess and Luna --

-- Celestia and Luna?

The Princess and Luna. She still had that much, at least for now. "Well -- if we're going to talk about greater powers -- are we still discussing the Exemption tonight?" And because she still truly wanted that talk, recruitment or not, it was followed by an eager, happy, "Please?"

"And anything else I might somehow be able to teach you," he smiled. "Although I personally expect to do more learning --"

-- and Rarity finally came in.

"I do apologize," were the first words out of the dress-free designer's mouth. "This is not my usual craft, and it took some time to find a truly proper cradle weave which balanced without criss-crossing in the front and ruining most of the view. I was tweaking and tweaking..."

Pinkie smiled. Fluttershy and Applejack both quietly nodded approval of the results. Twilight found said results exquisitely balanced. Rainbow tossed off a signature shrug, the one which said that while she was actually kind of impressed, there was no way she was ever going to show it. And Spike --

-- grabbed his napkin and pressed it over his nostrils.

"Oh! I am sorry, Spike, I completely forgot. Will somepony please switch positions with him, before I sit down? Yes, thank you, Fluttershy, that is very gracious of you -- oh, dear. Very well, will somepony please switch plates? -- and thank you as well, Twilight..."

She sank down to the floor, and more than just her position shifted. "Oh, yes, one moment..." Her right front leg came up for a moment. The hoof touched an area just below her neck, pushed left. Went back down.

"Miss... Miss Rarity?"

And there was only one pony left at the table who was still using that particular 'Miss.'

Doctor Gentle's voice had emerged as oddly -- dry. Not lacking in tone, or full of subtle wit: more as if he'd been galloping across the desert for some time and had just seen a distant oasis, one which his mind insisted on eliminating from the category of mirage before he dared to approach. "Where did you acquire that?"

Rarity's forehoof proudly touched the homemade necklace again. "Oh, the shiftstone? -- yes, Pinkie, I know he would think of it as a deathstone should he know it, but I am rather hoping it catches on... We found it in your wild zone! While we were searching for you. I may know no magic to detect ponies, but when it comes to gems... well, this one got my attention." Another moment of contact against the intricately-woven silver wire which supported the ever-cycling disc. "And understandably so! Pinkie has told me of how rare they are --"

"-- where in the wild zone?"

The volume increase had actually been rather small. And somehow, that made it all the more noticeable.

Rarity blinked.

"We were lost, Doctor Gentle," she said. "I cannot give you an exact location when I am uncertain of where we were. Are you -- looking to claim one for yourself? For I only detected this piece, and I would ask that you trust me when I say that for such searches, I do have a certain faculty..."

Doctor Gentle... took a slow breath. Nodded. Then smiled.

"I was simply curious about the terrain, Miss Rarity," he told her. "But 'wild zone' is enough. Even though I was hoping there was some consistency in where such wonders might be found -- and yes, I was briefly thinking of looking for myself, although such decorations are hardly suited to my own form. But I understand that most ponies have never even seen one, and I feel honored to be in the presence of your new jewelry. You've done an excellent job of presenting it. Silver wire for the cradle?" She nodded. "A good choice. It goes with all of its manifestations. And if you wouldn't mind -- might I touch it? I am curious to see if the density and texture alter in concert with the colors."

Rarity nodded, and her horn ignited. The soft blue field lifted the necklace away from her own body, floated it across to Doctor Gentle's station (with Spike going for the napkin again), then receded away from the jewel itself, allowing direct contact. Doctor Gentle raised his right foreleg, held ankle against stone for the duration of three changes.

"It does," he nodded, seeming satisfied. "A complete change indeed..." Rarity waited for a signal that he was finished and, after receiving one, floated it back to her own neck. "Thank you for the experience, Miss Rarity. I look forward to seeing what kind of dress you might create to truly show it off at the party. Although with only two days to go --"

"-- two days?" Rarity's forelegs shoved out, pushed her away from the table while making most of the plates dance. "Since when is it two days? Why didn't anypony tell me it was two days? Celestia's tail, two -- what time does it begin? I need an exact hour, a minute, and then I can hope to be fashionably late, but -- what is my deadline? Somepony, please, tell me what I'm up against! And the six of you, yes, Spike, I was thinking of something for -- oh dear oh dear oh dear, I don't have the fabrics, anywhere near the fabrics, and -- Quiet, I do apologize for what I am about to ask, but I couldn't help but notice a certain unexpected finery in your curtains...!"

Eventually, they talked her off the ledge, or at least off any borrowed sewing device, away from what would have been freshly-purchased extra sketchbooks, and into not staying awake for two days straight, although the group knew they would have to keep an eye on that. And then everypony settled back into their dinner, more or less, while trying to ignore the way Rarity was arranging the available hues of her vegetables into the shape of elaborate gowns.

Doctor Gentle also went back to eating. But he didn't consume that much, spending most of his time poking at his food, shifting it about the plate. Much of the rest was used for looking at the necklace.

Twilight understood. It really was something to see.

Moon had been raised a long time ago, and Twilight was trying to make sure they didn't get too close to seeing Sun coming up from their view in the astronomy tower. But it was a hard battle, for Doctor Gentle knew a lot about magic. Oh, he didn't match her: few ponies did, and even Trixie got lost sometimes -- although to be fair, there had been two occasions when Twilight had been the one scrambling to catch up. But he knew much more than she would have guessed a midwife to even be aware of. They had discussed nothing which she wasn't familiar with: other than the Exception itself, something which still wasn't yielding to her duplication wishes, he had nothing truly new to contribute in the way of discovery. But his perspective was surprisingly informed, and as the night sped on (because such a delightful discussion could never wear), it began to feel as if there were more and more times when she saw recognition in his eyes, even for those things he claimed to have never studied or even heard of, and she wondered if he was just having trouble bringing all the memories to mind, so deep into the night. Or if there was something else he was thinking of now and again, blocking the way. There had been moments when she'd briefly lost sight of his face, waving her hooves around or levitating star reference charts as a way of sketching out a particularly graphics-requiring point, and when she'd glanced back, she'd found him --

-- distracted.

Unfocused.

But only for a second. He always returned to the discussion. He never pretended to fall asleep, and it let her mention Star Swirl, of course he knew of Star Swirl, had even read some of the legends, and it let her keep mentioning the caster for a little while, although -- for once, it was only a little while, because Star Swirl had been one thing to her before the mission began, and was now -- she was still trying to work that out.

But Doctor Gentle knew so much...

Finally, she had to ask.

"Sir? Did you ever actively study magic? I mean, more than the basics, in a classroom or university setting. It's clear you've kept up --" that with some pride, along with a little internal disgruntlement concerning those who wouldn't "-- and I know you didn't attend the Gifted School. But it's not as if it's the only one, and some of the others are really good too."

He shook his head, hooked his forelegs over the railing, stared out into the night. "No, Princess. I came to magic studies late in life -- well, later than most. After I'd left school, and begun my current profession. I thought I might be able to learn things which would further assist me in midwife duties. I was able to master a few of them, but... well, nopony can learn everything. Still - as you said, I keep up. It's amazing, the things which can be adapted for medical use, if you just give them a little thought..."

"After you discovered the Exception?" She was truly curious now.

"Yes." Quietly, still not looking at her, gazing at the constellations which made up the Barding Of The Ancients, the oldest ones recorded in Equestria's astronomical history. "Where a little magic might assist now and again --" which struck her as a drastic understatement "-- a touch more could be useful. And I hoped to make another discovery, I pushed, and there were times when I -- pushed too hard. Well, I suppose it's a rare researcher who hasn't driven themselves into a drain-based exhaustion faint, even for the amateurs like myself. But it's never a good idea to do such things while a mare is on the birthing table, as that is a rather poor occasion for taking a sudden nap. All I could do was research in privacy, then hope to never need it in reality. Experimentation during labor..." and his voice was tired now, she'd kept him up too long "...you have to be desperate, Princess. Truly desperate. And I was..."

Speaking only to stars now.

"She was dying," the soft voice slowly said, and the warm eyes closed. "I knew she was dying..."

Quietly, "Fluttershy."

He blinked.

"...yes," he said after a moment. "Fluttershy. A dry birth, as I said. Her mother's water had broken hours before, and there was no strength left to push. A foal can't stay in the womb that way, Princess. And -- I knew she was dying. That she would die, if she didn't come out. And -- she was my first, and I was desperate, and... sometimes, when you're truly desperate, when the need is there... something will come. But the success isn't always complete. I brought her to Sun, and... it saved her, but..."

He seemed to be having some trouble focusing again.

"It's late, Doctor," Twilight gently said. "I'm sorry. We can stop now."

"No, Princess, it's all right," he told her, turning his head for a moment and letting her see the smile. "It's just that -- when you remember the ones you've saved -- you also remember those you couldn't. And for me, over so many years... there are names on that list, too many names when one is more than you ever wish to see, especially when -- well, some are patients, but some are friends, and..." He sighed. "Perhaps it's best that I started so late in my profession. If nothing else, the list is shorter for it. I told Fluttershy once that I felt I had to remember every name, from the first to what I'm forever hoping is the last. And I worry about what that did to her, because I think she does the same. And for her, desperation doesn't help. She can't mix herbs and chemicals just hoping something works, not without causing more harm. But for me... once, and once only..."

Back to the stars.

"Have you ever been that desperate, Princess?" he patiently asked. "I'll -- understand if you don't want to answer."

They were both silent for a moment, watched only by clouds and constellations.

"Did Pinkie and Fluttershy tell you about the Nightmare?"

He nodded. "What they were present for, and what you told them about what happened while you were alone."

"I never teleported before that. I was charging it, trying to get past it, and -- I was desperate. I wanted to phase shift and go through it, or self-levitate, or -- anything. And I went between. I was lucky, Doctor -- the Princess had escorted me a few times, and I'd been through it with teachers. So when it happened, I knew how to shield my mind. But I still had to reorient when I came out, and... after that... things became really desperate, and..."

Her eyes closed, opened. Closed again.

"...and I'm alive. Sometimes, I -- still wonder how. How we're all still alive, after everything we've been through. Knowing that it's so easy to... lose one, or more. That I'll lose them, and... I don't know how long we can keep that from happening. Eventually, a mission has to go bad, that's just odds catching up to us, and..."

Twilight's words finally reached her ears.

"...you shouldn't have to hear this. I'm sorry."

"Don't be, Princess." His right foreleg shifted over, made momentary contact before more tired words emerged, more weary than ever: he was older and she'd kept him awake for so very long, brought back his memories... "I spoke of loss. You spoke of fearing loss. It's natural. But in the end... you have so little to fear..."

She didn't understand.

She looked at him. And he was not looking at her. Only the stars.

"Doctor?"

It would be some time before she truly understood his next words. And by then, it would be too late.

"Did you feel them?"

A simple question -- so simple that it almost wasn't a question at all. More of a statement. An expression of knowledge and faith.

"...Doctor?"

And he turned to face her, forelegs unhooking from the railing, all four hooves now on the stone floor of the astronomy tower.

"Can you feel them now?" the soft voice asked, just a little more strongly. "Do you have to try, or are they simply there, waiting for you to call on them?" More loudly now: nowhere near a shout or even normal speech, but the words had a strength all out of proportion to their volume, it felt like every last one was kicking her... "But when it happened... did you feel them, Princess? Tell me you could feel them. Tell me that."

He was advancing. She was backing away. She didn't know why. She didn't understand, didn't know what she'd done, what had put the steel in his spine, the rising fire in those usually-twinkling eyes, the desperation which had straightened his tail and pushed his ears down and set Moon-glinting drops of sweat in that graying muzzle...

"You must have felt them! Please tell me --"

Her tail hit the back wall, and the base poked the stone hard enough to bruise. Twilight yelped.

Doctor Gentle -- stopped.

His left foreleg came up. The hoof gently pressed against his own temple.

"Forgive me," he said. "This wasn't the time for matters of faith."

"...faith?"

He nodded. "There are times when I believe -- that those I could not save watch me from the shadowlands. That they listen when I talk about them, because in such times, it is as if I can truly feel their presence around me. Just now, so deep under Moon -- I felt them. I felt them as strongly as I ever have. And it was so strong -- that for a moment, I thought you surely must have felt it too."

But... but that doesn't make any sense... it almost fits with what he was saying, and it's just his belief -- no, maybe it does fit, but... but why was he...

"Or," he sighed, and his posture sagged, "I am simply an aging pony who has been around too much death for one lifetime, straining to hear voices offering forgiveness and finding his own mind all too willing to provide, especially this deep under Moon. I am sorry, Princess. It was a hard labor today, and... matters of faith should be private. Perhaps we should stop for the night."

Twilight managed a nod. "Get some rest, Doctor. Please. There's probably going to be more mothers and foals who need you in the morning, and I still can't help..."

"You help," he quietly answered. "With your very existence, Princess, you help us. There was a reason for your new title, at least for so many of us. Because when I look at you -- I see that most gracious blessing of hope..."

He stopped. Took three breaths, then turned and trotted, with that one leg still dragging, towards the winding ramp.

Twilight watched as he descended.

And for a moment, the only thing she wanted to tell him was to never touch her again.

"Are you all right?" It was an automatic question, especially when the doctor looked that haggard. "I thought I would have the rougher coat between us when I had to stay up this late waiting for you, especially given that you're more used to being woken up at this hour than I am. But you look like you just did the Running five times in one afternoon, and with your leg..."

"Just -- shaken, Quiet," Doctor Gentle said as he fully entered the private room. "I was shaken somewhat at the moment the unicorn entered, and -- in retrospect, I'm not certain it ever completely wore off. Additionally, the Princess is -- rather enthusiastic about her subject. I received something of an education tonight, and much more than I gave -- but before you ask: only about magic. We were never quite able to reach the true questions. Perhaps another time, when I am less tired and better able to guide, there might be more luck, but for tonight -- well, let us simply end this portion of it so that we may both seek refreshment in Princess Luna's lands."

Quiet nodded, began a slow trot towards the far stone wall. "Well, if you've ever wondered whether that anti-detection spell actually worked..."

It got a slow exhale. "Do not be so certain, Quiet: we do not know her range. Fortunately, this is much deeper than most ponies would normally go. But... a gem-finding spell... it must be her personal trick, to have that degree of refinement. It took me so much time before the first feel arrived -- but then, I was not looking for the stone."

"We're not missing any," Quiet said, his eyes moving over the last of the count. "Not from here."

Doctor Gentle shook his head. "I could have told you that -- and am sorry there was no time in which to do so. Quiet -- it's one of hers."

The small stallion glanced back, and the grey eyes were not as wide as they might have been. "I thought there was a chance of that. Finding it in the wild zone. If we just knew where -- is it discharged?"

A nod. "Fully. But then, we already knew that worked. Not that it matters now, with no current means of retrieving it. And -- we have not had any means of recharging it for some time."

"True," Quiet dryly said. "But there's still a positive in that."

"Yes," Doctor Gentle replied. "As noted on both that day of recapture and after I received the letter... we are alive. The simple fact that we continue to breathe means he knows nothing. He must not even have memory of it, Quiet, for he is hardly known for his patience, and his entertainment would have begun immediately. And yes, I am aware that I am repeating myself -- but in this room, after this night... it seems necessary."

They never used the name. Not since that first day. It wasn't as if either believed he would hear it, and there would soon be a time when saying it would also be necessary. But still... it was best not to push too far.

"Keep repeating yourself," Quiet agreed. "Sometimes I think it's actually holding him off..."

Looking over the wall again.

"We're down one," Quiet noted.

"Dawn Sky," Doctor Gentle said. "Nuchal cord -- one of the rare truly bad cases. It's automatic now, Quiet. I always have one in my birthing garment. And I wished her to live more than I wanted to worry about our restock issue."

"Your priorities are in the proper order," Quiet assured him. "Still -- down one. And unless we can find some means to recharge them --"

"-- we may have one." A statement.

Quiet looked at him.

"And she's sleeping upstairs," Doctor Gentle finished. "For as much as she ever sleeps at all. But for now -- the Bearers have a chaos pearl. One of hers. And so we must wonder where they truly found it, and how -- along with what else they might have found. And knowing now exactly how expert our newest Princess is in magic, I am certain there is one thing which would have caught her attention..." A long moment of silent thought, and then, "Whatever supplies you might have been considering in the event of our needing to run, Quiet -- begin putting them together. We stand between caution and paranoia, on simple guard. And even so, even with that increased risk -- the party is more necessary than ever, for now we may not be the only ones who need to flee..."

"And now," Quiet softly said, "we have to take these."

They both looked at the wall.

Within one hundred and forty widely separated cradles of carefully-arranged platinum wire, the chaos pearls continued their endless changes.

Tanzanite.

Jasper.

Obsidian.

All the colors, textures, and densities of deathstone.

Symbolism

The sky is trying to drive her mad.

The colors should not exist, and she so wishes to believe they do not. Her soul screams denial, kicks reason against the world and desperately hopes to land a crushing blow. But it is not happening. The sky is in rebellion above her small form, and what it has gone to war with is the very concept of 'sky'. It feels as if that which is above her is trying to descend, not a few small clouds being lowered or wild zone fog sinking on its own, but the totality of it. For air has weight. Perhaps the pegasi know that on instinct, where the unicorn had to learn. But as she staggers forward through the nightscape, no longer capable of recognizing that she is in the nightscape at all, she remembers that fact: full bale-weights of atmosphere press down on every pony at every moment of their lives. Every movement the living can make is casually forced against an ocean nopony on the ground truly realizes they spend their entire lives swimming through. But she knows, and for a moment, as the twisting seems to accelerate, it is all she can remember, because the weight of that gas is increasing as it becomes the weight of liquid.

Above her, the colors go to war with sanity, with order, and logic is beaten, reason shredded into the dying screams of incoherence which make up the last sounds of the truly defeated. And the air is now liquid, the weight of it flows into her lungs as she pushes her way through the mad world and she can breathe, the liquid is something she can still breathe, but the horrible weight fills her lungs, presses against her ribs. She must breathe, and every breath she can take makes her feel as if the very act will break her from the inside.

Around her, there is ground, or what should have been ground. In a sane world, she might be trying to trot through a simple patch of something very close to natural pasture: mostly grass, a few sparse trees which nopony had tried to clear away, blue sky overhead and perhaps a few birds passing through it. But beneath her hooves, as air becomes liquid, ground is dispersing. Fight for each hoofstep, her head down so as not to see the horror of the sky, and peer into increasing void, something which cannot remind her of the absent center of a mark that should not be, for in her struggle to simply advance, to hold together against all-encompassing insanity, she does not remember that it exists. Not the pony, not the mission given to them from the mouth of madness. There is no Sun. No Moon. There is only a small unicorn struggling through what might have once been pasture land. And the grass is made from thin shards of bone and razor edges slice against her legs as she pushes on, trees begin to pull themselves from thinning soil, staggering away as mouths created by thousands of swirling leaves begin to scream.

It is insanity. It will break her. It will kill her, it will kill anypony who does not find shelter, it is the antithesis of hope and order and reason and harmony and thought, and it will not stop. Constants become variables. Variables refuse to be defined. There is but one piece of flotsam which retains any knowledge of what it should truly be, and she is bleeding and battered and her mind will break.

It is a chaos storm.

She has never heard the term. Nopony has ever said it to her, nor has any book contained it, much less the last shattered words of those who died within. But she knows it all the same, and she knows it is seconds away from something far worse than merely killing her. From having it somehow sense that last bit of order trying to fight for survival, and unmaking it. There is death, and there is never having been alive --

-- she sees a sparkle.

It's just barely visible through the hues which so wish to take the last of her. But the sparkle is there, and it's a constant one. Shifting, yes, because they always do, but it's just the steady, natural pattern of such little position changes. And with that sparkle -- no, plural, there's another, and another, and -- she sees glow. Reddish-purple, and that color maintains. An active field, a field holding against the storm. However, it is a field, not a shield spell as she knows them: the distortion of the light (in those few moments which remain before 'light' loses its definition) does not include any degree of opacity or reflection.

But it's a field. There is another unicorn somewhere in this storm. And on the other side of that field, it almost seems as if she can see --

-- no. She will not hope, for to hope is to risk losing focus. She will gallop.

And so she runs. The bone slices her, the air drowns her, the ground tries to make her drop, and screaming flames which still retains the faintest vestige of bird shape writhe in agony as the sky extinguishes them. But she is moving, she must be moving, surely that can't have broken too, it seems as if the sparkling field is getting closer but that could just be cruel illusion --

-- she can't think that way, not while she can still think at all. She gallops, hoofs pound at what little is left of anything, the chaos lances towards the desperate hope for escape and her tail begins to come apart --

-- there is a faint tingle as she contacts the field. Goes through.

And then she is coughing up the liquid, watching it evaporate in front of her before it can soak into the constant earth.

It takes some time before she can raise her head. (Nothing would make her look back.) And ahead of her, there is... light. The field itself glows from the inner surface, the giant dome arcing into the air above her. It is light without Sun. She still cannot find Sun. But...

...somepony lives here.

Or did.

There are structures. They are -- crude, exceptionally so. Bent branches with odd textures and hues draped over them to form smaller domes, entrances large enough for a pony -- but no ponies are within sight or hearing. There are fire pits, lined with rock and filled with naught but ash. A little bundle of oddly-bound sticks near one tent catches her attention, and it takes a moment to realize the shape crudely resembles that of a unicorn, with a little bit of old bone where the horn would be.

It takes longer to realize that the exterior of the tents are made from animal skins.

She forces herself to advance. And as she does, the structures become somewhat more sophisticated. The tent city fades away behind her, replaced by balanced-off rocks that make up stranger, sturdier temporary homes

above ground, why are they risking having so much above ground

and beyond that, she starts to see market carts, strange ones, too heavy, too solid, as if they were designed with no true thought that they should ever be moved at all. And still no ponies. Simply wares placed out for sale, and she does not know what so many of them are. Some things look as if they might be worn: not just over the body, but the face. There is what might have once been a bookseller's cart, and all that remains of that stock is fragments of shredded pages carried by a sudden wind. One scrap goes past her eyes, and the only words she has time to read are ALL LOST.

Here: metal hung from the top of a cart, rough shapes of highly polished -- not silver, it's not silver, she would know if it was silver, she doesn't know what that is

argentium

and then she does.

The sudden arrival of knowledge freezes all four legs. She stares at it, and the distorted reflection of a small young adult purple unicorn mare stares back at her as facts rampage through startled brain, how the metal is underestimated, thought of by the majority as good for naught but crude mirrors, but just look a little deeper and see how many true uses it has for the canny and clever, every last thing which can be done with it by somepony willing to do anything to finish the experiment and --

-- gone.

All she retains is the name. Argentium.

She is remembering a metal which does not exist.

Slowly, she pushes on. And as she approaches the core, order continues to assert. Broken order. There is a building, the first true building, and the hole in its side shows where something had objected to the very concept. She peers inside just long enough to note the multitude of low-lying large, flat-topped rocks which substitute for benches in the conference area. And then something inside her doesn't want to look any more.

This new place, this was

the doctor, the closest thing to a doctor, the shaman

where the shaman lived. Spilled herbal mixtures stain the ground, their scents linger within the air. She recognizes the warmth-inducing smell of crushed

cantomile

and doesn't know what that is.

Further on. Above ground, so much above, an open shout of defiance against the chaos, but there are broken walls and torn fabrics, shattered attempts at furniture and abandoned toys, lost wares and no ponies, no ponies anywhere at all --

-- and then she sees the lab.

It must be a lab. It stands at the exact center of the

barricade point

and is the most recognizable structure of them all. Not just for the devices which appear here and there on the exterior, things which seem centuries more refined than everything around it. Not for the ventings and smokestacks which hint at the forges within. Not just because it's the most advanced building in the area, something with a true foundation and walls of -- well, actually, the walls sort of look like somepony with a truly powerful field just took huge planes of rock and then smoothed them out there and there, thinned them down a bit, added a few openings, and fused the whole thing together. Look what a strong field somepony's got, and then look what was done with it, because this structure will stand against the chaos, all of the chaos, and the broken places show that about eighty percent of that declaration had been right. But it still looks like what a lab should be, has to be and -- isn't any more. Not after what happened.

She goes inside, through one of the freshly-created holes. She doesn't know why. She just does.

There is a stallion standing in the center of the hollow space, among the debris from broken furniture, the scattering of pebbles that had once been stone beakers

grindshell: it doesn't react to anything at all, glass is too fragile even with every

along with broken devices, fragments of notes which still smoulder among fading embers from the recent fire. He is not facing her. Perhaps he will not, at least for now.

"It grows back."

She can see the color of his fur, what little of it is visible beyond robe and hat: a rather light purple-grey. The mane and tail are beige slanting towards white.

"It grows back," he says to nopony at all, and that oddly-curled tail lashes. "It always grows back..."

The robe and hat are weighted at the edges, and as he angrily shakes his head, none of the bells make the slightest sound.

She wants to step forward.

The word in her mind is 'sir,' and she has said it so many times in the nightscape when she greets him. But it will not come. Because she knows this is him. She knows, as she knew so much outside. But this stallion... the back has the tight curve of youth, the fur is smooth and soft, without the white of age speckling the coat, the color of which was not as she'd always believed it to be. This is

it's not, it can't be

it is.

And she wants to run.

"It was His joke," the unicorn stallion says. "I told Him I could undo everything he did. Every time. And then he did this. I shave it every morning, when I can find something to shave with. I've used every spell I could think of, a few I invented, made up on the spot... and the next morning, it's grown back, it always grows back. Because He wants it that way, because He could have killed me right then and there, but he wanted me to know what a failure I was, how weak, and he gave me this before he... broke the barricade. The greatest barricade in Eris, and he broke it with a thought. And left me to watch, and listen, while He laughed. At the Bearded."

Her legs won't move. Nothing will.

"They... asked me to come with them," he softly continues. "I laughed, when she asked, so soon after they all stopped here. A request to leave the greatest of all barricades, the one which would expand to cover the world. And it came from... it didn't matter. It was stupid of her to ask. Stupid to believe they might have another way. A chance to beat Him, if only... there were six. Or seven, really, since they had that... but I laughed at her. Because it almost felt like a joke, one of His, where the last punchline would be their deaths. I felt sorry for them. For her. But it was madness to come, the surest sign that I'd fallen to the madness like so many of the weak, as they surely must have fallen before ever arriving, just to believe in that. In... another kind of hope, the most desperate one. But I was wrong. They weren't mad. It was easy to see the difference, when true madness arrived. When He came."

He is starting to turn.

The face is young, the snout long and cheeks hollow. The eyes are yellow, at least for now. The chin still bleeds from where hair has recently been hacked away.

"I... have to go with them. There's nothing for me here. He's coming back, and soon even this will be gone. He wanted me to have some time where I could appreciate what He'd done, before He finished it, and she -- she still wants me, even though I'm weak, I can't do anything real, and... she still wants me, so I have to go with her, there's nowhere else and nopony to want me at all, but she still wants me, she still wants me, but..."

The words are coming faster.

"...she doesn't look at me the same way. I look at her, I consent to look at her, nopony among mine would ever look at her and I did, but she doesn't see that and then it was them, it was the two of them, it was them and I don't understand, why was it them when --"

The turn is complete. They are facing each other.

He's so young. Her age.

He silently looks at her. Her face, mane, body, tail, eyes, horn and wings.

He screams.

"-- why was it them? It should have been me! They should have known it was supposed to be me, they should have made it me, it always should have been me and it was them! And now..."

He is beginning to advance.

"It's you! How could it possibly be you? What could have changed so much that it wound up being you? What? Tell me, tell me now or --"

Blood drips, and it fills his eyes, turns them red.

She can move. Somehow, she can now move, when she truly needs to most. And her wings flare out, beat at the air, carry her back through the hole without thought, he is chasing but he cannot keep up, bursts of reddish-purple field fly past her, she's doing her best to create a flight pattern he can't anticipate but all he has to do is snatch her out of the air and he's chasing, he's below her and he's still screaming about how it's her, it's her and not him, never him and there's a burst of energy, it goes into her ribs and she's spiraling, tumbling out of the air and --

-- the soil is loose. It's rained recently, the soil is loose, and between the two, her impact is cushioned. Clumps go into her eyes, cling to her fur, and it is long seconds before her shaking body can try to get her back on her hooves. But she gets up in the end, looks around to see where her pursuer is, the pony she will never again consult within her nightscape, and he is gone. The barricade point is gone. She is --

-- she's outside the Acres. The main barn, or an older edition of it: the paint is weathered, the wood untreated for what seems to have been years. Discarded implements show rust. And there is a mound of loose soil under her hooves, just a little longer and wider than the form of

the loan repaid, the contract completed, and so she returns

She does not push herself away. She does not recoil, not physically, for she can teleport again, and the light takes her to the cottage, where there are no animals in sight, anywhere in sight, and vines have claimed the walls, the chicken coops have collapsed, nopony else will live on the edge of the fringe without cause and nopony else took that one up, she has arrived behind the cottage, in the place where her friend buries those she was unable to save, and there is a new disruption to the earth, for the cycle turns and in time, the wheel will crush.

There is a pyre in the clouds, still smoldering, and ashes make a final climb into the sky.

Balloons lose air eventually. Every last one guaranteed to sink, and the shell is so very fragile.

Cloth decays. Gems fall away from broken cradles and are trampled back into the earth.

There is a scale. A single scale. It is just barely visible through the crawling termites which cover nearly every inch of what had been their home, and she will not leave it there, she snatches it up between her teeth and it feels as if it will crumble to dust at her touch.

She is galloping now. She gallops through Ponyville, and there are ponies here, so many of them, and every last one knows her, while she knows none. They call out to her, and never in the thousands of cries is her name ever said. It is Princess, always Princess, and she says names, asks about so many names, and they do not know any, not a one, for to them, none of those names has ever been spoken until the moment she gave them ignored voice. There is simply her, just her, perhaps there had always been but her, and they want and they need and they crowd around her, hooves stretch out to touch her fur, faces beg for a nuzzle against unwanted feathers, they beg and she hears every plea, with no power to answer a single one of them. Children are raised up in front of her, dying fillies and foals, she cannot save them, they die before her eyes and the parents turn away, blaming themselves for not having believed deeply enough to justify her granting the miracle, she is screaming and none will hear, she pushes, she can't fly because she doesn't want to fly, doesn't want the wings, doesn't want any of this, never wanted any of this but they won't listen and her field surges, pushes a path through begging bodies, she flees and then she is in the ruins.

The ruins of the castle. The castle of the sisters, where the dead things are kept.

She is on the podium. Five tiny piles of shattered stone surround her. She sinks to belly and barrel, curls up in the center of them, curls herself around the tiny scale.

She weeps. And the world does not care. It has heard such weeping at least twice before. Nothing cares, and nopony.

That is when the voices come.

We/I know the pain, they say, and the tone is a caring one. I/We have seen this pain before. We/I know the hurt. You bleed, and nopony knows it. You cry, and nopony hears. You hurt. And I/We... am/are sorry.

She thanks them, through the tears. Thanks anything which is willing to truly hear her, when no others will.

You wish to discard this fate, the voices knowingly, compassionately observe. To simply go back, to be normal again. And you cannot. Fate cannot be kicked aside or pushed away. We/I are/am sorry for that. I/We wish there was a way. For none to suffer.

The curl becomes tighter still. The edges of the little scale crack from the pressure.

Fate cannot be discarded. Only -- exchanged, the voices gently tell her. I/We feel your pain. We/I understand. I/We will take your burden. Take your place -- if you let us/me.

The tears are slowing.

You want this. More than anything.

She uncurls a little. Nods.

We/I can withstand this pain, where you cannot. Should not, should never have been asked/made to. I/We know pain. A little more will not hurt us/me.

She looks up. There is -- something -- just above her. It is darkness without comfort, shadows without protection. It shifts and swirls and coils about her, and it offers her everything she wants, everything she needs, every wish she has ever made.

The words are filled with love. Will you let me/us? Let us/me help you? When no others can or will, when none will let themselves see your pain and know you need help at all? Will you let me/us do this for you?

And she listens.

Her forelegs stretch towards it. The voices stretch towards her fur. Darkness coats the bottom of her hooves.

"GET OFF HER, Y'STUPID PIECE OF HORSE APPLE SMEAR!"

And the farmer erupts from those hooves, the body streaming out from her very fur, forming in an instant, the hard head goes into the shadows, impact stuns and knocks back a few crucial hoofwidths, enough to buy time for a spin and kick, the rotation brings the face into full view and the features are true, but the colors are almost there and --

-- it is like she is looking at another kind of shadow. One which offers protection. The shadow cast by a --

-- the darkness dodges, it/them is/are screaming, they/it claims bargain which nopony can break, it/they dive for her wings and a prismatic tail whips across it. The follow-up attack is brash enough to almost work on its own, and the sheer shock of anypony trying that kind of stupid move allows the whole thing to succeed. And before it can recover from that, thousands of little stone fragments are levitated by soft blue, pummel it in a hailstorm of memory, it falls back, tries to escape, finds its way blocked by the echoes of birds and beasts and the one carefully directing them to close the path.

There is one final chance for it/them to escape. One last possible way out. And that is when the party cannon goes off.

Slowly, she gets up again. Looks at them as they reorient after the battle, the farmer taking special care to stomp on the few scraps which remain. Looks at shadows.

Two of them are approaching a little faster, caretaker and baker. They come up to her first, nuzzle, the nuzzle meant for friends, always. The others press against her coat, and they are there, and yet they are...

...they are there, aren't they? She is surrounded by them, so they have to be there.

But it is the touch of shadow. It offers protection, comfort. And there is nothing more except a tiny scale lodged in her fur, without even the memory of that body to hug her forelegs.

They pull back, but only so she can see them smile. She cannot smile back. Heads quizzically tilt. And baker and caretaker open their mouths, ask the same question in the voice of the doctor whose touch she never again wants to bear, ask it as if it was the only question which could ever be asked in the history of the world, for it was the only one that could ever matter.

"Did you feel them?"

She turns, spins her body. The voice came from them, and from behind. But she cannot see him, and at the moment she turns, the others vanish.

"Did you feel them?" the voice repeats its question, somewhere out of sight, within the shield-covered burnout. "Are they simply there, waiting for you to call on them? Tell me you could feel them. Tell me that."

And then there is anger, and it quickly twists into rage. Perhaps because there was something there, and he spoke, and then there was not. But it feels as if thinking about it might just be a waste of time.

She doesn't know where they went, how to get even the shadows back, she charges through the shield with horn lowered and corona blazing, charges with intent to hurt, and trips over the first of the bodies. She tumbles, goes down, her face winds up pressed against a tiny corpse, and she looks up to find herself surrounded by ash and the remnants of walls and dead foals, dead foals everywhere, her legs instinctively kick, but she is only bruising dead flesh and more tiny bodies fall in to fill the gaps. She cannot move without damaging the remnants of what should have been a life, but she has to get away, she needs to get away from this, she has to move and so the dead are pushed, kicked, but there are always more bodies, always more, and just ahead of her, there is a scream of pain, a scream she's heard before, it makes her focus just enough and there are still bodies, she's practically swimming in a sea of corpses but somepony is alive ahead of her, if only until the moment when she decides to die.

She reaches her, and sees the twisting. The writhing. Wing bones shattering under the skin, turning to dust. The dust becomes clumps, domes bulge out her coat, move up the neck in a river of traveling tumors, further distort her agonized features before erupting from the forehead as a horn. Gold flares, but only for a moment. And then the horn crumbles, the flakes fall onto the hooves and where those hooves touch the earth, wilted plants spring forth and wrap around legs, preventing escape.

"I," she says, and for a moment, it is all she can say at all. "I. I..."

Her teeth tear at the vines. But it is no use. She can break them, but as soon as she does, wind pummels them from above, presses them against the ground. She raises her field to shield them from that and a second color ignites, binds in chains of glow. Counter, and it provides enough time for the vines to return.

Trapped. Forever trapped. Forever screaming, and she's screaming again, she may be here screaming until --

-- and then the scream becomes a laugh. The laugh she would give so very much to never hear again.

"I," she laughs, "am. What happens. When it goes. Wrong."

The eyes lock on her own. Purple. Tan. Blue. Over and over.

"What makes you. Think. You're. What happens. When it goes. Right?"

She pulls back. But it is all she can do, for the vines are now around her own legs, there is dirt mounding up her hooves, earth reaching for her --

"Broken," she laughs. "Always the broken. Begin -- broken. Finish -- shattered. I... broken. Everypony sees. You... broken. Everypony learns. Broken -- forever..."

The laugh. The laugh which should never be heard again. The laugh which will ring out across centuries. It fills her ears, it fills the world, until there is almost nothing but the laugh and nothing else could ever be again but two trapped ponies in a field of bodies and a joke unending, the earth pulls at her and...

"...Twilight, wake up! Y'gotta -- you have to wake up! Twilight, come on, wake --"

-- and her eyes opened.

The first thing she saw was green, and then Applejack pulled back enough to let her see the rest of the farmer's worried face. (Still no hat.)

"...Applejack?"

"You were having a nightmare," Applejack stated. "A bad one. You were writhing under your sheets, your horn was starting to spark, and I couldn't get you to wake up. But you're awake now, and --"

Twilight was breathing too fast. The sweat was dripping from her small body, soaking the sheets. But she was awake. And with wakefulness came --

-- forgetting.

She couldn't allow that to happen.

"-- Applejack, I'm sorry, but -- stop, please, just for a few seconds, unless there's an emergency, stop..."

"But you were having a --"

"-- I know. And -- I don't want to talk about it right now. But if we don't need to gallop anywhere this second, then I need to remember it. I think... things happened... please, just give me a few minutes, let me try to concentrate, I need to remember as much of this as I can. I have to focus."

Confused, "Remember... a nightmare?

"Please."

Slowly, Applejack nodded, lowered the front half of her body back to the floor, retreated three hoofsteps, sat down and waited. Twilight closed her eyes, concentrated, forced herself to think. Portions were already trying to fade, and the only way she was going to keep them was to go over them again and again. No matter how little she wanted to. Voluntarily and majestically ignoring the fact that she never wanted to think about any part of it ever again -- just like pretty much everything else about Discord's mission.

Well, Twilight darkly considered, at least it's part of a matching set. And forced herself through the review, over and over and...

It took ten minutes until she was confident enough to stop, another thirty seconds before the trembling began to subside. And then she finally glanced at the window, and saw Moon on the descent.

"What's going on?" she finally got to ask. "Why did you come in from the cottage so early?" Although she was just happy to see Applejack coming into her room at all.

The green eyes closed. Stayed that way for a long moment, and opened slowly, as if constant had become variable again and gravity had tripled for her eyelids alone.

"We have to talk. While everypony else is still asleep. While we can leave privately, without anypony seeing us, and talk outside the castle."

And Twilight thought she knew -- but something could have happened overnight, something she'd slept through or been absent for due to her talk with Doctor Gentle, and so she had to confirm. "About what?"

Another long pause, and the unbound blonde tail slowly shifted across the floor. It took thirty counted heartbeats before the earth pony could finish making the third-greatest effort of her life.

"You know about two," Applejack said. "It's time to complete it."

Earth Tones

Secrets moved under Moon.

Twilight didn't know how Applejack was choosing their path and after a while, wasn't sure one had been chosen at all. The farmer, who had taken the lead, had led them out of the castle, moving as quietly as she could. They'd paused at one point -- or rather, there had been a pause right after Applejack had yanked Twilight into a shadowed alcove by her tail, and they'd hidden there until the confused servant had fully passed, unable to figure out just where the yelp had come from.

Once they were on the grounds, things had accelerated somewhat. They'd avoided the exposed surface of the sports section: Applejack had gone directly for the trees. And after that... she would take a few steps. Look around. Sometimes she would close her eyes for a moment, and her ears would rotate as if listening to -- nothing. Nothing Twilight could hear. And then they would keep going forward, or change direction, double back a little...

Twilight didn't know how Applejack was choosing their path and, after roughly ten minutes, wasn't entirely sure Applejack knew either. There was a chance they were moving more or less at random in an attempt to shake a pursuit which wasn't coming. But when the farmer stopped... when she seemed to be listening...

"You walked."

What are you listening for, Applejack? You said you talk to the earth, and that... something's saying yes. What else does it tell you?

She wanted to wriggle inside her own skin, the excitement of getting to learn building with every hoofstep she took, especially something no unicorn might have been taught for a very long time. She wanted to search every tree and bush for hundreds of body lengths around to make sure they were alone. She wanted her scrolls, with enough ink and quills to build a little library in the wild zone. She wanted...

...to not be afraid.

Applejack, picking out the path, rotated her ears left, right, went for the former. And they trotted through trees and grass and the sounds of a wild zone which never entirely slept, path partially illuminated by waxing, nearly-full Moon. There were times when that light made it easy to find a new way. There were others when the shadows formed the outlines of something which Twilight's mind was all too ready to see as ponies, and she found herself making little jumps away from threats which didn't exist.

She heard something small die, off to their right: the squeal, the snarls. Then something larger, lured in by the fresh blood.

No earth ponies in Trotter's Falls. If nopony followed us, then we're okay. But Ponyville... is a settled zone with an earth pony majority. When we get home...

She was going to be told a secret. Something every earth pony seemed to feel was so crucial that they spent their entire lives in keeping it hidden. What happened if they knew somepony had found out? What would be done to the one who had told?

Twilight shivered, deep under Moon, so close to rising Sun. (There was nothing reassuring about the approach of Sun, because it gave them that much more of a chance to be seen.) Applejack led her further into the darkness, towards that which was not promised to be light.

Finally, Applejack stopped. Her ears stilled, her eyes closed for a brief moment. And then she lowered herself to the earth, belly and barrel tight against old soil, which squelched slightly as her mass was brought to bear against it. Unbound tail draped across old fallen leaves, along with a few fresher specimens: fall was on the approach, and some of the trees had begun to acknowledge the change. There was one directly behind her, thick branches blocking most of Moon, dappling the farmer's body with shadow.

She silently nodded to Twilight, who slowly trotted over, then tried to assume a matching position. It wasn't a pleasant process: she didn't have Rarity's mild rupophobia, but she'd never liked being dirty. The humidity in the area was on the increase: pegasi gradually building up the air's moisture content in preparation for the storm. Added to the morning dew, it made the ground into something like exceptionally thick mud, and bits of it squelched up between the leaves to mat her fur. Applejack didn't seem to notice, much less mind. Twilight could barely stay still.

With the two of them right next to each other... Twilight was the smallest of the Bearers: the least height, the thinnest build. Applejack held down the other end of the bell curve, pinned under her solid mass. The tallest among them, a few hoof-heights larger than Twilight, with the single most muscular body. The very noticeable discrepancy wasn't something Twilight had ever found any level of threat in: it was just who Applejack was, and Big Mac made her (plus just about everypony else) look small. But now, being next to all that strength, knowing there was another level of power behind it...

When she was close to Applejack, she often had the sensation of being guarded. Twilight knew she wasn't the only one: Fluttershy had once confessed something similar, knowing the earth pony stood ready to serve as the final barrier between them and anything which might threaten. A barrier which... Twilight had seen as a rather ineffective one, for things would come along which couldn't be beaten with kicks and well-aimed lasso loops. Physically, Applejack was the strongest among them, with Pinkie rather close behind. It was just that the missions brought them to places where that kind of strength meant nothing.

Where the other strength had never been seen.

It was the mud which made it so hard to remain in place. It was... a lot of things --

-- Applejack was looking at her, and Twilight wasn't sure how long that had been going on. The farmer's expression was carrying a weak level of vague bemusement.

"What are you thinking about?"

"...sorry?"

"Twilight, we met each other a little over three years ago. We've had a lot of time together. We know each other, just a bit. Right?"

She thought about how little she'd truly known Applejack at all, and still went with "...right."

"So trust me when I say I know what your 'I'm kind of insulted by something and I don't want to tell anypony what it's about' face looks like." (Twilight blinked. Blushed deeply enough that she wondered if Applejack was feeling the heat.) "What are you thinking about?"

There was nothing for it but the truth -- that, and to get ready for the possibility of another fight. "The missions."

"What about them?"

"How you could do... what you do." Whatever that was. "And we were out there, in all that, we could have died, and you never --"

The green eyes widened, with the movement enough to make Twilight pause -- and then Applejack laughed.

It was soft. There wasn't all that much actual humor in it. Disbelief, mostly, and a rather significant portion of insult returned. But there was laughter.

"Oh, for... Twilight, think."

Confusion. "What am I supposed to be thinking about?"

"You're upset about the missions? Because you think I never... Twilight, think. Run through everything in your head. Walk around it in a circle until you wear the forest into a groove. But when you're thinking about that, think about this: earth ponies have more than the Effect. Look at it that way, in all those memories. And when you're done? Tell me what you saw."

"Applejack --"

The orange body shifted a little, leaves breaking under badly-repressed frustration. "Think, Twilight. It's what you're good at, right? Just take everything you thought you knew, and then add one -- extra -- fact..."

Twilight stared at her. Applejack, silent, stared right back.

But she...

...she never...

...oh.

"Your mouth just dropped open." There was a tiny smile lurking in the words. "Y'know that, right?"

There is a bare plain full of rough-dug holes, and those holes close as they watch, as they race towards them, trying to get through before the last one is filled with fresh-dug earth. They fail, again and again as their friend's captors torment them, with legs tripped, tails yanked, attempts made to pull them in. They fail until they can fail no more, with Rarity trapped underground and no way to reach her --

-- except for one hole.

One still-open tunnel which, with all others closed off faster than they'd been able to respond, had no reason to be open.

"The Dogs..." Twilight whispered.

The smile came out into the open. "Jus' figured that one out, huh? Luna's tail, I thought I was pushing my luck there, and I had to keep fighting them all the way. It's like Rarity said: they've got magic of their own, and that tunneling's got some power behind it. They were trying to fountain up from below, I was asking the earth not to let 'em, and I was staying right on top of the thing just so I could try to talk louder than they could. And when they pulled us in... if you hadn't tried using Rarity's gem-finding spell and had it actually lead us to her, I was gonna have to get in front of you and... well, I was hoping I could pick her out down there. Never had to try it before, not underground with that kind of range. Finding four legs instead of two. And then when the Dogs jumped on our backs and tried to rope my mouth... I guess they sort of remember about truespeech, a few of them. They just think it involves actual talking. And --" a snort of derision "-- they couldn't even get the loops right..."

But the next memory was already coming forward.

They are climbing what will eventually be known as Dragon Mountain, and there is a rockslide in progress. Boulders are crashing down all around them, and she cannot think. There is too much happening, too much chaos, no pattern she can perceive, much less work with. Far too many targets to field-effect at once, she cannot yet teleport fully on instinct and to do so would mean abandoning her friends. So she gallops, unable to focus, unable to think, as masses large enough to kill them all mercilessly impact their area, there is a shadow rushing towards her and she will be crushed -- but then the hard head goes into her saddlebag, drives them both out of the way, there is a tremendous cloud of dirt kicked up from the ground and then it's over. The boulders have stopped falling, and the largest ones have become embedded in the huge pile of earth before them, the thing they must now climb over in order to reach the cave. None of them are hurt.

Except that there had been no dirt falling. Just the boulders.

"Everypony okay?"

"Thanks to you I am."

She'd nuzzled. One of the first times she'd ever nuzzled anypony, the nuzzle she thought was meant for friends. And there had been a look of purest gratitude on the farmer's face, of acknowledgment, and she hadn't understood. Why would anypony seem so grateful just to be mentioned when they'd just --

" -- thanks to you. Thanks to you I... Sun and Moon, the rockslide, Applejack, what did you do..."

The smile was a little bit rueful, but still bore a touch of weary pride. "Can't do much 'bout gravity. It's not levitation, Twilight: I can't ask something to not fall once it's gotten started. And honestly, I got lucky, working on the gallop like that, and it was pure luck, nopony getting hit in the first stages. Took a few seconds to set up the ridges along the impact and bounce lines which sent everything away from us at the end. But there was only a couple of places I could try to have it all land, and... well, the most natural direction was in front of us. Sorry about the climb, but... it was patchwork. I was yelling questions as loud as I could while I was still trying to be polite -- and I had to keep an eye on everypony at the same time, then I saw that one heading for you... I'm still not sure how Fluttershy got buried like that. I thought I'd gotten it about as wrong as I could have, right up until she popped out -- seriously, close your mouth already. You're gonna let the flies in."

She couldn't seem to manage it, not for more than was required to produce what little speech could still emerge.

"...what else?"

"For Dragon Mountain? The boulder at the top. That was hard. I'm not a rockbreaker. Never did it before and haven't been able to do it since. But when we got knocked towards it, I knew if our backs went into that, it was it or us, and -- maybe I screamed."

Twilight swallowed. "You told me... it was a mineral-glued collection of clumps which only looked like a boulder, and we just hit the fault lines -- that's what I told the others..."

"Yeah. That's what it was. After I screamed." This smile was purely rueful. "I kind of wish I remembered exactly what I said..."

Moon was being lowered now, and the shadows shifted as the sky began to lighten. Not too much, though: Sun was still some distance away, and the increasing humidity also meant a thickening blanket of clouds. It was still more than enough to let Twilight see Applejack's smile fade away.

"Whenever I could, Twi," she softly said. "Every time. Because it's not that we're not supposed to use our magic. It's that we're not supposed to use it in ways where we get caught. It's got to look like luck, coincidence, and that ain't always easy to come up with on the gallop. But I did what I could for everypony, and I swore I was doing too much sometimes, that somepony was gonna figure it all out. But when you know a secret... part of you is always wondering if somepony else knows it too. Might be looking for it, or just put it all together, and to me, it felt like I was giving you so many pieces for the puzzle, when all you do is try to put things together, get them in order... But you never did."

The first hints of birdsong. Enough light to let her pick out the colors of the naturally-fallen leaves around her hooves.

"Why is it a secret?"

It might have been the biggest question, and so the soft words had been at the very top of the checklist.

Applejack closed her eyes.

"I don't know."

The tree above them shed a few more pieces of its unneeded burden, and little bits of beautiful death drifted down around them.

"...you -- you don't know --"

A hoof came up. Twilight stopped.

"There's stories," Applejack quietly said. "That's what we're told: stories. About... ponies who talked, mostly, or wanted to, and... maybe a lot of them are just to scare us, so we won't. Or they're things which happened and got turned into stories, and our mommies and daddies never wanted to hear them told about us. But if you listen to enough stories... there's one which you know, Twilight, which just about everypony knows. The one about the first Hearth's Warming Eve. What are the earth ponies like in that story, Twilight?"

She winced. "One's... a puddinghead."

"Yeah." Darkly, "I felt so good when I didn't get that role. And then I felt lousy, 'cause Pinkie got stuck with it. And the other one's not so bad, but... what do the earth ponies in the story have to do?"

Too slowly, "...kick over their food."

Applejack nodded. Her head went down, and for a moment, her chin was resting on her forelegs.

"There's some folks who say 'earth pony' and mean 'dirt' or 'mud'," she quietly said. "And some of them just say those words, to save time. You don't get it much in Ponyville, not where we're the majority. Canterlot, you might hear it once in a while. Here... yeah, I know there's a few here: you didn't catch everything they were saying after we left the bar, but I did. It was slurred, here and there, but I know when somepony's calling me a clod. All we're good for is food. Can't say it too close, of course, or we might kick you -- but hey, they've got magic, they can probably beat it. That's what they believe, and they just keep believing it right up until..."

Her head came up again, and those green eyes quietly regarded Twilight.

"There's a true story," she said. "True enough that it made it into a few of the history books -- just not with everything intact. And when you worked in the Archives, you were in the Ancient History department, right?"

"With a little time in Rare Documents," Twilight slowly nodded. "Why?"

"So maybe you know about it," the farmer softly said. "Tell me a story, Twi, if you can." A slow breath. "Did you ever read about The Great Nearly War?"

Twilight winced.

"An' that's a yes."

Instinctively, "I... oh, Applejack, I'm -- I'm sorry --"

"Why? Wasn't you. You weren't there. You didn't do it. Ain't nopony alive who was part of it. So tell me about it."

It wasn't something most ponies studied. You had to be at the postgraduate level before you even started to spot hints that it had happened. And if you were a unicorn, once you knew, you never wanted to talk about it.

But Applejack was talking, when it was so hard for her. When she might have been the first to do so in a very long time. It gave Twilight no excuses for not matching a fraction of her, for something that was no true secret at all. She just wished it was. That the world could forget. That she could.

Even so, she still tried to shield herself.

"Supposedly --"

"-- no such thing. It happened. Go on."

Twilight swallowed.

"After the Unification -- that's when the Princesses were still trying to put Equestria together, bring everypony in -- they never fully succeeded, that's why we've still got Prance, but honestly, if you've ever met somepony from Prance --"

"-- you're stalling, Twi."

"I know." The next two gulps brought down air. "Okay. The short version is that there were a bunch of unicorns who didn't want to be part of Equestria, and they finally declared they were breaking away, making their own nation. I sort of got the impression that they might have held some power before the Princesses appeared, and they didn't want to give it up. They really didn't want to do much of anything except order everypony else to do things for them. But that meant... getting other ponies -- and they -- they hired a lot of mercenaries, they put themselves on the front lines because maybe they thought nopony else should be giving any orders, they just weren't going to fight, and they -- marched on the biggest earth pony settlement they could find, because they were... they were going to..."

The green eyes were patient.

"...take slaves. Make the earth ponies work for them and grow food and do everything they didn't want to do, everything their own magic couldn't --"

Which was when the next words in the book raised themselves in her mind, floated at the forefront of inner vision and shone with the light of revelation.

"But there wasn't a war, was there?" Applejack quietly asked.

"...because there was an earthquake. The whole invading camp just -- dropped -- Sun and Moon, Applejack, the books just thought it was the worst luck ever -- you -- you can --"

"Naw. Not by myself. Not something that big." A slow breath, which didn't make up for the one Twilight couldn't seem to take. "Unicorns... from what you've said, it's almost impossible for you to work together, right? Two, maybe three, and that's it. Pegasi... y'heard Rainbow. Too many, and it can all get out of control. But with us... we're voices in the orchestra, Twi. And when a bunch of us all sing the same thing, at the same time... we can get loud. There were hundreds of earth ponies in that settlement, and every last one of them asked the same question at the same time. They asked the earth to make it stop. And it did. A few of the ones at the edge of the camp cleared the hole before it dropped down all the way, and they're the ones who put it in the books. But the luck stuff... I kind of figured there's earth ponies working on some of the books, in the schools... It's hard to make something completely disappear, a lot of the time. But you can make it look like something else, if you've got a lot of time and nopony left who could say different."

As usual, the magical aspect was foremost on her mind. "Automatically... automatically additive --"

"-- goes both ways," Applejack stopped her. "I ask for something. Somepony else asks for it not t' happen. If we've got the exact same strength, we'll cancel. The earth listens to all of us, and it doesn't feel like dealing with any arguments." This breath was even slower. "My Daddy... he told me about the Great Nearly War, and he had this idea. Most earth ponies think the Secret is about keeping ponies in the dark. So that if anypony ever goes after us again, they won't be ready for what happens. But my Daddy... he thought it could be more about everything else. About the monsters, about stuff like the Nightmare and things that might be bigger than that. Because when you're going to attack, you find out what the enemy can do, right? Your brother must have said something about that. You get information. Every time any other nation's taken on Equestria, they knew they had to watch for workings and techniques, knew how to stop them. So if there was anything really big... there would be one last surprise. And maybe that would be enough. Except --"

Her head went down again and this time, her chin touched the dirt.

The words were nearly lost, absorbed by the damp soil. "-- it didn't work."

"...Applejack?"

The earth pony wouldn't look at her. "'My horn!' 'Your horn!' Twi, did you really think he didn't do anything to me? There was a light, and... I couldn't hear anything. I tried to scream and it was like somepony had torn my throat out. Everything we'd done, all the earth ponies, everything I hadn't said, and he just snapped his talons and it was all gone. I held it together until I got in the maze, or at least I made it look like I was okay. But I was shaky, I wasn't thinking straight because I was still screaming inside, trying to make any sound come out. And then when... when it all started, I... the inversion, and..."

They seldom talked about it, any of them, and even Twilight had known that the worst thing she could ever possibly do to Fluttershy was press her too closely about the moment Discord had gone directly into the yellow head. Twilight had projected resonance, pure resonance, the emotions behind each Element, and that had been enough for restoration -- but not for healing. Luna had visited them in their nightscapes for moons after the statue had been returned to the garden, and that had only started after the town-wide battle over an old doll had told the palace there was something which needed to be treated.

They had healed, in time. All of them had. But they still hated talking about it, especially in the days since Fluttershy felt herself to have acquired a friend.

"He's old," Twilight offered, as gently as she could. "If there was a time before the Secret, he probably remembers it. So he was ready --"

"-- doesn't matter," the farmer miserably replied. "Didn't work. I went down, like everypony went down. I fell for the lies. And after it all ended... I went to Pinkie, I told her I was sorry, sorry because I knew what it was like to be her and I'd never known how miserable it was, how much it hurt, when you can hear the music and it all goes away... and you know what she did? Just adjusted my Daddy's hat for me, then said I had it worse. Because I'd heard it, and then I lost it. Smiled when she said it, said she couldn't really miss what she'd never had. Pinkie smiles when she's trying to make me feel better. Smiles when she's telling lies that she thinks are gonna help..."

The sky was beginning to grey now, and the hues muted the world.

"Pinkie's got it worse," Applejack sadly said. "Always has. And she keeps going. Deaf and mute and just keeps going. She's stronger than me, sometimes, in a lot of ways, especially after what she came from, what she survived. But she should have been so strong, being a rock farmer, and she's deaf and mute and..." She trailed off, but in a way which said there would be more coming, after a little more strength was found.

It seemed to be a morning for explanations, and Twilight was starting to wonder why.

"You're -- telling me a lot."

There should have been a smile, and there was not. "Can't keep half a secret. Not most of the time. And with her around... I already did it. I already betrayed. So there ain't much point to holding anything back, not when the one thing I don't answer could be what we needed."

With the desperation fully in the open, "Applejack, you didn't --"

Sharply, "-- don't tell me what I did or didn't do. I was there. I can't take it back. I can just keep going forward and hope there's something at the other end. Something which isn't a noose. So keep talking, Twilight. Ask whatever you need to. We're both in this now and one way or another, we're going to hang together."

It took forty long seconds before Twilight could make herself speak again.

"Rock farming."

"Yeah?"

It had been nagging her since her second week in Ponyville. "What the buck is rock farming?"

The left side of Applejack's mouth quirked up.

"This one's probably gonna sting a little," the farmer predicted. Twilight waited. "Okay. Rock farmers are... they're some of the strongest, usually. They've got tools nopony else can master -- tools, that's what you usually call a category of requests."

"So you can't learn them all? Like pegasi can?"

A low-lying shrug. "Some families just have different kits. I can learn, but... some stuff just never came. And it's not like Pinkie could let me listen in on her."

It brought Twilight to what she thought was a natural digression, something she suddenly wanted to get out of the way before what seemed to be promised as a major impact kicked her in the face. "Applejack? How -- how strong are you?"

"I ain't you. I ain't bad either," was all she got. "We don't have meters, Adjusted or otherwise. Rock farming?" Twilight forced a nod. "I'll make the charge line straight and fast. Rock farmers make gems."

Twenty seconds of purest silence.

"Gems."

"Yeah. Don't ask me how: it ain't my tool and Pinkie can't do it, so I've never heard it being done. But from what she said, they just -- talk. To the rocks. To the inside of the rocks. It's slow... takes a day to do the smallest one, years for something big. But the insides just -- shift around. 'course, you need the right kind of rocks --"

"-- rock. farmers. make. gems."

"Rainbow's right. You really do repeat stuff a lot."

"Why?"

And in a casual offhoofed manner which Twilight (much) later realized was put on just to see her reaction, "Oh, they're for the dragons..."

Twilight won the world championship of Shh, set the all-time record, and then kept right on going.

"Breathe, Twi. Blink."

"...dragons."

Steadily, "Yeah. The way the stories make it out... way back when, while Discord was still running things, it was kind of hard to survive, you know? Even dragons had trouble. You know Spike, better than anypony, and that means you know how his flame works. He uses gems for fuel. And it's hard to find gems in the ground when the ground could turn to water at any moment. A dragon who's out of flame... well, they're still big, for the adults, and they've still got the teeth, but it was Discord's time and they needed everything they could get. So the rock farmers made deals. One family, one dragon, back then. They made gems, the dragon ate -- and then if the rock farmers got in trouble, the dragon tried to get them out of it because without them, no more gems. And there were only so many rock farmers -- still aren't that many -- and just so fast they could work, so the dragon couldn't figure they'd just find somepony else. It was just fair trade." Thoughtfully, "I always figured that digging ground Rarity likes so much was where a rock farm used to be. Way too late to feel the traces, but with that many in one place..."

Blink. Breathe. Repeat.

"And -- now? With the dragons?"

A shrug. "They've still gotta eat. Some families, the really skilled ones, are doing more than one dragon, since the tool's so hard to find. Pinkie's folks are one of them. They've got money, her folks, and I think some of it's been sitting on that farm for hundreds of years: they just don't spend anything. But they're some of the best rock farmers in the world, from what she's always said. It's in their blood. Generation after generation, pony after pony --" and dead stop.

Twilight quietly finished. "Until Pinkie."

Sadly, "Yeah. And... her father..."

Applejack broke the world record, then created a new league just to showcase the higher level of talent.

"Applejack?"

"It's -- not my story. And usually, that means I wouldn't be the one who tells it. Shouldn't be. But Pinkie and I talked last night, while you were with Doctor Gentle. In case this came up. She gave me permission. And she said... the next time you see her... if you understand, you'll know what to do. So just let me talk for a while, Twilight. Just -- let me talk, because it's not my story, and it still hurts..."

She did one of the hardest things she could do. She made herself be silent.

"Pinkie's a rock farmer," Applejack slowly started. "From a family of rock farmers. A family that always married pure. They've got a system going, with some of the other families, making sure they keep everything together. That the kids marry the right ponies. But she never had any real Surges, and when her magic should have come in... she was deaf, Twilight, deaf and mute. Her father put her out there in the fields every day, pushing rocks with her head, and he screamed at her when she got back and hadn't done anything. Because his whole family for generations had the right feel, the right tool, and she must have had it, so she wasn't using it to spite him --" She saw the confusion. "Yeah, I know. Doesn't make any sense to think that way. So after a while, he started saying his wife cheated on him. Pinkie was somepony else's foal. Not like there's anypony out there to cheat with, but making sense isn't his strong point. He... hates a lot of stuff, Pinkie's father. Like just about everypony who isn't pure, and everypony who isn't a rock farmer, and... everypony, that's almost easier. He hates everypony. And with Pinkie being deaf and mute, he hated her..."

All Twilight could do was breathe.

"Started feeding her less, to motivate her," Applejack forced herself to go on. "Started... get right to it: he kicked her."

And wait for her own tears to stop.

"One day... it got bad. It got worse, and then it got worst. She had her mark by then, y'see. And it wasn't a rock farmer's mark, not even close. Pinkie said she threw a party for her family the first day after her manifest, and she got her parents to dance for the first time she could remember, but... it didn't last. She got one dance. And after that, her father... he started kicking her. Because he said she'd stolen from him. Taken money from the family." A snort broke through the misery. "Stolen. Seriously, Twilight, stolen. Even if she took the money, the rock farm's way out in the middle of nowhere. Where's she gonna spend it? She'd have to be gone for days just to do the simplest shopping. Did he think he was just looking at his own memories the whole time? That he had an earth pony filly who could teleport? Never found out what was going through that thick skull, even when I got to -- well, that's for later: just wait. But he said she'd stolen from him, and he kicked her, and -- she finally kicked back. Got away from him, got out of the house and off the farm, and she never went back. Doctor Gentle found her after a while, brought her to Ponyville, found somepony who would take her in, and the Cakes -- she's legally adopted, did you know that? She's their daughter in everything but the blood. And there was this weird little pony galloping around town staring at everything because she'd never seen a town, who didn't know what anything was or how anypony who wasn't a rock farmer behaved, talking in an accent weirder than anything Rarity's ever put on -- she got rid of that after a couple of years, she wanted to fit in -- and trying to make friends when she didn't know how. Lots of ponies at school took advantage of that, made her do things promising they'd be her friends if she did them, and then they just thought of more things... Blow your nose, Twi."

She did. It took several tries.

"I got sick of it after a while," Applejack said. "I had some words with them."

She had to talk. "You mean kicks."

"...yeah." Not without a smile. "And then we were friends. Me and the strangest earth pony I'd ever met, the one who couldn't... anything. But my Daddy loved her, and... we've been together for years, Twilight. It was just me and Rarity in town to start, and we never got close to each other when we were fillies. Then Pinkie came in. Fluttershy was a few years later. Rainbow right after she finished school. Then you and Spike. And over all those years, all that time we've been friends... I still can't ask her why it's Pinkie Pie. Not when it could be Pinkie Cake. I don't understand that, and... I can't ask. Not that. Maybe not ever."

And Twilight found she couldn't either.

"She's completely -- deaf?" She'd never heard of a pony who couldn't do anything with their racial magic: even the weakest unicorns could get a full water mug off the table, although it might quaver all the way to their mouths.

Applejack started to nod -- stopped. "Once at the end of a Wrap-Up, when it was down to just the earth ponies and the seeds were going down, with everypony talking at the same time -- I caught her tilting her head, twisting her ears. Like she could almost hear us. But then she stopped."

"The seeds --"

Applejack looked at her. Tapped an orange forehoof against the soil.

A pit opened, one hoofwidth wide, about half a hoof-height deep.

"You know," she casually said, "Spike's pretty good with his claws -- but seriously, Twilight, having everypony there -- you really slowed us down..."

Twilight stared at the little hole for a while, as Applejack watched her.

"What -- what's it like?"

Applejack didn't speak. She just snorted.

Twilight didn't understand. "Sorry?"

"Let's just say I've been -- waiting for that one. For a while. Twilight -- how would you explain music to somepony who can't hear? I tried to teach Pinkie, just in case it was only her family's tools. Nothing ever worked. And she grew up with rock farmers, the ones who know they're pure. She might have seen just about everything. Sometimes I think she knows more than I do about more than a few tools, even the ones I can use. But it's just -- knowing. Reading the music on a sheet, but not being able to play. She's never heard truespeech. She's just known it was there, all her life. How long have you known for? How am I supposed to tell you what it's like when all you know is workings?"

The answer came immediately. "Maybe the same way Rainbow's teaching me to fly."

Applejack's body heaved -- and then the larger pony was standing, staring down at Twilight. "Teach you? Twilight, do you understand what I did just by telling you? And now you want to try and do some of it? I don't know if that's even possible! And if you ever got caught -- you're a unicorn! You don't --"

"-- Rainbow said that."

Somehow, the soft words got through. "...what?"

"That I was a unicorn. That it was why I couldn't fly. Because I was still a unicorn in my head, no matter what my body looked like. But she also said that... part of me was pegasus now, and I had to try and listen to it." Carefully, gently, placidly looking up at her friend. "So part of me has to be earth pony too, doesn't it? I'm trying to listen to that pegasus inside, and it got me in the air, for a little while. Why can't I listen a little more?"

A lighter shade of grey now, thick clouds moving faster in the high levels. Humidity continuing to rise.

More than a little disbelieving, "You listened to -- the pegasus inside you."

"Well -- Rainbow told me to... um... pretend I was her..."

Solidly, "That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard."

"It worked. Just for a few seconds, but I got in the air --"

"Stupid and it worked," Applejack snorted. "That's Rainbow all over. Twilight, the only time I asked you to think like an earth pony, work like an earth pony, you cheated. If you've got an inner earth pony, she's buried deep. And... teaching... teaching a..."

More leaves fell. One landed in the little pit.

"I've been thinking," Twilight eventually said. "About what happened at the lake. About -- what I said."

"Have you." There was something of a plain statement in that.

"Yes. A lot. It... hurts a little more every time I go over it. And I never really got a chance to say... I'm sorry, Applejack. I am. I shouldn't have said it. Even if you couldn't do anything except the Effect, it was still the wrong thing to say."

Several slow breaths, every one of which reminded Twilight of just how large the farmer was. "Ah -- I accept, Twi. Okay? I... ever since the ravine, I was just -- waiting, and -- I'm sorry for charging, I'm sorry for your ribs, and --"

"-- but..." She braced herself. "...it's not completely my fault."

Applejack blinked.

Carefully, "Say what now?"

"It's the Secret. The Great Nearly War was the Secret. If those unicorns knew that attacking would get them wiped out, they never would have tried in the first place. If I knew earth ponies could do more, I wouldn't have said something that stupid about her in the first place. Some ponies use all those words because... Applejack, when you make yourself look weak... how much damage has the Secret done?"

Slowly, the farmer settled back to the earth.

"You've got a weird way of saying you're sorry. Blaming other ponies for what you said."

Quickly, "That's not how I --"

"-- I know." Applejack sighed, glanced up at the lightening (but not light enough) sky. "We don't have much time before we have to start getting back. Lost a lot to your nightmare. Anything crucial y'need right now?"

Unfortunately, the answer was yes -- and Twilight already knew Applejack was going to hate the question. "How do we stop you?"

"One more time," came the slow words. "Say what now?"

"Sorry," Twilight winced. "It's bad phrasing. I meant -- how do we stop an earth pony? If she gets scared when she's in that form -- how do we stop her? Unicorn: backlash, restraints. Pegasus: immobilize. With an earth pony --" she spread her forehooves "-- what do we do?"

With narrowed eyes, "I know you need this. I know we need this. But -- seriously, Twilight: do you go around telling everypony that if they hit your horn while you're casting something big, it could kill you?"

"I -- I grew up with unicorns --"

"-- doesn't answer it. Rarity didn't explain backlash until after the rams. I knew about it. Didn't know the differentiation stuff, but backlash... I knew about that. And you never brought it up. So if one of us had gone into you by accident during a fight..."

She swallowed. Hard.

"You keep your secrets," Applejack quietly told her. "Even when you don't have to -- any siblings coming to mind right about now? Even when you shouldn't. But we need this, because of her. So... there's four ways. We can't do two of them. One might not work. We've -- gotta count on you for the fourth."

Four? Twilight listened.

"The ones that I know won't work... first one's subtraction. Debating. She asks for something, I ask for the opposite. But that's strength coming off strength, and -- she's shouting. I've never seen somepony that strong, not one pony all by herself. Maybe only the Princesses could match her. Take my truespeech off her shout, and it'll still mostly leave a shout -- just one where the echo goes a few less body lengths. If we had more earth ponies, a lot of earth ponies... enough of us saying no all the time and we can shut anypony down. That's how we stop Surges from the colts and fillies born to pegasi and unicorns. We keep ponies in range, listening. Drop by a lot. But this is Trotter's Falls..." The name was nearly spat. "There's nopony to help out. Just me and Pinkie, and when it comes to debates, just me. I'm not enough, nowhere near."

"We could try to bring in reinforcements from another settled zone," Twilight pointed out.

"Go ahead," was the instant reply. "Baltimare's three gallops out. And when you get there -- what do you tell them?"

It was a legitimate (and legitimately depressing) point. "The other one that won't work?"

"Direct combat," Applejack said. "Asking for different things, instead of just trying to shut each other down. Striking against each other with whatever answers you get. She's too strong there, no matter how many tools she has or which ones: anything she shouts for is gonna hit too hard. And the one time I did it... I barely won. But I had to win, I did anything to win, and he wasn't ready for it --"

"-- you're not talking about Pinkie."

This smile was forced. "I said 'he'. Plus you might kind of remember I lost?"

"...who?"

Applejack was mostly watching the sky now.

"You don't tell her."

"...who?"

"She can't know, Twi. She doesn't know, because it was just me there that day, and I've never told her. She's -- got autophobia, you know that? I went into the library one day and looked it up, while the old librarian was in town. She's afraid of being alone, more than anything in the world, and when she thinks she's going to wind up alone... that's when things start to get bad. When she thinks she's been left behind, or that ponies are abandoning her, going away. But it'll be worse, so much worse, if she knew who wanted her..."

"Applejack --" hastily, as Sun was truly on the rise now, "if it's important, I won't tell her, but you're still not saying who I'm not supposed to be --"

"-- Pinkie. Her father."

"...what?"

"He -- came to town. Well, not to town. The Acres. About two years after my Mommy and Daddy... he caught me alone. He was looking for the Acres, for the Apples. Because he'd heard, don't ask me how, that we married just about as pure as any earth pony family which wasn't rock farmers, so we were the ponies he could just barely stand to talk to -- because we were so pure, at least by our standards." With a light shrug, "Well -- we've got one pegasus. But she's adopted. Anyway, he found out where Pinkie was. If I had to guess... maybe one of his dragons flew over during the migration, and he'd just asked them to keep an eye out. But he came to the Acres, because he didn't know Ponyville or settled zones or much of anything that wasn't rocks. And he thought... he thought the Apples would help him get his daughter back."

Twilight instantly committed to the promise, even as her voice locked into confusion. "But -- he hated her. You said he --"

"My turn for bad words, Twi. I said 'daughter'. He meant 'property'. Maybe he wanted to get his money back, somehow. Or figured that if he didn't love her, nopony ever should. But he came for her, and he wanted us -- me -- to help him get her out. But she'd told me about the rock farm, everything about it, and... I said no, he challenged in the old way, we dug out the fosse right there, and... I won. Still not sure how. Maybe because everything he said... I think he's kind of a slow learner. It felt like he'd lost that way at least once before, and he still tried again. Stronger than me, stronger than just about anypony -- but not too fast, and not even a little imagination in his questions. Sent him off the Acres with what was left of his tail between his legs, and because he'd lost an old challenge, he couldn't come back, not to Ponyville. I told him I'd kill him if I ever saw him again." Her gaze finally came down, focused on Twilight. "And you know I wasn't lying."

It took a little time before Twilight could make herself continue. "I -- I won't tell her."

Neutrally, "Good. Want to hear the two which have a shot?" Twilight nodded. "They're both the same thing. Get her out of range. I've got my own field, Twi, and it radiates. But take me far enough away from the earth, and I can't reach it any more. I know it's there. But we can't hear each other. So use your field. Lift her high. I just don't know -- how high. How far off the ground she has to be, strong as she is. Worst-case, that one might be able to stand in Cloudsdale -- well, fall through -- and still be shouting."

"It has to be Rainbow and Fluttershy," Twilight quickly said. "Projecting too high... it's hard to keep cohesion in my field, especially after she reaches the point where it starts getting harder to see her. I could push her up for a while, but if she needs to go really high, it'll take a pegasus. Even if I can get flying, I can't stay up for long."

It produced a slow nod. "So we'll tell them. But the last one is all you." And with a steadiness which felt all too close to a lie, "Teleport her."

The Hall Of Legends -- the ravine...

"...it hurt you," Twilight whispered. "Applejack, what does it do..."

"It -- broke the link. Just for a few seconds. Twilight, when we go up -- if I try to visit Cloudsdale with you using an air carriage -- eventually, I get out of range. But it's slow and steady, the ascent, at least where my magic's concerned, and I still know the earth's down there. It ain't comfortable, but I can deal with it. But if you teleport me -- it happens all at once, and in your between, there isn't anything. It's like yanking a plant out of the soil: even if you jam it into a pot, there's gonna be shock. The stronger the pony, maybe added to the further you go, the worse it's gonna be. Me... I couldn't focus the first time, I was throwing up the second, and it took more time to recover. Even Pinkie got rocked a little when Discord put us here. So teleport her, first chance you get, if we get a chance at all. Then keep doing it if you have to. Maybe it'll build up. And eventually, you just might take her down."

And within Twilight's imagination, a small purple unicorn stood in the center of an earth pony settlement, surrounded by nothing but earth ponies, who knew only that there were other unicorns coming for them, but just about nothing about unicorns, and this time, the Secret had to be kept -- with a unicorn standing among them who knew that Secret...

"Make them use magic. Stay at range, so they think they're safe and can't attack conventionally. Get them in a position where they have to use their strongest spells. Ignore the partial coronas. But as soon as you see a full one -- double would be better, and you need triple to be sure -- go for their horns. Hard, sharp contact. Single will wound. Double is an almost guaranteed knockout. Triple will kill. Wait for them to use magic -- and then use it against them."

She felt their phantom gazes as they stared at the traitor to her own race.

"Applejack... I --"

Softly, "-- we have to head back. Now."

She forced herself to stand and on the third attempt, Applejack got her all the way up.

There was nopony who needed his services that early in the new morning (although there was always the chance of an unborn foal deciding to make a change in the schedule), and it left him free to go back. To see if his attempt had borne results, or if...

He knew she was alive, and a location she had been in. He didn't know if she would have gone back to the orchard, not if she'd found another source of food, or simply gotten close enough to the heart of the settled zone to have seen Trotter's Falls and decided that she needed to avoid it in her failure. But it had been worth the chance, and so he'd planted the resonance bombs, charging it with the emotion he was desperately hoping would work, added that to the fainter hope that she would know how to find her way home if she somehow managed to trigger it and failed to fight it off...

With her strength, as best he could estimate it... yes, she could have bested his spell, unicorn against unicorn. But she had no experience of such an attack, and so it might have gotten through.

If she'd returned to the orchard.

If she'd stepped into one of the five areas he'd been able to charge before his strength had begun to ebb.

If.

But there was still a chance. And so he fought to the last, and held out for a miracle as he entered her place.

Quiet. Dark. Nopony had activated the lighting devices, and the sounds of the world above could not reach them here. It made it easy to listen -- but it also made it easy to imagine, especially for a pony so desperate to hear. He wanted to hear speech, and so memories haunted his ears, so many of the discussions they'd had in the sitting room, over the dinner table, all throughout her place -- right up until the last, which had not quite qualified.

He wished to hear pages turning as she studied, pushing herself forward towards the conclusion of the Great Work, an effort which had failed in the most wonderful manner possible, and thus thousands of books rustled within his mind.

He wanted to hear her. To see, and he could almost see her, but... not as she was now. He so very badly wanted to see her now, to see if she looked at all like --

-- his ears twisted.

Again. More to the left.

He held his own breath, listened more closely, tried to fight through the fog of memory -- but in this case, there was almost nothing present which would have tried to force the illusion upon him. They had talked often, laughed sometimes, done so much together... but she had hardly ever wept.

Slowly, sliding his hooves, he moved through the dark, for to activate the lights before he saw her might be to alert her to his presence too early, make her fear his seeing the wondrous failure, and if his spell was not holding, she might flee again. She could teleport, and he would not be able to trace the destination.

Down the hall. (There wasn't much of a hall.) The sitting room, completely dark. The sound was still coming, and it felt as if the source was low. She might be on the floor. She might be -- all of two body lengths away. It was possible, just slightly possible, that another had found this place and set a trap, but... he didn't believe it. It certainly wasn't another pony who had triggered his bomb: the resonance would have sent them to their own homes. It...

...it had to be her.

She was alive, and she was right in front of him, in the dark, her crying slow and pained as she agonized over what she saw as her failure. He heard so much pain in her sounds. He knew the noises which emerged when agony and tears mixed, for it had come many times at the birthing table, and once from his own mouth.

She's alive.

She's here.

His right forehoof came up, touched the device, and the light turned on.

The blue head lifted, startled. Afraid. The horn began to ignite with gold --

-- she saw him, and the corona winked out. Her eyes closed. She shuddered, with the pain of failure. But he could only stare. At how much taller she was, perhaps a near-match for the younger of the Diarchy when she stood. At the length of that perfect horn. At her. And he had to see the mark, he had to see what symbol represented --

-- he pulled back. All his experience, everything he had seen and done, and still he pulled back, just for a moment. (With her eyes closed, she did not see that.) He didn't understand the mark, the loops, the center, and --

-- the silver moved.

She screamed.

Her body convulsed. Muscles twisted. Joints revolted against each other. The horn shrank, just enough to see.

He pulled back even further. Almost half a body length this time. But her eyes were open now, forced to see him through the pain, she was staring at him with nowhere to run, and he started to understand the failure for what it truly was, what might have happened, what was still happening...

Another scream, which she tried to bite back as her hooves scrambled for purchase. She was trying to get up. Perhaps to get away. But her legs refused to help her, not with the pain still building, she collapsed back to the floor and --

-- he was pressed against her.

He would not leave. Nothing could make him leave her. He pressed his body close, felt the muscles writhing under the skin. Nuzzled her as best he could.

Her tears fell. Those, at least, were normal. His own soaked into her coat as the hue of her fur slowly began to shift.

He told her he loved her.

And in broken words, she did her best to say she loved him too.

Watercolors

"So does anypony know where he is?"

It was rare to hear Pinkie so openly worried -- but most of it came from the subject of that concern, and so Quiet was quick to reassure her. "Wherever he is, trust that he's all right. After the last incident, I suspect he has the local ponies keeping an eye on him at every possible moment, just in case that leg starts to drag a little more -- or, given the humidity, if there seems to be just one crucial extra drop of sweat in his coat. Which may produce any number of false alarms..."

It didn't quite work. "But when we don't know where he is --"

"-- out for a morning trot, even when he shouldn't be. Word arriving of a patient he had to teleport to see. Lost among architectural fantasies after the dreams of his own manifested in a way which left him buried in blueprints," Quiet sighed. "Believe me, Miss Pie -- oh, very well, Pinkie -- I'm not happy about his continued absence from breakfast either. As I said before, he's a horrible patient, and I'm afraid he will push himself too fast -- but I also have to trust that the town is ready to serve as a thousand roaming nurses at need, any of whom just might usher him in at any moment, hopefully no more injured than before. Which, as the second instance of the day, just might threaten to create a streak."

That last was said with a significant look at Twilight, who was starting to wonder if she'd picked up a reputation for acquiring new bruises every time she got out of sight for a few minutes. She had been a little late to the breakfast table herself: she and Applejack had separated as they'd passed the guest cottage, and then each had tended to their own washing-up before going to meet the others. It had just taken a little longer for Twilight to both figure out an unseen way into the castle (along with several deep breaths before she'd finally risked going into instinct long enough to reach her room's balcony, which left the entire short flight filled with non-thoughts about why she'd been worried about something so basic) and to get all the dirt off. And the leaves. Especially the leaves. Plus when you'd been resting in the soil in a wild zone, you had to take some time to check for insects, and then there could be other things --

-- she didn't have rupophobia, and would continue to insist on that any time somepony might suggest it. She was just practical. A pony should be clean when attending breakfast in a castle, and that pony had also better take a few minutes with a fine-toothed comb and check her entire body for ticks.

Also, mane grooming. Lots and lots of mane grooming.

(She always had a little trouble with her tail: using her field on any part of her body she couldn't directly see tended to be awkward, and so a proper self-grooming session involved a great deal of twisting -- and that was before considering what the tick check had required.)

"I'm fine, Quiet," she insisted, wondering if she'd groomed her mane enough. Rarity believed a hundred brushstrokes was required simply to venture out in public without collapse, and Twilight didn't know if that was supposed to be per strand... "I'm sure Doctor Gentle is too, Pinkie. The kitchen can always make him something when he comes in, if he doesn't just want to fix something for himself. Somepony who lives alone has to know how to cook."

Just about everypony very carefully avoided looking at Rainbow.

"You don't know how to cook," Spike immediately noted.

"I can cook a little. And I don't live alone. I live with you."

"Living with me is why you don't cook. Because I cook. And sears done in chemistry beakers don't count."

"They do when you're trying to make sugared hay twists come out right," Twilight protested. "Something you still can't do, and you come with a built-in searing option. You really need to bring your lips together a little more --"

Only a little of the incredulity was faked. "-- you're telling me how to breathe fire?"

"No! Just how to make sugared hay twists! I'd like to have one good homemade one. Once. Without actually having to go home..."

It took a few seconds before the emotions faded, long enough to wonder if some portion of the resonance bomb had been left behind. But she'd checked herself for thaums, and...

...it wasn't magic. She was just -- homesick. Legitimately homesick. All the magic had done was remind her of that, and everything afterwards, she'd done on her own.

Homesick for... Ponyville.

Quiet chuckled. "It's a challenge, I know. To make it all caramelize without burning off, and keeping the coating even... well, we have our share of gourmet chefs in Trotter's Falls, but a proper sugared hay twist might be beyond the best of them." His right forehoof pushed an empty plate aside: a servant swooped in to collect it. "So what was everypony planning for today?"

Twilight had worked out her destination during the trot down to the dining room: she just hadn't had the chance to tell anypony else. But she knew where she needed to be, and so, "I thought I'd visit your town's library."

And then everypony was looking at her.

"The library," Quiet carefully said.

"Yes..."

"The town library."

See? I'm not the only one who repeats things. "Yes."

"I," Quiet declared, "am insulted." And looked it.

She thought he was teasing. It sort of felt like a tease, anyway. And if so, the only thing to do with it was... "And why are you insulted?"

"Oh, please." That with a slight head tilt towards the door. "You've seen my library. I remember every last moment of your first encounter with it. The widened eyes. The increased heart rate. Oh, and there might have been some attempts at bribes involved, but I'm choosing to see that as the way you generally choose to declare your undying affections. You were in love with my library. And now, the first chance you get, you're going to cheat on it with the town library. A library which will, to be frank, allow itself to be patronized by anypony. It's a library without standards, not to mention a rather lacking Ethics section. It really gets around, if you take my meaning, or at least some of the more lurid books do. You have a choice between my library and the town library, and whom do you choose to spend your time with?" There was a pause, and she could almost see him considering the next words, wondering if he was about to carry the joke too far -- just before he went for it anyway. "The town's book slut."

Rainbow nearly choked on her very last bite of food. Fluttershy's entire face vanished behind quickly-tossed mane, which didn't do anything to block the giggles. Rarity chose to develop a well-timed coughing fit. Applejack snorted. Pinkie buried her face in her napkin, an act which gave her an effective concealment level of three hundred percent over the mane: nearly nothing instead of virtually. Spike was just visibly trying to work through most of the vocabulary.

And Twilight smiled.

"Oh..." she slowly said. "So you'd rather I spent some private time with your library."

"Well, anypony with taste --"

"-- completely private time," she cut him off. "Just going around, carefully appreciating the artistry of the covers and spines. Especially the spines, because when some of them start to age, you have to look more closely. The letters fade. In fact, if you don't keep things perfectly organized, some of the most important books can get lost because from the casual side view, they look more or less just like each other. Anypony who truly knows about books is familiar with the problem -- how somepony could just get a few generic publications with brownish covers, rub a little dust into them to age them up a bit, then slip them onto the shelves while, say, taking down something important and... bringing it somewhere new. Somewhere it would be appreciated. Yes, Quiet, I would love to have a little completely private time in your library, taking things down, putting things back, seeing exactly what you have and making sure nopony's switched any of it out on you -- yet. Why, given the size of your collection, it might take moons before you noticed some of the volumes were gone..."

The coughing seemed to be accelerating.

Quiet made a show of thinking it over.

"The town library, you said?"

"Yes."

"Why?" Several facial echoes of the question manifested around the table.

"Because I'm a librarian," Twilight patiently explained. "A public one, although I like to think I've educated my shelves on practicing certain discretions and making sure somepony knows where their contents are at all times. I'm always curious to see what other settled zones are doing with their own facilities. You have a wonderful collection, Quiet -- and --" trying not to wince "-- I'm pretty sure everypony knows that if I go in there alone, it may take a while before anypony can get me out again. Believe me, I want to take some time in there before we leave, and I want to talk to you about some of your suppliers and how I can get in contact with them -- but today, I thought I'd see what a town like Trotter's Falls does. I know what my Ponyville budget is, and... how much trouble I have working with it." The Archives could get everything. She could get just enough to remind her that everything else was still out there -- along with collecting another angry letter from the mayor, who seemed to be under the delusion that Twilight didn't remember the last time she'd asked the city government for the planting of a second tree. And besides, who was going to use that proposed rounders playing area anyway? "So as long as I'm here, I'll find out what your facility is managing to get, and the arguments they're using to bring it in. If I could just convince Ponyville to give me a second branch --"

"-- tree trunk --" Rainbow broke in.

"-- then maybe I can finally start to make the place into a real -- um... anyway, I'm going to the town library, at least for the morning. What about you?"

"Well, with the party so close now, there are some things I have to do," Quiet admitted. "Mostly signing forms. But I can put that off for --"

Which was when one of the servants came in.

"Lord Presence?" Softtread's field was carrying a stack of papers. A very tall stack. "From Town Hall. To be sent back, bearing your fieldwriting, as immediately as possible, or at least as immediately as -- a certain somepony feels it should be done. Of course, it is your discretion as to whether you wish to... stall somewhat..."

Practicality and several minor forms of vengeance clashed on Quiet's face. The former barely won. "...no, put them down -- actually, put them down somewhere else: we don't want to risk flipping the table, much less giving my least favorite bureaucrat any excuse to ruin the party. Well, that's my morning settled, if not my stomach. Everypony else? Because with the press still in town, I don't think Twilight should be making her library gallop alone."

Rarity winced a little. "I... need sewing time," she admitted. "All the time I can find, along with rather more hues of thread than I brought with me. And anything I use for shopping -- Twilight, I will give you a list and the bits to cover it, and I would be thankful if you would fill it before returning -- but when it comes to my leaving..."

"I understand, Rarity." In no small part because she knew what the sleep-deprived alternative looked like (and was still internally flinching at the prospect of being sent back three times for 'just a minor hue correction, dear, it's not your fault that my eyes are better at determining exact shades than yours...') "Everypony else?"

"I'll come," Spike reliably offered, and left it at that.

Pinkie had pulled her face out of the napkin. "The party is getting close..." she thoughtfully mused. "If you need some help --"

-- and that put Twilight into damage control mode. Pinkie's mark and talent were for party planning: there was no question about that. And when Pinkie put her mind to it, parties came together. It was just that she had a certain, highly-preferred... type of party. It was theoretically possible for Pinkie to manage a high-society affair, booking the orchestra, arranging the appetizers into an artistic display, memorizing every lengthy title in order to greet the dignitaries in the manner they were expecting, and circulating among the guests in a way which both gave everypony the proper amount of attention and broke up the manifestation of all the tenth-generation feuds before they could truly materialize. It was also possible for her to decide that was just plain boring, empty out the wine bottles and hang them from the ceiling as clanging chandeliers, cover every exposed surface with streamers, push the stuffiest pony in the startled room into leading the dirty joke contest, teach dignitaries how to bob for apples and, after the inevitable occurred, how to bob for their lost monocles -- then wrap the whole thing up by taking her one-pony-riot tendencies into the orchestra and using any taut cello strings as a launching spring for the evening's Catch Me finale. Again.

"-- I need some help, Pinkie," Twilight immediately said.

"But..."

"A lot of help."

"But --"

"Please?"

Pinkie looked at her. Then at Quiet, followed by slowly moving her gaze over the others. Applejack was regarded last.

"...okay, Twilight. But I want to see the food list later. And if you need any extra baking..."

The others declared their intentions (most of which wound up centering around Rainbow's continuing quest), and after everypony had finished their meal, the group split up. Twilight went back to her room, with Pinkie and Spike following: there was still some time before the town library opened (at least if they were keeping something close to standard hours), and there was something she had to do before they left.

She waited until they were near her assigned bedroom, then asked Spike to wait outside for a moment. The remaining pair entered, and Twilight closed the door behind them with a flicker of field.

Carefully, more carefully than she'd wanted the word to emerge, and it still felt like she was directing a blast of sound at the most fragile of glass. "Pinkie?"

Who was looking directly at her from about two body lengths away: body still, blue eyes calm. "She told you." And all Twilight could do was nod. "I thought she would. I kind of thought -- she'd have to, after what I said at the waterfall. And I told her it was okay, because if you understood, and I think you understand a lot more now, more than ever, you'd -- know what to do."

The pink tail was completely motionless. No curl shifted or bounced.

"What are you going to do, Twilight?"

The librarian took a tiny step forward. Then another.

Then she rushed forward, planted her forelegs across Pinkie's back, pressed her face into the curly mane, and refused to move.

Eventually, a bright pink foreleg came up, rubbed against her.

"I'm sorry, Pinkie, I'm sorry, I didn't know, I didn't -- I don't even know how to be this sorry, it's not my fault or anything I ever did and all I can feel and say is that I'm sorry and... it doesn't do anything. I can't do anything..."

"You can do the important thing," came the soft words. "The same thing you've always done. You just treat me -- like me. Except no staring contests. Or paint drying. Because we're both more than that, okay?"

"It's going to be hard."

Absolute confidence. "But you can do it."

"Knowing you can't hear..."

"It's okay, Twilight," Pinkie whispered. "I make my own music."

They held their positions for a while, until Pinkie gently helped Twilight get all four hooves back on the floor.

Almost as carefully as Twilight, but with more than a little eagerness and hope riding in the words, "How did everything go with Doctor Gentle? Is he with us now? Can we take him out to the orchard, and maybe to the ravine, or... well, everywhere! Can he come, Twilight? Please?"

There was a moment when all the thoughts were crashing together in her head.

He scared me last night. I don't know why. I don't understand why. I just know he scared me, and I don't want him touching me again, I don't want him with us or...

He's part of Pinkie's life. He brought her to Sun. He brought her to the Cakes. He's why she's alive at all. He's the reason I have a friend.

He scared me.

He's... part of her family, isn't he? And she's one of his. I saw how he greeted her, nuzzled Fluttershy. The nuzzle meant for family. He cares about them. Maybe he even loves them...

But he... scared me, with that question. I don't feel like his explanation was real.

The family of Pinkie's blood had been an unknown horror.

She couldn't make herself speak against the family of the baker's heart.

"No. We... mostly talked about magic all night, Pinkie. I'm sorry. It got too late, and... you know me, when it's magic, I..." It was all too easy to see the sadness in the earth pony's eyes, and just as simple to remember how the pony who had been pushed into the Ancient History department (because nopony in the Archives wanted her in their domains) would have missed it completely. "But there's something he said which made me think a little, and maybe that could help us. Please don't tell him about the mission -- not yet. I want to check something first. Maybe later --" maybe never "-- but not yet. Please?"

A long, slow sigh, and the way the words eventually emerged reminded her of Fluttershy. "...all right, Twilight. It's a mission and you're pretty much in charge right now, so... all right. I won't tell him, and I'll let Fluttershy know when I see her." Hopefully, and not without pride: "But -- he said something which might help?"

Twilight nodded. "It's time to do what I do third-best, Pinkie." And somewhere, she found a smile, struck what she felt was the right too-dramatic pose, made Pinkie giggle. "I'm going to research!"

"Stop it," Spike told her.

"Stop what?" She wasn't particularly good at sounding innocent, especially when she'd been caught, and so Twilight decided to pass herself off as simply being confused.

That didn't work either. "Stop reshelving. It's not your library. You don't get to rearrange things. You're not allowed to shift the sections around. You have no right to start going through the late fees folder and see who's the most behind. And if I see your field projecting towards the card catalog one more time..."

"It's a lousy card catalog," Twilight said as two field bubbles crept behind Spike's back, silently bearing most of the Science section to where it should have logically been.

"...yeah," Spike eventually admitted. "But it's still not yours."

In protest and frustration: "It's mine for now..."

Because there were still more than a few ponies in Trotter's Falls who were trying to work out how to deal with a Princess.

The trot through town had been... odd. Twilight had felt so many of the local ponies looking at her, and that was becoming sadly normal in the moon (it was about a moon now) since the change -- but more than a few had followed that up by gathering in tight, whispering knots, and it was happening too many times for coincidence. One group might have just decided to take up a topic, two clusters could have found a sudden mutual need -- but this many were talking about her. And she couldn't just go up to them and ask exactly what they were discussing. Part of her wanted to -- and so much of the rest was afraid to find out, because too many of those never quite understood whispers felt dark. There were ponies who came right up to her (or as close as they could get before her companions blocked them), tried to get a moment of her time, as many moments as she had to give -- but in so many places, her passage triggered what almost felt like conspiracy.

She told herself that she was being paranoid, that the mission made it all too easy to view things through shadows which had never been meant to protect, and to a degree, it was true. But still they whispered.

There had been two encounters with the press: both Murdocks, neither familiar. Spike had tried out Quiet's teachings with the first: as soon as he'd spotted the notepad coming out, he'd gone directly up to the stallion and began inquiring about his pay -- namely, where he picked it up, what the signature looked like on his vouchers, did it seem to be more towards mouthwriting or fieldwriting... It was a work in progress, but it had provided enough confusion for the mares to slip away -- right into the path of the second self-titled journalist.

The subject of Spike's efforts had gotten off easy. The mare wound up having to deal with Pinkie.

"Hi! So I've kind of been wondering. When you write articles which say things like 'A lot of ponies are saying' -- how does that work? Do you go around your headquarters handing whatever you wrote down to everypony in the building and when enough of them repeat it, that's a lot of ponies saying something and you can print it? How many ponies does it take for a lot? Do you ever wait until somepony gets back from lunch? What if you just stood between a couple of mirrors and watched your mouth move? Because then you could say a lot of ponies were saying it, only most of them were saying it sort of quietly, but all of them were you, and you're your own best source, so you can totally verify everything that all of you said! Or you could just use a mirror pool. Except you shouldn't, unless you like paint. You probably do, since everything you write is about taking things and making them into all the wrong colors and shades. You know, now that I think about it, what you're really really doing is just painting with words. Except it's not painting. You dip your tail into the paint bucket and just smear everything until nopony can tell what it was in the first place. So you create dumb stuff which doesn't make any sense and just tries to hide what really happened, and you get paid for it! But not very much, because you have to give most of your bits to the ponies in the mirrors, because without them, it would just be you saying things and you can't print that at all, right? So you've got to be paying your reflections, because they work harder than you do. And since there's sort of an infinite number of reflections, even if you can't really count them all because they get kind of small plus it's infinity and counting that takes a while, you'd have to give them... you're in debt, aren't you? I'm so sorry! You know the best way you could make some real money? Quit."

(The second salvo had been worse.)

Eventually, they'd reached the library, and Twilight... hadn't been impressed. There was definitely some degree of superior budget in place: the lighting was better than what she had in the tree and included several helpful enchanted lamps attached to the corner of some rather fine reading desks. The benches were more comfortable than what she'd inherited from the previous librarian, and a glance at the upper level told her the only thing it was being used for was the storage of more books -- and mostly hardcovers at that.

But there were also things missing. They had the smallest History section Twilight had ever seen outside a kindergarten: Quiet wasn't only the best source in town (and most of Equestria), he was just about the only one. The Periodicals area seemed understocked, the International area wasn't, and she couldn't find the library exchange program request box. Not that she'd gotten all that much time to look, because the resident librarian's first reaction to seeing Twilight had been to squeal, gallop directly to her (nearly knocking over two patrons in the process), ask what the Princess desired, what could she do to make the Princess happy -- and upon being told that the Princess (or, rather, the Twilight) just wanted to look around for a while and maybe do some reading, had responded by evacuating the entire facility. Every patron had been removed, and the slowest-reacting among them had been hauled out while still on the bench. A hastily-made sign reading Temporary Royal Hours In Effect had been attached to the outer doors before anypony could stop it. The mare had gushed, she had curtsied, she had been honored beyond all possible levels of understanding or reason, and then she had left because the Princess (who was somehow also a librarian) had the gallop of the place and it simply wasn't her place to be in the Princess' way. After all, it wasn't as if a Princess could possibly need help, not one who was also a librarian...

...and then they'd had the place to themselves, along with an incomplete set of fast-cooling benches and a card catalog which could best be dealt with through setting it on fire. Drifting ashes at least had a chance of landing in a proper order.

Pinkie bounced over, and her mouth deposited another bundle of papers in front of them. "I think I can find more! These were just holding up -- well, it's not being held up any more. By much of anything." There was a slow, unstoppable sliding sound coming from a back room, as if a rather heavy piece of furniture was skidding across a wall. "Actually, that might be a problem... be right back!"

She pronked away. Spike looked down at the papers.

"So what are we looking for?"

"News," Twilight replied as her field discretely finished its complete improvement of the atlas arrangement. "They don't have their own newspaper, not a formal one -- but it looks like their school does the same thing as ours: a student paper. If anything weird's been happening before we came in, maybe somepony wrote it down."

He looked her over, very slowly.

"And... what are we really looking for?"

"Spike --"

"-- I know you're going to go through the papers. And maybe we'll find something. But that's not the only reason we came here, Twilight. I can see you thinking. So what are you after?"

She glanced around, made sure Pinkie was nowhere in earshot. (It took a while. Pinkie had some interesting ways of hiding.) "I need every book we can find which mentions Doctor Gentle."

He blinked. The nictitating membranes didn't move. "...why?"

"Because he said something last night... I don't want to say too much with Pinkie here, Spike, and when she sees me looking at those books, I'll just tell her I wanted to refresh my memory on his credentials. But he said something which -- scared me. It just felt wrong. And he had what sounded like a good reason for it, but that's just it: it sounded sort of good, except that it didn't feel like it worked..."

Spike took three slow breaths. "How bad was it?"

"Disturbing. I'm not even sure why."

And directly, "Do you think he has something to do with her?"

Twilight closed her eyes.

"Did you feel them?"

She shivered.

"...I don't know. Maybe I'm just having the wrong reaction. We were up really late. With anything else, I could have taken something the wrong way because I was getting tired, except that we were talking about magic and I didn't feel tired, Spike. But the mission has everypony stressed, and... I don't know. I just feel like I want to know more about him. Like I need to. So while Pinkie's getting school newspapers, you look for those books. And if there's anything like a Public Records section -- that's probably another back room, if they've got one, they'd hardly ever need it -- try to find his. Anything, Spike. Because maybe it'll help me to stop feeling like this about him. Or maybe... it'll tell me why."

He often knew when she had something on her mind, and she could say the same about him. It was easy to watch him thinking.

"Public records is usually the town hall," he reluctantly said. "We could go in --"

"-- no. Not unless we come up empty here." If there was anything which seemed to relieve a little of her stress, it was getting the chance to trample all over Coordinator -- but this would be putting herself into a position where he just might have a little power. The ability to deny her information, if he could somehow find it in himself to openly refuse the request of a Princess.

But he was a bureaucrat. If he couldn't deny, he could delay. And she doubted he was willing to give them open access to the records, letting them go through cabinets while he left the building, content to have no idea what they were after. To make a request of Coordinator was to give him information, and that would never feel like a good idea.

"And not unless we absolutely have to," Twilight added. "He's probably monopolizing a few forms. But general town stuff -- true public records -- there should be copies. Start digging, Spike. Please."

The picture which emerged was incomplete, and she had expected that. It wasn't as if she could get his tax records: those would be the exclusive possession of the government, and she didn't really feel she needed them. His school grades didn't feel important. She was just looking for...

...something.

The school newspaper turned out to be thoroughly boring, without even a five-issue-wonder gossip column to break up the monotony. There were outdoor concerts. There were election notices. Bake sales, because it wasn't a school newspaper unless it was announcing a bake sale. Recipes created by the students, publicly posted and guaranteed to send most of the goods back home with their creators, as most ponies favored salt licks over salt bread. Oh, and there were things about the main fountain. The town really seemed to like its fountain.

Pinkie did spot her as she began to go through the Doctor's life, and her friend, who so wanted to see that part of her family join them, believed Twilight's lie. Claws and teeth brought her documents now, for there was a public records section.

Admittedly, it was... weak. Coordinator seemed to have just about everything under his dominion, and what Twilight was left with was more appropriate to old notices pulled off a central board. The library had also seen no more need to keep what seemed to be a never-accessed section in order than they'd devoted to a good History section, and so papers seemed to emerge at random, her eyes darting back and forth across huge gaps of years. But there was something to work with, at least enough that she didn't have to approach him just yet, and she delved, deeper and deeper into the faint ink trail which created the ghostly outline of a life.

Birth announcements were part of what was available, and so she learned his age, for he truly had lived in Trotter's Falls all his life. She saw the names of his parents, and she found out when they had died.

He had gone to school, of course: announcement for the first day of kindergarten, another listing the graduating class in that last year. But not postgraduate courses, and if he'd worked at anything before taking on the role of midwife, she couldn't find any record of it. No announcements of shops being opened, or family businesses being pressed between new hooves. Given the size of his (destroyed) estate, there was the possibility of it having been a old family home. He might have had a steady income waiting for him at the moment of graduation. No need to work at all.

A selection of journals momentarily distracted her. The first news of the Exception. The studies of it, one public demonstration with a mare who'd volunteered for the role. An honorary degree. Follow-up articles concerning everypony else's lack of ability to duplicate what he'd done. Nothing she hadn't already known.

There weren't many pictures: photography had been invented during the course of his life, and so images of the colt and young stallion were lost to time. There was one sketch in an ancient school newspaper: the entire class rendered in ink. However, it had been proudly drawn by a member of that young class, and the best Twilight could do was guess that he might have been one of the colts, followed by trying to guess which ones were supposed to be the colts.

It seemed as if there was a break line in the stallion's life. On one side, an adult who couldn't be picked out of the herd for more than a moment before slipping out of sight. Nothing notable, certainly nothing historic: just another quartet of hooves picking out a path under Sun. And on the other, the midwife, acclaimed, sought out, the last (and only) resort.

"it took some time for me to realize -- what I was truly meant to do"

What had he done first? It was unlikely that the manifestation of his mark had been delayed well into full adulthood. Twilight, with a few semi-backed fears regarding a lifetime of Crusades, had already researched that: the latest appearance she was able to track had shown up a few moons after the pony's graduation. So he would have likely already had that symbol, and... what had he felt his mark was guiding him towards? It wasn't a case of simply needing to put off his training: his own words indicated that. He had been... something else, prior to taking up the career everypony knew him for.

There were many ways to interpret a mark, of course. On rare occasions, the same mark could represent different talents: it depended on how the ponies saw it. A razorwhip was for battle, but it could also indicate a pony suited for weapons design. And a mark could stand for an entire category of talent. More than a few mistakenly viewed Twilight that way, thinking a mark for magic had to be everything to do with magic -- but in reality, it was unicorn workings: an enhanced capability for learning, understanding, creation, and duplication. With devices, she was a studious amateur, and when it came to the magics of the other pony races... she didn't know what her mark would allow there, if it was anything at all.

But for a single mark to show two completely different talents in one pony... that was the stuff of legend, or rather, fiction.

So maybe he's a category case. Or... I don't know. I don't know what I'm looking for. I'm not even sure why I'm looking at all. He said something which scared me, I don't even know why it scared me, and now I'm in a library. I could be looking for her. I should be. But I'm here. Because this is where I'm comfortable. Because this is something I thought I could control, at least until I saw how bad their shelving was. Because... I had a nightmare.

A nightmare which felt like it was trying to tell me something.

With more than a little self-directed sarcasm, Other than my being broken. I figured that out on my own.

The dream could not have come from Luna, sworn not to interfere. Twilight knew of no other ponies who could roam or so thoroughly manipulate the nightscape of another. It was possible to shield one's dreams from intrusion (although she wasn't sure it would actually hold against Luna's strength), and she had read about a spell which allowed the caster to stop a desired category of dream from appearing: ponies trying to escape recurring visions by any means possible. And with her...

...it could have been her. But that's the easy way out, isn't it? She's a unicorn one-third of the time, she's powerful, maybe she can do anything, so if I have a nightmare, it's her. And she could have done it, put herself into that last part, but... where did the rest come from? Things I've never read, things I didn't know. Maybe they're things she learned, but why would she send them to me? Why a dream about Star Swirl and -- everything else?

Doctor Gentle had been part of the nightmare, or his words had. And things which scared her could easily slip into her nightscape -- but it still felt as if it meant something.

In the midst of nightmare, she had seen Nightmare. She had heard an offer, and pain had accepted. And then there had been shadows, and that had been followed by the Doctor's voice. Why?

Maybe it was just a dream.

A dream of things I never knew.

Things I made up --

-- no. I don't think I did. But... where else could they come from?

No answers. Just more papers. They were starting to blur.

"Twilight?" For Spike knew her, and so he also knew when she was getting tired. "We're running out of stuff." He put down the newest bundle. "Maybe two more to go after this, and then -- that's his lifetime. All of it."

Hours spent searching through that lifetime. Hours she probably should have used for something else. "I understand. How's the sorting going back there?"

He sighed. "We're putting it back in order. Mostly."

Wearily, "How many flying sheets?"

"Pinkie stopped folding them after she finally got one to land in the drawer." He turned, ready for the next trip. "Want to get some food in town before we go back?"

"No. I didn't bring any vouchers." Of course, it was possible that somepony might be willing to provide a Princess with a free meal -- and she really didn't want to go through the process of finding out. "We'll eat at the castle."

Spike nodded, left. Next stack. Scanning for strangeness. For a name. But there was just birth and bake sales and new business announcements and a huge settled zone founding anniversary which took up so much of the stack all by itself and --

-- that was when she saw it.

She had been hunting for the name, a familiar sequence of symbols. And it was there. But not on the first line. A little underneath. Isolated. Given some space to itself.

There was another name above that, on the notice. There was also a request. A quiet invitation. Come, it said. Come when you're needed. Come to where you're needed. Come because... you still can, and there are those who will never be there again...

She was still looking at it when she heard Pinkie come up behind her, and made no effort to hide it. There was no need.

"Twilight?"

"I didn't know," she quietly said. "Pinkie, did you...?"

Her friend looked at the notice.

"No," Pinkie said, and she could almost hear the tears starting to coat blue eyes. "He's never talked about it. I didn't know..."

Discord had told them they were being sent to the start of the middle, something Twilight still didn't understand. But the chaos which was the filing of the notices had brought her in at one kind of end, and they didn't find that particular beginning until the very last stack, with two years in between.

Two years of marriage before Doctor Gentle had buried his spouse.

The trio was silent all the way back to the castle, all possible speech absorbed by pain and grey sky.

Pinkie's face was a study in empathetic misery. Hurting for a pony she'd known since the first moment of her life, mourning for a mare she'd never met. Spike was at her right flank, with Twilight on the left. Keeping company, trying to diminish her pain through sharing it. And Twilight felt like an intruder. She'd gone through the debris of a stallion's life like a scavenger hunting through the ashes of the fire, and all she'd found was death.

There had been no cause listed, of course: it had simply been a funeral notice. But... two years of marriage, both still young. Likely not a natural death. Accident, illness, monster attack. So many possibilities. One gone, the other trying to find any way of going on...

He'd never remarried: Pinkie knew that much, because she'd never known he'd been married at all. Two years... and then alone.

Was that what had made him take the first hoofsteps on his path? The death of his spouse?

They entered the castle, failed to find anypony except Rarity, who had shut herself into her room and most assuredly did not wish to be disturbed, could not be interrupted at this vital stage, and if anypony was so crass as to take an artist away from her work when a deadline was so very close... Which had been all the accent-implied italics they could stand, and the trio had quickly retreated before Rarity could bring her creative agonies into the realm of boldface.

The servants told them Quiet (or rather, Lord Presence), was desperately sorting through a dozen different menus and could not be disturbed, especially since there was a new place in the settled zone trying out griffon cuisine (heavily modified) and they suspected their Lord would rather not have anypony see his reaction to the sample tray.

"And my friends?" Twilight asked.

"At the waterfall," the eldest of the maids sighed.

The -- waterfall?

"We tried to warn her --" the mare continued -- but by then, they were already on the gallop, Spike moving onto Twilight's back with practiced ease in order to save that much more time.

It didn't take long. It took too long. For the waterfall pool was the place where everything had truly changed, but it was also a site she had chosen to appear, and if she had returned --

-- but it was just their friends.

"...so do it already," Fluttershy suggested, the quiet words barely reaching them as they came into some level of hearing range.

Rainbow was a lot easier to pick up. "I'm gonna! I just want to -- pick a spot."

"You've been picking a spot for about fifteen minutes," Applejack pointed out.

"It's got to be deep," Rainbow insisted. "This is a high dive! If I don't get something deep, I could crack my head on the bottom instead of just touching it! Do you know how hard it is to see straight down through this much water?"

Applejack simply snorted, and the little outburst was almost comforting to Twilight: the familiar sounds of her friends arguing over something which was only important to them. "Do you know how much you're stalling?"

"Am not!"

"You're still hovering. So you're stalling."

"I don't see you up here!"

"Yeah, Rainbow, and there might be a certain, I don't know, anatomical reason for that?"

It took Rainbow a few hoofsteps to get past that one. "...well, just wait until Twilight gets here! One little spell -- it's not like we've got much Sun today and I'm not that high up, so if you really wanna try -- oh, hey! Great timing! Twilight, would you mind putting a pair of butterfly wings on this poser? We'll rewrite the dare and make it into a contest! Whoever stays down the longest wins!"

They took the final steps of the approach, Spike jumping down as they reached the water's edge, where Fluttershy and Applejack had been watching Rainbow, hovering some eight Celests over the middle of the lake.

"What's going on?" It seemed to be the logical question for Twilight to ask.

"Rainbow's diving," Applejack replied. "Eventually."

"Who dared her?" Pinkie asked.

"Fluttershy."

Twilight locked onto the one visible blue-green eye.

"...she was going a little nuts in the castle," the animal caretaker quietly offered. "She's looked in some of the same places eight times. I know we said we'd stay and help her look, but the more she made us look in places we've been through over and over..."

"She was driving us nuts," Applejack firmly declared. "And Fluttershy remembered something Quiet said: that the pool's so cold, most ponies only go in on a dare. And I --" a little more awkwardly "-- know it's cold." Pinkie winced, nodded. "And... well, three of us know it's cold, let's just leave at that. But Rainbow never went in. So Fluttershy dared her to do it. To dive. And here we are. For what's probably the last fifteen minutes."

"...I thought it would get her mind off her manuscript," Fluttershy softly finished. "...just for a minute or two. I brought lots of towels and blankets. We'll dry her off and warm her up as soon as she gets out, so she won't get sick. And she'll do some heat-shifting on top of that. But she's -- picking a spot."

"For fifteen minutes!" Applejack called up.

Rainbow glared at them. "I'm a pegasus, not a seapony! We don't do water!"

"Ain't no such thing as seaponies! And you still took the dare!"

"I know! And I took it because I'm me! I can do this! I think I've got the right spot! It's just... a lot of water..."

Applejack looked at the hovering weather coordinator, then snorted again. "Okay, fine. I swore I would try to never go through this after what happened to Rarity, but... Twilight, let's see some corona, 'cause if she won't --"

"I will!"

"-- did Ah say 'won't'? Sorry, Rainbow! I meant 'can't'!"

Magenta eyes narrowed in a very familiar way. A sleek body oriented down.

Oh no.

"RAINBOW!" Twilight yelled -- and wound up addressing a spreading circle of ripples.

The pool was too big for a splash at dead center to reach the shore and soak the spectators. Rainbow gave it her best shot anyway, and never got to see her efforts land two body lengths short.

She turned on the others. "Does anypony know what thermal shock is? Or how bad we are at swimming? That water --"

"...I do," Fluttershy softly reassured her. "There's no real current there. This is safe, Twilight. It's a few seconds down, and a few seconds up..."

A soaked prismatic mane broke the surface, and Rainbow gasped. "I -- oh, for... I... I think I..."

"Are you okay?" Twilight called out. "I can scoop you --"

"-- no! Don't! I'm going back down!"

"...what?"

More ripples, and fast-vanishing colors muddying as their bearer went deep.

Seconds passed. Too many seconds.

"...Twi?"

As fast as she could talk, "I don't know any spells for breathing underwater. There's some experimental devices -- Fluttershy, get me up there, over where she went down, I need to see --"

But there were already hooves pressing against her sides, weak wings fighting to get her weight off the ground --

-- and Rainbow surfaced.

Her legs kicked at the water, with her body so low. All they could see was her back, and her head from the nostrils up. But she was pushing in towards shore, she would get there -- in a time added to what Twilight already considered to be too long. Her field lanced out, surrounded the pegasus and scooped her up.

It let them all see the rest of her. The saturated, dripping tail. Waterlogged wings. And the thing she'd found.

For five long seconds, nopony moved. The field bubble was static. And then Twilight carefully, silently pulled her in, waited for Rainbow to bring her legs into a landing posture and then deposited the pegasus on the shore before winking the field out.

Rainbow spat. Her discovery landed in the grass, and five of them gathered around it, staring. The sixth couldn't get close enough.

"Oh," Pinkie breathed, and seemed to have no other words.

They changed. They changed in rhythm, in perfect synchronicity with each other. They did not touch, bound within their cradles of shining wire, for all were fairly small and so could be easily kept separated. But there was a cradle for a single larger piece, and that was empty, at least unless they decided to fill it again.

A rhomboid. A little triangle. Rougher shapes. Green. Blue. Pink. The deepest red Twilight had ever seen, red merged with black...

"Painite," Pinkie softly said. "I've only seen pictures -- there it goes. Black opal..."

"...it's a necklace," Fluttershy breathed. "...like the one Rarity made. But there's so many shiftstones..."

"Twelve," Applejack counted. "Would've been thirteen with the center piece. But that ain't silver wire. And what's that gold bit at the back? The braid holding it all together?"

That was the part Twilight was staring at, frozen and silent. A long braid of double-woven braided gold, twisted into itself so that it was something very close to a doubled helix. Staring at where the wire wrapped around the ends, just before the deathstones began their march.

"I saw it down there," Rainbow gasped, and the shiver which followed it got Fluttershy moving towards the blankets. "I saw the colors flash. I had to go back down, make sure it was really there... the cold shocked me, I wasn't sure --"

Her head began to dip, as if she was about to touch it again. Going for the braid.

"DON'T TOUCH IT!"

Rainbow looked up, saw Twilight's narrow rib cage heaving in and out. The panic.

"-- okay," the pegasus quickly decided, and backed one body length away. "But -- why? We know the stones are safe --"

"-- Spike," Twilight cut in, "check the border. Right now. Make sure there's nopony watching us --"

"There ain't," Applejack said. "Not unless they're in the air." She looked up. "Don't see anypony, and they can't spy through clouds that thick. Twilight, what's going on? Why can't we touch it?" Openly worried, "Should Rainbow have touched it in the first place? Is she gonna --"

"As long as nopony can see us with it," Twilight softly told them, "we're fine. It's not the deathstones. It's not even the platinum wire, because if it hasn't done something by now with the way it's attached, then it's stable." Platinum with deathstones, what would that even do... "It's the snitcher. If anypony sees us with that, thinks it's ours, and the jury decides we're guilty, it's a minimum of ten years in prison. If the judge is being nice. It's one of the most illegal devices there is..."

"Snitcher?" Rainbow, now being quick-dried by Fluttershy. She was also shifting her wings and legs in what felt like an unusual manner, and Twilight managed to give a second for wondering if heat was being pulled in before the fear came back. It didn't stay long. The horror needed the room.

"The braid," Twilight made herself tell them. "It... you put it on a pony, and if they don't have their mark... whoever puts it on, it'll tell them how close they are to manifest. They'll just feel it. And it'll keep telling you until the mark comes, or it's put on another pony, for as long as it stays in contact..."

"That's illegal?" She had expected the words, along with predicting the identity of the pony who would be saying them. "Ah could use that, more than just about anypony! We'd know if the Crusade was getting anywhere, or if it ever could! Why would anypony make that --"

"-- because when you put it on a pony who doesn't have their mark," Twilight stopped her, "it suppresses their magic. They won't be able to access their field. Any kind of field, I guess: I know it works on unicorns and pegasi, so probably earth ponies too. If you have a mark, it can't do that: your magic is too active to stop. But for a youngling who hasn't manifested... it'll stop them cold, until they get it off or find their mark. That's the first reason."

"...there's... there's another?" Fluttershy risked.

And Spike spared his sister from having to voice the horror, through making everypony else hear it.

"Because if you know a mark is coming," he whispered, "you can try to stop it..."

Twenty hooves and two clawed feet backed away. And the necklace lay in the grass, the metal still chill from its time in the pool. Liquid which was as cold as the water in the ravine.

Griffon cuisine. Modified.

Quiet didn't see the point of it. Making vegetables look like meat. Cooking them alongside meat. But he did know it was a trend which was moving through a few of the largest settled zones, and so Trotter's Falls had gotten in on it. Some of his guests would be expecting it, and so he'd added the stuff to the menu, fully expecting to spend part of the morning after the party watching the servants carry every last expensive serving to the trash.

He was still trying to get whatever a simulated 'au jus' was supposed to be off his tongue.

"Lord Presence?"

"Give me five more minutes," he called through the closed bathroom door. "Ten. Maybe ten. Ten minutes and some more mouthwash -- fifteen. Fifteen minutes , mouthwash, and ice cream. No: twenty minutes, mouthwash, ice cream, and a hazardous substance form I can fill --"

"-- the doctor is here. He wishes to see you. Immediately."

The words normally would have brought some small degree of relief: it had been hours. But with 'immediately' invoked...

However, it wasn't the worst of words. It didn't mean run. "Let me just take care of my breath and --"

"-- he insisted, Lord Presence. He is in your -- other study."

And that got him moving, as fast as he dared, passing through Bearer-free hallways (although he did go by the increasingly-frustrated sounds of frenzied sewing), into the passages and --

-- his mentor was on the reading couch. The newest one, the piece Quiet had been relaxing on when everything began. He'd never moved the tract.

The older stallion's head was down. Eyes closed. Long, half-dried trails ran down his snout from their corners.

It wasn't a question of whether something was wrong. It was a matter of what.

"Doctor --"

There were only six words, at the start of that meeting. Six total words was what it took to break Quiet's world, and the three sentences which contained them arrived as statements.

"She returned. We failed."

Quiet's heart missed a beat. He fought for breath. And that was before the last two words put an end to that phase of his life, sent him crashing into a potential future without title (although that didn't matter), possibly without direction (and that did), without... hope.

"They know."

Sgraffito

To tell somepony they're thinking with their mark is not a compliment.

The mark is meant to guide. Over the centuries, many ponies have testified that their marks occasionally whisper to them, although 'whisper' is simply the most common term used for a communication which takes place without words. But there's been more than enough evidence to prove it happens: that when a pony's talent might be of direct use, the mark's magic might suggest a course of action, and such will lead the pony towards exactly what they need to do.

However, manifest brings new magic into somepony's life, and every newly-marked pony will spend time experimenting with fresh capabilities. For the first few weeks after the mark appears, this will almost inevitably turn out to be too much time. They relish in the boosted skills the mark brings them, experiment with the little magics, take pleasure from the results -- and with every action which leads to pleasure, there will be somepony who just keeps on doing it. They stop letting their mark guide them. They allow it to dictate. And for those who aren't caught by family and friends, who have the condition worsen...

Just about everypony goes through a touch of it in their early years, while the adults wearily shake their heads and wait for the time of flank-brain to pass. Many eventually find some level of balance between their life and talent. Others... don't. Falling into the mark is the most common psychological condition in Equestria, and too many ponies exist within the weaker stages of it. Smiths that seldom leave their forge, cooks who typically only venture out in search of new ingredients. And for those who truly become the fallen, who have nopony to pull them back -- things can get very bad indeed and a few, no longer willing to consider the consequences of their actions, will wreak havoc on the world.

Consider the case of Fortreeze Laudanum.

Fortreeze had what many would consider a rather simple talent: for research, of the kind which compiled written histories, advanced textbooks, and comprehensive text renditions concerning the actions of others. He desired to learn things, and then share the results of that fresh knowledge with the world. From the surviving accounts of those few who managed to make him briefly talk about himself, (for Fortreeze was not one for casual conversation and, when it came to anything outside his current research subject, was sometimes barely capable of speech at all), that simple talent had a remarkable degree of power behind it. When he focused his attention on a new topic, intuitions arose. Fortreeze would wander the world in order to do his research, and he always seemed to wind up in the proper place to learn whatever he wanted to know. A simple glance at a surviving scrap of paper might somehow suggest his next destination. The one and only pony he would accidentally bump into there would be the lone soul to possess a vital artifact. And so on down the random-seeming trails of his travels, until he knew -- and having written down what he now knew, he would choose another subject and begin all over again. Over the course of Equestria's recorded history, very few ponies have had a mark talent as strong as Fortreeze Laudanum's and thankfully for the survival of the realm, only a scant number have been equally as stupid.

One day, Fortreeze decided he wished to tackle a particularly challenging topic, and so his talent did its usual job. It led him down dark paths and the most shadowed of alleys, left him stumbling into what had been hidden workshops right up until the moment he'd tripped on the secret lever, and eventually had him talking to ponies whom most only spoke to once, with the end of that escalating into a final scream. But Fortreeze survived every encounter, for his talent was remarkably strong and the pony who had fallen to it was just as remarkably stupid. He told those he met what he was doing, at least once the gag had been removed so he could let out what would have otherwise been his final words. And, both appropriately bemused and curious to see the results of his work, the ones he encountered would -- let him go, often with a few words of advice on how to approach the next destination. Some even provided supplies and protective spells. More than a few followed from a distance for a while, for when one encounters idiocy on that level, it's hard to look away.

Because Fortreeze had decided it was time to research devices.

Not everyday household conveniences. Not even the fantastical wonders found in only a few private homes and collections, bringing their benefits to the scant few who can afford them or were lucky enough to inherit. No, Fortreeze wanted to learn about the forbidden. The things which had been banned, dismantled whenever they were found, rendered outright illegal for possession, much less construction. And why did he want to learn about that? Because it was something for which learning could be found, and nopony seemed to have ever compiled a comprehensive listing of such things before. To what was left of Fortreeze's mind, there seemed to be a regretful gap in the market, and so he set out to fill it.

He thought this was a good idea.

So he ventured forth and, thanks to his talent and those who simply couldn't believe their own luck in encountering such a majestic example of perfect idiocy, he compiled what was then the single most detailed volume of forbidden devices ever to exist. He learned their names, sketched their appearances, and even wrote down every single thing he'd been able to learn about the processes for enchanting them. (A few helpful footnotes were added on common mistakes to avoid.) And then he found a publisher -- or rather, a vanity press whose operator couldn't be bothered to truly read the pages which were being run off.

Fortreeze's Guide To Dangerous Devices had an initial print run of two hundred copies. As with his other publications, he attempted to distribute a number of those to libraries and universities, for surely that was where any collection of knowledge belonged -- but never got very far with that intent. Because as it turned out, all of those he'd met along the road, who'd been so helpful to him, wished repayment for their advice. Not much. Just -- a personal copy or two. Which they were willing to pay for, as keeping Fortreeze happy and alive for his next extended bout of stupidity was something they could all agree on. After all, a pony who was capable of providing them with a comprehensive list of such devices, not to mention some rather detailed guides on their potential creation, was probably a pony whom you wanted researching on your own behalf. So they paid for their copies, a number tipped handsomely, there was a gigantic earth-shaking fight over who got him next (which Fortreeze barely noticed), and then the survivors pressed their hooves against his and went on their way, happy at the chance to put their newfound knowledge to work. After all, it wasn't as if anypony had ever put everything they needed in a single volume before.

But they left him with a number of extra copies. He kept his first draft as a memento (and then ignored it). As for the rest... well, knowledge still needed to be spread. So he mailed a few of them out. One went to the Canterlot Archives, where it still exists in the most isolated section of the stacks: twelve different forms and three crucial field signatures must be gathered before a pony can even look at the cover. A few dozen were mailed to schools of all sorts, and the one originally gifted to the elementary facility wound up being the hardest to track and destroy, especially once that one prodigy got her field around it. And the last was sent directly to the Princess, who occasionally sorted out her own mail and so got to do some very interesting reading indeed, followed by sending out an equally fascinating number of rather desperate raiding parties.

Ultimately, once all the flames were put out and most of the classroom desks were rendered inanimate again, Fortreeze was recruited by the palace to be its head researcher, a position he held until the day he died at his desk -- because when you learn about somepony that stupid, you need to put them where you can keep an eye on them. While his last pre-government work was never actually banned, nearly all copies of the Guide were destroyed. Those of the palace and Archives were allowed to survive, for the book was truly the most comprehensive work ever seen and it was knowledge that somepony was eventually going to need, if only to find out how to stop the results. It's believed a few copies might still exist in private collections, but if so, the owners are staying quiet. Every so often, a surviving volume turns up pressed between somepony's hooves and as long as their field doesn't start trying to work with Chapter One and beyond, they'll probably be all right -- unless somepony with, shall we say, a more practical need for the information finds out who has it.

Twilight had been in the presence of a Guide twice, with both due to the rather reluctant permission of the Princess. Her total allotted reading time had been thirty-one minutes, and so she had done something she'd hated: skimmed. But a fair portion had been retained.

She knew what a snitcher was. What it looked like. What it did. And while it hadn't been any part of Fortreeze's original work, she also knew the price, for the footnotes regarding the prison sentence had been personally added by the Princess.

But the book had been all there was. The palace was supposed to have a collection of confiscated devices, and Twilight had once inquired about it. Once, for what she'd seen as an innocent question had brought out a reaction -- and the memory of that startled rearing-back had kept her from asking the Princess for anything over the next five moons. She'd never seen most of the things in the Guide, not outside of Fortreeze's sketches.

She'd never seen a real snitcher. She'd wanted to, for it was magical knowledge which could be acquired and at the time she'd first desired to learn, Twilight had been very close to completely falling into her own mark, potentially lost beyond anypony's ability to pull her back. She'd been thinking about making a second request, or maybe if she just happened to be wandering through the palace and felt a particularly interesting gathering of thaums in a given direction...

...and then the Summer Sun Celebration had arrived.

She'd reluctantly followed what she'd seen as orders, gone to Ponyville and in time, five ponies and one dragon had combined to pull her back. Oh, she was still curious: she always would be. But that curiosity had been tempered. She would seek knowledge because it was needed, not just for the sake of having it and -- figuring out how it could be applied. She'd never seen an actual snitcher. And after a while, she'd stopped wanting to. Seeing her friends was more important.

Fortreeze Laudanum fell into his mark and never emerged. Twilight Sparkle came out the other side.

Twilight was still staring at the snitcher, and nearly every last tenth-bit of her wanted to stop.

It was, in its way, beautiful. Fortreeze's sketches had been in simple black ink. He'd written down the necessary materials and what the colors of an ideal result should be, but none of that truly captured the shine of the gold. Even with Sun so blocked by the steadily-increasing clouds, there seemed to be enough left to make the device reflect dark dreams back to the beholder. Looked at by itself, it could almost be jewelry.

It had been made into jewelry. All the better to keep it worn.

"Twi?" Applejack was starting to pace somewhat, and none of it involved true movement. The farmer's hooves were basically going up and down before reimpacting their own prints: a localized, very nervous dance. "I think you've got to start talking here. How does it stop a mark? It tells the pony who put it on when a mark is supposed to come? This thing can tell what the future's gonna be?"

The head shake was automatic, and it made the memories of her skimming vibrate within her inner vision. "No. It -- sort of measures how close the magic is to the surface, and it tells whoever put it on the victim whether that magic is rising or falling. When you do things that bring you closer to your mark, the power starts to build a little. Do enough and it'll trigger manifest and the True Surge. But if somepony can feel how close you are, and that you're getting closer -- they can interrupt you. Redirect. Keep you confused. I don't know how the spells work, Applejack: mark magic is deep magic, some of the deepest there is. The Princess didn't let me study even a little of it for a long time, and..." She winced, and the expression kept the tears away. "...we all kind of know how my one try worked out. But I know how the ponies who abused it operated. You just feel how close the mark is -- and when you feel it rising, you can..."

Her stomach was starting to churn.

"That's horrible," Pinkie whispered. "That's one of the worst things I've ever heard in my whole life. How could... how could anypony do that to a child? It would --" and moisture began to coat the blue eyes. "It would... make you deaf, and mute, and then you wouldn't even be able to find your mark..."

Those blue eyes closed, and her head went down as the curly tail scraped against grass.

"...Pinkie?" Fluttershy was already moving towards her. "...are you okay?"

"I thought..." Head still low, not looking at the others. "I didn't have my magic, Fluttershy, any of it, and I thought... I wouldn't get my mark either. Because if one thing was wrong, then maybe everything was, and when the rainbow exploded across the sky..." She looked up, and wet eyes went to Rainbow. "Thank you."

"Um," the weather coordinator said, which was briefly about as articulate as she was capable of being. "Um. I just --" and in the wake of horror, a tiny miracle occurred. " -- set things off. It was my Rainboom, but I didn't pick what you saw in it, Pinkie: the way you reacted to it. It's your mark."

And even with the snitcher in the grass, the silence went on for as long as it dared. The world generally had to take a pause when Rainbow didn't seize credit for something.

"Thank you anyway," Pinkie smiled, and then went back to the main topic. "That empty setting -- it's just the right size for Rarity's stone."

Twilight had once wanted to see a snitcher. And now that she was looking at one, she mostly wanted to vomit all over the grass. But there wasn't time.

"Exactly the right size," Twilight breathed. "And --"

Rarity at dinner, her foreleg went up

"-- everypony, give me a little space. Let me think..."

They backed away. Twilight began to trot in a slow circle around the newest fragment of nightmare, keeping her gaze steady.

"She wore this," Twilight declared at the start of the fourth circuit. "Her foreleg -- when she'd stumble or when she sat down, stood again -- it would come up. She was touching herself where a necklace would have rested. Automatically adjusting its position, even though it wasn't there any more." The horror pressed down on her with each additional circle, drove her hooves deeper into the dirt. "And if she was doing that without thinking about it, on reflex..."

"She wore it for years," Rainbow's surprisingly soft voice said. "Until it was pretty much part of her."

Applejack forced a breath. "If somepony went an' put this on themselves -- it would tell them how close their own mark was?"

Twilight nodded. "But if she wore it for years -- how old was she when she first put it on? Reflex, Applejack. She would have had to make the decision to try so early..."

Fluttershy's voice was quiet. It generally was. But this time, the words were barely audible, and each went into the world on a current of grotesquerie.

"...unless somepony decided for her."

Twilight stopped circling. Everypony else stopped breathing.

"...we were talking about it," Fluttershy whispered. "That there could have been -- somepony else. We've been thinking -- that she wanted this. To change. And she had friends, or partners... ponies who could help her. But what if..."

The words so often seemed to take all of the caretaker's strength. And yet after each emerged, there was more strength to be had.

"...somepony talked her into this in the first place? To put it on, to try everything, to change, and... what if it wasn't her decision, Twilight? What if it was always... somepony else?"

"Then that pony," Pinkie harshly declared, every word intended as a rib-caving kick against an unknown target, "would be the worst pony in the world. You heard her, how she talked about herself! 'Defective.' 'Broken.' If somepony made her believe that --"

"-- easy," Twilight broke in, and Pinkie glanced at her. "It's -- something we have to think about, even if we don't... want to." She had to, and she didn't. "But right now, let's stay with this." Her tail flicked at the snitcher. "It tells her -- or somepony else -- how close she is to her mark. Why are they measuring that?"

Spike frowned with careful thought. "Because she was -- studying? She was learning all the magics. Maybe she was trying to learn how to be an alicorn, and so when her mark came, it would be a mark for -- just being an alicorn, and manifest would make her change?" A glance up at his sister. "Is that possible?"

"I don't know," Twilight slowly admitted, resuming her circling. And with a tiny smile, "Before the mission, I would have just said 'no.' I wouldn't have thought manifest could change somepony's body like that. But right now, Spike, I'm not sure. It could be possible. A mark for becoming a Princess, and the snitcher to tell her how close she was to achieving the goal at any moment -- but she had to have still been wearing it when she came outside, because she lost it in the wild zone. Maybe she just kept wearing it out of habit after her mark came, or -- maybe with how weird her magic is, the snitcher might still suppress it?" A wild theory at best -- and one they would have to check on. "She lost it in the ravine..."

Twilight stopped. Turned, looked at the pool.

"The river from the ravine," she said, "feeds into that."

Pinkie slowly nodded. "It cuts through the rock and comes out here..."

Back to pacing. "Okay," Twilight said, even though she felt anything but. "She loses it or throws it away. Maybe when she opened the ravine to save her life, she got the distance wrong and opened it under her own hooves. She couldn't fly or teleport, so she fell, and she must have hit the river. Or she could have taken the rock stairs down to see what had happened, but..." The convenience of that formation finally hit her. "Applejack, was that...?"

It got her a slow nod. "Yeah. Ah'd have to guess, Twi, and Ah -- I'm admitting I'm guessing here, because the echoes were still really loud. I couldn't work out exactly what anypony had asked for, and with the volume, I thought -- I hoped it was a lot of ponies asking at once, enough that all the signatures kind of blended together into one note. Which just felt off. But I've never been near earthworks that big. I didn't know what they sounded like. So I can't say for sure if she made the climb out possible -- but everything I think says yes. She went down, and maybe she fell. But she got out on hoof."

"She would have had to land in the river if she fell," Spike pointed out. "She might have earth pony strength, but a fall from that height, going into rock, would have left her more hurt than she already is -- or worse. But if she turned the fall into a dive -- maybe she would have splashed in okay."

"Which lets her lose the necklace," Twilight conjectured, trotting faster. "It's possible she just went down to drink --" and if that was why the ravine had been opened, to prevent death from thirst, it was a truly magnificent piece of overkill "-- but I can't really picture a head angle where the necklace just comes off because she tried to drink, even with her height. I think she did fall in. The shock jolts one shiftstone out of the necklace and it gets lodged at the bottom, probably stuck against a little rock projection or something. The rest gets carried underground until it winds up here. Twelve stones out of thirteen..." Thinking fast. "Pinkie, you said they're really rare. How hard are they to make?"

Pinkie blinked. "You can't."

Like the world's best-planned crash landing, the reactions came in exactly on top of each other. Twilight said "What do you mean, you can't?" at the exact moment Rainbow's wings flared out from shock.

"What do you mean, make?" Rainbow instantly demanded. "How is anypony supposed to make --"

"-- um," Pinkie said, and her skin flushed under her fur. "Oh. Right. This is... um... actually, it's -- really awkward. Really-really awkward. It's... a little weirder than I thought it would be, after so much time saying -- everything else." She took a deep breath, then rushed through the rest. "Rock farmers make gems. We can talk about it on the way to the castle. And I'm sorry about everything else I said. And didn't say. And lied about. A lot."

The next chorus was Spike and Rainbow. "Rock farmers make --" Fluttershy simply sat down, hard. Applejack smiled to herself, and that expression was not a small one.

"-- yeah," Pinkie blushed. "Please, everypony, just let me tell Twilight, and I Pinkie Promise I'll let everypony know the rest on the trip back." With a wince, "And then I have to tell Rarity, and she's going to have so many questions... Twilight, you can't make a deathstone. Lots of rock farmers tried. The most skilled ones over more than a thousand years tried to talk rocks into it. But... my grandma told me they were almost impossible to feel, even for rock farmers. And that you... shouldn't try to feel them for too long. That ponies who tried too much got sick. But making them -- nopony ever did, and I'm not sure anypony ever could."

It led to the next question. "Is there anything else they can't make?"

Pinkie visibly thought about it. "There's stuff you're not supposed to make because some families got the exclusive rights to them during the Slate Wedding Truce. Like painite. There's only one family allowed to do it, and it's so rare in the wild that... well, you just don't see it. Obsidian is supposed to be almost impossible, and my grandma said a dragon has to help. But stuff you can't make..." Curls shifted. "Pearls. That's it. Nopony can make a pearl. Only oysters can. Because they sort of grow the pearls inside themselves, so pearls are a little more..." The word search took a few seconds. "...alive? Normally alive. Not like the earth is alive, even though it is."

"Organic," Twilight provided. "Pearls are more -- organic. Sand gets into the oyster, irritates it, and the oyster sort of builds up the pearl around the grain, so the irritation will stop." She'd asked once after seeing a seldom-worn piece of her mother's jewelry for the first time.

Pinkie nodded. "Right! So just pearls and deathstones. Pearls only come from oysters, and deathstones -- it's what I told everypony with the first one. You're only supposed to find them where really bad things have happened."

"...so if you can't -- make them," a still-reeling Fluttershy slowly asked, "then what does?"

"I don't know," Pinkie admitted. "And nopony wanted to try doing things that bad just to see if one appeared -- well, they don't try any more. My grandma told me one story..." She shuddered. "It doesn't work." And left it at that, although not before images of the attempt besieged Twilight's imagination.

"Pinkie..." Twilight carefully said, "what kind of bad things?"

"Big ones," the baker helplessly said. "Lots of them. I'm sorry, Twilight, but... that's almost all my grandma said. I was a little bitty Pinkie, and it was just a story my grandma was telling me. I didn't think about asking. She told me that, and -- I should never go looking for them, because so many were in places where bad things were still happening."

Which left her turning to the only other possible source of information. "Applejack?"

It got her a head shake, and there was still no hat remaining perfectly motionless throughout the movement. "I can't feel it. Not my tool, Twi. And it's pretty much the same stories, at least for that. What are you thinking? That the stones do something?"

She slowly nodded. "Yeah. But I don't know what. Just that... she wouldn't have this many if they weren't supposed to be part of it. Whatever the process was, the shiftstones have to be involved. And cradling them in platinum -- or maybe that's just for the snitcher..." Devices weren't her specialty: that required a more specific mark than hers. But she remained a dedicated amateur. "I'm not sure that's possible, to rig it on the outside and expect it to do the job. But it could be for the stones. I just don't know what platinum would do there. I just know that whoever rigged it made it stable, even in that configuration. That takes some real skill."

"...what does it normally do?" Fluttershy carefully asked.

"It absorbs magic," Twilight replied, and the lecturing tones almost made their way in. "In tiny amounts, constantly. From everything. Unless you tell it not to, or make it so that it only absorbs from a few things, which leaves out the ponies wearing it. You usually use it to make self-charging devices, Fluttershy: it takes in thaums and then those thaums go towards running the device's spells. But most ponies can't work with it. It's incredibly hard to enchant because it'll keep trying to absorb the thaums from any spells you cast on it, and if it takes those workings apart... it gets ugly. Plus if it absorbs too much and doesn't have anywhere to channel it... nopony's ever found a really big platinum deposit. Just some craters with fragments around the edges. Unless you're really good at making devices, you stick with silver for channeling and get somepony to provide thaums when the power gets low. It's just safer. But if this hasn't blown up after being tossed around a river and falling into the pool, I don't think it's going to. Whatever it does, it's okay to be around it, as long as we're careful and -- nopony sees us with it. I just don't know what it was supposed to do. It could be keeping the snitcher charged, I guess. But to have it around the shiftstones..."

She completely stopped moving. There was no gradually slowing down, no careful transition. She was trotting, then she was not, and her body trembled from the shock.

"...cycles," Twilight slowly said. "They change. Completely. It's not just color, it's texture and density and everything else. It's becoming those gems, one after the other. Maybe if we watched long enough, the cycle would start to repeat. But they change, truly change, all the way through, while still being a shiftstone -- and she changes, over and over..."

Something had gone wrong in the attempt, and the fault might not have been with her.

"We need to research," Twilight told them. "Right now. I know Quiet has one of the books I need --"

-- there's a snitcher here.

Quiet has a copy of the Guide. The very first copy. There is a copy of the Guide in Trotter's Falls, and now we have a snitcher. That copy is in Quiet's possession. And the snitcher is here.

Her body was no longer moving in a circle. Only her thoughts.

"Twilight?" Pinkie was usually the first to spot emotional turmoil. "What's wrong?"

"I --"

-- not Quiet.

Please, Sun and Moon, please not Quiet --

-- no. It wasn't him. He didn't make this. Maybe I was stuck with skimming, but I think I know roughly how strong somepony has to be before they can make this. He's not that strong.

I think.

...okay, all he's really done is move a few papers and books, plus normal dinner table stuff. But he probably isn't that --

-- actually, how old is this snitcher? They're supposed to hold up really well, and she might have kept it clean. It could be centuries old. Maybe she just found it, or...

...but he has a Guide...

"Twilight? You're just -- standing there..."

She had to say something. And as Rarity had so recently reminded her, they all needed to talk to each other. She had to say what was in her head.

"Quiet's a book collector," she told them. "He specializes in unicorn history, and -- the history of devices sort of qualifies. He has a book which -- hardly anypony has. There's things about snitchers in it, and... if somepony was really good at magic and research, read that book and followed everything it suggested carefully... maybe they could make one. Except that --" and the smile was just as strong as it was sudden "-- Quiet didn't make it. He couldn't have. You'd need a mark for devices just to have a good chance at pulling it off. And his mark is --"

Is -- what?

Well, whatever it was, it wasn't for that. Twilight knew what every device mark looked like, even when they showed up on the most unusual of ponies, which included Ponyville's lone mechanic. "-- for something else. And that book could have been on his shelves for a really long time, plus it's not the only copy. So somepony could have gotten into the Archives, or had one of their own --"

"-- or somepony," Applejack broke in, "could have read his and worked with that. Somepony local. But even if she read the book, she couldn't have made it herself, because that's not her mark."

"Maybe she just found one?" Rainbow proposed. "She went on a quest for it because she knew she needed it, and managed to come up with one? And she got the deathstones along the way. Or... well, even Daring Do goes out with ponies sometimes, especially when she needs experts, for those adventures when she somehow isn't it..."

The pegasus frowned, and it was an odd specimen to see on the cyan features, for it was the frown of deep thought.

"Rainbow?" Twilight had to know. "What are you thinking about?"

"My hat," Rainbow slowly replied. "They took my manuscript. Not my hat."

There seemed to be only one thing she could say to that. "Huh?"

"I paid a lot for that hat," Rainbow said. "And it should have been right next to the manuscript, because I know where I left that --" a brief glare at the others "-- no matter what anypony says. If somepony was going to steal something they could sell for money, they would have taken the hat. Anypony could have found a collector in minutes. If they wanted to sell my manuscript, they would have had to sort of... clean it up first, and I kinda know that doesn't go so fast. Maybe it could be a bestseller eventually, but -- why not take my hat?"

The urge to facehoof was oddly welcome and mostly resisted. "Rainbow."

"What?"

"It's an interesting thought." That wasn't quite a lie: the hat did have value and now that Twilight thought about it, the most valuable thing to have stolen would have been the Royal Vouchers, snatched from saddlebags while the castle's guests slept: any merchant would have gladly accepted one for the most expensive item they carried (which, for Trotter's Falls, was really saying something) and by the time the palace refused to authorize for the expenditure, the thief would have been long gone. "But I think we have to focus on this right now." A nod to the snitcher. "Let's head back. I need all the research time I can get, and I don't even know where to start with shiftstones -- I guess they'd still be deathstones in any books. But for the snitcher, I have to use Quiet's library. I've seen the town's library, and -- I don't even have most of his books..."

"An' he does," Applejack carefully said. "Twilight -- I hate to say this, I really do, because he's been nothing but a gentlepony to all of us, but... he's got a book you need. A book where it sounds like anypony making one of those things might need it. And maybe he can't do it himself, maybe somepony just got into his study or something, but..."

"...it's not him."

Green eyes locked onto hers. Steadily, "And you know that's true."

It's not him.

It can't be him.

"He doesn't have the mark. There are some things you need a mark for, Applejack: it's why I still can't cast luck spells. They're so closely tied to the associated mark that if you don't have it, they're practically impossible, and that mark is barely once a generation to start with --"

"-- he don't need the mark," Applejack interjected. "He just needs to show the book to somepony who's got it and takes the bits to make it for him."

"It's not the only copy!" Twilight shot back. "The Archives have one! Spike, when we get back, write the Archives: ask them for a list of everypony who's been -- no, wait, I don't know if anypony there can figure out how to send it back, we'd need emergency express return mail and even that's going to take --"

"-- Twilight."

She stopped.

Carefully, so very carefully. "I ain't sayin' it's him. I'm just saying -- we've been talking about somepony else being involved. And he's got that book. That doesn't mean he's it, any more than us being around this snitcher means we should be in jail for it. Sometimes, stuff's just in the wrong place, and there's a pony there at the wrong time. Somepony could have found an old one. Made a new one without him. I know what coincidence is. But -- we've gotta think about it. So please, Twi -- be careful. And... think about it."

Spike was wringing his claws. Twilight almost envied him. It would have been nice to have something she could wring.

"I will, Applejack," she eventually said. "But I'm not going to accuse him. Not without more proof than this." The farmer nodded. "Let's go back."

They secured the snitcher between several of Rainbow's wet towels, placed the bundle into one of Fluttershy's saddlebags, began the trip. It took only two hoofsteps for Pinkie to decide the group both needed a welcome distraction and it was time to keep her Pinkie Promise, and so an impromptu lecture about rock farming filled the air. Rainbow, who had spent the years accumulating the majority of the wrong guesses, fumed through most of it.

Twilight didn't really listen. Most of it seemed to be what Applejack had already told her. Spike was fascinated by the dragon-relevant parts, but -- it wasn't enough. Not to get his mind completely away from the other thoughts, and Twilight suspected some of those were the same ones she was struggling with.

If you had a snitcher, you could try to stall your own mark. But why would anypony do that? She'd feel it was coming, decide she wasn't ready to change yet no matter what her mark said, and back away? How many times could somepony actually manage it? Or she was just trying to see if she was on the right track, and as the magic started to rise...

A mark -- for being an alicorn. Could that be done? What kind of mind thinks of that?

...no. Whose mind thinks of that.

After the public failed flight attempt, when they'd been on their way to the orchard... she'd felt like she wasn't telling herself something. As if there was a concept she wasn't ready to deal with, a thought she'd hid from herself. And now she was starting to wonder if there were several of those thoughts, because she still had that feeling -- even when she now knew what one of them had been.

Somepony else. We've all been thinking about that for a while. Somepony else involved. Somepony she recruited. Family. Friends. Companions. Those who -- wanted to see if she could do it, so that others could follow her road. But we kept thinking it was her idea. She wanted to change, she found what she thought was a way to do it, and... everything came from that.

She said... that when it happened the first time, to the sisters -- the ones who changed were the ones who were broken. Did she think of herself as broken when it all began? Did she have to in order to begin at all?

Or did somepony tell her...

A pony who deliberately made somepony believe they were broken -- would be a monster.

Her hoofsteps stumbled. The others, listening to Pinkie's rock farming tales, didn't notice.

Somepony who used her.

Somepony who didn't care about her.

Somepony else.

...please...

...not Quiet...

It was the first question which had to be asked. It wasn't the kindest of queries. It wasn't something which would comfort his first friend. But he knew it was expected of him, and so he asked it. Doing whatever he could to fix the hurt would have to wait, and that was understood by the one he needed to ask. "Do we need to run?"

"Not... immediately," Doctor Gentle said. "The Bearers know about her. But I spoke to her, Quiet. It took... some time. She has trouble with... we will come to that." His voice was controlled, and Quiet wondered what it was costing him. "They know about her, and only what she told them -- which was not much at all. They do not know about us. She protected us, from the first to the last." His lips twitched, and it almost seemed as if he might have been about to smile -- but no such expression appeared. "She is loyal. Even in talking to others -- well, one could make the argument that her approaching the Princess was my fault. Imprecision of language, Quiet. She was to speak with nopony who did not know of the Great Work, and fortune provided her with somepony who had completed it. To that extent, we are fortunate she did not appear within viewing range of Canterlot. She told them... we will go over that in short order. But for now -- I see your own pain, Quiet. I see that you wish to bring me some degree of assuagement, with no thought as to your own loss of hope. Please -- do not give up. We failed. But in that failure, there is something we can learn. We accomplished -- something." Speaking a little faster now, with more determination going into the words. "Something never before seen. There may be a way of correcting the error. There was a way to do this, and it had never happened before, so why not a way of fixing it? We will investigate. We will do the needful, until it truly works. She did not transform into an alicorn, Quiet, or simply a unicorn. She simply transforms, and simply achieving that... we have wrought a wonder. We simply need to figure out how to -- adjust it."

Quiet forced a breath, felt his ribs fighting him. "Do you know what went wrong?"

"I have... suspicions," Doctor Gentle eventually said. "The attempt was -- not fully as I would have desired it. The mark was coming, Quiet, it was coming with a force I had never seen since the moment I placed the necklace upon her. She had so much enthusiasm, she could not be dissuaded, and with the mark coming -- I used the moment. It was the only moment I had. And with what she was trying to show me when it happened -- it could be argued that there were... errors. But she changed. We did something right. Once we track the mistake..." The trailoff was a thoughtful one. "We will track it. No matter what must be done. We do the needful."

"You said -- she transforms." The older stallion nodded. "Present tense." Again. "She can change her race? Is it temporary? Only so much time per change? Just shapeshifting on that level -- and to change her magic --"

The left forehoof came up.

"I will tell you," Doctor Gentle said. "Now. You need to understand her condition, and an additional perspective will be of use. I found her, Quiet, in her place, and she was --"

The older stallion told the younger. It took some time, along with more than a few pauses to wipe away tears. And when it was over, Quiet silently took a place on a neighboring couch and stared at the books which covered the walls.

It had never happened before. They had, in their failure, wrought the new. But the nature of that creation...

"I gave her what painkillers I had," Doctor Gentle quietly stated. "Unfortunately, most of those were of a casual pharmaceutical nature. When I leave the castle, I will be making several stops in the name of arranging something stronger. The drugs I use for birthing mares are on the way, and some will be here by tomorrow. But we need yet stronger than that, Quiet. She needs to be -- presentable."

It made him look away from the books.

"You're going to present her." The words felt oddly neutral. Flavorless. Very much like a... statement. "At the meeting."

Doctor Gentle nodded. "It will have to be carefully timed, but I spoke to her and gained what knowledge she had collected. I was also present long enough to witness some portion of her cycle. The timing will be exact, and my words shall be precise. I was planning part of the speech while I waited for you. They will see and hear what they need to -- and it will be enough. Because she also told me of theory, Quiet, and when they see..." A long pause. "They will see. You will see. Yes, she will be presented, in all her glory..."

Which was when he finally smiled.

"I would not be surprised," Doctor Gentle said, "if she was looking forward to it. And that is just for seeing you again. Do you know, other than myself and the Bearers, you will be the first pony she ever sees twice?" With a twinkle, "Let us hope she remembers you."

Glory.

Quiet thought about everything the older stallion had told him. About the pain. The constant, unrelenting twisting. Then he thought about the reason the doctor called him the most devoted, and his gaze returned to his first friend's eyes.

"Did the drugs help?"

"Somewhat. But her mind is still confused, and some of that is the pain. She confessed that she has had some problems interpreting new feel: something I had expected, but not in this manner. But with the pain -- she told me what occurred after the teleport, Quiet, and the pain has twisted her memories. She spoke of doing something... well, clearly she was a unicorn when it happened. One who did something which took far more strength than merely breaking an Eastern Red Giant. Once we find a way to relieve her mind of the burden, the truth will emerge. Also, I -- asked her the question."

A long pause, all of which Doctor Gentle spent with his eyes closed, looking at inner visions.

"She -- said no," he reluctantly finished. "But in the confusion of the transformation, and with the pain she currently experiences -- it may not be possible to sense through those barriers. Once she has adjusted, I am certain the answer will change."

Quiet nodded. It seemed to be all he could do.

"Prepare whatever you require for departure," Doctor Gentle said. "I will do the same. But for now -- they know of her, and they may wonder why she has not returned. The Princess -- given her position, she was targeted by my working, but she was unable to read my signature from it: she would have confronted me by now. We would have seen signs, Quiet. We are safe for now -- but they are investigating. We must be ready to leave at any time. I hope that we can reach the meeting, and that we have come so far suggests that we likely will -- but I cannot guarantee it."

Quiet nodded again, forced his body off the reading couch. "Is there anything else you need me to do?"

"Not that I can think of at the moment," the older stallion replied. "Your primary duty remains the same: manage the Bearers. See if they have suspicions, divert whenever possible and alert me if you can. But for now -- I need to leave. Once I had her settled as best I could, my next duty was to tell you. And the one after that -- is to arrange for our future. To see if it is possible to keep from running."

Quiet looked at him, waiting. He knew the doctor well, and so knew when the subtle changes in tone represented an idea about to emerge.

"The Bearers," Doctor Gentle said, "require time to communicate with Canterlot. Given our distance from the capital, a considerable amount of it. They may have made no effort as yet to inform the palace of what they have seen, and any letter sent would still be in transit. To that degree, when it comes to the prospect of Solar and Lunar paying us a personal visit, we have time. Your job is to continue your current management of the Bearers, especially Princess Twilight. Mine is to try and arrange for them to be managed in the future."

He stood up. The injured leg gave him some trouble.

"I can see two paths which leave you within your estate and myself awaiting construction of a new one," Doctor Gentle told Quiet. "We will discuss them both in detail when I return, although I believe I can provide the basics as we make our way back to the public portion of your castle. But for now, there is a time issue, at least when it comes to the hours of availability -- and so I will go to Coordinator now."

They began to trot together.

"Coordinator," Quiet repeated.

"He is necessary," Doctor Gentle stated. "With what has happened, with what he has already done -- he remains necessary. Let us see if he has found a means by which he might begin to work his art."

There were probably words which could have been said in response to that. Quiet couldn't seem to find any of them.

"As for the second path... it is a desperate road to travel," the older stallion admitted. "But -- we will see..."

More trotting, heading out of the true library.

"When I saw her, Quiet," Doctor Gentle suddenly said, "as a unicorn... there was a moment when I rejoiced. But even after, when I saw the true results transpiring before my eyes... I thought about the Bearers. The first Bearers and what it must have been like for them, when they first beheld what had happened to their companions. When they bore witness to a miracle."

Quiet's field pushed on the wall, here and there. The passage opened.

"She is not the miracle we sought," Doctor Gentle told him. "But in her own way, a miracle is exactly what we have found. And I looked upon that miracle, and marveled at what we have wrought..."

They stepped through, began to make their way up the incline.

"Very well," Doctor Gentle finally continued. "I have the course. To Coordinator, and then for the drugs, and finally to Chief Copper before returning. Should something happen while I am making those rounds, send a servant to alert me if you can."

"Chief Copper?" It was something to say.

Doctor Gentle nodded.

"There are many ways," he said, "in which we might have to begin anew, ways we have known about since the first step upon the road. One of them is before us now."

He was having some trouble with the slope. Quiet nudged his flank, helped him along.

"Which?"

"We may need to begin anew," he repeated. "And even if that does not come to pass, we always knew that in time, another would be required..."

Quiet listened. Waited. It didn't take long.

Doctor Gentle smiled.

"The time has come," he stated, "to arrange for her successor."

Pointillès

The first thing to do after having one's world shattered should be something small.

For the most part, it was wisdom he had passed down through providing the opportunity to follow it. A mother would lose her foal in spite of everything he could do (and he had done so much, more than he suspected even Quiet knew, remembered every name and tried to keep track of how their lives were progressing), a spouse would learn that nopony would ever follow him out of the birthing room. And when the cursing stopped, when the tears slowed and the kicks might have finally ended, he would tell them -- to mix a cup of wake-up juice. Sit down with a form, simply staring at it for a time. (There was no need to try filling it out: in the immediate wake of a death, such was a cruelty which only Coordinator might have relished, and so he generally did all the paperwork for the lost himself, sparing the survivors from what little torment he could.) Take a trot around what had once been his estate, although that would generally be one where he had to follow, just in case those who remained chose to seek a reunion in the shadowlands. They had just learned that there were aspects of the world which could never be controlled, and so he would provide them with something which could. Do something small, something you could still do. And once you had done that one tiny thing, perhaps you would be able to attempt something else. And then another, followed by another, until you were finally ready to face the larger challenge known as going forward.

It was wisdom he had acquired through experience, for his world had been broken, and he had done... something small. And then, with that accomplished, his mind had eventually become settled enough to think of something very large indeed, the means by which some portion of that lost world could be recovered, and it had led him into the labor known as the Great Work.

He had found her, in her place, more broken than ever, something which -- could be fixed. He had dedicated his life to fixing her once: swearing a fresh commitment to that cause had come automatically, even in the midst of horror. The path had been created which led to transformation: they simply needed to adjust the direction of the road, bring her to a place of stability. So many had thought it impossible to change even once and that had been accomplished: why should a second alteration be any different?

but his notes suggested there was one chance, one moment where change might happen, something he'd missed and she needed to reach it at just the right moment while in precisely the proper mindset, with the chaos pearls about her and my being there to direct them, one chance and then

No. Star Swirl had been the greatest caster of his generation, as Princess Twilight was the greatest of hers. It didn't mean either of them knew everything. The original (as far as anypony knew, and so few were aware of even that much) Element of Magic had tried to forge his own path to ascension, and that trail had ended in a lonely cell on a small island off the west coast, an aged body finally giving out and leaving the Amulet with no living host to control. Star Swirl had seen aspects of the path which she had ultimately taken, but that was all: aspects. The caster had been thinking of working the change on his own body, not performing the miracle upon another -- and so he had never pursued that which had been incorporated into the very heart of the Great Work, a method which had led to change. There had to be more than one chance. Because after that shattering, there had been none until the moment he'd decided there would be one, and then there had been. So he had now decided there would be two, and so there would be. A simple statement of approaching fact.

None of which changed the fact that her return

just like her arrival

had constituted a new shattering.

He had done his best to be strong for her. He'd touched her, even though it had meant feeling the shifting against his skin. He had nuzzled her and stayed beside her, reminded her of that very first lesson: that he loved her, and so she would love him too. He loved her still. She was... all that was left of a shattered world. How could he not love her, even when what remained had been a fragment, distortion, broken mockery of what should have been? She was loved, and so she would be fixed.

He had been strong for her -- and then he'd had to be just as strong for Quiet, for he knew his most devoted would be pained by the news, might suffer a total loss of hope, and he would not allow that to happen. Change had been created once: it could be created again. In fact, it would have to be created a second time, and then a third, and beyond. Nopony should ever call a hypothesis proven based on a single experiment, and there were so many of the broken who needed saving. They had blazed the first of the new trails together, and the destination had not been what he'd intended -- but still, they had found themselves somewhere new. It suggested possibilities, and if none of those were currently ways that promised a total success, much less a fresh means of fixing her, then the next thing to do was -- something small.

After finding her, after staying beside her for a time... he had helped her to reach the bath and assisted in cleaning her, as he had so many times over the course of her life. (It had been strange, tending to her that way as an adult.) It was in hopes that the heat of the water would soak into those tortured muscles and bring some relief. (It had not.) It had been a simple act of civilization. It had been something they could control: you are dirty (the dirt of the outside), and now you are not. It had given them something to do while he thought, and now he had the first steps of the new path. The meeting, with everypony (or so close to it) gathered in a single place, would be crucial. Especially if it became necessary to arrange --

-- he did not want to face that just yet. He had thought of it, started to plan for it, and mentioned some of the details to Quiet -- but that move was the more desperate of the two he had considered, and so it was the one he wished to avoid. The Bearers had to be managed, now more than ever. But if that could not be done, and the second method failed -- that would guarantee running, and perhaps so much more. So for now, his focus was on the first path: control. And in some ways, that was also a small thing.

There were stops to make. As he'd told Quiet, he needed drugs, powerful ones, and that went beyond what could be acquired from those few who worked in the hospital. The most powerful medications conventionally available to physicians, in the strictest legal sense, should not have been available to him: a midwife had no true right to write prescriptions. But while his doctorate was honorary, his skill was true, and so he had been granted a certain amount of leeway without even so much as the wink and flank nudge which might have gone with so many other underhooved transactions. He wrote out what he needed, and it was fulfilled simply because he'd been the one to make the request and nopony in Trotter's Falls ever really thought about the "honorary" portion any more.

The problem was that he needed to go beyond that.

Measurement of pain was a difficult chore: spells existed which could do it, but he knew none of them and had never truly required any, because his patients could normally be presumed to be going through the single greatest agony of their lives. She seemed to be in a place beyond that, one which those straining, often screaming mares falsely declared themselves to occupy and for her, it was a full-time residency.

There were also the changes to consider, the cycle of her transformation. Some of those alterations were internal. Food in her stomach was just that, because the stomach presumably remained the same in every aspect, and so digestion proceeded normally. But what of her blood? Medicine put into her body -- would that wear off well before its usual duration expired, simply because the blood which carried it had changed? Would it resume operation when that aspect came around again? What did that mean for drug mixability and interactions? Did her current state mean that she would build up tolerances more quickly, or was it now impossible for her to develop any resistance at all? What about drugs which were known to only work on a single race, ones which produced adverse reactions for the others? If he had to give her a dose of one for any legitimate medical reason and it was still in her body when the next phase of the cycle began to take hold... Plus there was metabolism: hers definitely seemed to have accelerated somewhat, her energy requirements were higher than he'd ever seen for any mare, she might simply burn medicine out of her system long before it should have been passed through, which brought up the question of dosage and the risks of giving her too little or too much...

The Princess had resisted virtually every attempt to have her body studied, and he suspected too much of that was due to Star Swirl's actions: the surviving notes had included some of his original observations on both siblings, along with a few minor experiments which had been surprisingly advanced for their time -- and given what had been done with that information, resistance to future inquiries had been effectively guaranteed. So when he'd tried to find out what she would have been like after the Great Work had succeeded -- if there were any special requirements to her diet, times during which she would have to rest, illnesses which only she might be susceptible to -- there had been just about nothing, and that had been a cause of some worry. Still, it was something which could have been fixed simply through introducing her to the throne (and then thrones), with a polite request from the newest of alicorns for advice on how she might go forward.

But she had changed into something never seen before. A miracle, a wonder -- and when it came to how her altered form now operated on the deepest levels, a total mystery. He would have to investigate carefully in order to avoid harming her, but investigations would need to be done just to ensure her survival until the day she was... fixed.

She needed drugs, ones stronger than any hospital could offer. Illegal concoctions, those banned because they were addictive, risky, too hard to control. It was another reason for going to Chief Copper, for while such substances were scant in Trotter's Falls, there were a few ponies who had tried using them now and again. Some of those attempts had been discovered, with the users compassionately sent to a place where they might recover -- but the drugs themselves went to the evidence lockers. If the right concoctions had been claimed by the law, then some of them would still be good. Narcotics strong enough to bring her pain to a level she could bear, turn the agony of the changes into something masked for the duration of the presentation. There was no guarantee that anything he required would be at the station, of course, but the Chief had his own connections and on the whole, the odds of finding what he needed seemed rather strong. However, using it on her...

It was necessary. It was doing the needful. But for that first dose, it would be a risk, and that was something he was dreading. But as the needful, it would be done.

And there were other reasons for seeing the Chief. The illegal passed through that stallion's jurisdiction, and so did the immoral and unwanted. He had always known there would be a successor in time, and -- he was looking forward to it. A youngling. All the discoveries shared a second time, a fresh chance at miracle moving through the rooms...

As long as we do not need to run.

No: new rooms could be excavated. A fresh start, in every way. And he would devote himself to a pair of Great Works, with the chance that fixing would unite the roads.

But...

...he had seen her, in the aspect of a unicorn.

She had looked... not as he truly would have wished, not even in that aspect. But it wasn't as if that was ever truly under his control, now was it? With so much involved, so many charged chaos pearls, the amount he'd believed necessary just to make the attempt... no, there was no way she would have looked precisely as he had once dreamed. That made sense.

But I asked her the question.

And she said --

-- no: asking her to interpret simple sensory information was hard enough right now, and he'd already had signs that her memory was confused. When her pain had diminished, she would naturally be capable of sensing more. He simply needed to wait for the right time, he would ask again, and she would provide the only answer which made any sense. He just had to wait.

But before that time could arrive, he needed to do things both large and small. And this was the time for seeing how well the first approach might work.

He did not teleport to Town Hall, for there was no safe arrival point waiting for him, and he suspected the building's true master had deliberately arranged it. Coordinator could not teleport -- could, in fact, barely do anything, and did so much in the name of keeping that a secret, one which had been so easy to learn -- and so why should anypony who could enjoy the benefits? He'd asked for a place, just a single unoccupied closet he could use, and the first time he'd tried to arrive there -- well, at least all the stacked-up paperwork had provided a degree of impact cushioning. The bureaucrat's excuse was that he simply couldn't control where ponies needed to place things, which of course meant that he had controlled exactly that and arranged both matters and stacks so that everypony would understand just who was really in charge.

(A pony who was -- necessary. It was, when applied in that exact direction, an ugly word. But what Coordinator failed to understand was that necessity in itself did not create power. A certain degree of leverage, yes, and his continued presence as a much-reviled part of the Great Work. But not power. Coordinator saw just about everything in terms of power, and so tended to falsely view just about all the world in terms of what he could get it to do for him. Coordinator thought he had control, and... some lessons had yet to be taught, ones which were an exceptionally long time in coming. He wondered if the stallion would ever learn, and who the teacher might ultimately turn out to be.)

So he trotted through the town, which slowed him down somewhat. It wasn't just the lingering injury of his leg: there were still a few of his in the area whom he could speak with (a welcome distraction), plus some of the locals wanted his attention (one had just learned of her pregnancy: they mutually set the time for the first examination), and there were other draws on his time, pulls created by a lifetime spent residing in the same settled zone, one where virtually nopony ever moved away and some of those who moved in didn't stay long. The interactions of everyday life. Small things, and thus they were ones which assisted in further centering himself before he reached Town Hall.

Eventually, he got inside. (Coordinator had kept him waiting: another petty display from an even more petty pony.) And having reached that particular destination, he went right for the point.

"It has become necessary to control the Bearers," he told the stallion, and his directness meant he got to watch something exceptionally nauseating take place. Coordinator seldom smiled and when he did, the expression was rarely a true one. Being in the presence of something which constituted genuine joy for the bureaucrat was more than enough to turn his stomach.

But it was necessary.

"Really," Coordinator smiled. "And does 'Bearers' include our visiting Princess?"

He saw the change in posture, tail lifting and ears rotating forward added to that so-rare flare of corona, and recognized that he might have just given Coordinator the single best moment of his life. (It was going to take a lot of effort to push that nausea away.) "Yes. Did you find anything?"

That weak corona exerted, and the stacked pages of the pegasus' stolen manuscript slid forward on the desk.

"Where," Coordinator smiled, "do I even start?"

Their first stop in the castle had been Rarity's assigned quarters, and that had gone about as well as Twilight would have expected -- which was to say that there had been other post-fashion-show occasions in all of their lives when they'd wound up interrupting the designer while Rarity was caught between creative frenzy and fast-approaching deadline, and so the five who were standing on the floor all knew just how much to back up before the door flew open.

"Really, do you mind?" (They tried not to look at the disheveled mane, which turned out to be surprisingly easy when the twitching borders of the blue eyes were demanding so much of their attention.) "I have hours, mere hours before I must be finished, hours I cannot extend or beg for more of, hours which never should have been so scant in the first place --" a forehoof stomped "-- not that I am blaming our host in any way, of course, but mere hours and now I am losing seconds, perhaps even a full minute to speaking with all of you, so really, I must ask that you all leave me alone. No suggestions. No advice. No queries on why the curtain rod is currently vertical against the wall -- oh, Twilight! If you have a minute, this one spool you left outside my door -- I'm sorry, dear, but the hue is not quite ideal. However, should you visit that shop and simply ask them to assist you in finding something two gradients closer to cerulean --"

Which was when a hovering Rainbow, who'd heard it all a few too many times before, pressed her forehooves into the carefully-wrangled indoor cloud.

"-- I am wet."

They all nodded.

"I am wet," Rarity slowly repeated, her straightened mane now dripping into the puddle on the floor, "and I am still hysterical. Hysterically angry. Was that truly necessary?"

Another group nod.

"And you all wonder," Rarity muttered, "why your hock lines sometimes feel too tight. They are that way because you all deserve it... Very well. If it is so necessary to both distract me from my labor and force me to lose yet more time to restyling and drying -- what is going on?"

Once the floor had been mopped and Pinkie had verified that nopony was trying to watch or listen in, the group began to update her. Twilight didn't stay for all of it: there were things she had to do and no matter what Rarity might have wished, none of them centered around the exchange of spools. She provided what information she personally could about their latest discoveries and conjectures, participated in the group's attempt to figure out exactly where the snitcher could be stored for maximum safety and a minimal chance of arrests, successfully talked Rarity out of laying claim to the new supply of shiftstones, and just barely talked her into removing the one she'd worked so hard on.

"But I was going to wear it at the party! And it was so hard to come up with a dress which would work with so many hues --"

"-- Rarity, it was part of her necklace." There had been no real point to checking the stone against the empty cradle's shape and fit, and they'd done it anyway. "Maybe part of what made her change. Nothing's happened to you, and I'm not sure anything could -- but I don't want to take the chance. Please put it away," Twilight asked, her tones coming all too close to pleading. "Because if there's any chance that somepony could wind up like her from wearing it too long, then nopony should ever wear these again, and..."

She couldn't stop the image any more than she'd been able to prevent it from manifesting within her inner vision for the seven replays she'd been through during the trot to the castle. Rarity's skin being pushed from beneath, new bones forming and breaking as her friend's scream filled the world.

"...you can't wear it again, Rarity. You can't. Not until we know it's safe. Please?"

The designer looked deep into purple eyes, and Twilight wondered how much reflection of imagination had been seen in order to trigger the shudder.

"Very well," she reluctantly said, and her field exerted: the necklace floated to a fabric-covered dressing table, enveloped in soft blue. "I do understand, Twilight, truly I do, but... I hope that should it be proven innocent in all this, you will return it to me. What is our next step?"

"They'll tell you." Twilight nodded to the others. "I've given you everything I have, and -- Pinkie needs to tell you some things."

It got them all a very quick "Privately," from the baker, followed by an even faster "After you promise you won't get too upset. And you'll understand. And really really won't get upset. Because you're going to get upset anyway and I want you to at least promise you'll lie about it."

Rarity blinked, and the saturated glue of her false eyelashes slipped a little more. "Pinkie, that is not exactly what I would consider to be an encouraging start. Exactly what is going on that you --"

"-- in privacy," Pinkie semi-repeated. "It's not horrible and it's not anything about -- her. I just know it's going to upset you a little. Maybe a lot. Please?"

Eventually, "...very well. Twilight, you are leaving?"

She'd thought she'd been shifting towards the door a little more subtly than that. "Yes. That book is in Quiet's library, at least if he didn't --" and she could feel the heat from the fast-rising blush "-- move it because he thought I might try to -- borrow it for a while, or all the things we were talking about over breakfast --"

We were having fun with each other during breakfast. We were just kidding around. Like friends.

"-- and that means I have to go read that entry. See exactly how complicated it is to make, how many snitchers might have existed during Fortreeze's time because that'll give me a guess as to how many might have survived. And then I need to find out if there's any local device-makers. That doesn't mean much because somepony could have gone a long way to find an old one or have something new created, but it'll help to know if it was at least possible to get it done in town."

Rarity slowly nodded. "Good luck, Twilight. But I rather doubt he's moved it. He knew you were --" and the pause felt far too long "-- playing. However, before you go -- one last thing." Twilight paused in front of the door. "Pinkie said that -- a pony who deliberately made her believe she was broken would be the worst pony in the world. We do not yet know if that is what happened. But not all monsters appear as such. As Luna has said, there are those who trot through the world wearing pony skins, and..." A deep breath. "Do not accuse any, not before we know. Most especially, you must try not to see her that way without final proof, for there is a chance that she is simply a victim and nothing more."

"We're all ponies," Pinkie half-whispered. "We have to remember that we're all ponies..."

It produced a slow nod. "But we may be moving among monsters, Pinkie, and simply have yet to see their skin slip. Be careful, Twilight. All of us must be so very careful. Monsters react poorly when their disguises are broken. Do your best to make it seem as if everything is normal, no matter how hard that might be. Act, speak, move normally. But think about what you see and hear -- no matter who might be saying it." And the last word came all too close to begging. "Please..."

Not Quiet.

It can't be Quiet. He's around our age. He wouldn't have the experience or the knowledge. He just has... a library which might help, and if he's around our age, then he's also around hers and he could have known her as a filly, but he... he doesn't have the device mark, even if he could pay somepony who did and

not Quiet.

"Okay." The word had made it into the air. It had been picked up by her ears. But when it came to sinking deep within her heart, there was simply no space remaining.

Twilight exited the room, carefully closed the door behind her, made sure she could hear just about nothing when listening from the hallway, and then slowly (it felt as if she was moving much too slowly) trotted towards the library.

In the past, she'd only had a total of thirty-one minutes with the Guide, and so she'd had to skim. She'd retained most of what she'd seen, but the speed of her reading had prevented a few facts from sinking in. Spending a little more time with the book, a hour in which the only pressure on her came from twitching ears rotated towards the barely-cracked door, was allowing her to learn several of them. Chief among the new lessons was that there were many things which could have been truthfully said about Fortreeze Laudanum, and none of them would have been "He was a good writer."

The Guide's creator had been one of the most talented researchers to exist and when it came to assembling the facts he'd unearthed, he certainly knew how to put them in their proper order. He'd had some hard-learned skill for sketching, and the plain black lines never seemed to miss any vital details. But when it came to weaving his discoveries into a compelling non-fiction narrative, he hadn't so much failed as he'd apparently never perceived that making an attempt at success might be worthwhile. Any other material given such treatment would have been so dry as to choke the reader. But the Guide's subject matter managed to give it some degree of flow, with all of it carried on a tide of spilled blood.

It was a first draft, and so it was somewhat more crude than the volume which had eventually reached the vanity press. But that gave her an advantage, as there were things Fortreeze had written down in this version which hadn't made the Archives' copy. Footnotes which had been deemed unworthy of publication, little sketches which he must have decided were just taking up space, personal notes to himself which never would have gone into an actual book -- and so her eyes went over crucial new lines.

Barrier Breaker: power requirements surprisingly high. Believes it's because mark magic so deep and hard to reach, getting accurate measurement takes more thaums than expected. Suggests platinum as absolute need instead of option: recharging otherwise too frequent.

Barrier Breaker. She knew that name from her Gifted School studies, and wished she hadn't.

No physical harm done from long-term contact. Fallen Shroud claimed heard of fused snitcher to skin of rival's child, prevented mark manifestation for full lifetime. Had to ask for repeat, three times. Hard to understand her through the laughter.

She turned her head, let the tears fall somewhere other than the book.

Nepher wants to know about bulk creation. Asked me to come back if I found something. Thought using them on private village might allow 'direction of society'.

The snitcher, as she now understood it, hadn't originally been created as a device meant to inflict pain. Instead, it had been the result of a parent's simple question. 'It seems as my child's mark should have manifested by now: is there any way I can learn if she's at least getting close?' A single dedicated caster who had only created the prototype as a means of reassuring her child that yes, the mark was on the way and now they would both know what sort of actions would make it appear all the sooner. That device builder just hadn't anticipated the suppression side effect, and when others learned about her newest of creations...

It wasn't always about the device itself. With the snitcher, the original intent had arguably been good. But once news had spread, so had the device, and that had led to the perversions which ultimately placed it into the realm of the banned and the pages of the Guide. The original creator hadn't been punished, for only the original dream had been hers: not the ways in which others had twisted it. But for the majority of those who had built and used the subsequent snitchers... prison, and that was at the minimum. Some of those discoveries had led to the reveal of other possessions, and several of those ponies had gone down fighting. More than a few had sent law enforcement officers into the shadowlands ahead of them.

A snitcher didn't require much in the way of special materials: the finicky part was in the arrangement of the internal structure, the true difficulty in the enchantments which made it work. It needed a builder with a device mark, enough raw field strength to get into the Gifted School without issue, and a spectacularly high field dexterity score because the final spells were just that complicated: microadjustments made up ninety percent of the final stage. A single pony could do it all -- but that pony would be a rare specimen indeed, and so snitcher production had always been kept low, even by those who never cared about consequences. Fortreeze had estimated a few dozen to exist during his time: Twilight would have been surprised if the number had managed to double since, especially given what happened to the confiscated ones.

So one very talented pony -- or two could work together: one builds the device, the other does the final enchantments. But you'd still have a hard time getting it all together, because there's no way to finish it, or even really start, unless you've got somepony with a device mark on your side. There are devices where somepony else can just work out the thing from first principles and then once it's announced and the designs get made public, somepony without that mark can just set up a manufacturing line. This isn't one of them. It's always going to take the right mark, and those ponies aren't all that common --

She paused as her thoughts turned to the one resident of Ponyville who possessed a device mark.

-- or fully suitable.

It was a thought which shamed her every time she had it. But it was the truth. She liked Ratchette: the two had often indulged in long talks since the mechanic had moved to the settled zone, although they were discussions which generally left both opening individual bottles of headache medicine: Twilight understood the spells, Ratchette the physical construction, and they hardly ever found a way to meet in the middle. Ratchette had her skills, her knowledge, a talent Twilight could still have so much trouble believing in... and yet she wasn't fully suitable for her mark-assigned profession, and never would be. For Ratchette would probably recognize a snitcher, might even be capable of repairing one if it was just a matter of realigning the interior -- but the pegasus would never be able to enchant. It took so much for her just to make fine adjustments without the benefit of a field...

...I'm distracting myself. Ask the hard questions, Twilight. First: could somepony with a Guide use it to create a new snitcher, with no other books for resources? It didn't require much thought. No. But they wouldn't miss it by much. This has everything about the physical construction and suggests most of the spells down to the feel -- but you can't get feel from books. He can write all about how your corona should be angular here and rounded there, but none of it will ever let somepony know how a spell truly feels until you either get it right or have somepony who can demonstrate for you, which isn't always enough. The Guide would let them make the interior and shell. They'd know which enchantments they had to learn, but they couldn't learn them from this. Nopony could finish it from one book. But... they would have a pretty good idea of where to start looking for the next step. The casters he's listed who could do it are all dead. But other books are referenced in the citations, and while pretty much all of them are gone now or just as restricted as the Guide, you'd know what you were after. Give it all to the right caster, allow some time for experiments and a lot of luck in dodging the results from the test gallops, and eventually...

Possession of a Fortreeze didn't guarantee the creation of a working snitcher. But unless another caster was willing to try working from first principles and just knowing it was possible at all, having the Guide was just about a required step to making one.

And somepony like Quiet, with this kind of library... would he have the books which let somepony try to finish?

There was nothing more she could do with the Guide, not for this, and her old desire to go through every last page seemed to have faded. Instead, her field gently closed the old book, and she carefully reshelved it in the way she treated every volume, so that it looked as if nopony had ever moved it at all.

He's got somepony regularly dusting them. Under normal circumstances, she would have approved -- but in this case, it meant she couldn't estimate how long it had been since the previous reader had opened the book. Hours, years, centuries: anything was possible.

Standing perfectly still, facing the shelves, listening to the silent hallway and the unsteady beat of her own heart.

It's not worth my wings.

She needed to apologize to Rainbow, because the pegasus had probably (and justifiably) been offended by the stupid statement. She seemed to spend so much of her time apologizing for this and that, and virtually none of it ever felt like it prevented the next offensive sentence from dropping out of her mouth.

I have to check the security spells on the castle. There doesn't seem to be much magic in the library itself, but Quiet's going to take books in and out of here all the time, bringing them somewhere else to read. His main concern would be anypony leaving the structure with them, not leaving the room. So most of the workings are probably at the front door, plus any side entrances, the local pegasus population isn't that large so he might not have done much with the windows, although that's also leaving all this open to self-levitating unicorns. But I really need to learn just how hard it would be for somepony else to get in and out without him knowing. Use the book --

But Quiet had said it was just him and the servants on a lot of nights

when his wife is traveling

and that implied he didn't have many guests. The best security for his wonderful book collection might come from nopony knowing he had it.

That's not good enough. With just a little internal humor, Because now I know he has it.

Not that she was planning on stealing from him -- but it would be a lie to say she hadn't already entertained several rather detailed fantasies on the subject, because it was almost a truism that anypony would recognize a truly great library when they felt the instinctive desire to rob it. Push aside the palace (where years of daydreams still hadn't let her figure out a route past the Princess) and Quiet had the single greatest personal collection she'd ever seen. To look at his shelves was to plan a thousand heists and the twelve false identities she'd need to live under in order to get away with it.

Owning a Guide isn't illegal, not in and of itself. But there's other books which somepony could have temporarily taken from him or just broken in long enough to use. I saw the citations section, so the next step is to find out if any of those books are here. Because if they are, it means anypony working on this just has to break into one place. Or they could own the spellbooks and just need information on the device. Finding an old snitcher, having the book just be a coincidence... that's still possible. He's --

-- hoofsteps in the hallway: light, careful ones, steadily approaching. She paused, then went back to reading book spines.

"I should have known," came from the steadily-opening doorway. "One library a day just isn't enough to satisfy your urges, is it?"

It made her smile. And then she realized she was smiling, felt how good it was to smile around him, and...

He's not.

She turned her head just enough to look at him. "I know that expression," she told him. "I've had that expression. It's the look of somepony who's checking the complete contents of their shelves to make sure nothing's missing and doesn't want anypony else to know they're doing it."

"That's a -- rather specific expression," Quiet guiltily admitted.

Twilight shrugged. "I'm a librarian. I get to wear that face every week, and --" blushing a little "-- when I worked in the Archives, a lot of department heads had it around me. Constantly. It didn't take very long to figure out what it meant. They're all still here, Quiet: I promise."

"So no more offers?" She couldn't tell if that had been a tease.

She sighed. "I don't think I have anything valuable enough. And you should be worried about that value. What's your security like? Because if somepony wanted to get the haul of their lifetime, you have subsections which are worth more than a few whole libraries --"

-- Rainbow's manuscript, I keep thinking she must have misplaced it because nopony would have stolen it and if anypony was going to steal a book for value, there's all this. She must have just left it somewhere --

He was looking at her. Waiting for the rest of the sentence.

"-- and you're going to need the spells to match," she concluded. "I was just trying to think of a few which might be suitable, that I could cast for you before we left. It's the least I can do to thank you for your hospitality, Quiet, and -- to make sure it's all safe. I never want to hear that something happened to your collection."

He sighed.

Twilight blinked. She hadn't been expecting a sigh. The sigh didn't seem to make sense. "Quiet?"

"Just thinking, Twilight," he told her. "That I probably don't have enough spells set up, but... don't worry too much about them. Anypony who knows enough to want them is at least a pony of quality and eventually, they will need to go somewhere. Somepony else will live in the castle, they won't have the same interests, and -- they won't stay here forever. I think the most I can hope for is that in the end, they wind up in a place where they're carefully pressed between caring hooves. That's enough."

The words had been -- soft. Solemn. Weary. And she thought she could hear more than that, after three years of trying to learn the art of listening.

He's hurting. Something's hurt him.

The words automatically slipped out, and she didn't regret any of them. "What happened?"

"Sorry?"

And now he was trying to brush it off. "Something's wrong, Quiet. I can hear it. Something happened and -- something's wrong. I'll understand if you don't want to tell me what it is, but I'm your guest and --"

Could she say the next part? Did she mean it and nothing more?

"-- I'd like to think I've started to become..." Her head briefly dipped, eyes unwilling to meet his from fear of seeing rejection looking back. "...your friend. If it's anything I can help with, anything..."

Another soft sigh, and then a nearly-invisible field gently lifted her chin.

"It's..." He took a deep breath, then winced at the movement of his ribs. Her right forehoof started to come up, and he quickly shook his head. "It's the weakness in my blood. I told you there was work being done on a cure, and -- I spoke to the head researcher today. There's been a setback. And that's the whole of it, Twilight. I thought there might be a cure any moon now, but -- it's going to take more time. And I've been roaming around, thinking about how much more time it could take. Trying to keep believing that there could ever be a cure at all. Hope can be a very delicate thing, mine took a kick today, and I'm not thinking about the security of my books so much as -- having nopony I can read to, or leave them to, and... whoever winds up in the castle might just kick them out and fill the space with sports trophies. Compared to that, a thief who would steal the books for their own use starts to sound pretty good --"

She didn't know she had been stepping forward until she finished doing it, and she didn't realize she was nuzzling him before she was in the middle of it.

His eyes went wide and grey ears rotated back, half-flattened. But he didn't pull away from her. He just -- let it happen, something she hadn't even realized was going to happen. She nuzzled him, and it felt almost as if it was the nuzzle meant for friends.

Almost.

"Please keep hoping," she whispered. "You always have to hope."

He nodded, if just barely, and she took a hoofstep back.

"So the issue is reading to somepony?" she challenged while hoping he could hear the tease in it, without ever wondering if there was something else present to hear. "I can fix that." She trotted over to the largest couch, settled in. "Read to me."

He was looking at her. She couldn't remember anypony ever having looked at her that way before, and wasn't sure what it meant. Not until the moment her gaze reached his eyes, eyes which looked like nothing else in the world.

There was a moment when it was the two of them among the books, one standing, one resting, and a heartbeat which she felt everypony in the settled zone must have heard. And then he took a slower, more shallow breath, and his face turned towards the shelves.

"Any preference?"

"I saw a first printing Canon #1 Daring Do up there. Which doesn't quite fit your theme..."

"I like to think of them as history which had to be published as fiction," Quiet declared. "Because nopony ever would have believed it. That's your choice? And you're willing to put up with my notoriously horrible attempts at a mare voice, which I generally only use when I'm completely out of penalty rope?"

"We'll see just how far I'll let you get with it," Twilight told him. "Get the book."

His field fetched the volume, and he settled in on the couch. It took some time before he had arranged body and legs into a position he was truly comfortable with, and Twilight wondered if she had to move closer. Keeping an ear tuned to his breathing felt like a good idea, and of course that naturally meant dipping her head in a little...

"You want the opening chapter quotes, don't you?"

"I," Twilight declared, "am a proper audience. The opening chapter quotes, if you please."

He began to read, and Twilight listened, moving closer still so that he wouldn't need to raise his voice too much. And she still had to check for those spell-crucial titles, and there was the mission and the snitcher and her wings and the Secret and so much else, but it could all be told to wait for a little while, for her friend -- her friend, just her friend, he had to be just her friend -- was hurting, and she thought she could help him feel better. For a little while, she could let that be the most important thing.

He's not a monster.

She would almost manage to believe that all the way to the end.

Bentonite

For Coordinator, there was nothing quite like receiving the credit for something he'd intended to do anyway.

His recruitment into what so many called The Great Work had come fairly late in the process of that madness, during what had been just about the earliest part of his career. Oh, he'd had an idea that something might have been going on: ponies getting together who had no normal reason for associating, conversations between those with nothing in common... well, he supposed some might have called that the connections of friendship, and the description was only slightly less laughable than the actual concept. But once he'd realized that none of it surprisingly had anything to do with him (for he always tried to keep an eye on any such interactions, just in case anypony was plotting behind his tail), he'd initially just kept an eye on it from a distance, as best he could -- and when that gaze was blocked by the intervention of some rather surprising bodies, he'd stepped up his efforts, trying to bring some of his usual skills into play. Doing so had led him directly to the heart of everything.

Yes, there would probably be some who would describe the exact path as unusual. But when you were trying to get some idea of what was going on around town and whether that activity might be illegal -- or rather, a level of illegality which he could personally exploit -- then naturally the first pony to start putting pressure on would logically be the chief of police. Having that pressure tracked back to him... somewhat unexpected, but he'd learned from it and adjusted certain tactics since. And it wasn't as if anything bad had happened, because the ultimate result had been to place him into a position where he could expand his power while pretending it was in the service of a so-called greater cause -- well, no: that last part was true. Giving Coordinator additional control over an expanding population was as great a cause as anypony could ever work towards, while what would have been the best possible outcome of the supposed Great Work could have been accomplished on the very first day through the simple and just action of repeatedly kicking a skull.

(Perhaps he'd even slipped up purposefully, planning even that action on a deeper level of thought, knowing they would have to recruit him. That certainly seemed possible, especially after having told himself so over several years.)

The recruitment itself had been rather basic, at least once a pony of sanity took a moment to disregard what had so clearly been Chief Copper's completely empty threats. He had eventually been told what that lie of a Great Work was about, and Gentle Arrival had delivered the joke of a speech personally. Coordinator had managed not to laugh, mostly because plotting out what he could do with knowledge of that secret added to the proof of a public figure's obvious dementia had been taking up much of his time. The false physician had been chasing cure, when any who were truly among the pure would have exacted that simple justice.

But then the speech had gone on for a little longer. Not just the master experiment (he only thought of it as an experiment now, one which still needed perfecting, but just might have produced some level of reproducible result), but the... other things. The actions which had produced the warped.

(After he'd gotten out of there -- once he'd agreed to become part of the whole thing, after he'd gotten out of sight, hearing, smell and feel... well, the vomiting hadn't stopped for some time, and the profound sense of relief which settled in once it finally ended had never gone away. For on the day he'd been born, Gentle Arrival had not been in Trotter's Falls, completely unable to attend or assist. Coordinator was not one of his, not in any way for which the word could apply and never for the truest definition. It meant he was still pure. He would always be pure. He was safe.)

And as it turned out, the creation of the unnatural came with certain... expenses.

So he'd been recruited, and it had given him the chance to receive credit for something he would have done anyway. The Great Work had a number of willing donors: those who had been just as delusional, stupid enough to believe there was even a chance that justice needed to be postponed. (He held to that opinion of their intelligence, even now. There was no way anypony could have guessed the idiocy would do something.) But after so much time, they weren't enough. An open invitation had been issued for him to pull the strings of ponies he wasn't planning on tugging for years to come. To speed up the process of expanding his power base, all in the name of what they thought was their cause. As a sane pony, he'd let them think he was going along with that, and so the number of pictures on his wall had increased faster than ever. It was reaching the point where he was thinking about having somepony else move a few filing cabinets in order to clear extra space, although he had yet to decide where they were going to be moved to. The small details also needed full control.

He'd done work he would have done anyway, received what often seemed to be insufficient and, occasionally, what he felt was perilously close to backhoofed praise for it. (He had plans on how to make certain ponies pay for that, and some of them were now very close to being put into unstoppable action.) Records had been presented to Gentle Arrival, along with what the elder foolishly believed to be the complete results of those efforts, and Coordinator was certain nopony had worked through the multiple layers of security he'd used to get his hidden bank account. In return, he'd been given updates on how things were proceeding, managed not to laugh at any of those either, occasionally took time out after such meetings so the nausea could subside, and once his skills had been proven, once he was trusted...

Coordinator usually didn't think about that day. Surprisingly, if given the choice, he might not have scrubbed it from his memory entirely, for the pure needed to be aware that sin existed, along with those weak enough to allow it any freedom to breathe. But for what had happened... well, that usually wasn't worth thinking about, because he had only seen her once, and once would have been the ultimate limit. Coordinator's lies had been believed over any truth she might have tried to present: the midwife wasn't so far gone as to not dismiss anything which came from taint. Ultimately, all it had done was reinforce his place in the conspiracy, for he had been believed, not her, and so he'd left her halls at a speed which years of lying to himself had turned into a slow, dignified trot. Never to return. Never to look upon that walking sin again.

Except that now, there was going to be a presentation, with the party used as the excuse for gathering those who would attend. There was something which could be presented...

Coordinator was rather involved in the planning of the party, and not just in the little ways in which he was using it to remind the powerless local Lord of just which pony truly made everything work. For starters, he was the ultimate arbitrator -- and gatherer -- of the true guest list, and that was an exercise so complicated that he frankly didn't trust it to anypony else. There was just too much to do there, and he was the sole pony who could get it done. The deadline (and why was Gentle Arrival in such a ludicrous hurry? It wasn't as if he had anything to fear from the still-lurking press, nothing except for everything) had put a certain amount of pressure on his office, and that started with the need to send things via same-day delivery -- not just within Trotter's Falls, but all over Equestria.

It was a complex process. News typically traveled at the speed of ponies and when sufficient vocal relays between fresh, speedy pegasi got involved, a story could go from one coast to the other in something over a day. But there were times when things had to go faster than that and when the need truly called for it, ponies turned, as they always should, to their superiors.

Gentle Arrival's idea for maintaining a series of safe spaces at the limits of his range had hardly been an original one: even the palace maintained hollow structures called gatehouses across most of Equestria in case the thrones' own teleporters needed to be dispersed in an emergency, and Coordinator had recently managed to get the one for Trotter's Falls dismantled due to a minor and completely fictitious conflict of zoning laws. However, when it came to private operations... if it was truly necessary to get a physical missive from one major settled zone to another within a matter of hours, you paid a teleporter, who would bring it to the limits of their range, pass it off to another unicorn who would repeat the process, and after the required number of jumps had done their damage to your budget, the letter would be delivered. Or in this case, the invitation, which was the best way to mask what Coordinator saw as the order.

The bare majority of those invited were within Trotter's Falls: sending out underlings on the gallop sufficed. But Gentle Arrival had, over the course of the years, spread things across Equestria. Coordinator had amplified that web, added fresh strands while thickening a few established ones into choking ropes whenever a pony seemed to be on the verge of coming to their senses. And if everypony needed to be contacted in one day -- well, there was an expense built into that, and it wasn't a small one. But it was a cost many operations dealt with as part of their yearly operating expenses, and Coordinator had funds put aside for such occasions, none of which were actually his.

Issuing same-day orders was a fairly standard procedure, especially for a pony of his skills. The trouble came when everypony who'd been given those orders needed to respond through showing up. Because those ponies were still all over the continent, they would need to attend the party -- and that meant another requirement for load-relaying teleporters, those who could escort, bringing the living through the between. When Canterlot had a true legislative emergency, putting all of those casters to work on the same goal would gather the full representative population of the Day and Night Courts in a matter of hours -- and should that requirement dictate the use of more than the palace's own capable unicorns, it would happen at government expense. In this case... well, just about everypony paid, and other ponies collected. Which excepted Coordinator, who had never perceived a need to blackmail his way into the travel network and had no way to make up for lost time. Ten of thousands of bits would be spent for such speed of journey, and no percentage of that would skim its way to him. If he hadn't been boosted by his current joy, it actually would have been somewhat depressing.

But he was happy as he worked in his office, writing the true invitations before sending the summons out into the network for delivery to those attendees, and there were many reasons for that. He had pretended to dedicate himself to the Great Delusion and much to his surprise, that insanity had produced results. Not ideal ones, from what little Gentle Arrival had told him prior to departure, but -- results. There was a chance that one day, that type and level of power could be his, and Coordinator was more than willing to pledge himself to a cause which might support him, especially when he had the means to control it.

But that was something for the long-term (although the direct control would need to begin very soon). For now, he had been told that the time had come to control the Bearers. He would receive all the credit for that within the conspiracy, along with the potential for increased influence and an easier seizure of the lead role. And it had been something he'd been planning to do anyway.

The weather coordinator's manuscript had inflicted multiple levels of pain. Unless research was involved, Coordinator didn't read about pony's lives: he wrote about them and then let those ponies know that he had the means to publish. But going through the multicolored text had certainly qualified as research, just as much as trying to get all the way through the results had more than established its credentials as migraine.

But it had been worth it. The pegasus might have treated the placement of apostrophes as something very much like bursts of lightning produced while blindfolded (just jump on the base material enough times and eventually, something would be randomly shocked into agony), but there had been nothing wrong with her memory. Normally, he would have taken a little more time to verify some finer details of such accounts, but he'd been reading the reports of an eyewitness and had, somewhere around the third dose of pain medicine, learned to translate from the ego. In a very real way, she'd become one of his favorite authors, and he almost considered it a pity that her desires to create future volumes were about to be completely derailed.

Still, it didn't matter. Very soon, he'd be getting everything he needed to know from the pony's mouth. All six of them -- but with a special focus on one. Twilight Sparkle had gotten away once with nothing more than a lack of friends as inadequate punishment for that escape -- something she'd certainly managed to change since graduation. It was long-past time to collect his true due.

Coordinator would finally be her friend. Her best friend, the one who kept her shielded from all the things which could hurt her. And weren't there more of those things than anypony could have possibly imagined?

He would speak for a Princess, just as he'd once dreamed. Not the Princess he'd originally intended, yes, but in time... well, who knew how far Twilight might go with a few proper words of advice helping to clear the way? After all, that was the sort of thing friends did for each other. He would make the path for her -- and she would keep him in her shadow, stepping aside whenever he wished true power to flow.

Control over a Princess: the best day of his life. (He could see that as a seventh Element: Control. It was certainly the only one which mattered.) The chance to take over a conspiracy which might actually be able to do something, potentially provide the opportunity to replace Princess with Prince, a glory found only in the nightscape given the chance to manifest in reality -- well, really, was there any way this day could possibly improve any further? And yet it would be surpassed at the party, the gathering he was looking forward to more than any other moment of his life, as the time when Twilight would realize what a good friend he would be. Given that level of shining guarantee as a beacon to steer by, he could even deal with having to see her --

-- he was going to see her.

(His field winked out. The quill dropped. No part of him was capable of noticing.)

She had -- attacked him. Attacked him simply for telling the truth, telling her what she was and what should have been done with her. They were words somepony should have told her at birth, assuming any of the truly pure could have been bothered to pause long enough in their kicking for speech. She had clearly never heard those words before, and so they had been more than overdue. And she had responded by attacking.

They were words he had relished and in part, that had been due to their fundamental truth -- but some of the rest was because under normal circumstances, he just didn't get to say them. As her inferior intelligence had naturally failed to perceive during her failed lesson, there was generally a need to maintain a shielding barrier for purposes of plausible deniability and so under most circumstances, he simply wrote the words and made sure they would be found by those just barely capable of reading them. There were certain problems with saying them in person, starting with the loss of that layer and ending with -- attack.

But he had said them. He had been forced to spend time in the presence of taint and worse, it was taint which thought it could become something far worse than the usual delusions of equality. She had believed there was the chance to become superior. Nopony of sanity could have stayed in that room without having said something and as it had turned out, there had been no consequence at all. He'd left, knowing he would never see her again.

Except that... he would see her again. Very soon now.

He would be expected at the party. He would need to be there, for that was the time to seize control of Twilight and the other Bearers, with the others believing he was doing it on their behalf. And afterwards, at the gathering... yes, he would be expected there too, and he'd been told that there might be certain precautions in place, depending on whether he had succeeded. Because if he somehow didn't (utter nonsense), there was a next step, and --

-- he would succeed. Of course he would. But after that happened...

There was a chance to avoid the gathering itself, although it would be a regrettable one: he would have to postpone some portion of his power transferal for later, and getting just about everypony together a second time in the same fashion would be extremely difficult. But when he did take over... she would be there. She might always be there.

Gentle Arrival hadn't said that much in telling him what the presentation might contain. Hardly anything, now that he thought about it, and he hadn't seen a need to ask because he'd assumed it would be a modified form of the recruitment speech: the same stupid words just about everypony had already heard. But she would certainly be in the room, he might have some trouble avoiding it, and --

-- there were things which could be done. She wasn't essential. She could be disposed of at the sign of first perfection (unless that was her -- Sun and Moon, what if that turned out to be her?) or second partial success. Maybe -- maybe he could get rid of her immediately, or rather, have somepony do it for him. But then there would be nothing to present, it was essential that there be something to present or things would stop. And even if he waited until the minute after she left the stage...

Would she have forgotten him? She had only seen him once and under most circumstances, that would provide hope for a lapse of memory, especially when dealing with the inferior. But it wasn't as if he hadn't done something rather memorable.

It took nearly half a minute to force his corona into ignition, and then he slid open the hidden drawer of his desk.

There was a bottle there. He'd kept a bottle in the concealed compartment ever since taking the office, although it occasionally had to be replaced after the contents aged past any hope for use. This one was fairly fresh. It had been hard to get, just as hard as some of the others, because sources had a way of vanishing. But he had to have the bottle, because the bottle was power. More power than he'd ever had, at least for the kind of power he... didn't have. It would not provide the level of power which only fantasy, and now perhaps the Great Work, could truly offer. But to a smaller degree, the bottle was still power, and so he'd had to have it. Just in case.

Gentle Arrival hadn't told him much, not compared to what he now wished he'd been told. But one detail stood out.

She had broken an Eastern Red Giant. Casually.

He had to get back to issuing the summons, and so he closed that hidden drawer -- only to find himself opening it again and again, looking at the bottle. And all the while, the same five words kept echoing in his inner ear.

He had been justified. He had been right. Nothing about that had changed, or even should. But she had changed. And he had...

I called her a clod.

"'She remembered the first time she had visited the Museum Of Minotaur History in Polis, the capital city. The heavy stone around the entrance halls, taken from the remnants of overseer tunnels. The bloodstains which had been perfectly preserved through requested magics, with the intent that those who stepped through would be reminded, and so never forget. And just beyond the last remnants of Ancient lives stolen by force, she had found the whips. Thousands of them, the largest collection in all of Mazein. There were times when a young, bold, and rather dismissive minotaur would be found snidely looking at those whips, having somehow decided that they meant nothing, and one of those had occurred right in front of Daring. Her tour guide had spotted that look, gone to the teenager, and asked if he felt his strength was enough to withstand what others had not. The youth had started to boast of his power and in his bragging, he hadn't seen the guide's big hands move. He only felt the sudden pull of the metal cord as the end clamp snapped onto his nose ring. He had started, instinctively tried to pull it away, felt the surge of pain from his snout. And then he had screamed, over and over as the guide calmly resumed the tour's opening lecture, timing the words through the bellows of fear, ignoring the youth for five full minutes before coming back to grant him his right of freedom once again. Daring remembered all that and wished for that teen's fate because for her, it had been so much more than five minutes...'"

Twilight listened, ears rotated to catch the sound from a great distance. For she had been in Mazein for a moment, and then she had returned to the dungeon to sit at Daring's side, helpless to assist the pegasus as she struggled against the chains, trying to find a route to freedom which had already been located through the flip of thousands of pages, and yet was still in doubt until the next one turned --

"-- your... pardon?"

Ahuizotl's dungeon vanished. Quiet's library returned. A library where they were sharing a reading couch, she had been listening to him, and everything had been perfectly fine as long as his voice had continued to advance through the pages. (He had such a good reading voice, at least until he tried to vary the tones for some of the secondary mares). She'd... lost track of time. There hadn't been time, other than that which was passing in the story. No time, no mission, and perhaps even no wings. It had been something very much like a little miracle, and it all shattered at the moment she saw Rarity standing within the doorway.

Quiet blinked. Twilight was in a perfect position to see it, at least once she glanced up a little.

"Rarity?" Quiet asked and to Twilight, his tones seemed to be slightly off. "Is something wrong?"

"No," the designer too-quickly said, just as Twilight spotted the tide of red surging beneath the white coat. "I simply need to borrow Twilight for a short time. I have been working on her onsom for the party, and... well, the problem is this, Quiet: I have all of her..." with a very strange awkwardness "...measurements memorized, of course, and they tended to hold true at all times, excepting when she pushed herself too far in her studies and neglected to notice Spike trying to shove food beneath her snout. But those are the... old measurements. I have nothing for her as..." It triggered a little swallow. "Very well, put bluntly: I need to get her wingspan. Also, I must check to see if the necessary change to the muscles around her ribs has altered that number. And then there are other considerations..." More hastily, "Quiet, I am under something of a deadline here, there are multiple dresses to complete along with a tuxedo for Spike, I have only now realized that there is a possibility that nothing I have for Twilight will work, I will already have to do a certain number of adjustments and I now owe you a set of curtains. So before my inevitable nervous breakdown decides to save everypony some time through happening now, would it be possible for me to borrow Twilight?"

They both stared at her for a few seconds, and Twilight wondered if there was a subtle way to tell Quiet that the eye twitching was, at worst, in a mere Phase Two and there was actually nothing to truly worry about until the recently-restored mane began to fray.

"I think you'd better," Quiet replied. "Quickly. And for that matter --" with a small sigh "-- the duties of setting up for the party call. Again. Twilight, I'm sorry, but -- I do have a lot of things which still need arranging and if I don't get back to them soon, I probably will need a professional planner's assistance. And since Pinkie happens to be here --"

Twilight's imagination quickly pulled up the rather recent file which contained the images of a Pinkie-arranged, castle-hosted party.

"-- how do you feel about balloons?"

After a long moment, "...I think I'm missing some information which would be required to answer that. Balloons?"

"And cakes flying through the air. And collapsing statues. Plus some columns. There's a chance for columns to collapse too."

Carefully, "I think I'm... against it? Well, maybe not the flying cake, depending on where it lands. Or the statue if it's an ugly one. But I'm pretty sure I need every last one of my columns."

"Then you'd better get back to work," Twilight said, pushing her way off the couch. "I'll see you later, Quiet."

He nodded, started to get up -- paused. "Do you want me to bookmark it?"

"Please. Spotting the bookmark will save me time in searching before the theft."

It triggered a smile. "Until we see each other at the trial, then."

Teasingly, "You would press charges? Against a Princess?"

"The world," Quiet solemnly stated, "does not need a Princess of Crime. Best to stop her now before that career truly takes off."

Twilight shrugged. "Oh, fine... come on, Rarity, let's get me wrapped and quantified. Again..."

She wanted to take a last glance back, see if he'd been amused by that. But Rarity's tail swished as she stepped aside to clear the exit, did so again as they began to make their way down the hall, and the air currents seemed to suggest it was being held somewhat higher than usual.

Twilight put up with it until they were most of the way back to Rarity's guest quarters. "What are you doing?"

Half-whisper, half-hiss. "Recovering you. Because I do need to put you under the tape, Twilight, or you will look something other than your best when the party begins. But other things must be discussed, and it would seem that some of them should come in the form of a reminder. An immediate one."

She had no idea what Rarity was talking about.

Then she knew exactly what Rarity was talking about, and decided it was in her best interests not to.

"I don't understand," Twilight lied.

"You. And Quiet." Three-quarters hiss now. "Together --"

"I told him," Twilight cut her off.

Slowly, the hoofstep rate dropping accordingly, "Really."

"I told him I thought we were friends," Twilight stated. "He didn't say no. So we're friends, Rarity, we are friends, and my new friend had a bad day. The head researcher who's been working on curing the weakness in his blood told him there was a setback, and... he was down, Rarity, he was just starting to get depressed thinking he'd never have anypony he could read to -- so I let him read to me for a while, and he felt better." Not without pride in three years of lessons both well-learned and recently applied, "That's what friends do for each other."

Rarity's next breath somehow came across as forced. As did the next, and the next...

"...Rarity?"

"Friends," the designer softly said.

"Yes," Twilight tried stating again. "We're friends."

"So when a friend reads to you," Rarity quietly continued, "your natural listening position is to lie down so that your head is resting on his forelegs?"

Twilight hesitated, searched for a response, then wondered how visible that hunt had been.

"I don't know," she replied, and also wondered if the words sounded just as defensive to Rarity's rotated ears. "None of you ever read to me. So I guess any position I use during my first time would be my natural one."

Rarity's breaths were now being pulled in between her teeth. The door to her quarters was right in front of them.

"Twilight." Flavorless. Neutral. Almost completely free of accent.

"What?"

Rarity's horn ignited. The field-coated doors opened to reveal nopony else waiting within, and the designer went inside. Twilight followed, and the doors quickly closed themselves.

The purple tail whipped as Rarity spun, blue eyes fully open, nostrils wide and tail now starting to lash --

"-- we cannot stay here," Rarity hissed. "Not in the castle, not for much longer. Our excuse will only hold for so long. We are expected to remain until the party, and I suspect that many within this settled zone might feel we are only staying for that amount of time as a courtesy to our host. But within a day or so after that, ponies will begin to question why the Bearers need to remain in Trotter's Falls, when Doctor Gentle is safe and we all have duties awaiting us in Ponyville. We all have lives which were put on hold, no matter how many ponies fail to see that and in time, those lives would be expected to resume. The mission -- that goes on for as long as it must: I doubt we would even be permitted to leave the area until it was completed. Simply attempting to depart on the train might lead to a flash of light and rather unexpected fresh view of the ravine. We may wind up camping in the wild zone rather soon, unless we can make progress. And this means we need to search for her, as soon as we possibly can. Or rather, you must, along with as much company as can be managed, as I am expected to stay behind and work on those dresses. And the tuxedo. Spike is somewhat more fit in the limbs than he was the last time I designed for him and the tuxedo shall require additional effort. We have all been distracted by things, from the town itself to the library and poor Rainbow's lost manuscript. But tomorrow morning must be for the search, to find her. We will lose at least the entire evening to the party, and there is nothing to be done about that, not without creating questions. Even if we somehow managed to locate her, help her, everything before Sun was lowered tomorrow, we should attend the party. But the castle is not our first priority. She is. I have trapped myself, through my declarations and neuroses. The rest of us cannot do the same. You know that, Twilight. Help her. Think of her. And tomorrow, search."

She had listened to all of it, as such had seemed essential to finding the best place for an interruption and countering argument for whatever Rarity had meant to say. It meant Twilight had heard every word and in doing so, realized no counter existed. For Rarity was right. The mission had to be resumed. They had to find her and very soon, they would have to leave the castle.

It... hurt.

She didn't know why it hurt, and that made the pain surge all the more.

"We'll get back out there," Twilight softly promised. "We will, Rarity. But I don't know how we're going to find her. She's been coming to us and I was hoping that -- once the resonance bomb wore off, she'd come out again. I don't even know where to start looking. We lost the trail going out of the orchard, and without feel to track..."

"You will think of something," Rarity quietly answered. "You usually do, Twilight, and if not you, then one of us shall. We also have -- a resource we did not previously possess, at least knowingly. Perhaps that can be of some use. Just find her if you can, and begin planning for what must happen if we cannot locate her and convince her to come with us within a day or two of the party."

She nodded. It was all she wanted to do.

"And -- Twilight?" Rarity added.

It felt as if the next thing her friend said would hurt her. Twilight didn't know why it felt like that, nor did she understand why she was so certain of it. But she also knew there was no way of stopping the words.

"Lies," Rarity softly said, "can have their place. Despite what Applejack might believe, there are times when they are necessary. To save social graces, to prevent public embarrassment and sometimes... to save lives. A well-placed lie can do much when it enters the world with good intent and careful crafting, Twilight. But... there are times when the truth is what saves us. And either way, it does not mean I appreciate it when you lie to me."

She didn't understand.

Or she did, and no longer wished to.

Every one of Rarity's gentle words kicked her. Lashed, blasted, bit. "Can you accept that you can only be his friend?"

Twilight closed her eyes, left them that way.

"Yes."

It meant she didn't have to see Rarity's face.

"I suppose you feel some good has come from saying that," Rarity sadly replied. "Because there are times when a lie helps, does it not? So I will take your new measurements now, because that is part of our latest lie, and so it must be the part which provides evidence, along with a proper fit. But Twilight..."

The pause felt far too long.

"...no good ever comes from lying to oneself."

And the little sigh took forever.

"Spread your wings, please," Rarity said. Twilight did. And the rest took place in silence.

He had told her what they needed to do, and she had agreed. It was for the Great Work, and so it was something which had to be done. Yet another consequence of her failure. But she didn't want to do it. And that... didn't matter. Whether she wanted to be presented was immaterial. She had failed. Her desires were no longer relevant, if they had ever meant anything at all. It had been his Great Work, and she had failed him, failed all the others, failed everypony. She had done something wrong and the fault had to be hers, for it could never be his. Not when he was...

...he was there.

She was a horror. A monster. Something which never should have existed, a status which had been present on that very first day. And yet he had accepted her. He had tried to fix her. And all she had done was find a way of becoming the most broken pony who had ever lived, defective beyond all hope of repair.

But he still had hope, and he was still there.

He was watching her eyes now, as their color slowly began to phase. She tried not to squint against the pain. He needed to see it, see everything, no matter how much she wished for nopony to ever look at her again.

"This is the first trial," he said, and the only truly familiar voice she knew was calm. "This is -- powerful. Under normal circumstances, it's more potent than anypony would normally consume. And I have no way of knowing how your new body will react to it, so I'm going to stay with you and monitor things for as long as I can. If something happens after I have to leave --" and she could hear the regret in that "-- you know where the passage is. Use it if you can. And I'll come back during every chance I have. If I don't find you here, I'll look there."

She nodded, felt the grinding within her neck, fought back the scream.

"Are you ready?"

Another nod. She could deny him nothing, not after having cost him everything. And should something happen, then he would only have to look at her one more time.

"All right," he softly said, and silver floated a vial of liquid up to her. "Swallow." His field tipped the contents into her open mouth, and she let them burn their way down her throat.

"How..." Her tongue constricted, and she waited until the next momentary ebb before trying again. "How. Long before. We know?"

"With a broken pony, a few minutes. But for you -- I don't know," he admitted. "I'm sorry for that, but we have only one way to learn. We have to wait."

"Is it. Safe? For -- anypony?"

It seemed as he hesitated too long before he spoke.

"It's what I could find for you," he finally said. "So it's what we have to try."

They waited. She did everything she could to bury the spasms, counter the twitches, keep the gasps silent while only permitting the screams to sound within her mind. She frequently failed. But he had told her to listen to her horror of a body, tell him everything she experienced as the liquid tried to do its work. And so while the miracle, when it began, was small, she knew.

"It's..."

He leaned forward, ears rotating towards her.

"...moving."

"Keep talking," he told her. "Where is it going?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "It's like it's -- shifting away. Like it's. Still there, but... I'm over here. There and not-there. It's..."

It was fading. The pain was fading.

"...going --" The hesitation of disbelief, somepony beholding the impossible taking place on their behalf and afraid to accept it because that recognition might somehow ruin everything. "-- away. It's going... away. I know where it is. I know it's here, inside me, but it's like -- it doesn't know..."

The thought struck her as funny, to have pain as something capable of ignorance, and so she giggled. The sound only rasped at her throat.

"Think," he said, and she could hear the hope rising. "Is your memory any clearer?"

She hadn't felt there was anything wrong with her memory, at least not until he had found her. The pain could disrupt thoughts, break them up in waves of agony, but she could remember. But he had told her that she was remembering things as they were not: confusion from twisting senses added to the delirium of pain, and that had sounded wrong --

-- but he knew best. He always did.

Perhaps she had become confused, when she was out there in the world. It was certainly possible, because he had said so. And with the pain so distant now (still there, but mostly ignoring her, muttering to itself, only bothering to send occasional flurries of spikes into her eyes), she tried to remember again, for the things he felt she had to remember.

It was surprisingly hard to do. Thinking about anything felt like she was pushing herself against a formless mass of cotton wool. It was like the night her first quilt had torn and the stuffing had gone everywhere, she'd tried to pile it back up and push it through the gap, fill the cloth envelope again, but it had squished around her hooves and up her ankles, soft and giggle-inducing right up until she'd remembered that he could have just looked at it and made it all go back inside, she was broken and only his Great Work would ever make it right --

-- she... couldn't seem to make her thoughts go where she needed them to. She needed a guide.

"I need my memories," she said.

He blinked, looked worried. "Do your best to focus," he told her. "This is a -- powerful drug, and you may have some trouble concentrating. Start from when you appeared outside."

"I don't have a memory for that," she admitted. "I haven't made one yet."

Under normal circumstances -- under just about any circumstances -- to truly hear those words would have had her jamming an imaginary forehoof into her mouth, hoping onto everything there was that he wouldn't think about them. But she had already made the mistake, her thoughts didn't seem to be interested in doing anything other than getting some welcome rest without the pain battering them all the time, and so all she did was look in a certain direction.

She had, in the time since he'd found her, caught him looking in that same direction. She had done it too, when the pain broke her focus on not letting it happen. Neither of them had discussed it in any way. There had been many words between them, and none had concerned what was there.

He sighed.

"Too strong," he half-muttered, half-whispered, and while she heard the words, she was no longer capable of truly caring about what they meant. "Strong enough to affect the brain, as it would for other ponies. Impairment of thought. Still, it may do for the presentation, should it last, if the dosage is properly timed and it holds through the change. But we will have to be so careful..." Back to normal tones. "Where is the pain now?"

She tried to think about that. "It's there." She glanced down at her right flank, noticed the bulging of the skin as bones grew beneath it. "It's just not paying attention to me right now. I'm afraid to bother it. It might get mad."

"And that is as far as it has moved or changed?"

She nodded.

"Very well," he said. "And you are still willing to try?"

Her failure. His time. His life. "Yes."

A slow nod, and then he stood, crossed the short distance to where she rested on the stone floor, dropped down and nuzzled her before he said the words, with a few new ones added. They reached deep into her, ignored cotton and pain, touched what was still present of her thoughts, because the start consisted of the first words she could remember being said to her at all. The thing he had been saying to her for all of her life, when she had never deserved any of it.

"I love you," he told her. "In spite of what you did, I loved you. I love you still."

She tried to smile, and even with the pain uninterested in interruption, it wouldn't come.

"Now," he stated. "Faster."

Planography

She wasn't used to the silence.

Typically, Rarity would keep up a flow of conversation while working with a pony: Twilight had seen that within her first somewhat-stunned hours in Ponyville, and had been through multiple exposures to the phenomenon since -- enough to recognize that much of the time, that discussion was rather one-sided. Rarity would provide a galloping commentary on local events, the latest rumors to reach ears which were always ready to rotate in a promising gossip direction, talk about designs she was working on, things she'd rejected, the mare she truly wished she'd actually and rather literally kicked out of the Boutique just before Twilight arrived -- and while responses were welcome and generally wouldn't be interrupted too badly, they weren't actually required. If there was somepony else around, then Rarity chatted as she measured, planned, and sketched. Twilight had never been able to decide if it was some level of mental focus exercise or if Rarity had simply become too used to talking at her cat.

But now Rarity was measuring her again, getting the new numbers, and -- silence.

During Twilight's first visit to the Boutique, she hadn't known how to deal with what had felt like an assault of words. She'd had no concept for any means of truly responding, much less coming up with something which would provide a chance to get away. And now her mind didn't know how to deal with the reverse. Her body manifested the confusion as the occasional awkward twitch, many of which set Rarity to silently taking that measurement again.

Finally, a soft blue glow of field rolled the tape back up.

"There are changes." (Twilight's ears strained towards the sound.) "Outside of those visibly created by the possession of wings. Your barrel measurement has altered, and I believe that is due to those new muscles. A fresh session was in fact required." Rarity softly sighed. "Better that I realized it when I did, best to have thought of it long before this. I have to resume my labors, Twilight, and you should return to yours. What next?"

"Spike." The extended silence had given her time to think, and most of that had been used in getting away from the things she didn't want to think about. It had allowed her to come up with two possibilities she wanted to try, and most of the invention had been in self-defense. "Have you seen him?"

"No," Rarity admitted. "Not when he has not come to me, along with the rest of you. At the moment, I am not in much of a position to search. But his current location is hardly much of a question, Twilight. We are in a new place, you had no need of him until just now, there are playgrounds occupying the grounds outside the castle -- and where there are playgrounds..."

It was almost always easier with the youngest. Too many adults tended to see him as something other, and multiple out-of-town visitors to the library still refused to believe he was something truly capable of thought at all, let alone a sapient who could outsmart their attempts to take unapproved photographs. Their first weeks in Ponyville had led to more than a share of that: so few dragons had ever lived among ponies, hardly any so young, and none but him had been raised by ponies starting from the hatching of his egg. There had been a generation without a dragon citizen of Equestria, and the most in any generation had been five.

So many ponies didn't know how to deal with him during a first encounter. There would be confusion, and most of it would be out in the open. Dismissal, more than occasionally. There were times when he had to deal with fear, prejudice, and being treated as an animal, with more than a little of that last taking place in the Gifted School itself. Ponyville had eventually become used to him, learned to accept, love, and forgive (with the perpetual exception of three flower-themed mares). But when they were traveling, it all came back as ponies met a dragon for the first time, and too many never took their eyes away from nostrils and mouth, watching for that first sign of flame.

But that was with adults. Children, especially those who were already at play, were a little more likely to use Spike's arrival in their midst as the launching point for an argument.

"He stopped it! It doesn't count!"

"But he -- but he didn't use his head! You're supposed to use your head! You can't use your forelegs! That's in the rules!"

"He doesn't have forelegs!"

A very familiar argument.

Twilight managed to repress the sigh as she trotted closer. There were in fact rules for mixed-species sports youth leagues: she'd managed to get copies of the relevant books, which had taken slightly more work than was required to locate a Fortreeze. They saw some use, particularly in Canterlot: some among the various embassy staffs brought their children along rather than spend so much time away, and of course there were immigrants of all species, here and there. When speaking about the total citizenry of Equestria, the appropriate term to use was 'everyone' -- but most ponies forgot that. When far less than two percent of most settled zones was something other than ponies, it could be easy to forget. And for a place like Trotter's Falls, where you couldn't even find an earth pony in residence, asking the local children to know how they were supposed to deal with a dragon goalkeeper was slightly unrealistic.

Spike stood quietly in front of the net under rapidly-thickening clouds, still holding the ball -- a ball he was completely aware that, under those rules, he wasn't allowed to be holding. But when it came to his first time in a game, he generally integrated himself with the new team by trying to get away with anything he could for as long as possible, followed by claiming ignorance of every rule he'd just very wittingly broken.

"Spike," Twilight sighed as she trotted up, "you know you're not allowed --"

The children automatically turned towards the voice. They all saw her.

It wasn't a perfect Official Royal Greeting Stance, especially when performed en masse by colts and fillies who might have never had a chance to try it out before (although she did recognize a few from the hoofball practice, whose brief previous experience didn't seem to be helping much.) Some forelegs were out of position, and more than a few heads were off-angle. Most of that last was produced by the ones trying to check their neighbors to see if they were doing it right. But on the very dubious bright side, it wasn't universal: not only had Spike kept his position (and the ball), but three -- two colts, one filly -- had stayed upright.

Those three were just staring at her. Intensely.

"-- please get up." Normal postures slowly began to exert themselves. "Spike, I need you inside for a few minutes. Please. You can come back out right after we're done. I promise it won't take too long, but we have to get it taken care of now."

He sighed, the exasperation of somepony who knew he had a better chance of getting away with it again once the game resumed if he was personally there to argue the lie. "Just a few minutes?"

"I hope so." She couldn't be sure. Half of it would be quick, but the remainder had felt extraordinarily awkward as she'd composed it within her head as a means of blocking out Rarity's silence. She suspected it wasn't going to make a very smooth transition to the scroll. "Do you -- need me to wait a little?"

Several children stared at the sapient who had just been proven capable of telling an alicorn to wait.

Another sigh, followed by a tired little shrug. "No, we can do it now. I'll be back in a while, guys." He carefully put the ball down, went around the argument which had seized its first chance to resume, and walked to her side. She smiled at her little brother, then began to lead the way back towards the castle.

"My mom," a colt voice said from behind her, "was talking about you."

She didn't know how to respond to that, if she was supposed to ask questions, or -- ignore it? Was that impolite, to ignore a child? Of course ponies were talking about her. She wished they would stop.

"She says you're --"

The next word was cut off by the sounds of the primary argument, which had just taken a verbal (and literal) surge for the sky. Twilight decided she didn't need to ask for a repetition. It was probably about blessing ponies. She'd heard more than enough of that for one lifetime, and truly didn't want to think about the word which had come just before the internal comma.

Spike waited until they were back in her temporary quarters before asking. "So what's going on?"

She made sure the door was closed, then checked the balcony. Everything seemed to be clear. "Two letters." He nodded, got the supplies. "The first one is to Trixie, and we're going to repeat the experiment. I have to tell her that I haven't been trying to make my own field stronger. I'm not sure what else I can tell her right now, but she needs to know it's not me. And... I have to ask where she is. Exactly."

He frowned a little. "Why?"

"Because we're allowed to ask for help," Twilight reminded him. "We can't call back to Canterlot: he said that. So the Princesses are out, and I'm not even sure if I can get away with writing the Archives. But -- we could be here for a while after the party, Spike, at least for being in the vicinity of Trotter's Falls, and Rarity was telling me..." She managed a slow breath. "...that we can't stay in the castle much longer. After the party's over, that's the end of our excuse for being exactly here. The Doctor is safe and our host kept his promise to the town. We may need to start getting some real camping supplies together, because we could be sleeping in the wild zone, really soon. And Trixie knows a lot more magic than most ponies, and she's really good with theory. If she's close enough that her caravan could get here in a few days, we can arrange to meet. That gives me time to figure out how to tell her what's been going on: that's a letter which'll take hours, and we don't have them right now. But if she can reach us, it'll be one more pony working on the problem, somepony who might have new ideas and a fresh respective. That could help."

The movement of his head crests seemed far too slow, the nod just barely identifiable at all. "Twilight... I know you two have been doing better. But -- Rarity and Pinkie -- bringing Trixie in, working with all of us, with them..."

"It'll be hard," Twilight reluctantly admitted. "But at the very least, she needs to know I'm not doing anything stupid. And she is good, Spike. And as far as the fights go --" because there was guaranteed to be at least one "-- I don't have to tell the others to get ready if she can't reach us, so I'd better find that out first."

"Okay," he eventually decided. "But Pinkie's going to yell at her. A lot. Because she's got her mouth back to yell with. Who's the other letter for?"

This time, it took five slow, steady breaths before she built up the internal pressure required to force the word out.

"Cadance."

Spike looked at her. Waited, claws flexing around the quill.

"She said... that the sisters and I used the same path. The Elements. But she didn't know what Cadance did. Maybe nopony does -- except the one who was there. The one it happened to. It's possible that she stumbled or researched her way into part of that path without knowing it, an accidental duplication -- and because she didn't know all of it, that's what went wrong. So I have to ask Cadance --" and she had to swallow twice "-- about what happened."

His eyes widened. "She's -- I..." His free hand came up, covered his eyes for a moment. "I don't even know how she's going to take that. Are you going to tell her about what's going on?"

"I don't know how much I can say," Twilight awkwardly admitted. "She can't come. She has to stay in the Empire. And if I say too much, she might relay some of it to Canterlot, and that could count for contacting them. This is hard, Spike. It's hard to figure out how much I can say to anypony, and I was trying to work that out for a while. But... she might have a piece of the puzzle. A piece nopony else knows about or understands. I don't know how she's going to take it either, and -- I just know I have to ask. It's time to ask. And if I make it sound too bad, or too urgent, then..."

"It could get worse than that," Spike decided as his hand came down.

"Worse than breaking one of the rules fourthhoof?"

"You could get her worried enough," Spike told her, "that she shows the letter to Shining."

Twilight's imagination immediately flashed onto the arrival of a full Guard unit in Trotter's Falls, with a very determined, potentially overprotective and, in this situation, extremely military Big Brother's Mentally A Captain Forever trying to put himself in charge. She stopped just as Quiet's study was being turned into Central Command, with all of those suddenly-pointless books being evacuated to make space for something important.

"This may take a few drafts," she winced.

"I know..." Most of the groan was buried. "Maybe they'll go into overtime outside."

The wince seemed to settling in for a long stay. "I'm sorry, Spike."

"Don't be." (She was proven wrong when the blink banished most of it.) "The mission comes first. Okay -- Trixie. Let me get a vial..."

With two scrolls sent into the aether, she released Spike to what remained of the game, then trotted back to Quiet's library. There was a little time left before dinner, and she needed just about all of it for scouting the shelves.

This time, she kept her focus on the goal (after a brief look at a fresh bookmark and listening for any hooves which might just happen to be approaching in the hallway, plus a brief pause to make sure the reading couch was properly aligned for best acoustics). She'd seen the citations Fortreeze had listed, and now she had to check for those books. She didn't expect to find any of them: the majority were scarce (although that didn't seem to be a problem for Quiet) and the rest held the same Can We Just See Your Authorization Form One More Time? status as the Guide. But she had to check. A one-book temporary raid of the library would start somepony's hooves on the path to creating their own snitcher: was there enough present to allow anypony a chance at the goal?

She worked quickly, even as her subconscious kept pausing in amazement, shock, and the occasional outburst of total jealousy as more and more longed-for titles passed before her rapidly-scanning eyes. (It took three tries to get away from the strongest of the fantasies, and it only broke up after she'd realized the spell she'd just had her imaginary self use to get out of the country had never existed outside a Thaumic Fiction section and would need at least two years of research before she could try to extract it into reality.) But in the end, she wound up with three things: a fairly extensive personal cataloging of Quiet's collection, a blazing fire of purest envy just barely being kept in check by a full knowledge of Equestria's penalties for grand theft, and -- one book. The weakest of those on the citation list, something which could be found in more than a few collections across the continent, which generally required nothing more for access than a polite request following a knock on the local library's front door.

It couldn't be done. There was no way to construct a snitcher simply by working with this group of books. To that extent, there was also no way Quiet could have been an active participant, and anypony breaking in for the information would have needed to plan a secondary robbery elsewhere.

The relief was enough to send her tail splaying across the floor.

All right. So the next questions go to device-makers, other sources for those books, and the possibility that her piece is just a really old one: something which was never confiscated. But that's an incredibly wide range of possibilities, too much to ever examine from here. There's device-makers all over the continent, along with private libraries. It could still be somepony who got into the Archives, and as for an old device -- that could be anywhere in the world, even places where ponies don't usually live because that might be the best place to hide something illegal. I don't know how we're going to narrow that down. If I brought her snitcher to a device historian, they might be able to examine it closely enough to determine age and caster, but that means finding a historian who won't report me two seconds after I take it out of the saddlebag. There probably isn't one of those in town and --

They had to be careful. About what they said, and very much about which ponies they spoke with. Twilight still didn't believe the entire town was in on it, for the full scope of whatever 'it' ultimately turned out to be. But they all believed somepony other than her had been part of it now, and without a find or something sitting in somepony's personal collection with multiple workings shielding it from the authorities, a device-maker would have been needed. Find exactly the right pony to ask about a snitcher and she might wind up talking to exactly the wrong one.

And if we got the right one, Rainbow would insist that the bad guys would catch up to us just before that pony could give us the information we needed, hitting them with a spell through a gap in the shop's keyhole, never mind the aim or a device-maker using security measures on their door which would leave it with a keyhole.

The thought made her smile, if only for a moment. She was proud of Rainbow for having taken to reading, but her friend's personal library was still extremely limited. Rainbow was thinking of things from the perspective of an adventure novel because that was all she had experience with. Plus the fact that she'd personally gone on so many adventures probably wasn't helping --

-- this isn't an adventure.

She stopped. Held the thought within her mind, rotated it back and forth, turned it over for a closer examination.

We've had missions, and some of them were adventures. But the books always miss something, and it's a problem no author can fix. They can make your heart beat faster, they can put you as close to the character as possible, they can make you feel for everypony there -- but they can't duplicate one aspect. Because when you've been on a real adventure, you know about the other moments.

The ones where time slows down because something's going wrong and the whole world wants you to appreciate just how badly you messed up.

The seconds where you're wondering if your friends are going to die because of a decision you made.

The moment when your heart almost stops.

You can always close the book. You can come back when you're calmer, and know the author is waiting to get the characters out of it. But no one saves us. No one fixes things for us.

When it's real, when it happens to you -- adventures are what you call the times when you nearly die because it's the only way you can think about them again at all.

We've had adventures and one day, one of us isn't coming back. Maybe we'll find something which Harmony and Elements don't mean anything against, and then all of us aren't coming back. But this... this isn't an adventure.

There's horror. There's been horror from the moment I first heard her voice. Then I saw her, and it became grotesquerie: breaking through something I thought was normal to reveal the nightmares underneath. I started to learn more about her and the more we all thought about somepony doing this to her, the closer we got to tragedy.

But that's not the core, is it?

Not adventure. Mystery.

(She paused for three seconds before realizing she'd been waiting for Pinkie to pass her the hat.)

When the clues don't seem to come in order. When you can't be sure if you're following the right clues, or if something is a clue at all. When you don't know who to trust or turn to, when even those closest to you -- no, stop: that's going too far. My friends are my friends, even if two of them are --

-- his.

Maybe it was something about being in the library, which made her think everypony could hear her heartbeat. Pounding so loudly in her own ears as to escape into the world.

What do I suspect him of? He scared me, that's all. Or maybe that's the wrong word. Go to what I told Spike in the town library: disturbed. You're scared when something isn't normal. You're disturbed when something should be normal and suddenly, it's just a little... bit... off.

"Can you feel them?"

I don't think that meant what he said it did. But I don't know why I think that. It's just instinct, and my instincts aren't always right. If I was better at instinct, I might be better in the air. But this takes thought, and when you try to break down instinct with thought... you can't always understand it. Maybe that's why I have so much trouble working out Rainbow sometimes, even now. She reacts and I try to figure out why I'm reacting.

But it's a mystery. Anypony could be a suspect. Anypony at all.

But not Pinkie and Fluttershy. He delivered them, and I'm grateful for that. It's all 'his' means: that he was their midwife. I'm glad for the Exception, for him. That they're under Sun as my friends.

The seven of us are together. None of us are any part of this. And I hardly know the town, or anypony in it. Mostly just the ponies in the castle. So I'm going to focus there, even when I possibly shouldn't. There's so many ponies in this town, and any of them could be involved. I need the right suspect. I need...

...her.

I need to go out and look for her tomorrow. And take Applejack, because Rarity's right: that's a resource we didn't know we had before this. Maybe there's a tool which can track. And maybe Cadance has an answer, or Trixie's just a few gallops out, or...

She wasn't sure when she'd started to move in the circle, and really didn't know why she kept looping behind the couch.

Too many questions. Too many possibilities. Too many mysteries, and even if we solve everything in Trotter's Falls, it'll still leave one. This was Discord's mission.

"I -- need your help. There is something -- which needs to be done. You are the ones -- who can do it. Will you?"

For Fluttershy.

"Something has happened. More things will happen. Unless the seven of you stop it. That is the mission. Now go do something about it."

For us.

Was she close to finding a way to become an alicorn, he doesn't want more of them around, and he wanted us to destroy her path once and for all? Why couldn't he do that himself? He never tried to stop me, if he even knew anything was happening at all. How does he know when something is taking place? What gets his attention?

Why does he care? Can he care? And if he can't, why would he pretend?

"Why?"

She stopped pacing as she said the word, looked up to the level where those mad red eyes usually glinted. But there was no flash of light, no sound of snapping talons.

Mysteries were, in their way, a form of chaos, and perhaps that held some interest for the draconequus. But solutions were order, and so she doubted he had any interest in providing hints.

It was time for dinner. The last one before the party, and perhaps her last formal meal in the castle. They would need to duck out before breakfast, might be gone long enough to miss lunch and after that, she had no idea what the meal service would be like during the party itself. If they left afterwards, their excuse having galloped itself into the ground -- then it might be the last time when that exact group would share a table.

If we have to leave -- I won't see Quiet any more.

She could write him. Experiment with the idea of multiple-jump teleportations, try to establish a line of safe spots between Ponyville and Trotter's Falls. Quiet would probably be willing to give her a clear arrival point in the castle, presuming anypony could move enough furniture.

But he's married.

He was her friend. Just her friend. It didn't matter if he was married. They could see each other, talk, read together, and his spouse wouldn't mind because they were just friends --

-- she'll be at the party.

She's coming back tomorrow.

I have to meet her. So she understands.

I don't want to --

-- it was time for dinner.

Eventually, Rainbow got Rarity into the dining room and judging by the echoing screams which had made their way down the approach route, most of that had been via tail clamp and drag.

"Really," Rarity huffed, "it is as if nopony here has ever had to deal with a deadline --"

"-- publications," Twilight reminded her.

"Birthday parties," Pinkie chirped.

"...taxes," Fluttershy softly said.

"Harvests," Applejack added.

"Daily weather schedule!" Rainbow finished.

Spike simply, silently pointed to Twilight.

"I suppose," Rarity sighed, "you all believe you have a point..." But the angle of her ears told them she'd admitted defeat. "Very well. I will emerge long enough for a meal. It keeps the food from getting on the fabric anyway. But may we please begin now, or at least free me to consume? I understand that the rest of you may wish to wait on Doctor Gentle, and that is a matter of courtesy, one I generally would not wish to offend, but given the scant hours I have remaining --"

"-- he's been in and out, Rarity," Quiet told her. "There's a lot going on today. I don't think he'd want us waiting on him."

Pinkie looked up. "A lot of births? I didn't hear that many ponies coming in and out of the castle, other than all the ones with the forms." A brief frown. "Why do you have to fill out so many forms just to throw a party? If I lived here, I'd go through more quills and ink than Twilight, and I'd never have time to do anything else!"

"Government," Quiet sighed. "Lots and lots of government, which somehow manages to manifest itself in the body of a single pony."

"Coordinator," Pinkie not-quite-asked, and he nodded. "I don't --" Stopped. "Um... I don't know how you two feel about each other, and I don't want to -- I mean, maybe when we're not here, he's really really different or something, but..."

Their host managed what felt like a rather weary smile. "If it's a matter of not wishing to cause offense, the only way you could say something about him which I haven't already is by speaking more languages than I do. And given that properly expressing myself on that subject required researching a few extra curses, you may need to take some classes. I'm hoping I can finish the last of the paperwork tonight. But as for the doctor -- he's been going back and forth between the castle and his estate grounds. Too much, in my opinion, but he's starting to make plans for the future. We both know he can't stay with me forever -- or rather, he can, but I think he'd rather have a place of his own again. And when it comes to his work, something a little less improvised."

This can't last forever.

"Twilight?" She looked up, saw Quiet's smile become even wearier. "As long as we're talking about less than enjoyable things -- I should warn you about the party's guest list."

She sighed, and felt he would understand the reasons. "Ponies who want to meet me."

He nodded. "We'll be getting a few from outside the settled zone, I'm afraid. Those who couldn't attend the coronation, and perhaps some who did and just want to prove they can manage such a feat twice. You'll be seeing nobles of all sorts, plus a number of businessponies and more than a few who'll just want a picture with you, preferably as you press a hoof against theirs or give them the nuzzle meant for successors. Which I've never seen and have no idea how to manage, but they'll just claim any nuzzle they somehow received was it. But I'll do my best to keep those encounters short."

"Well," she noted, "that is your duty as Captain of the Dawn Guard." His ears twitched a little, and she felt that much better about the day. "But there will be locals?"

"The majority," he assured her. "You've met at least one of those: Weaver Shine will be in attendance, although I'm not sure his spouse wants to go out this soon after the birth."

Rainbow looked up at that. "Who?"

"He runs the thaumaturgy supply shop," Twilight told her. "All sorts of stuff which nopony in Ponyville carries. We really need one of our own. We can't even get the experimental devices on first-generation because Mrs. Wonderment won't --" and she realized it was giving her an opening "-- carry anything that new. I'm guessing that's not a problem around here."

"Mrs. Wonderment?" Quiet blinked. "The Wonderments are in Ponyville?"

Which made Fluttershy tilt her head enough to almost expose a second eye. "...there's more than one of them?"

"They're rather scattered," Quiet told her. "Some make devices. Some sell them. It sounds as if you've got the latter. And if it's Mrs, then you may just have the clan elder." A brief pause. "You have my pity."

"You've met her?" Pinkie asked.

"I've met a Wonderment. That was bad enough." He shuddered. "Well, we don't have a member of that family locally, at any rate. The closest such pony is in Baltimare and our own convenience shop has more than enough devices, especially as owning something more expensive than functional seems to be an odd and frequent source of local pride. Weaver takes the experimental goods and Iridium Twist just takes the majority of everypony's bits, generally while he's smiling directly at you."

"Maybe I'll stop in tomorrow morning," Twilight decided. "It's been a while since I've seen anything really high-end."

"For purposes of costs," Quiet stated, "you're better off waiting for another shop. Just about any other shop."

"I can browse." And hope there wasn't any such thing as a Royal Discount. "Does he also do repairs? Mrs. Wonderment doesn't." Was in fact famed for not doing so, along with finding a way to blame just about every defect on the buyer, while that pony's fur was still smoking.

"Now and again, for some things," Quiet shrugged. "The damage to the malfunctioning device's surroundings is generally only matched by the injury to any repair budget."

"How about older things? Does he have any unusual pieces?"

There was a moment when she thought the near-colorless field around his lit horn might have flickered. Or perhaps it was simply sparkles shifting under light.

"Such as?"

"I wouldn't mind seeing a device shop which was a rough equivalent to your library," Twilight smiled. "With an equal promise not to leave with all of it. Since this seems to be the town which hosts a few surprises..."

He chuckled. "You may be disappointed. He mostly tries to keep as current as possible, and the antique shops... well, there may be a few treasures there, but I haven't really looked. At most, I might have moved something which was blocking my view of a particularly fine desk. That's about it. There's probably more antique devices in the castle -- which reminds me." He turned towards Fluttershy. "Did you ever mail out that animal feeder?"

"...no. It's easier to just take it when we go," Fluttershy softly replied. "And... thank you. Again."

Quiet smiled. "Think nothing of it, please: I'm glad just to know it'll be used and free up the space. And Miss Applejack? Did you mail your seeds?"

"Yeah," the farmer admitted. "Before we reached that shop you were talking about. Dropped them off at the post office." Twilight nodded confirmation: it had been a rather quick side detour. "I might have been better off carrying them home, but you never know with airmail: there's at least a chance they'll beat me there. Even if I can't plant them until next spring, I at least want my brother to see them as soon as possible."

It brought a nod, and the topics continued to shift. They talked, they ate, and they tried to keep Rarity from bolting her food too fast, with a brief failure of attention leading to Spike carefully pressing his hands against her ribs until the coughing went away. But Twilight kept her mind focused on what she'd learned. A local device shop was a place to start, and an inspection of the interior -- and proprietor's mark -- could potentially tell her just how good this pony might be at putting things together. Then again, if it was a rather young pony, that individual might not have been around when she had first needed a snitcher. However, if the shop had contacts...

Twilight felt it was a place where she could try to investigate. She just wished she had some idea of how to actually do that without getting caught. It was one thing to look into a subject where everypony knew there had been a crime (along with exactly what that crime was) and all attempts to solve the riddle could take place in the open. But with this kind of mystery, where even the investigation was being concealed...

Apparently I'm a specialist. Equestria's Greatest Pastry Detective. No other cases accepted, much less solved.

The meal went on, and there were moments when Twilight almost felt as if she was trying to slow time. For there was no disaster in progress, nothing with any degree of risk involved or a chance of somepony being hurt, the things she knew stretched out her perceptions -- but she wanted to remember. Sharing the meal. Herself, her little brother, and six friends. Six -- friends.

He's just my friend.

But nothing worked. The seconds rushed on, became minutes, gathered their forces and assaulted the clock. Nothing she did slowed the process, granted her a single extra moment. All she could do was try to remember. That they had talked, and joked, and mutually kept Rarity from dashing off for nearly an hour.

We may have to leave the morning after the party. We may never all be here again.

That there had been a time when it truly felt like as if there were eight.

I can come back. I will come back. Maybe we could all come back...

And she didn't understand why it felt like the last time.

Primer

He can only deny himself the manifestation of a single subject.

In many ways, the working is a basic one, and so it does a single basic thing. The caster chooses something they do not wish to dream of, and the spell prevents that concept from reaching the nightscape. But -- he can choose one event. A single idea. One... memory.

He will have to speak of that, very soon, for it is part of the presentation. To, at least through speech, do something very close to reliving that night, when doing so becomes absolutely necessary. But he will not dream of it. He will not allow himself to truly return there and watch it all take place a second time. And if he were to become aware that it was but a dream, and nothing he could do would ever truly change anything...

The other nightly spell shields his dreams from intrusion. Admittedly, it has never been truly tested, and the one individual most likely to try and break through it would probably overwhelm that defense in a heartbeat. But the Princess of the Night knows nothing of his dreams, just as Luna remains unaware of hers. And yet he has wondered that if the first working should somehow fail, should he come to that moment again... if that would be enough to make the walls break from the inside.

He denies the subject from his nightscape, as he does every evening upon retiring to bed. But he has much on his mind, and he can block only one thing.

The dinner: he'd missed most of it. His most devoted had provided the excuse, and so nopony had asked too much of him when he'd finally come in during dessert. Even then, he hadn't had much time to offer, for she still needed him. The experiments were hasty, yes, and that concerned him. But there were only so many hours they could use before the meeting, too few, and yet -- they were seeing results. Her memory remained hazy, distorted, insisting on something which could not have happened, and as for the question -- well, there would be a time when he will ask that again. Perhaps when the dosage was just right, when she was as focused as she could be in her current state. She would look deep inside herself, and she would know.

She would find...

He knows what the true answer will be. What it has to be, for it is what has made everything possible. She will say yes: she must. And once that answer comes, the rest will follow.

So little time before it all comes together. Before they know whether control can be seized, or whether they must run. But in those dwindling hours, there remained time to collect information. So he had asked the Princess if he could spend a few more minutes with her. Continue their conversation, although hardly for the same duration. He knows that she did not speak of him to the Princess, and so that newest of alicorns suspects nothing of his part in the Great Work. But the Princess is some level of authority on magic and Magic alike, is always eager to speak of it, and perhaps the right question might bring him to her own ascension. To hear what had happened during a transformation triggered by the Elements, rather than reading what remained of Star Swirl's notes. It might give him insight into her condition. It could help, and do so before -- the other measure. The last hoofstep they could possibly take should Coordinator fail, and he has nowhere near as much confidence in the bureaucrat as that one has in himself.

But the Princess had turned him down.

Tired, she said. She was sorry, but -- she needed to rest up for the party. And she'd left.

Possible? Certainly. And he had no reason to believe the denial had come from any level of suspicion. But on her way out of the dining room (and she had been the first out), she had briefly glanced back at him, and her features had been... what had that expression been? Relief, that she would not be speaking with him again? Concern that he might have been about to follow? He is not sure. There was just something there, for the briefest of moments before she'd turned back.

He had not reacted, of course. At least no more so than he had when the unicorn had come out wearing one of her chaos pearls. And still... his eldest had briefly gazed at him, and the gaze from that one visible eye had been weighted with concern.

(Not the worst of options there. He knew what that gaze could do under other circumstances, and was the only pony in the world who understood the why.)

He'd spent a few seconds with his eldest, made that concerned look go away. Others were given to his most determined. But then it had been just him and Quiet -- and that had brought them to the bad news.

The earth pony had mailed a package.

Eastern Red Giant seeds: that was the claim, and Quiet had seen the bulge of apples within saddlebags during the children's game. It would be easy to check with the post office in the morning and confirm that the box had been airmailed to a Ponyville address. But even that could be a front, the written destination which told others to reroute things towards Canterlot. The apples were the excuse, the true intent was deeper within the parcel, and the Solar Princess might be informed within -- days? Hours? Even without a special express rate openly paid for, any agents placed into the postal system by the palace might speed things along...

Or perhaps it was merely seeds.

They had to be ready to run. Some of his scant time had been used in making preparations for that. He can only teleport himself, and... he cannot leave her. Not for long. That had been a problem from the start, especially during the very first days. Always going back until she had reached the point where she could take care of herself for a time, dropping in whenever he could after that, and now -- he cannot leave her. He will not.

Do they have enough time left for the meeting to even take place? Does he need the second measure before the first, as that might be their best chance to remove all chance of any Princess interference? Or would the forces of Solar and Lunar combined descend upon the castle while everypony was gathered there? Would everything be destroyed before he had the chance to explain himself, make them understand why the needful had been done?

And then back to her again. He always goes back, for she is all that is left.

He has much on his mind, and can deny only a single subject from appearing within his nightscape. The same subject, again and again. And so he slips into sleep, drops into the past and finds himself at a different day, reliving it once again with no knowledge that it is but a dream. He is there and then has become now.

The day (too-long night) of the Return: ask just about anypony and they will tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing at the moment they realized Sun was not being raised. Such things have a way of sticking in a pony's memory. For his part, he had just about missed the whole thing: there had been a birth in progress, one of those labors which stretch across multiple hours no matter what he or the mother could do (a colt, very healthy, exceptionally bright eyes) and so he'd spent the majority of the time used for the rediscovery of the Elements and salvation of a Princess in his delivery room. His first thought upon finally reaching a window again was that he'd completely lost track of time and the entire thing had taken them all the way past Sun-lowering. He'd ultimately caught up on current events just in time for them to become history, and remained more than a little embarrassed about it.

But there had been another day, a little over a year later. One during which the entire world did not know what was happening, for the signs hadn't had the time to fully spread and only a few would have recognized what they truly meant.

And on that day, he'd been in Canterlot.

"And thank you," the mare says. (He remembers the name of her filly: Frost Gate. Mothers tend to blend together, even the nobles who insisted on his services and paid for personal attendance at the birth.) "For my daughter." The smile follows that, and it is a weary one: the labor had not been easy, and the drugs which had kept most of the pain away were wearing off. "And for coming, and -- waiting."

She'd been two days late, and he hadn't been able to take even a short trip back because to leave would have been to cue the exact moment when the first contraction would begin. (Even for those trips when he could check in on her, it was something he had to be careful about: multiple short-range jumps, even to safe spaces with no recoil at the end, still required energy to enact, and it was possible to exhaust himself through too-frequent journeys.) "It's hardly under your control," he smiles, briefly glancing at her. "Under mine either, for that matter. And you did most of the work." His field gently moves the cleaning cloth around the newborn's horn, giving it that first polish so that the gleam of Sun coming through the window would reflect from Equestria's newest citizen. "I know it was a long labor, but ultimately, you brought her to Sun." He hadn't needed to use the chaos pearl, and the charged mass was doing nothing more than shifting unseen within his birthing garment.

"Even so," the mare replies in her vague, hazy voice, "I'm glad you were here. After what my own mother went through --"

He almost doesn't notice the pause at first: Frost has priority. But the silence stretches out, the cloth moves, the last bits of cap residue are removed from the newborn's horn, and the pink glint of sunlight shifts over a pale blue cone of something not quite bone --

-- he blinks.

Pink?

He looks up, turns his gaze towards the window. The same direction the mother is facing, and so they both find blue banished from the world.

Sun might have been behind one of the pink clouds: it's currently impossible to find it in the darkening sky, which is slowly deepening into something approaching purple. Or it too could have been banished from reality, with the light being produced by something else entirely. Controlled.

And he knows.

"That's odd," the mother says, tones fogged by the last of the drugs. "Do you think the pegasi are doing something?"

Which was when he hears (barely hears, with his own thoughts roaring in his ears) the sounds of confusion beginning to arise from the ponies on the street outside.

He starts to turn towards her again. Stops. Goes back to the window. His field wavers, and the cloth dips, sways, nearly drops out.

He cannot focus. There are thoughts which should be coming. Directions to be followed, steps which can be taken, and he can think of none of them, not for more than the briefest fraction of a moment before the thoughts themselves break apart, shredded by the whirlwind rising inside him. Only two words remain, and that is because they form the bulk of the storm. They batter him from within, send jolts into spine and muscles, direct him to run.

"Take..." It is the first utterance to emerge. He doesn't know how long it took. In many ways, the time doesn't matter. Within moments, nothing may matter at all. "...take her." His field exerts, surrounds the newborn --

-- no. He can see the wavering of the borders, something very close to sparks threatening to spray from the edges. He will not trust Frost's safety to his fear, and so he gently carries her by the nape of her neck, teeth gripping in such a way as to only lift and never hurt. He wasn't even aware he knew how to do that, but... there are many things which can be aspects of a mark.

The filly is deposited next to her mother.

"Doctor?" the confused mare says. She doesn't understand. She doesn't know, and he wishes he possessed the blessing of that ignorance.

"You should be with her," he tells the mother. "For as long as you can."

And then he leaves the hospital room, hooves skidding across a hallway which is designed to let ponies move through it in a hurry -- no, it's not the floor, his legs are slipping, but he has to get away from mother and child, he has to get away from everypony because when it happens, when He comes...

There are ponies staring at him as he rushes by. They don't know. There are perhaps three ponies in the world who fully understand what is taking place, and he has no way of knowing what's happened to the other two. They might be fighting this, even now. But

it takes six, they need six and they're not two of those six any more, Pinkie, Fluttershy, He's going to go after them, He has to, it'll be one of the first things He does and then He'll

Does he go to them? Can he warn them? Has the palace already summoned them, the only hope brought to bear? Or would he doom them by going there first, because He may practice guilt by association. It might be funnier that way.

He can't be sure where they are. In Ponyville? Canterlot? In transit? Already dead?

He is running. But it is not because there is somewhere he can gallop to. There is nowhere he can hide from Him. He is running because he should not be near any other ponies when it finally happens.

Not even her.

It hurts him. To think of her, waiting for him to return, spending lonely days within her place before finally venturing down the passage. If she has days: if not guilt by association, then guilt by his own intent and Great Work, especially should He wring forth a location amidst the screams. He wants to spend the last moments with her, to begin the process of teleporting home, but if He comes and finds them together...

He wants to go home. He cannot. He can only run, try to think of a place he can go where no others will be there to suffer his pains. Try to think at all. But it is as if his brain is wrestling with itself, thoughts spinning away in every direction, and the only words which stay with him come from the truth he cannot deny.

It couldn't happen. It was never supposed to happen. It has happened.

The same two words pound within his soul, over and over.

He's free.

And soon, He will happen.

So he runs, and fragments of memory briefly fuse into something coherent. He thinks of her, why it all happened, and wonders what the world will be when she emerges. He thinks of everything he did, and the price about to be paid. A thousand tortures weave through his mind and are broken by a million silent screams. He runs --

-- and in the reality of memory, the sky had turned blue.

Hours. (It will be a long time before he can force himself to discover just how many had passed.) Hours, and then the sky is blue again -- but he does not take it as a sign of true safety, for he has read Star Swirl's notes and knows that there were times when that power was focused elsewhere and the world briefly exerted itself again. Instead, he waits for a full day (because it was rare for things to hold that long in a land known only as Eris) before he ventures out and discovers that the world is intact enough for newspapers to print, and it takes more than a few of them before he can start to piece together any portion of truth for what might have happened. In the end, his own provide the factual account. And after another year...

Freed. Recaptured. And then released, only to be bound by a new kind of chain. He does not learn about the last part until some time after it happens. And when he does, he realizes the truth: He does not remember. The Elements had not created lifeless stone: there was a core remaining, something he had worked so hard to first sense and then use. But whatever was left must not have been capable of true thought or memory, and the times he almost felt that there was some kind of emotional resonance coming from the statue during those times of pulling were simply his own imagination trying to force a false regret upon him.

He didn't remember. He didn't know anything had ever happened at all.

There were still problems connected to His freedom, of course: the chaos pearls would not charge themselves, and the source could not be approached. It had meant an ever-dwindling resource, even with Coordinator's increased efforts providing more money to be directed into a desperate search. But he might have had nearly all of them by then, certainly those which could be found in Equestria, and to push the hunt further beyond the borders... fresh risks, new costs, and an interesting set of account books.

But He didn't remember.

It was safe.

The waking self knows that. But in the nightscape, the blue does not return. The sky darkens, twists as the world distorts around him and the air begins to solidify into something like a cage while his blood surges and muscles threaten to turn inside-out. In dream, he simply runs.

And there is nowhere he can run to.

A pony's nose is not as sensitive as it could be -- but there's something about a dragon's breath which burns its way into just about every sapient's olfactory senses, and Twilight winced as the accompanying green flash pressed against closed eyelids.

She slowly forced herself into a sitting position, got her eyes open just in time to see Spike unfurling the scroll.

"Who?" It wasn't exactly polite, but she wasn't quite fully awake yet -- and shouldn't have been: a quick glance towards the balcony found Sun just barely beginning to lighten the sky.

Her little brother was already reading. "Trixie," he sighed.

"And?" Until the words got to stretch themselves out on a river of wake-up juice, some of her speeches were going to be a little short.

"She's a little outside Trottingham," Spike told her. "It could be a lot worse, Twilight: she's on the right coast, southeast of us. But it would take her at least two days to get here, probably longer. She's willing to come, and I think she's a little worried about why you'd want her to, but... at least two days, Twilight. And that's if she abandons the caravan."

Memories slowly shifted forward, emerging from the fog of half-sleep, and she softly groaned. That was in the first letter, wasn't it? Yes, it had been: 'the rest of my stay in Trottingham.' But Twilight had been doing a lot, thinking about so much, and that minor detail had slipped...

I have to be more careful. I can't make mistakes like that. This one may have been harmless, but if I miss something more important...

"What do you want to tell her?" Spike asked, and waited.

That thought came a little more quickly. "To come, as fast as she can." She took a deep breath, forced some more words into something resembling a proper sentence. "We can use a Royal Voucher to cover the money she'll be losing: I'll tell the Princess I hired her as a consultant after it's finally over. But..." She winced. "...I don't even know where we can meet her. We may not be in the castle by then, she'd need an excuse for showing up -- actually, just being a traveling performer is probably enough of an excuse -- but if we're back in the wild zone, then we'll have to coordinate with letter after letter just so we don't miss each other..."

"We've got vials left," he assured her, then put the recently-arrived missive down before reaching for a fresh scroll.

Twilight managed a nod, and wondered if they had enough. "Did anything else come in?" He shook his head. So we're still waiting on Cadance. I hope that arrives soon. I hope she answers... "Okay. Let me think about what to say, and we'll get the next one to Trixie. After that, I need breakfast. Wake-up juice. Lots of it. And then..."

He watched her for a few seconds, green eyes patient.

She sighed. "I've got to get out there. I have to search. And you'd better come with me, Spike, because if Cadance sends anything back --" and could the youngest

second youngest

alicorn manage the trick at all? "-- I'll need to see it immediately." The nod was an understanding one. "So we'll both have breakfast, and after that... I think we need to stop at the guest cottage."

The castle was... busy.

Sun was barely up, and the servants had beaten Sun to it. Ponies seemed to be swarming through the hallways. The floors were being cleaned. Every last piece of furniture was in the process of being dusted, and that was going to take a while. Buntings were being hung, and Twilight did her best not to pay too much attention to the colors. The party was hours away and yet had already found a way to arrive, as trays of food were kept (barely) level within field bubbles, Softtread was spotted reciting the pronunciation of a particularly tricky name, and everypony seemed to just about lose Twilight in the midst of a rather organized sort of chaos. It actually made it easy to raid the kitchen, at least once the panicked cook finished turning and recognized the exact pony who wasn't going to snatch an appetizer before its time, by order. (Calming the cook down after she'd cut herself off in mid-scream took a while.) And after that, they managed to make their way out, although that meant fighting against the tide to the point where Twilight briefly considered trying to use the upper portion of the hallways, right before realizing that entering a Rainbow state of mind would probably leave a series of empty food domes in her wake.

It wasn't so much sneaking out as discovering that she just wasn't that important right now, mostly because she was going to be Much More Important later. Nopony was very concerned about what a Princess was currently doing because they all had to prepare for said Princess -- along with guests, and food, and buntings and manners and titles and everything. It was a reminder for one of the smallest lessons taught by the mirror pool: that there could be a certain amount of stress associated with a party planner's mark, and she received another refresher when the cottage's front door flew open three hoofsteps before the siblings got there.

"Do you need me right now?" Pinkie quickly asked. "Is it anything important? Because I sort of have this twitching in my right shoulder and it says somepony else needs me. Lots of somepony elses. Really badly. Even really really badly. So if it's anything important, I'm here and I'll go with you, anything you need, Twilight, but if it isn't, then..."

The tentative plan had been to try and search for her using earth pony feel. Twilight still wasn't entirely sure how that was going to work, or if it even could. And should they somehow find her, Pinkie was one of the ponies she seemed to be a little more comfortable around, and vice-versa...

...but she can't feel. Applejack is going to be doing -- it... whatever 'it' turns out to be -- and Pinkie can't. I don't want to remind her of that the whole time.

Twilight briefly considered all the things she'd seen happening in the castle, the low-level miasma of stress filling the air. Then she remembered all the things she'd warned Quiet about.

"It's their party, Pinkie."

The baker quickly nodded.

"And their way of throwing it. Their style."

Again, even faster.

"So no streamers."

The slightly chubby face immediately took on an expression of mild insult.

"Twilight."

"...what?"

"It's my mark. I know when things are appropriate! I understand what they're trying to put together! They just need a little help for the last minute! And I know it's really the last hours, but when you're in them, every one is the last minute all by themselves. And together. It's actually kind of funny how that works. So if you don't need me --?"

Twilight, blushing with the embarrassment of somepony who'd just questioned a mark, thought about it.

"Go." But they still needed somepony she was a little more comfortable around, just in case. "But send out Fluttershy?"

"Okey-dokey-loki!" A pink blur went past Twilight on the right. "I'll get her!"

"Thank --"

And at the moment before that blur was out of earshot, "-- and I promise, it'll only be the tasteful streamers!"

And then it was the four of them, trotting towards the orchard. (Well, three trotting and one riding: Spike had been granted a place on Applejack's back, as she had the easiest time taking his weight over a long stretch.)

They moved under deep grey sky, and it was grey only because black was still being arranged. It was possible to watch the clouds thickening and, at least until they got some distance away from the castle, it was also possible to occasionally catch a glimpse of the pegasi who were arranging the color shift. It made travel difficult, as they now had to worry about being spotted from overhead: the local weather team was busy setting up the final elements of the coming storm, and it put most of their airborne focus on the sky -- but it didn't mean they might not glance down now and again.

Twilight wished she was better with illusions, anything which would help to conceal, but... she could mostly reproduce the image of something she'd seen and had an exceptionally clear memory of, and it tended to end up as something translucent. It took art to render illusions into something which could pass for reality. Rarity could manage animations, at least after she'd had a lot of quiet time to plan and been granted a confined space to work in, added to total concentration: it added something to some of the fashion shows. One pony could make a plush spider appear to have turned into the genuine horrifying article, and Twilight had never managed to ask Luna how she'd done it. (It had taken a few shaken nights before Twilight had even realized that illusion had been the category of magic in play.) To place the group under camouflage could not be managed, and rendering them truly invisible was effectively impossible. They simply stayed under the canopy of color-shifting dying leaves and checked the sky as often as they could.

The humidity had increased to the point where it felt as if they were breathing liquid more than air. The temperature had dipped, and there was a chill wind blasting that moisture into their fur. Spike, who didn't deal with the cold all that well, was starting to blow little gusts of flame over his hands, staying warm. The others just went through their own form of Weather Bureau arranged misery.

"When do you think it'll hit?" Twilight asked Fluttershy.

The pegasus blinked. "...the schedule said about an hour before the party starts, and then it goes all night, Twilight. It'll be stopped about an hour before Sun is raised."

Which brought up a question. "Can you feel that, though? Can you just look at the clouds and know when the storm will start?"

The visible eye slowly closed as the caretaker's trotting pace dropped . "...no. I can't."

"Oh. So that's not part of pegasus feel --"

"-- no," Fluttershy softly said. "That's... not it. I meant I can't. Other pegasi could. I just don't... my..." Her head dipped, and then the right eye opened again as her gaze sadly, slightly raised. "...we don't all have the same level of feel, Twilight. I'm just... not very good at it. At -- any of it. You remember the water transfer, and how hard I worked to get my speed up. How... little all that work did. And I'd tried before, but I still thought that this time, if it was with everypony else, that it might help and nopony would laugh..." A deep breath. "There are unicorns who can't lift much. And... there's me. There's always been me. My parents were saving for me to attend weather college before I was born, because they thought I'd be like them, and I... my mark brought me to the cottage. They didn't understand that. Sometimes I think they still don't..."

All four yellow legs stopped. The wings, pressed against her sides as they so often were, trembled. And the others stopped.

"Fluttershy?" I hurt her, I keep hurting her without meaning to, why do my words always --

"We can wait, sugarcube," Applejack quietly offered. "If you need a minute."

"...no," Fluttershy told them. "Because my parents... love me. They loved me enough to let me have that college fund to buy the cottage with, even if they didn't understand why I wanted to live on the ground. They don't understand me, but... they love me. They always have, enough to let me -- be me. There are pegasi who don't understand, who think I'm weird, who call me a freak, sing about how I can 'hardly fly'... but my parents love me. And I have friends who accept me. Pony friends. And Doctor Gentle, who never thought I was weird, who always tried to... bring me back when things got bad, if he was there. I'll never be what everypony else thinks is normal. But I'll always be me. I think... that's good enough."

Her head came up a little more.

"...and when I forget... you're here."

The sounds of animals around them: birds moving through the trees, squirrels preparing their own shelters for the storm. Perhaps they sensed the presence of mark and talent. And if so, they allowed the ponies their privacy.

"...I'm not the pony I used to be, before Twilight got off the air carriage" Fluttershy finished. "Not completely. I don't think any of us are. I like me a little more now." She looked at Spike. "I'm -- glad you were with her. To start everything."

"Um..." Spike really wasn't equipped for blushing: he technically could, but it was hard to get a glimpse of the skin under the scales. At most, there might be a rising wave of heat -- which, given the humidity in the air, was actually somewhat visible. "...I didn't exactly plan that..."

"...I'm glad anyway," Fluttershy smiled. "Let's go."

Applejack took a slow breath, nodded. "Still not sure what y'want me to do here, Twi. We've got some privacy --" an automatic glance up "-- if you want to explain in a little more detail."

"She was using magic at the orchard," Twilight eventually said: part of her really wanted to go back to what Fluttershy had been talking about, and even more wanted to take a moment for the accompanying nuzzle. "Earth pony magic. And it hasn't been that long. So her --" what was the proper vocabulary here? "-- feel? Signature?"

"Echo," Applejack told them. "Her echo should be there. And you want me to listen in, get a better idea of her song, and then listen around to see if it's anywhere else? Like if she used her magic while she was running away?" Twilight nodded. "I can try, Twilight. I already heard her the once at the ravine, even if I didn't know it was her. And it was..." She frowned, and the blonde tail twitched. "Weird. It was weird."

The trot resumed, and it took a few hoofsteps before anypony tried to ask: Spike finally took the lead. "Weird how?"

"It's hard to describe," Applejack replied. "I'm not used to describing it, and -- I was reeling, outside and in. The..." and it still took a moment to bring the next word out "...teleport did that. So I couldn't be sure of what I was hearing, once my hearing came back. It was loud. Louder than anything I've ever heard -- but now we know that's just her. And --" She abruptly stopped, words and pace: Spike almost grabbed for her mane to steady himself. "This is where she signaled you."

Twilight, some distance back and lacking a good view, paused at the sounds of absolute certainty. "You heard her echo?"

"Wasn't listening for that just yet," was the reply. "I saw your signature."

The former unicorn blinked. "You saw my --"

"-- y'leave a pretty distinctive groove."

"...oh."

"Always meant to ask how you got all the circles that close to a true one," Applejack shrugged. "Ain't like you were measuring things out. Okay. Give me a second here..."

The others trotted up just in time to see the green eyes close. The muscular torso shifted as several deep breaths were taken, but nothing else moved. There was a pony, the greying world, and a distinct ongoing lack of hat. To Twilight, it looked like nothing so much as a caster centering herself just before a major working.

"...yeah," Applejack said, mostly to herself, and frowned. "This is... maybe it wasn't just the teleport."

"I don't understand," Twilight immediately said. "What are you hearing?"

The farmer's eyes remained closed. "Remember what I said back at the lake, when we found the snitcher? It's still like that."

"...loud?" Fluttershy tried.

"A little. Not too bad. Like somepony speaking up when they don't have to, but not shouting. She's trying to hold back, control her volume, and -- maybe she could even get there," Applejack slowly said. "But that ain't it. When we were in the ravine, I thought it had been a lot of ponies asking at once, and all for the same thing. And like I said, I've never been near earthworks that big. So all the echoes blended into one big note. But now she's trying to be quieter. And... there's something off about her magic." A small nod, mostly to herself. "That's the only word I've got for it. Off. Like... there's something there which shouldn't be. Something that's part of the magic, something you can't get out..."

Twilight blinked. "It was like that when she cast as a unicorn," she quietly added. "It felt like something was wrong..."

"Maybe that's from the pain?" Spike proposed.

"That comes through in the resonance," Twilight answered, slowly shaking her head. "It's... not a good thing to feel, Spike. This was separate." Something -- other.

"...and Rainbow said the residue wasn't right," Fluttershy half-whispered. "So whatever's wrong, it's wrong for all three aspects."

"But that ain't the whole of it," Applejack told them. "Because at the ravine, I thought there had been a whole orchestra of ponies, with the notes blending together, and part of that was because she was shouting. I still can't figure out exactly what she said. But here, where she's being quieter, where she's trying..." Another deep, slow breath. "Give me a second here. I -- don't talk about this. Never had a reason to talk about it, and I never thought I'd be talking about it with --" more awkwardly "-- it's like Rainbow said. I have to find the words..."

Spike bent low, head dipping towards her mane. Twilight and Fluttershy approached a little more: one hoofstep each. But they all gave their friend the time she needed, and after a minute had passed, she nodded.

"Okay," Applejack said, her eyes still closed. "Have you ever been to a concert? A big one, with a chorus, with lots of ponies playing and singing at the same time?" (Only Spike nodded, and Twilight stared at him in shock.) "And they're all trying to hit the same note, to make the song work. If they do it right, it'll sound like they made it -- but if you listen close, or you've got a talent like Lyra's and can pick it up naturally, you'll hear that every instrument hits that note a little differently. Woodwinds ain't strings. Brass stuff aren't voices. They all get there in their own way. Same note, but with a lot of little sounds inside it trying to make it that way."

"An illusion created in sound," Twilight quietly offered.

"Yeah," Applejack replied. "I can go with that. So right here, where she brought the rocks up and then dropped them again... I can hear her echoes. And since I don't have the teleport recovery to deal with, I'd know her voice now if I heard it again. But she's being quieter here, keeping it down, and... it's just her voice. That's what it should be: one voice asking a couple of questions. But when I listen... there's sounds inside it. She's talking, singing in truespeech, but at the same time... there's something lower than whispers, more quiet than a murmur. Almost impossible to hear -- but I'm listening deep. It's one note -- but there's a central singer, and it almost feels like there's a chorus. Like there's more than one voice..."

And Twilight, who had labored so hard to retain every last moment of her nightmare, thought about dream-shadows coating the bottom of her hooves. It took nearly everything she had to repress most of the shudder.

The farmer sighed. "It's a nice main voice, for whatever that's worth," she concluded. "She's a pretty good singer."

"Essence." And the word had come from Spike.

Applejack's eyes opened, and so she got to join the three-way stare, even as Twilight's end of the effort steadily descended into horror.

Softly, carefully, the little dragon forced himself to go on. "You were all talking about it, on the way to the thaumaturgy shop. About the Amulet. And how she might have gotten a lot of unicorn essence, and pegasus essence with earth pony essence added to that, and tried to -- put it inside herself. Trixie wrote about how the Amulet took on an aspect of its own, from all the resonance... would essence have a voice?"

They stood under grey sky, the weight of humidity and horror pressing down upon them.

"Spike," Twilight breathed, "if that's any part of --"

"-- shut up!"

It had been a hiss, low-pitched and all the more urgent for the near-silence of the utterance. It froze ears, stopped words.

"Applejack?"

The farmer's ears rotated.

"Somepony just got here," she whispered. "We're being followed."

Composition

Twilight had already committed the faux pas of second-guessing a mark: something which would border on the unforgivable with many ponies, as those who heard the focus of their lives being cast into doubt seldom reacted well. She would not do Applejack the disservice of questioning her friend's magic. The farmer had said 'somepony just got here,' and so there was somepony there. She believed that.

But she didn't see anypony new, at least not within her current arc of sight. A half-panicked survey of the landscape might alert the new arrival. And so...

"Where?" she whispered, fighting to keep her own posture from tightening.

"Behind you," Applejack softly replied. "Don't turn: you probably couldn't see it anyway. Ways back, through the trees. Not on the main path. Still more than a few body lengths out."

"...one?" Fluttershy quietly asked, something which required practically no modifications to her normal tones.

"It's one unless we've got a pair of ponies trying to do the Trottingham Two-Step," Applejack reported. "Four hooves."

"Maybe they're not following us?" Spike tried. "Ponies come out here for apples. This could just be somepony who wanted a snack."

"This early in the morning?" Applejack reported, forcing her volume down. "Maybe. But that's not the way I feel like betting right now, Spike. An' either way, I don't want ponies seeing us out here. Ah sure don't want them close enough t' hear. So we're gonna move now, nice and natural. Just trot off like we're the ones looking for apples. I'll listen, see if this one tries to follow, and if they do -- we'll shake them. If it gets real bad --" a glance at Twilight was accompanied by a very visible wince "-- you teleport us out. Two ponies plus Spike: you can pull that off, right?"

It was as much as she was officially licensed for: Twilight had only been able to pay for the three-sapient version of the escort test. "Yes. But if I teleport you --"

"-- better than some of the other options," Applejack half-forced out. "Just bring us in somewhere that nopony's gonna see the reaction. Okay. Everypony follow me. And chatter a little, if you can. Act natural."

Twilight briefly wondered if acting qualified for lying -- then remembered the play. Still, if the lines weren't rehearsed... "About what?"

A soft groan. "Oh, for... Apples. Talk about apples."

"...why?" Fluttershy asked.

"Because we're in a wild apple orchard," Applejack hissed. "And not only is that the reason why we should be out here, it's kind of a topic I can keep going for a while." And then, with her normal volume coming back all at once, "Let's scout over that way." A head tilt indicated an angle stretching off to Twilight's left. "Maybe I already got the one type of seeds, but there still might be a few other varieties around here. Since we're not gonna be around much longer, I want to finish this scouting gallop. Come on, everypony!"

...does that count for a lie? Because it had emerged so naturally, without strange expressions or green eyes constantly darting up...

Applejack began to trot, Spike now half-clinging to the thick name. Twilight forced herself into step, and Fluttershy brought up the rear. None of them risked glancing back.

"Look for a striated sort of red," Applejack called back. "Hint of peach at the very top, near the stem. We're in just about the right place for a Jonagold. And that's not controlled like the Eastern Red Giants are, but I've never seen a tree I liked. Wouldn't mind adding a few to the Acres if we can just find a decent source of seeds."

"Peach?" Twilight asked, mostly because it was something she could say.

"Just the color. Not the flavor. They're more tart than sweet."

"Oh. Good." Twilight searched for more words. "Because I don't like peaches."

"Y'don't?" A little hint of very real surprise made it into the words. "Because I've seen you eating them. Pinkie served up that pie the one time, and you had a slice --"

"-- Pinkie baked it," Twilight sighed. "I didn't want to be rude. And it's the texture, plus the juice is so cloying, and if you've ever seen what happens to it when somepony tries to put them into a preserves jar..."

"...everypony has foods they hate," Fluttershy contributed. "Angel hates iceberg lettuce: that's why it's his punishment dinner, after he's been bad."

Spike projected his groan to the theoretical back row of the open-air theater. "Obsidian." (Twilight winced, automatically nodded.) "It's not a real gem. It's a rock which had some weird things happen to it. So that's what it tastes like: a rock which went through some bad stuff and wants to take all of it out on you. And you know the worst part? It looks so good. The color, the way the light goes through it -- you'd swear it was going to be the perfect gourmet snack. Exactly what you need to get through that next reshelving. But as soon as it hit my tongue..." The memory triggered a very open, extremely sincere gagging sound. "Obsidian is the Baked Bads of the gem world."

They could all see Applejack's wince. "Do we have to talk about that right now?"

Fluttershy giggled. "...we should talk about the old lessons, so we don't forget them. Get some help. Ask for help." A half-mischievous pause. "Go to bed already..."

Applejack muttered to herself, the words lost in low tones, and glanced off to the right. "So maybe this way..."

They wandered through the wild zone, and Twilight couldn't make herself look back. The play was in progress, and breaking character might alert the local audience as to what was going on. But she didn't know what was happening. Applejack was still talking (lying?) and that had to mean the pony was behind them. Following. But --

--why?

Several possibilities presented themselves. The reporters were very unlikely to have departed from Trotter's Falls, and it was possible that one of them had wandered out of the town just in time to spot a Princess, decided to go look for a story to distort. (Or worse, had camped out within easy sight of the castle, was watching every coming and going.) It could be a local, somepony who'd started out as just looking for an apple and upon spotting the four of them, had switched into a quest for gossip. Or it could have been --

-- somepony else.

Whoever planted the resonance bomb might have come out to see what had been set off -- or would they check her home first? But if she'd gone back and they'd found her there, they still might come out to get rid of any others, so nopony else would set those off and then tell the local police about a strange spell in the wild zone. Take the teeth out of the traps. And when that pony sees us...

If she had gone home, and the pony who'd placed the spells had met her there -- how much had that pony been told? Any accomplice (at least an accomplice) would certainly be aware of who they were and what they looked like. What would that pony intend for them? Further consultations, asking them for help to fix her? Or would they attempt to cover up what had happened through getting rid of everypony who knew?

An accomplice who wanted help would have approached.

She forced her hoofsteps to stay even, made all four legs work in something which she was hoping would appear to be a natural rhythm, trying to keep the sudden surge of fear from reaching her movements. Twilight wasn't sure it was actually working.

We could be in trouble. Big trouble. If this is that other pony --

-- there's four of us. We could take on one pony.

A pony who might know all kinds of magic, have devices we've never seen before. Or both. A pony who might know a lot, who would have to know a lot just from what she told us. Maybe she found out about the original Bearers herself -- but somepony else could have told her. Somepony could have told her so much...

And now she wanted to stop. Confront, capture, question. But if it was just a local or a reporter -- all right, with a reporter, there was a chance to get rid of some stress, but --

-- and there's at least one more possibility. What if it's her? The bomb would have worn off by now. Maybe she came back out and she's afraid to approach us after what happened, she doesn't know how to explain what she did and she wouldn't know that I figured out what happened...

Should I stop? Call out? I can't project my field backwards: it's a blind grab with too many trees in the way. I could get anything.

She could think of so many possibilities for what might be happening. But she was merely thinking about them, and...

'That's what I meant about you in fights. Sometimes you're so busy thinking about ways to block a kick that by the time you pick one, you've already got a hoof in your ribs.'

Okay, Rainbow. You've got a point. Maybe this is where I need to stop thinking and start acting.

And now I'm thinking about that.

...I'm not sure it helps.

What should I do? What do we do?

"And would you look at that?" Applejack had stopped at the base of a trunk, and the hatless head had tilted up, all the better to let her gaze at the hanging fruit. "Jonagolds. They ain't perfect ones, but -- they're wild. No control on the weather out here, so the growing conditions ain't ideal and without the Effect, the soil isn't charged up enough to let the tree do the best it could. For wild, that's probably about the best we could ask for."

Twilight blinked. "We found them?"

"I know my orchards," Applejack replied. "So now -- Spike, you'll want to get down for this..." The little dragon quickly dismounted, freeing Applejack to spin and slam her hind hooves into the bark. Apples dropped. "Okay. This one -- and this one -- don't like the looks of this one -- yeah, there's the worm -- and these two for backups -- you can eat that one, Spike: just wipe it down a little first."

"With what?" Spike naturally asked. "I don't have any cloths, I'm sure not rubbing this against everypony's fur, and all we've got around here is more dirt."

"...saddlebags," Fluttershy suggested.

"Rarity," Spike replied, and shuddered.

"Good points," Applejack conceded. "And since we've got what we need -- Twilight, let's take the fast way out."

Part of her wanted to stay, confront. Another portion was still searching for a workable plan, and there was something very close to majority writhing in confusion and self-doubt. Everything briefly united to trust her friend, and Twilight nodded.

"Trot over," she said. "It's a little easier when we're all touching." They gathered. "Okay..."

A quick, hopefully-unseen glance at Applejack. The farmer forced a tiny nod.

Twilight's corona flared, and they all went between.

Once the flash of teleport dazzle had been blinked away, the remaining pony silently stared at the spot where they had been. There was a brief head shake, and then the slow, worried trot back began.

Twilight hadn't memorized all that many spots around the area. Bringing a group into her assigned bedroom had too many risks: with the way her friends had been grouped around her, it was a virtual guarantee that at least one body would have arrived in a position which intersected the furniture, with an additional promise of recoil -- something which could all-too-easily wind up randomly aimed towards the balcony doors. The ravine, while it probably did warrant yet another inspection, would have required another teleport to get back in less than a day. But they'd been to the lake a few times now, and she was relatively confident in the shoreline being unoccupied.

She was right, and so the only body which hit the ground did so of its own volition as Applejack immediately dropped to all four knees, sides heaving with breath after breath as the earth pony desperately tried to center herself again. Fluttershy matched her level before the second exhalation could begin.

"What happened? Is it the teleport? It sounded sort of like you were suggesting something about that back at the orchard, but we never got a chance to talk --"

"-- it's the teleport," Twilight cut in, lowering her own body to the pebbles. "It'll pass. And we all need to talk, before the party." Everypony needed a full update, for everything they knew, had learned, and merely suspected. "Applejack, are you --"

"-- give me a minute," the farmer said. "No hurry, right?" She briefly forced her head up, checked the sky. "No weather team up there, an' -- I'll know if somepony is around here in a few. Twilight, can somepony trace a teleport? Figure out where we went?"

She shook her head. "There's been a lot of attempts to create spells which would do it, and none of them ever worked. The best you can do is sort of magically attach yourself to the other pony: make them bring you along. It's not easy, I didn't feel any workings, and whoever was back there would have shown up with us."

"Good... good to know," Applejack gasped. "All right. Then we've got that minute, and I can..." She swallowed hard, and Twilight wondered how much had just been choked down. "...just breathe a little. And yeah: when we get back to the castle, before the party -- one more bath. That should give us the chance to brief everypony on -- whatever's needed."

They gave her the minute, and Twilight waited until Applejack had staggered back to her hooves before asking the next question. "Was that her?" And why I am thinking Applejack would know? "I thought that maybe she came out again after the spell wore off, and she was just nervous about approaching us after running away --"

"-- nah," Applejack replied, voice a little steadier. "Couldn't have been."

Spike blinked. "How do you know?"

"Too light," was the answer. "She's big for a pony, Spike: just about Luna's size. Wasn't anywhere near that much pressure against the soil. This pony -- well, I'm guessing it was a pony: all I know for sure is that there were four legs an' the impressions sort of ran towards hooves. But I ain't seen anything else around here, not that can think. Could have been an animal, something which figured we were prey and decided to track us for a while. But at the same time -- light. Not enough weight to really think about taking on three ponies plus one dragon and coming out ahead. And that's all I know, everypony. Whoever it was, they followed us all the way. Couldn't shake 'em casually and didn't want to make it look like we were trying, so I waited until we had a reason to leave, and then we left. One something or other, not too heavy, with four legs, which tracked us as far as it could. And..." She frowned. "...quiet. I was listening deep, but I was using my ears too. Never heard a twig being stepped on. Didn't even hear anything breathing. All I knew was that they were on the ground and behind us, a ways back."

It wasn't quite a relief to hear: one possibility removed, but far too many others opened. "I was thinking a reporter who spotted us," Twilight admitted, "or a local who just happened to be going for apples and wanted to see what we were doing. Or --" a brief hesitation "-- it could have been the pony who planted the resonance bomb." She wanted their opinions, wished she'd had them a few minutes ago. "I was wondering if we should have just gone after them."

"...if it was an animal," Fluttershy stated, "spooking's not always the best idea. And for a pony... a reporter's not so bad, in some ways." Timidly, "I mean, they're really bad, but it's not the kind of bad which goes worst right now. Somepony who just lives here, we could talk to. But if it's the pony who was helping her, or making her do it... I don't know, Twilight. They would have had to confess, right there. We don't have evidence to connect anypony to what happened, so unless they got scared and fought us while they were yelling all about their plans..."

"Daring Do," Spike sighed. "Canon #6. Maybe we missed an opportunity, but we don't know..."

"It's a mystery," Twilight quietly said, and they all stared at her. "I was thinking about that before: that we're in a mystery more than an adventure. And the rules which apply to adventures only work when you're writing about them. So the things which happen in adventures don't work, and the ones which take place in mysteries need an author. We might have missed our chance, or -- we might have just dodged a reporter. I don't know, and -- I'm really starting to hate second-guessing myself all the time."

"...we could go back," Fluttershy proposed. "...start by the broken tree and search?"

"Don't have a reason for going back," Applejack replied. "Worst thing we could do might be to let somepony know we're onto them."

"They know," Twilight quietly replied. "If it's the pony who was helping her and they found her when she went home, then they know something. Whatever she told them." Which led to the next question. "Applejack, you didn't sense anything else? Any magic she might have used, anywhere she could have gone?"

The farmer took a deep breath. "No more echoes. I listened as deep as I could, but... after a while, I was mostly tracking whoever was behind us. Trying to focus. But I would have heard her: I know that. And I did hear the caves."

Twilight blinked. "...the --?"

"-- little network, not too deep." Applejack said. "Might have been natural or it could have been an old Dog tunnel. Didn't feel too even. We already know there's some stuff underground in these parts: the ravine and the waterfall prove it. So it didn't surprise me to hear a little more. First time I've picked up on it, but -- first time I've been listening that deep. If it's Dogs -- and there's no local pack, from what Quiet said -- then the tunnels are abandoned: no one moving through. Least not for that part."

"Maybe we should check them out," Spike suggested. "If somepony's moving around and trying to stay out of sight..."

It got him a slow nod. "Yeah. We probably should. But we're gonna need some stuff before we try. Don't want to go spelunking without preparing, Spike: going after Rarity was bad enough, and that was with an occupied tunnel. The Dogs keep their warrens steady, make sure nothing collapses. We get down there, and it's just going to be me watching for the bad spots." Her tail shifted: left, then right, and her knees straightened a little more. "I'm okay to move if anypony knows where we're going next. The castle? Or did you want to try surprising whoever that was in the wild zone, Twi?"

"Not yet," Twilight sighed. "It'll take too long to work back from the tree: it's the only place I've really got in my memory and with four of us, whoever it is will probably see or hear us first. And I don't want to go back to the castle yet. I want to head into town. We can't stay in the castle much longer, and -- we need some things. Camping supplies, for starters."

"An' what's the excuse for buying them?"

Twilight blinked. "Sorry?"

"We've been selling a lie," Applejack shot back. "That we came for the Doctor, and then that we were staying a few days. So what's the next lie? We're going camping instead of going home? We got called to a mission and we're going to need some stuff before we all head out, but we're staying for the party anyway? Ponies see us buying stuff, just about any stuff with Royal Vouchers, and they're gonna wonder why. Might have to hit the next settled zone and shop there, then work back. Or wait until tomorrow and then say there's a mission, only we can't tell anypony what it is except that it means we're gonna be camping. Lies just lead to more lies, Twi. So better figure out which one you're telling, because once you pick that road, there's only one way to get your hooves off it. And when you don't know who you can tell the truth to, then that --" the hesitation was visible "-- might be worse. So what are we doing?"

Another blink, and then a slow breath. "With the camping supplies? I don't know. Maybe we do need to wait until tomorrow. We have to plan the departure as much as anything else. But I still want to go into town. I need more Fawkes Vials, and I think we have to check out the device shop: try to get some idea if the pony who runs it could have been involved with the snitcher."

"All right, then," Applejack nodded. "We'll do that." She began to trot towards the exit path, movements steady.

Twilight, still motionless, watched the blonde tail shifting under grey sky for a whole three hoofsteps before the question came out. "Applejack?"

The farmer glanced back over her shoulder. "What?"

"Did you --" and in the moment before the words emerged, she hated herself, for to question a mark was a discourtesy and insult -- but to question an Element "-- when you were talking about looking for those Jonagolds -- did you lie?"

"It's an apple orchard," Applejack steadily said as her eyes refused to narrow. "A wild one. Conditions looked about right for that kind of apple. So I decided, on the spot, to look for those apples, and I said I was looking for them. That's truth all the way through, Twi. Nopony told me I had to say why I was looking. I didn't lie. Ah just changed the subject."

She trotted away. After a moment, Spike scrambled, caught up, and she allowed him to ride again. Fluttershy followed them. But Twilight remained on the shoreline for a few extra seconds, thinking.

Rarity doesn't have to give everypony anything they ask for. Fluttershy's lost her temper a few times. Pinkie's been sad, I don't use magic every minute when I'm awake. Rainbow's always been Rainbow, for better or worse.

And Applejack doesn't lie. But that doesn't mean she has to tell the whole truth.

We're more than our Elements.

It could have been a reassuring thought. It might have been a disturbing one. But as she stood on the damp pebbles on the shore, Twilight didn't know how she felt about it.

We're all just ponies. She's just a pony: Pinkie keeps asking us to remember that. But a pony who would make somepony think they were broken...

And there was something else.

Trixie said essence is harvested from the dead or the dying. If she used essence, then somepony had to gather it.

Were the ponies they used dead when they started? Or dead after they finished?

We know she's already killed twice.

How many dead unicorns did it take to create the Amulet? How many ponies would have been needed to create her? And if it is essence, and resonance can distort it so easily...

She said she was doing it to save the broken. Charity. Discovery. Sympathy. It's what Rarity said: not all resonance is negative.

But if it's essence -- then somewhere in all this is a graveyard.

High humidity, a dropping temperature, and fast-moving breezes as the time of stormbreak approached. It was as good a reason as any to shiver. And then she hurried to catch up.

But for a moment, the nightmare came into the world, and she pushed her way through the bodies of the dead.

There were many words which could be used to describe Trotter's Falls. "Isolated" generally worked, with "expensive" as a constant, and those used to a little more in the way of greenery could easily pull out "barren." But on the day of the party, there was another term in play and upon seeing it posted in the main display window of Miracles Limited, Twilight openly groaned.

"'Closed'," she read aloud. "Why are so many places closed?"

"Maybe he's getting ready for the party," Applejack suggested. "That's what the last place said on their sign, an' we know he's coming. Plus he's got a new colt: that kind of has a way of stealing hours, Twi."

"But I needed the vials..."

"So we'll get 'em tomorrow."

"We might have to do everything tomorrow," Twilight sighed, openly frustrated and not caring who heard it -- not that there were ponies around to hear: the worsening weather seemed to be keeping the population indoors. "Closed, closed, closed..."

It wasn't a universal condition: some shops remained open, and they had yet to encounter a restaurant which had locked its doors. But it seemed as if a good part of the settled zone had decided to take the day off, and there was more than a little evidence around for Twilight having been the cause. They had tried to find a store which might stock camping supplies, and the only likely candidate had been closed. They hadn't even been able to confirm that establishment as truly useful: nothing they would have needed had been visible in the front window. But they had found the device and convenience shop. To wit, they'd found it closed. However, in that case, the window had provided a great deal of information, mostly concerning how even a Royal Voucher might have its purchase limits. Twilight was starting to give some serious thought towards sending Trixie one of the precious documents with the next letter and asking her to buy everything, just to keep the palace accountants from suffering a voucher-by-voucher series of coronary palpitations.

"The party's hours away," she tried, presenting one last protest. (Although not too many hours now: they'd lost time in approaching the town from an angle which didn't mean going past the castle again, and had nearly wound up lost. Twice.) "How much preparation time does everypony need?"

"...maybe they're all doing it in Rarity time," Fluttershy gently smiled.

Spike sighed. "Where it takes longer to get ready for the party than you spend at the party... Guys, can we just go inside someplace?" He shivered. "It's getting colder, most of my emergency gems -- Rarity's emergency gems -- are back at the castle, and I'm getting low on flame. I just want to warm up a little."

"The coffee shop's open," Applejack noted. Fluttershy and Twilight mutually shuddered. "We don't have to buy any coffee. It's bad enough that they've got a shop..." For Ponyville, Zecora was the only truly reliable source of beans, and Barnyard Bargains was the central seller of the anti-nausea medication most ponies required after taking the initial risk. "They've probably got some tea and pastries to go with the foul. And the tea's gonna be warm. Besides, at least coffee smells good." Which triggered reluctant nods: coffee did in fact smell very good, thus proving that some illusions could also be woven from scent. "Let's go in."

There was a single pony behind the counter, her deep brown fur nearly blending into the contents of the glass jars arranged on the wall behind her. Only the reflections of interior lighting off that glass (because Sun was currently a lost cause) and the presence of small white labels helped to differentiate the two, especially when she blinked.

Twilight automatically read a few of those labels as she trotted in. The majority told prospective buyers where the beans had been harvested from: Pundamilia Makazi naturally led off the majority of indicators, as the zebra's home nation was the world's only truly reliable source of coffee. (It was possible for earth ponies to grow it in Equestrian soil, just as the Cornucopia Effect created the potential for everything else -- but the limited local demand and need for extreme climate control meant very few farmers spared any space for that particular crop.) This was followed by the name for the subspecies of bean. After that, it was the exact region of that distant country, perhaps the grower's name if it was somepony of repute, and finally a few suggested uses, all of which included actually drinking the stuff and were therefore automatically ignored.

The proprietor's dark brown eyes narrowed as she watched Twilight trot in. Applejack was right behind her, and the pupils became something very close to slits.

"...hi," Fluttershy tried as she came in with Spike, because she wasn't entirely the pony Twilight had met on that first day. "...it smells very nice in here."

The mare said nothing. She simply watched them all, irises barely visible and jaw set into a line of something which felt like defiance.

Fluttershy had changed. But she hadn't changed that much, and the silence sent her right hind leg into the first movement of a hoofstep back. "...we were wondering... if we could just get some tea?"

"You trot into a coffee shop," the mare said, "and you want tea."

"...and -- pastries?" Fluttershy valiantly tried. "You have pastries in that case... they -- look like very nice pastries..."

"There's a tea shop," the proprietor harshly told them. "Out the door. Turn left. Twelve buildings down."

More softly, "...they're closed. A lot of places are closed today..."

"I run a coffee shop," the mare tensely stated. "I serve coffee. To the ponies I want to serve." Her pinprick of a gaze briefly shifted to Applejack, then returned to Fluttershy. "I reserve the right to refuse service to anypony. I'm not serving you."

Down to a whisper. "...but..."

"Get. Out --"

-- which was when Twilight took a step forward.

"I see tea jars. On the fourth shelf."

"I imagine you see a lot of things," the mare replied. "You don't seem to hear very much. I don't have to serve anypony if I don't want to. That includes you."

Applejack moved up, stood tensely still on Twilight's left. "Y'don't want to serve a Princess."

This was ignored. The mare was now staring directly at Twilight. "When I find trash in my shop," the proprietor steadily said, "I remove it immediately. I suppose there are those who just let things fester for a while, but I find the smell tends to drive my real customers away. I don't have to serve you. I won't take your money. If your field goes around a single jar, it's theft. Touch one strand of my fur and it's assault. Now get out. And take your pet with you."

Spike's tail twitched. Applejack's right foreleg moved forward --

-- as Twilight's left foreleg slammed sideways.

The created barrier was small. Thin, weak, and all in the physical ways, completely ineffective. But it was still somehow enough, and Applejack stopped.

The mare softly laughed.

"That's right," she told them. "You can't do anything, and even she's just barely smart enough to know it. I read. I know exactly what you can and can't do. What the protocols are. And before you say this will cost me business, it'll bring in a lot more from the ponies who know somepony can stand up to you. I won't serve you tea in my coffee shop --" her horn ignited and the brown field dipped below the counter, brought up a small, quickly-rolled bundle "-- but I will give you the complimentary gift of my opinion."

The newspaper was slung towards Spike: Twilight's field automatically caught it before it could impact scales.

"Get out," the mare smirked.

Twilight's field strength resided at the far end of the Celestia Meter (Adjusted). She knew far more workings than the vast majority of unicorns, could sometimes even try to put raw theory into a spontaneous casting and watch that mistake unfold. Multiple spells were viable in this situation. A touch of basic manipulation would forcefully express her opinion. There were any number of things she could have done, and so she did none of them.

She turned, trotted towards the door, and silently left. After a few seconds, the others followed.

"Ah'd ask what that was about," Applejack half-snarled well before they would have been completely out of earshot, "but I'm pretty sure I already know. That's a Murdocks paper, ain't it?"

Twilight's field had already unrolled it, and her eyes were quickly scanning across the pages. "Yes..." She sighed. "It's not Ponyville, Applejack. There's ponies who don't like the government, or the Princesses. The --" and the quotes only partially encased the nausea "-- 'loyal opposition'. Like Thistle Burr." Every settled zone had at least one pony like Thistle Burr: in Ponyville's case, he counted for twelve. "And they're not going to like me any more than he does. Us, not with the Bearers effectively being agents of the thrones. And she's right. There's nothing we could have done: nothing legal. In Ponyville, I can get away with dunking a reporter because it is Ponyville and as long as it's just dunking, Chief Rights will be on our side. Here... we trot away. We have to trot away." No matter how much it hurt.

"...but we didn't do anything," Fluttershy whispered.

"We don't have to," Spike heavily said. "We just have to exist."

Applejack took a long glance back, and Twilight did everything she could not to track the movement or expression. "Well," the farmer finally shrugged as she faced forward again, "at least we got a stupid one."

Twilight didn't get it. "How so?" More pages turned.

"A smart one would have served us. Overcharged, tainted the drinks, made sure we'd be sick later and couldn't tie it to her. This one was just so proud of how she felt an' the chance to say it right to our snouts that she couldn't pass it up." Applejack snorted. "Give me a stupid pony any day. The ones smart enough to keep it under wraps in public are the ponies you've gotta watch out for. Anything in that paper? 'Cause if there ain't, I want to dump it before she has a real thought go through and tries to tell somepony we stole it."

The former unicorn blinked, then scanned a little faster. "Gossip -- gossip -- more gossip -- scandal -- oh, for Sun's sake, we all know where the Princess was during --" and the soft groan served as the initial announcement of the discovery. "Found it."

"What are they writing this time?" Spike asked, blowing the last wisps of flame over fast-clenching claws.

Twilight read through it. "It's mostly about invasion of privacy." She sighed. "Just ignore the irony... Apparently I've been directing threats towards an unnamed private citizen, saying I'll go after them and expose all their secrets for no reason whatsoever beyond my really wanting to because I'm just a horrible pony that way. But of course that unnamed pony doesn't have any secrets, so I'll just make something up -- ignore that irony too... And that's breaking palace protocols. Taking what happened in the thaumaturgy shop and twisting it around to make me look as bad as possible. Just the usual, Spike." And the fact that it had taken her a mere moon to consider that kind of wound inflicted on the truth as the usual brought pain to more than one pony: she could hear Applejack's wince. "But it's a weird way of going after me, and that's when you go past the lies. How can I break palace protocols? I'm not the Princess or Luna. We work for the palace when we're on missions, but the protocols she's misquoting are for the Diarchy. You can't apply the standards for rulership to somepony who isn't a ruler."

"...some ponies don't think that way," Fluttershy softly said, feathers lightly trembling with each word: she hadn't recovered from the confrontation yet. "...they just see the wings, Twilight. They see an alicorn, and the title is Princess, so they think you have to be in charge of... something, I guess."

"I'm a librarian," Twilight wearily shrugged as her field began to roll the newspaper back up. "I have absolute domain over the arrangement of my Periodicals section, right of enforcement against the crime of late fees, and no final say whatsoever over what the mayor assigns me for a budget. But they're not going to write about that, unless they're calling it a clear sign of possible insanity again, according to a lettered expert who never gets a name. It's just going to be me and all the horrible things I threatened to do, abusing my non-royal authority, and it's all me. The reporter barely even mentioned that you were in the shop, Applejack. Or --"

-- wait.

Her corona flared, and the newspaper opened so quickly as to nearly tear itself apart. (Normally, it was a horrible thing to do with any reading material and would have called for at least a minute of self-chiding -- but this was a Murdocks newspaper, and so she didn't care.)

"Something else?" Spike quickly asked.

Twilight reread the whole thing. It didn't take long. "She put it all on me. Quiet isn't in the article."

"You're kinda the main target, Twi," Applejack shrugged. "More she can blame on you, more she's gonna blame on you."

But she said she was going to get his name. Print a story about us hanging around together. That ponies would know who he was...

"...maybe she found out he was the local Lord?" Fluttershy carefully proposed. "And she didn't want to risk --" the one visible eye briefly closed "-- no, I'm being silly: they go after the Princesses. Nopony who works for them is going to worry about offending somepony with any title at all."

"Or maybe it just reads better when Twi's responsible for everything," Applejack countered. "They've got a style of lie, Fluttershy, and they usually stick to it. Spike, you're looking pretty cold there. Want to try for another store?"

The little dragon's arms were now huddled tight against his body, and his posture was slightly curled in on itself. "No. Let's just go back to the castle. We've got to get ready for the party. And then, when everything is over..."

His eyes briefly closed, and his tip of his tail dropped closer to the dirt.

"...we can go home," he quietly finished. "I just -- really want to go home."

They walked and trotted under grey-black sky, in a barren town at the heart of an isolated settled zone, and the group pulled a little closer together. Some of it was keeping an eye on each other, and being in a defensible position should more reporters appear. (Twilight almost longed to get the article's writer -- but any attempt to correct the record would only provide a chance to further distort it.) But a little was for warmth, and the rest because in the end, they were the only truly familiar things in what suddenly felt like a very strange land.

I want to go home.

There was no resonance bomb triggering that thought. Just the pressure of the mission, the pain of the confrontation, and the permanent weight of wings.

And then there was one more bath. It put them in what felt like a safe place, away from the activities which had taken over the castle. It allowed them to pretend the stresses were being soaked out. It had the seven of them together, updating and briefing each other, at least once Pinkie had checked for eavesdroppers again. (She had been the hardest to fetch, and she'd still been trying to insist on something regarding an archway when Applejack had finally become fed up and just outright pulled the fuming party planner down the hallway, tail-first.) It allowed them to share everything which had happened, make sure everypony knew the latest information, possible tactics to employ, recover from hearing Spike and Twilight's tentative thoughts regarding essence, and let them all mutually try to figure out exactly what their next lies were supposed to be.

"A mission might be best," Twilight reluctantly concluded. "I can say I got the alert in the morning. It gets us out of here with a good excuse, it explains why we need to resupply, and -- well, then the main problem would be if things took us back into town again." She softly sighed. Claiming palace secrecy was theoretically good for a lot of things, but most of the practical uses centered around making ponies wonder just what they were being so secretive about. "Maybe we all need to sleep on it after the party and talk it over again tomorrow. But we can't stay in the castle, everypony, because the town will start to wonder about that. We can't stay here, and we can't leave the area before everything's over... we need to come up with something. And maybe a faked new mission is it, but..." She paused, glanced at Rainbow, whose sullen form was starting to drift by on the right. "I'll take any ideas anypony has."

"Nothing," Rainbow listlessly declared, barrel and chin low in the water. "I've got nothing."

Everypony focused in that direction. "Are you all right, dear?" Rarity carefully asked -- then winced. "No, you are not, and I believe I know why. It is because we are leaving --"

"-- and that means I'll never see my manuscript again," Rainbow finished. "Well -- I guess there's a chance somepony might spot it somewhere, and he'll mail it to me." A brief frown. "He. Um... Quiet. He'd send it. But I know where I left it, everypony. I do. That means somepony took it, and -- maybe they're rewriting it, maybe they'll try to get it bound and submit it somewhere, I could fly by a bookstore and spot my own words under somepony else's name..."

Twilight, who would never need to write a scroll about the emotional agony of having somepony else taking the credit for hard work, carefully moved closer. "You can start over, Rainbow. Just work from your drafts. It'll be faster that way, and I'll help --"

"-- most of that was the drafts," the pegsaus sullenly stated. "I just -- wrote stuff down. Whenever I thought about it. I don't remember everything I wrote. Not word for word."

"But you remember everything that happened!" Pinkie reminded her. "Whoever took it doesn't. You just have to remember again. Only with better commas."

"I guess." A long exhale, and water soaked its way up a little more of the cyan fur. "I just wish I knew who did it. I just wish I could kick the pony who did it. For starters." With a slow-rising note of hope, "And if we found out at the party, there's all the clouds outside. That's a lot of lightning..."

Twilight, who'd already (and in part, reluctantly) defused one potential fight that day, scrambled to change the subject. "Rarity, I hate to ask, but -- are the dresses --"

"-- and the tuxedo," Rarity wearily nodded. "Barely -- and do not give me that look, Spike: your scales are set off most elegantly in this design, and having you insist that you feel as if you are wearing, and I quote, 'a lemur suit,' will not make me send you into the party in what would remain the nude. For everyday events and the majority of what Pinkie hosts, that is more than adequate. But this will be a party which requires clothing, and so clothing you shall don." (The little dragon grumbled to himself, sunk lower into the water, and entered an impromptu sullenness contest: Rainbow easily won.) "Everypony should come by my assigned quarters before the festivities begin. I will make sure everything goes together properly. And Fluttershy? Your design exposes the tail."

"...but," the caretaker tried to protest. "...but..."

"And there is no time to rework it. You have the fullest tail among us: I believe it should be shown off for a change."

"...but..."

And the corner which Fluttershy ultimately backed herself into probably wouldn't appreciate the view. Still, some of the ponies who got a look at her before she entered the defensive stance...

"Rarity?"

"Yes, Twilight?"

"Can I get some help?"

Carefully, "With what?"

"Well -- this is my party. Technically. I should probably look my best for it. And you know I'm still not good with cosmetics. So -- if you would put my makeup on for me? Please?"

"Makeup," Rarity repeated.

"Yes," Twilight stated, feeling the the stares of the group starting to focus upon her as defensive tones tried to rise, personally leading an instant internal revolt which crushed the rebellion under a tide of Decorum. "Makeup."

"You hate wearing makeup," Rarity unnecessarily reminded everypony. "You generally react to any attempt at applying proper cosmetics in a manner befitting somepony who had been told to have their face painted with acid. You wore makeup to the Gala, under rather memorable protest, and only complied in the end because you were afraid of reflecting poorly upon the Princess. And now you are requesting it. I believe you can recognize the reason for my surprise?"

"It's about our host," Twilight magnificently failed to lie (if only for wording). "And that's exactly the same as it was with the Princess. Quiet's put up with a lot, having us here. The party might be for me, but everypony around here is going to remember it as his party. We have to reflect well on him. So for me, that means makeup. And for everypony else, it means being on our best behavior. All of us. Rainbow, I know you're down and I really do understand why, but -- try to put on an uptilted snout, just for a few hours. Pinkie, let the band play -- do we have a band? Applejack --"

"-- I've got something ready," Applejack cut in. "Something appropriate."

The stares directed themselves.

"Appropriate," Twilight not-quite-asked.

"Very," Applejack smiled. "And that's the truth. But it's also a surprise, and that means if anypony asks me anything else about it, I'm just gonna float here with my mouth shut. Any other last-minute stuff we need to go over before any maybe-band starts playing?"

"Just try to keep your ears open," Twilight told them all. "Ponies talk at parties: that's one of the first things Pinkie taught me." (Damp curls enthusiastically bounced a few body lengths away.) "We can't pry. We really can't bring things up. But we never know what we might hear. It's a small chance, but -- you never know. And if we don't find out anything -- then just try to have fun, as much as you can. But careful fun. We have to think about our host. We're reflecting on our host."

"And hostess," Rarity added.

Twilight's head whipped to the right at a speed which, with a much longer and equally-soaked mane, would have risked injuries to Fluttershy's ears.

Far too carefully for the movement which had preceded the word, "Hostess?"

"Quiet's spouse," Rarity clarified. "She came back today, you know."

"Did you see her?" A little too quickly.

"No. I was in my quarters, finishing everypony's garments. I simply overheard two of the servants mentioning her return as they went by outside."

"Oh." But there had been two others who'd stayed behind. "Pinkie, did you happen to meet her?"

"I've been going back and forth all day with the servants and catering staff!" the baker reminded them. "Kitchen, main hall, front entrance. And besides -- um... what does she look like?"

Twilight winced. That was right: unless somepony else had tried looking for the lost manuscript in Quiet's bedroom, she'd been the only one to see the picture. Which potentially meant there was very little point to the next question, but since Rainbow had been searching everywhere... "Rainbow?"

A quick head shake. "Maybe she went by under me, but nopony said anything or introduced us."

"So unless somepony spots her before everything starts, we'll probably meet her tonight," Twilight concluded. Does Rarity have enough makeup? Maybe I need to make one more gallop for town. It's maintaining our cover: that's probably worth a Voucher. "I guess that'll be --" and it took a very awkward-feeling pause before she could settle on a word "-- interesting." Followed by the smallest fraction of a second before she decided it had been the wrong one, and tried to recover with "Tonight's for the party, everypony. We probably can't advance things there, and we have to think about tomorrow and everything which comes after. But for tonight -- just try to have fun, as much as you can. And maybe we'll get lucky." A soft sigh. "I hope we get lucky..."

"Maybe she'll show up," Spike weakly joked.

And what are my best cosmetic colors? I know what Rarity puts on me, but I've never gotten a professional opinion --

-- Twilight refocused. "We're not that lucky."

He was dressing her.

She had clothing, of course: the simple country dress, and that formal gown for come-calling dinners. They had practiced etiquette while she was wearing those dresses, and -- she couldn't seem to remember most of the details for those lessons. It was hard to remember, when the drugs took hold -- at least for some things. Depending on the drug and dosage, others might march forward and block her inner view of just about everything else. And when it came to sleep...

It was experimenting. But it was also the needful, and so she dutifully tried whatever he gave her, for it was what had to be done.

This dress was new. Of course, it had to be: her height had increased, and nothing from the time before her mistake fit any more. (She couldn't even rest on her own bed without overlap: one more reason why she'd originally slept concealed in the closed-off secret, recently-added little room below.) It was new, it was from him, and so she didn't want to tell him that even to her fogged senses, it was ugly. But his sewing skills were limited to stitching wounds, and he had no special eye for creating the balance of colors (although she suspected he could easily appreciate it from others). All he could do was gather fabric and try to create something roughly pony-shaped, and a bit beyond pony-sized.

The draping was awkward. It was loose, out of necessity. But the slits at the sides had been properly aligned.

"I know," he half-sighed, half-chuckled as he checked another stitch in the wounded cloth. "I'm no good at this. It's not what I would have imagined for the occasion, and I doubt it's what you pictured either."

"It's -- fine," she managed. The most recent dose was starting to fade out, and she knew he'd heard that in her voice: his head came up a little too quickly.

"You'll have some medicine just before it starts," he told her. "But I don't want to risk giving you too much now. We're still learning, and there are risks I don't want to take unless we must. Do you think --" and his face told her he hated having to ask "-- you can endure?"

"Yes." It might have been a lie. But it was a lie she would tell for him.

"It's all about tonight," he reminded her, trying to smile. "One way or another."

She nodded.

Half a whisper now, and she almost wondered if the words had been meant to be heard at all. "Not how I imagined it..." And then, more normally, "You met seven. You saw hundreds, coming so close to the gathering of mine. But now -- now you are the one being met. You are their introduction to miracle."

The shudder got past her, vibrated mane and tail as their colors slowly shifted.

"The pain?"

"Yes." No. She wasn't a miracle. She was a horror. But her failure might yet save the rest, and all that might be required to set them on the right path was fulfilling what he had asked her to do. The least she could do in atonement for having wasted his life.

"Can you manage?"

"Yes." For him.

The smile came, and it was one of pride. Something she didn't deserve.

"Tonight," he told her. "Those in attendance -- they have hoped. They have dreamed. But tonight, at the presentation -- they will believe."

Plinth

She held as still as she could while the soft blue glow carefully moved across her face, and did everything possible to avoid focusing her gaze on the mirror which was just barely visible beyond Rarity's left flank.

In so many ways, avoiding focus should have been easy, at least when it came to the mental sort: the moon which had passed since Twilight's change had been filled with any number of reasons which kept her from dedicating all available internal resources to pretty much anything. But this was the visual variety, and that was presenting some challenges. She couldn't focus on the glow because doing so would mean scrunching her face in such a way as to create a near-silent grumble from Rarity as the designer began to rework that entire area again, not to mention the minor anatomical problems involved in truly trying to regard her own upper eyelids. For the same reason, Twilight couldn't really look around the room either, even with so many things calling for her attention. They were all getting dressed in Rarity's assigned quarters -- or nearly all, as Spike had muttered something about not wanting to intrude on the partial nudity of mares who typically didn't wear anything again before heading into the bathroom -- and based on the audio cues, that provided a variety of things she could look at. For starters, the series of little whimpers steadily emerging from one corner was telling her exactly how much of Fluttershy's amazingly full tail had been exposed by the newest of designs: all of it.

She couldn't look at anything because to do so would interrupt Rarity's silent artistry. (She was certain the others had noticed the unnatural silence.) But the mirror was right there. Checking her reflection wouldn't even require any real neck or facial movements. She just had to focus her eyes just so...

...but she didn't.

Twilight didn't spend a lot of time looking in mirrors. In the days before Ponyville, there had been basic grooming requirements, especially if she was about to have a lesson with the Princess or could be reasonably sure of spotting a scarce patron within the Ancient History department: she would perform the standard routine and move on -- with the perpetual understanding that if she had a few days off for experimenting out of everypony's sight, said standard routine could and probably would go hang. After she'd settled into the library... well, there were still basic grooming requirements to look after, and being dirty around one friend was the best way to bring on an emergency spa visit. But it was as Rarity had said: Twilight generally didn't wear makeup. Part of that was because she'd never really learned how to put the stuff on: not only was applying subtle shading and fur highlights an art form all its own, but even a unicorn working that mostly-thaumless magic in front of a mirror had to account for the reversed image before considering exactly how all of those careful movements should proceed. It was a skill, and Twilight acknowledged that, but -- there were more important things to learn. And besides -- she knew what she looked like.

She was (too) small and (too) slender, thin in a way which could readily tip into emaciated if she fell into a two-week research gallop when there was nopony around to keep an eye on her nutrition, or to make sure she ate at all. Her snout wasn't bad and she supposed there were far worse ear shapes to have, but the totality of her features really didn't seem to be anything special and her mane had been originally cut into something which wouldn't take a lot of work to maintain (and in the darkest days, she'd considered shaving down to stubble, because it would keep stray hairs out of her beakers and besides, it wasn't as if anypony was truly looking at her). Even in her Ponyville days, she'd never really experimented with new styles because underneath any success at curl and dip would be her, with a tail that really wasn't particularly interesting, hindquarters which struck her as appealing to a rather narrow segment of the population (and she was this close to outright banning Mr. Waddle from the library), and there were so many ponies who had her exact fur color...

On her best days, Twilight considered herself to be average: on the worst, somepony so average that no amount of help would ever change that status. The mostly-faked pinup calendars of the Bearers were, for two moons out of thirteen, a bad joke. Everypony among her friends was more attractive than she, and Twilight -- accepted that. She was average, and the opinions of those who insisted on anything else were either being spoken by those with some extremely specific requirements (and seriously, if she caught the senior lurking behind the shelves to the rear of her checkout desk one more time), ponies who were outright lying to her snout, or friends trying to reassure her while boosting her confidence under an uplifting stream of completely false pretenses.

She was average. That was what she told herself. Who would be in a better position to know? And in the time between arriving in Ponyville and her change, she hadn't spent a lot of time looking in mirrors, because there wasn't anything particularly notable looking back.

But after the wings had come...

"And finished," Rarity quietly said. "I believe we are ready. Or nearly so." With a slight increase in volume, "Spike?"

From the bathroom, there was a mutter of "...ties... what kind of sapient came up with ties...?"

"Fashionable Noose," Rarity automatically replied. "A pony designer of some repute."

Through the door, "Oh." A long pause -- then, with the air of a dragon looking for somepony to take the tightness around his neck out on, "Is that pony still alive?"

"No."

More muttering, all of which seemed to have a freshly-added frustration to it.

"Check yourselves over," Rarity told the others. "This is the time for last-second adjustments, and seconds may be all we have."

Rainbow uncomfortably wriggled inside her dress. "My hock lines are tight."

"Yes," Rarity darkly stated. "I wonder why. Perhaps your dress suffered a degree of shrinkage following an unexpected drenching. Anypony else?"

"...um..."

"Fluttershy, our host has sacrificed -- perhaps without his full knowledge, but I have compensated him for his replacement costs -- a perfectly lovely set of curtains so that you would be at your best tonight. The green is beautiful against your fur. It suggests leaves. It offers the hues of the deep forest. It tells everypony that a representative of nature trots among them."

"...but my tail..."

"Yes," Rarity placidly observed. "Your tail. Should somepony once again openly suggest to you that for some incomprehensible reason, their lives cannot be complete until you have your tail docked, please let me know so that I may conduct a scientific experiment -- Twilight, I will need your help in quantifying the final result, as I may lose track of exactly how many kicks it requires to send somepony to Moon -- and while that is happening, I suggest that you swish your tail in that pony's general ascending direction. Because when it comes to not allowing others to dictate how one's natural form should appear, there is no such thing as causing too much offense. Anypony else?"

"Ah don't think this is finished," Applejack risked. "I mean, I've got everything on and it ain't like anything's peeking out which shouldn't be, but it feels like something's missing..."

"How insightful!" the designer brightly said. "I was wondering if you would notice that! Truly, your increasing perception into the world of fashion is a source of personal pride for me. Additionally, I suppose the mark switch had some small benefit for you after all... But do not worry, Applejack: your issue can be fixed within a moment!"

Cautiously, "And -- what exactly is that issue?"

"Oh, it's a simple thing, really. It's practically instinct for me now or at least, a rather automatic sort of habit..." Rarity smiled, and the elaborate purple mane was given a light, flouncing toss. "You see, unlike what Rainbow is currently insisting on doing despite all my advice to the contrary, I naturally designed your piece to work with a hat."

Twelve seconds of Tartarus-freed silence passed, with every last one dragging broken chains behind them.

"Rarity?"

"Yes, Applejack?"

"If one of us ever went evil, it's probably going to be you. Y'know that."

No response.

"I ain't sure you're not there already."

The designer favored that suggestion with a rather expressive shrug.

"I'm not ready yet," Applejack stated. "Nowhere near." And fixed green eyes upon blue.

Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen...

"Very well," Rarity replied. "Still -- habit. Twilight? Would you do me the favor of examining your makeup in the mirror? If you perceive any adjustments required in the name of reflecting well upon our host, this would be the time to tell me."

"I'm sure it's fine," Twilight automatically said.

With a nod towards the mirror, "And yet you should look."

And with no way out of it, Twilight looked.

The dress was... well, in truth, there were times when Twilight still had trouble appreciating Rarity's artistry. The librarian could catalog an art collection, happily note creator and year, research to see if there were any particular Periods in play, perhaps consult a helpful biography or three on the side -- and still might wind up more interested in the chemical composition of the paint than the image it had rendered. But this time...

She had never realized grey could be iridescent.

The fabric only caressed her form in a few places, billowed around others. Every movement produced a new shimmer of highlights: nothing ostentatious, just a gentle reminder that shimmer was possible. There would never be too many points of shine: just little twinkles appearing and fading out with each breath.

The dress was stars in the last moments of dusk.

But not all of the temporary constellations could be seen, for too many were blocked by feathers.

It was Twilight's first dress since the coronation and at that time, there had been too many other things for thinking about. But now, with a moon having passed and every memory of all the other times Rarity had instructed her to check a mirror before they all went out echoing in her mind... now, her eyes went to the reflection of wings, for Rarity had needed to assist her in getting them through the appropriate slits, Rainbow and Fluttershy wound up checking on (and correcting) her preening...

She wanted to look her best for Quiet

because it reflects on our host, we all have to

for whatever her best was. But Twilight didn't look in mirrors very much.

"It's fine, Rarity," she quietly said. "Everything's fine."

Her features were her features, and she would insist on her averageness in the face of all evidence. She was accustomed to all of that.

But the reflection no longer matched the pony.

They were making their way to the main hall. The buzz of the party had already come for them.

There had been something of a tour on the first day, and so Twilight had a decent memory of the hosting area. There was a section of the castle which lay (and almost lurked) just past the main entrance. It was a two-level hollow within the main structure which had a hallway circling the entire thing one floor up, allowing ponies to look down through curved openings and regard whatever activity might wait below. Two grand ramps waited on the left and right, allowing descent to what, at the time of their arrival, had mostly been a repository for excess furniture. But part of the activity leading up to the party had been intended to clear that space out, and Twilight could easily picture it accommodating a rather large number of ponies. She just hadn't had any chance to see it occupied by anything other than wood, and was already starting to wonder if the inanimate would turn out to be an improvement.

Softtread had told them the basics regarding their arrival, providing a quick-but-thorough briefing on what would happen. The bulk of the crowd had already arrived, but for those for whom lateness was eternally in procrastinating fashion. They would be introduced in turn: Twilight would go last. There would be titles. One by one, they would descend until they were among the masses. And after that, there would be a party of some form, one where apple bobbing would have been banished and giggling would be at a premium.

Twilight tried not to sigh.

It's for Quiet. It's our last night here. I -- we have to all get through this for him --

-- the raindrops pelted against the glass like a barrage of pebbles being field-tossed up to gather attention, and like most of those little notice-seeking missiles, they hit far harder than the ideal. There was a rapid-fire chorus of impact, just before the wind which had accelerated every drop reached the pane, making it vibrate within the frame.

They all looked, saw sky gone to black -- and then a yellow-white streak went through the fast-approaching night, imprinted itself on every retina until multiple hard blinks brought the rest of the world back.

"...it's a big one," Fluttershy softly stated.

Rainbow softly whistled. "I was watching the local team setting some of it up. They're making up for a extended dry period -- some kind of outdoor concert series. The pegasi around here are good." More quickly, "Not me good. Decent good. But still good."

"What are they using for drying devices in the entrance?" Twilight asked Softtread.

"A rented desaturator," the servant smoothly replied.

Which produced a wince. "And..."

"Our guests trot up a miniature, rather temporary and decidedly porous ramp," Softtread answered the unspoken question. "The tubs are below."

Twilight nodded. Desaturators worked by magically forcing all exterior water to separate from the absorbing surface, effectively producing instant drying of fur and clothing. It also left that water hanging in midair for a split-second before it all crashed to the floor and the splash almost inevitably forced the device to start working again, over and over until the charge ran out or the resulting rivers had run past the working's range. (Hot air blowers were much slower and considerably less efficient, but also didn't require the same amount of cleanup.) "And they're running normally?"

"Nopony has reported symptoms of dehydration thus far. Although any number are following their own introductions with an immediate trip to the bar, perhaps under the delusion that alcohol will replace any lost fluids." A tiny sniff. "It, of course, does not. Oh, yes -- Lord Presence had a last-minute question. Regarding alcohol: do any of you drink? I ask so that I can save your favorite vintages before the gathering empties every bottle."

Spike's mouth began to open --

"I don't," Twilight quickly said, "and you don't either."

The little dragon glared at her.

"Yes," Pinkie smiled. "But not too much." Which, for the pony with the highest tolerance in the group, could mean just about any quantity at all. "And I'm not fussy."

"Slightly," confessed the designer, who had never reached a fifth consecutive mug in her life. "But I am certain that whatever has been provided will more than suffice."

"Not when I'm flying," Rainbow stated, and adjusted the position of her Daring Do hat again: the darkness of the storm-ridden sky had made the nearest windowpane into a decent substitute mirror.

"...we're going to be inside all night," Fluttershy softly reminded her.

"It's a two-level hollow! I've got enough room for some of the basics! And if I start at the far end -- oh, I can show them some stuff once I get a little acceleration going...!"

The caretaker quietly sighed. "...nothing for me."

"Just hard cider now and again," Applejack shrugged. "You probably don't stock it."

"Not at the bar," the servant replied. "But I shall check the cellar. Very well. We will be visible just after this turn, and then the ceremony, such as it is, shall begin. Do not worry -- it will be kept short. An introduction of the group, then each individual, by their full title." (Twilight automatically winced.) "If you would please go into the designated order?" The procession shuffled. "A few more hoofsteps..."

"You look good," Twilight half-whispered to Rarity as they passed each other, with the former heading towards the absolute back. "I didn't get a chance to say it earlier."

A welcome half-smile formed part of the answer, and "Thank you," made up the rest.

With a full smile, "Maybe you'll get lucky and meet a decent stallion this time."

"Given my luck at the majority of our previous gatherings on this social level," Rarity decided, "I will consider myself fortunate if we end the night without my trying to kill anypony. Or, for that matter, without anypony attempting to kill me --"

-- they went around the turn, and the light hit them a split-second before the applause.

Twilight automatically looked down, and a full rainbow of iris hues met her gaze. Ponies were staring at her, staring at all of them as hooves went up and down, some doing the alternating stomp which dominated most of the continent, a few indulging in the repeated rearing-back that was nearly exclusive to the west coast: less frequent, but with more authority behind each impact. And a few...

"That one's just lifting his legs," Spike whispered. "Over and over."

Rainbow snorted. "Maybe he just needs a bathroom," she suggested in a tone which did its best to state that anypony who didn't applaud when she showed up just might wind up in need of a hospital.

Twilight was trying to identify specific ponies, and wasn't having much luck with it. There were simply too many places to look: the hall was roughly fifty body lengths from front to back, and about a third of that from side to side. A few pegasi were in the air, and always in places which wrecked her sight lines. And with all the clothing, searching for the comforting sight of grey just wasn't working out. (She was also on the lookout for his spouse, and wasn't having any luck with that either.) However, despite the presence of guests from outside the settled zone, it could be argued that the gathering was still a representative population for Trotter's Falls: at least for her initial survey, she couldn't spot a single earth pony.

"I don't see Doctor Gentle," Pinkie worriedly said. "Oh, it'll be just typical if somepony decides to be born while we're all having fun! And I didn't even get any infant games set up!"

Which made Twilight immediately focus in that direction before projecting an urgent whisper of "...what kind of games did you set up?" to the center of the line.

"Nothing! I just directed a lot of the clearing. Plus I helped in the kitchen. There was some stuff with the band -- see, they're in that corner, setting up. Oh, and I did the welcome archways at the door and the tops of the ramps!" The bright left foreleg pointed forward.

Everypony looked.

Twilight finally said it for the group. "...it's made of balloons."

Pinkie giggled. "Yeah!"

"...and they're being held together with streamers."

"Yeah! But they're tasteful ones!"

They arguably were: Pinkie had chosen colors which worked with the castle around them, and the edges of the inflated semi-spheres melded into each other in a way which almost made the entrances look as if they'd been carved from a single airy piece. But still, there were balloons...

"Everypony really liked them," Pinkie smiled. "They said they'd never seen that done before, especially on one breath each."

Nopony facehoofed. Facehoofing would have been perfectly visibly from below and besides, the arches had to be made out of something.

"I don't see any reporters," Rainbow decided, trying to both get her words through the applause and not be overheard as the stomping began to inevitably slow. The effort took the most work for her: she was in the lead position. "Not ones I recognize from Ponyville, anyway."

"Quiet said they were going to screen them all out," Twilight replied. "I hope it worked..."

How many ponies? At least a hundred and fifty. And there would be late guests. So many ponies to meet, so many trying to meet her, strangers expecting her to be friendly and social and act with the bearing of a Princess...

"Twilight?" She glanced down at Spike. who was gazing up at her with open concern. "You're breathing a little fast."

"I'm okay," she partially lied. I did it at the coronation... But at the coronation, ponies had been willing to let her do anything at all. I can do this. I can get through it. It's just -- a lot of --

-- a flash of grey tail, one with thin grey stripes running through the mass, and she felt her breathing slow.

"Easy, Twilight," Applejack softly told her: she was just in front of the siblings. "It's just for tonight."

"I'm okay," she repeated. And there was a moment when it was just a little less of a lie.

Softtread took up his place just inside the left edge of the arch. The applause ended, and everypony below waited. Stared.

"Honored guests," the servant began. "Citizens of our settled zone, and those who have favored us by visiting from beyond. We are honored by your attendance here tonight. And I have been honored with the opportunity to introduce those who have saved this nation time and again. The majority of you have never met them, have never had the chance to put faces and coats to names. You know them only as legends in the making and tales which are already being told to the young."

She saw it, in the only moment when the sight would have been possible at all. The pain flickering across Rarity's face.

"We owe them our lives," Softtread continued, voice pitched low and solemn. "We owe them Sun and blue sky. Everypony here exists in a sane world because they stepped forward again and again, when we needed them most. We would do well to honor that."

Most ponies looked at them as those words washed across the crowd. Some would not.

Music began to play, and memory sparked at the first six distinctive notes: The Barding Of The Ancients. An orchestral composition which had been named after a distinctive sky-strip of constellations: in both cases, among the oldest known. No instrument could be loud during the Barding, and none could be anything less than powerful.

Softtread took a slow breath.

"Miss Rainbow Dash," he stated, and the pegasus stepped into the arch, framed by air and streamers. "The Linchpin Of Harmony. Our Exemplar of Loyalty."

Twilight had known Rainbow would be the one who basked in it the most, taking special care to smile and wave a foreleg at anypony who seemed to be applauding harder than the masses -- while simultaneously checking for anypony who seemed to be faking it and memorizing their appearance for later. The only easier prediction had been the one which recognized the pegasus wouldn't stay on the ramp, and the mostly-white dress which gave her the appearance of a streamlined cloud considering whether to transform into a thunderhead streaked over the crowd in a quick circle before touching down at the incline's base.

"Miss Fluttershy Phylia. The Comfort of Harmony. Our Mercy of Kindness."

Who essentially shrunk her way down the ramp, visibly trying to force her head up while the exposed tail mostly tried to take refuge between her hind legs. She reached the bottom with what Twilight recognized as near-indecent haste and quickly hurried up to Rainbow's right flank, seeking refuge in the only shelter available.

Phylia?

She'd known Fluttershy for over three years and in all that time, she'd never thought to ask if the pegasus had a surname. Then again, it was also the first time she'd ever heard anypony using it...

Perhaps it was a particularly unusual name. Maybe that was why so many ponies seemed to be looking at her...

She's the prettiest of us and that dress was designed to show off her tail. Of course they're looking.

"Miss Rarity Belle," Softtread continued. "The Gift of Harmony. Our Offering of Generosity."

Rarity, under one of the other hooves, generally discarded her surname: as she had explained it, the solo appellation looked better on a label, plus her father was a hoofball coach (and retired player) of some renown -- which, if the relationship was recognized, could win her instant friends in a few parts of the world while manufacturing any number of spontaneous enemies in most of the rest. But she accepted this particular announcement with dignity, and trotted down the ramp as if she'd made such public appearances a hundred times before, every head movement and eye-based acknowledgement just so. She reached the pegasi after a casual trot, and stood unblinking under the scrutiny of so many gazes, opalescent dress serving as weapon and armor alike. After all, something which had been made to work with so many different colors could easily stand up to any number united against her, and if appreciation was coming -- well, then let it come.

"Miss Pinkamena Diane Pie. The Healing of Harmony. Our Bringer of Laughter."

Was the applause softer now? Were there more ponies who were only pretending to stomp? Twilight tried to look, but there was only so much surveying she could do, because the important thing for Pinkie wasn't acknowledgement or even recognition, but that there was a party waiting at the bottom of the ramp. As such, the trot was quick and she joined her friends on the ground level with a smile on her face -- something which didn't seem to be echoed by a fair number on the ground floor.

Softtread glanced towards Applejack as the farmer stepped up. The servant hesitated.

"Like I said," Applejack softly whispered, lips barely moving at all. "The whole thing."

The stallion took a deep breath.

"The Lady Applejack Malus of House Rosaceae."

The sentence multiplied as it hit the air, every syllable creating duplicates at a speed the mirror pool never could have managed, allowing the whole thing to impact hundreds of ears at once. The majority responded to the assault with something approaching a temporary personal fatality: breathing had stopped all over the hall, and it didn't seem to be interested in restarting anytime soon. Several ponies sat down. A few snorted, and those scant sounds were all the louder for the absence of just about everything else.

A small, slightly mercenary smile briefly played over Applejack's lips.

"Keeper Of The Path," Softtread carefully went on. "Discovery Of The Unknown and Bloom Of The New Seed. The Truth of Harmony. Our Reassurance of Honesty."

The farmer began the trot down the ramp.

Somepony stomped their forehooves: Twilight didn't see who. Then somepony else joined in, followed by another, five more came in at once, and then it was most of the gathering applauding. That was normal, at least in some way. But the means by which it had come about, added to the strange expressions on a few faces and the shock settling into Twilight's fur, twitching within her skin and seemingly undoing every touch of makeup all at once...

...Lady?

Twilight forced a breath as Applejack went up to the others, took up her position, orange set off by the tan dress, green eyes silently daring the entire world to make a move.

...Lady?

She seemed to be stuck, and so tried again.

...Malus -- LADY?

But Softtread wouldn't give her the time to reconcile it. "Master Spike of House Twinkle," he went on, and that at least brought a brief smile up through the turmoil of Twilight's total confusion. Her little brother had been legally adopted, and so he was entitled to an introduction under the name of his House --

-- but the next words were new.

"The Protector of Harmony. Our Bulwark of Guidance."

Spike froze on the ramp. Looked back at Softtread. The servant smiled.

"As my Lord instructed," he said. "Go down."

The little dragon slowly made his way down the ramp, walking claws dug in for traction in a way which just about guaranteed a series of series of little gougings in the wood. And there was applause -- but before, there had been reluctance and pure obligation mixed into the other welcomes. Now there was just confusion. A dragon who could claim to be any level of noble? Somepony trying to say there was another aspect to the Elements? The fact that there was a dragon on the ramp at all? Everything added up, and there were so many ponies not looking at Spike, with others simply staring as if they would never stop...

But he walked past them all. He nodded politely to those whose applause seemed sincere. And then he took a place at Rarity's side and gazed out at the crowd with placid eyes. They had been given the words, and it was their choice as to whether any of them would be believed. For his part, at least to Twilight's practiced eyes, he seemed to be having a little trouble with a few of the concepts -- while simultaneously wondering about them and trying to decide if they were something he could accept into himself.

...Lady --

-- but she was out of time.

"The Fair Princess Twilight Sparkle Of House Twinkle," Softtread introduced without mercy. "Our Lady Of The Dusk And Dawn, Incarnate Of The Future, And Most Gracious Blessing Of Hope Upon The Land And Sky. The Enchantment of Harmony. Our Incarnation of Magic."

Her legs moved, and seemed to be doing so independently of her own will. She wanted to go into Quiet's library. She would have given so much to simply curl up with a book for the duration of the gathering, perhaps while somepony read to her. But all four legs were moving, and the trip to ground level began.

The pegasi who had been in the air landed. Ponies all over the hall dipped into the official Royal Greeting Stance, and she could not bear to look at it for long. Her gaze moved over the lowered bodies, caught a glimpse of a brown and white speckled coat near the entrance.

I...

There was finery draped across just about every pony body. Dresses and suits woven by the greatest designers on the continent: she knew that was so because nopony could spend so much time having Rarity assault them with trade magazines without learning something, and that meant she recognized a few fashionable Looks. Three ponies were wearing her friend's creations, and there was a moment where she could simply have pride in that. But it was only a moment.

...this isn't right...

She could see the band now. The musicians bent low among their discarded instruments.

There had been no applause for her, sincere or faked. She wasn't sure how she would have felt if there had been. Rainbow lived for acknowledgement: Twilight was generally content with a touch of academic recognition, the appropriate authorial credit on a journal article, and the most precious things of all: her friends and the Princess telling her she'd done a good job. But the others had received something resembling their due. And for Twilight, it felt as if she'd just been given another type of acknowledgement. An open admission that for so many, this was the only way they could deal with her at all.

The silence filled the castle, and every silent echo carried words.

'You are different.'

'You are strange.'

Desperate eyes reached her friends, the only ones still standing, saw faces which didn't know what to do. How to help, or if there was any way to help at all.

'You are something --

-- other --'

-- two forehooves stomped.

Again. Then again, and once more still --

-- and there was Quiet.

He had a natural rhythm to his movement, and a decided talent for not noticing attention. He didn't pay any visible mind to the way she looked at him, nor did he respond in any way to the ponies whose gazes came up just so they could see who was making the noise. But then some of those ponies saw that it was the host doing it, wondered if he was truly the one committing the breach of protocol or if they were messing it up, herd instinct twisted between following the group and trying to meet the example of the one who seemed to have assigned himself as the leader...

Some ponies straightened. Others did not. On the whole, there was a massive, off-kilter beat of sonic confusion about the hall, and nopony fully got it reconciled before Twilight forced herself not to stagger up to her friends.

Quiet steadily made his way through the crowd as the last of his guests resumed their normal heights, stopped in front of them and nodded to mares and dragon before turning to face the masses.

"These," he told the gathered ponies, "are our Element-Bearers."

Silence. Letting him speak, even if there seemed to be a few visible questions about just who this was that he would presume to speak at all.

"They came to Trotter's Falls to help a friend," he continued. "They remained to offer their support. They are here tonight because I foolishly promised that there would be a party, and they chose not to make me into a liar."

A soft laugh, somewhere in the crowd. It sounded like a mare's voice. Was that Quiet's wife?

"They are here because of us," he softly went on, the careful syllables filling the silent hall, "and as has been said, we are still here because of them." A brief pause. "We thank the Diarchy for Sun and Moon. We look to the Empire and find love. We stand in the presence of our saviors and gaze upon hope. As long as the virtues remain united, we know our nation will stand. That we can wake to the raising of Sun, sleep when Moon is brought over the horizon. That is the kindness of our truth. Our gift, joy, and magic. That we have been guided in our dedication to the world -- and it, in turn, to us."

He nodded once, a simple and personal answer to the silence.

"I don't believe anypony in the world thinks about that every day," he continued. "We have our lives, after all, and spending too much time considering the reasons why tends to get in the way. But tonight, with the Bearers among us... tonight, I would ask that every pony here offer up a few seconds of their lives for that thought, because that would be the very least of what we owe them. Consider that thought -- and then let it go until it's needed again. Because I feel they would ask us to approach them without awe -- but with respect. Grant them the courtesy due to anypony: the acknowledgement of their being somepony worthy of courtesy. We have recognized, we have welcomed -- and now there's something else to do."

Everypony waited. The guests, her friends, a sibling, and Twilight. Waiting on the next words.

"The drinks," he smiled, "have been paid for. The band is coming off our local outdoor concert series and has agreed to extend their tour all the way to this hall. I've been told that the food which will soon circulate among you partially consists of modified griffon cuisine and based on my personal taste trials, let me tell everypony the most important things about that: you will find the bathrooms there -- and there -- and up that ramp, to the left, and it's a quick gallop down the hallway, assuming anypony can still gallop while they're that desperate. Please let somepony know if you enjoy any of it, and if so, how."

More laughter -- and then a wave of it, a surge of relief rushing through the hall as the world slowly tilted back towards normalcy.

"Because this," Quiet finished, "is a party. So --" and a nod to the band "-- shall we?"

Glazing

They moved through the tunnel, with the path lit by silver corona light.

He had hardly ever used the passage. Teleportation brought advantages, and high among those was the fact that if you wished for a shortcut and knew there was a safe space waiting at the destination, then you had a rather strong primary option. For the most part, his time in it had been limited to occasional examinations of its full length, trying to see if everything was stable. But that was a visual inspection, and he had never been fully certain of his judgment there, for it wasn't as if any magic existed to help him learn what was going on with the walls and (still) somewhat natural ceiling. In the end, all he could do was say that it had not collapsed yesterday, having been there so long meant it probably wouldn't collapse tomorrow, and he was truly hoping it wasn't going to collapse tonight.

Surrounded by stone. For one of them, that state was the single most familiar.

"The things we fail to learn..." he softly said.

She was behind him, for she always knew to let him lead the way. "I don't. Understand..."

"Escorting," he clarified. "The process of teleporting with another at my side, bringing somepony with me to the destination. When I first learned to teleport, I thought that extra knowledge would be easy to add. How hard could it be? I could move myself. If I was wearing or carrying something, it came with me --"

From the back, a small, pained giggle briefly resonated through an enforced variety of night.

"-- well, all right," he ruefully remembered. "I did accidentally abandon those saddlebags at my departure point that once, rushing off to the delivery. I was rather distracted at the time. It happens. But in this case -- I thought I could learn to escort. There were many times in my life when bringing another with me would have been of so much use, starting when..."

And he stopped. It wasn't time for that. Not yet. And because she knew exactly what he was speaking of, the uneven sounds of hoofsteps slowed somewhat. There would be no more giggling.

"Many times," he quietly stated. "Including tonight. If I could just bring you there in a moment... so much easier. But somehow, the twist in the base working which leads to escorting -- that never came for me. And so we trot. But we will be there soon. And then I will have to go upstairs, be part of the party. Until the time comes."

"Yes," she eventually said, and he could hear the effort required to make the broken word emerge. How she was trying to make it sound as if she was hurting less than she truly was, and failing.

"Will you be all right by yourself? It will be some time."

"I can -- manage."

Words she probably would have said regardless. "You're certain?"

"I'm -- used to being..." Stopped. Coughed, and the little blast had a liquid sound at its core.

He wasn't a true doctor. But he had been present when so much had gone wrong, tried to stop as much of it as he could. To change those fates, and so part of him instinctively recognized the sound of a new distress. "What's happening?" And turned, his horn's light shining upon those changed features.

She wasn't moving. Her front knees were slightly buckled.

"I -- I feel --"

And then the vomiting began.

He rushed to her side, stayed with her through the convulsions. And when they finally ended, he gave her some of the water he'd brought with them, which had originally been intended for the time she would spend in waiting. But she could barely swallow it. He had to massage the outside of her throat with a field bubble just to trigger the automatic reaction and even then, some of the liquid tried to come back up.

It was several minutes, down there in the dark, before he would allow her to try moving again, and that did result in the resumption of their trip down the passage. She forced herself onward, because he had told her that this would be her night (not the one he'd dreamed of, but one which could still lead to the completion of the Great Work in the end, still an important night in so many ways and perhaps even the most so), and so she would do everything she could to make his words true.

But he'd forced himself to look upon the half-digested matter she'd brought up. The partially dissolved colors which stained her sickness. Melted capsules floating within.

Adverse reaction to the painkillers.

...he had other medications. He had something strong enough for the presentation, and if it triggered a reaction, it would do so after she had left the stage. They would get through the night. And after that... there was always a way forward. There always had been. So there always would be.

"This is your night," he told her. "The night for all of the broken."

And perhaps the pain had frozen her tongue, for she did not answer.

Pinkie had told her it was called circulation. For Twilight, who was the central target of the flow, it felt much more like being trapped within a giant clot.

The Bearers had, over the course of their friendship, attended what might be seen as far more than the standard share of parties. For starters, there were certain consequences to having Pinkie as part of the group, and then there were those few social gatherings which they stumbled into, were requested to attend, initially received too few tickets for... Most of the latter categories had produced memories, and there were even a few which could be recalled without triggering blushes -- as long as the inner movie didn't roll out anything too far beyond the opening credits.

As such, they had slowly established Rules for non-Pinkie parties, in the hopes of keeping the incidents down and at least a few of the local support columns standing. Two of those had become standardized: Pinkie was generally in charge, and Pinkie would make sure she herself had a full understanding of exactly what kind of party it was and why those hosting the function might want to keep it that way before she actually took charge. On this night, with Twilight at her first major post-change function, with so many of the guests seemingly coming from high society...

(Twilight wasn't entirely sure where all of the guests had come from and, after she'd heard a portion of the accent selection which Rarity's presence had once again effectively made complete, had some questions as to how they'd all gotten to Trotter's Falls. Quiet had mentioned that they'd be getting a few from outside the settled zone, but she could swear she'd just heard a distinctive west coast snort coming from the vicinity of the bar.)

After Quiet's speech -- something which had ended with more than a few ponies staring at him, and some of those surprised gazes had felt like those guests were trying to figure out just who this was as to presume he could tell them what to be thinking about for even a few seconds -- a few had seemed extremely confused about that part -- the line of Bearers had quickly been (and almost completely) dispersed. Ponies had crowded in towards them. Moved around them. They had gotten separated from each other, because a party had circulation, and ponies flowed through the paths which made up its arteries and veins. There had barely been a moment where they could try to stand united -- and then they were somehow standing near the band, or next to the bar. In Fluttershy's case, the ultimate destination was probably going to be the most defensible corner available, and Twilight was just hoping there wasn't a clear path to any window available from it. They were circulating, whether they wished to or not. In some cases, this meant they were being circulated: passed off from one pony who wanted to meet them to the next -- and the majority of those ponies wanted to meet Twilight. Or rather, they were ponies who wished a little snout-to-snout time with a Princess.

The party had started -- and Twilight had almost instantly found herself meeting Very Important Ponies, very important indeed, so very important that the first full minute of their introduction was generally used for explaining just how important they were, with the second occasionally utilized for explaining why she still hadn't heard of them. But those who approached had to get through a curly-tailed barrier first, because Pinkie, who understood the flow on the level of her mark, had made sure she'd stayed next to Twilight. It seemed to slow a few of the approaches, diverted others, and as far as Twilight was concerned, every tenth-bit helped.

The baker was listening to all of the interactions. She generally didn't interrupt unless the other pony said something she found funny, which still had to deal with Pinkie's sense of humor. There really hadn't been any moment when she'd formally put herself in the way. But she was very much a visible presence, letting anypony who approached know that there was a guard of sorts on the premises even without the capital letter involved, and it seemed to having a screening effect. Some ponies had begun to approach, spotted Pinkie standing next to Twilight, and silently changed their angle until they were flowing into a different section. There was a pool steadily building up by the bar. In terms of party anatomy, Twilight imagined that to be something like the kidneys. Or perhaps the bladder.

Some ponies had turned away -- but not all.

"...and that, Princess," beamed the fast-talker who hadn't let either of them get a word in since he'd started the sales pitch (and speaking so quickly as to prevent Pinkie from charging into any gaps was a feat worthy of applause), "is why you should absolutely channel some of your plentiful resources into getting my new company up and running! You'll have the original investment back inside of eleven moons, and after that, it's all profit! Yes, I know you've already got your riches, but what's wrong with being wealthier still? Absolutely nothing!" The stallion's head began to tilt back, reaching for a tiny exposed corner of the papers which were making an extremely thick bulge in his garment's chest pocket. "Now, I just happen to have a copy of the standard investor's contract right here --"

The pegasus' teeth clamped down on that corner. It gave Twilight her chance. "-- I'm a librarian."

His mouth released the documents, and a confused gaze swiveled back towards her. "You're -- well, yes, I suppose some of your station do decide that a job will pass the time nicely, but still, I'm sure that once you tap your true resources..."

Twilight named her salary. It wasn't a particularly long name and was completely lacking in titles, although it did come with a lot of unpaid (and generally compulsive) overtime.

"...you're a Princess," the somewhat-stunned pegasus finally got out, six breaths into the desperate attempts to acquire oxygen. "How does a Princess not have --"

"-- additionally," Twilight broke in, speaking at the speed of Pinkie, "I've been saving up to take a very important test. For some time now. I'd really rather not put any of that at risk. So my apologies, sir, but I think you might be better off looking for other investors tonight."

"But -- you're a Bearer. Surely that must pay at least --"

Pinkie automatically giggled, which switched up the target of the stare.

"-- excuse me," the pegasus abruptly stated. "I think I see somepony I know. Yes. Somepony I know. Over -- there." Wings flared.

Twilight spent a few seconds smoothing out the wind backblast's disruption to her mane. (Pinkie's curls were naturally resistant.) And then she sighed. "How long has it been?"

"Since the party started? About twenty minutes."

Twilight had what she felt was the only possible sane response: she softly groaned. "Ponies who want to meet me," she quietly said. "Ponies who want me to do things. Ponies who just had to be here..."

"You're doing okay," Pinkie gently encouraged her. "And I'm here." Twilight glanced over at her friend, found one of the smiles which the baker could so readily bring to others. "It's just for tonight."

Until the next party. And the next, and the next...

But this one was just for tonight. And Pinkie was there.

Admittedly, when it came to her current outer layer, she was a little less there than usual. The dress Rarity had granted her was considerably more subdued than the typical Pinkie-destined composition: a dark teal which didn't exactly mute the baker's presence while still stating that on this particular evening, it was best for said presence to have some level of volume control. It hadn't done anything to control the wild curls of mane and tail (and practically nothing ever did for more than a few minutes at a time), but it had rendered the total image into something which merely suggested an inherent sweetness to go with Pinkie's near-infinite approachability, as opposed to putting the entire candy shop on open display.

A degree of muting seemed to be a common theme for just about all of their outfits, including Spike's. It had taken Twilight some time to figure out the problem: Rarity had been working with a lack of gems. Her storeroom was gallops away, she knew of no hunting grounds in the area, and she hadn't approached Twilight to ask for a voucher which could be used at any local shop: even Rarity would hesitate before trying to declare fashion as a mission expense, and that was in an area with more normal pricing. As such, there were only a few gem adornments -- and those had come from the little supply which the designer almost always had with her, added to Spike's emergency rations. The resulting dresses (and one tuxedo) were still recognizably the product of Rarity's creative vision: it just took a moment to adjust for not looking through facets.

"At least he was nice," Pinkie decided. "In a Flim-Flam sort of way. When they're being nice until they have your bits, and sometimes they're even nice all the way over the hill, right up until you never see them again." She was starting to trot forward: Twilight made sure to move with her. "Besides, who would burn oil to run a new kind of train? Oil smoke is dirty! Steam kind of messes up your mane for a while until it dries out, but oil..."

"I know," Twilight sighed. "But it's not like he gave us a chance to tell him." Ponies who wanted investments. Ponies who wanted to say they'd met a Princess. Ponies who were --

-- admittedly, some of them definitely seemed to be avoiding her. There were ponies who reacted to her circulation path through instantly putting themselves into a branch artery, or squeezing through the narrow capillaries which ran between roaming food trays. (Wider ones were available, but only where the griffon cuisine (modified) was moving.) But still -- twenty minutes, probably hours to go, and somehow using twenty minutes as the divisor for those hours was producing a rather unmathematical and yet completely accurate number.

It was going to be a very long party. And since the circulation had started to pull them all apart, she'd barely had a glimpse of the others. (The most frequently sighted pony had been Rainbow, who was either fulfilling all requests to show off a little or deciding that just about any interaction with her was leading up to such and saving those ponies the trouble. So far, the entire party area remained intact, although one ceiling-hung tapestry was now dangerously slanted to the left.) Spike, smallest, who had the most trouble holding his ground -- he'd been completely lost to view, something Twilight was all too familiar with because it happened so often at large gatherings: the little dragon, even with the novelty of his presence figured in, could become overlooked, especially if there were ponies with raised snouts who'd decided not to bother with checking for smaller obstacles in their path. At the worst of times, he could wind up dodging around a seemingly-endless series of near-tramplings. Tonight, Twilight had to worry about that, having him sneak off to the bar when she wasn't looking --

-- and a potential letter coming in.

They still hadn't received any reply from Cadance. It could arrive at any second. It might never arrive at all. But if it did come, then there was no way of stopping it. Spike had no truly tested ability to temporarily keep such missives within the aether, not for more than a few seconds. His nostrils would flare, his mouth would open, and a new pathway would be cleared for the gout of flame. Possibly rather quickly, and with more than a little chance of screaming involved. The majority of Ponyville's residents had gradually become used to the arrival of scrolls, and now recognized that most of Spike's exhalations represented nothing more than a rather unique method of saving a stamp. But here... they wouldn't know what was happening. They might panic, and with so many ponies packed so closely together...

Twilight had spent a good part of the day desperately hoping Cadance's answer would arrive. She was now rather desperately hoping it wouldn't. Not until morning.

"Twilight?"

"Just thinking, Pinkie."

Another smile. "About what?"

I have to tell them what's in my head...

Keeping her volume low, making sure Pinkie's rotated ears were the only ones which would hear her at all, "Hoping we don't hear anything from the North until tomorrow. If Spike got the scroll right now..."

Pinkie winced. "I didn't think about that! Maybe... oh, I hate doing this to him, especially during a party, but -- maybe he'd better go back to your room? How long could he hold it back if he had to?"

"I saw him do it for about twelve seconds once," Twilight admitted in that half-whisper. "He was assisting me with something and -- well, it was one of those things where open flame was a really bad idea. He managed to keep it from coming in until he got clear. But he's never had to really keep something from arriving for longer than that. I don't know what he can do. We never tested it, there was never any real reason to test..."

"Maybe it's like holding back a sneeze," Pinkie optimistically suggested. "Sometimes if you just make a funny face and hold it for a while, the sneeze goes away."

"And sometimes," Twilight stated, trying not to think about the possibility of a lost scroll, "you sneeze." Maybe she did need to send Spike to the upper level, just in case. But she needed to find him first. Aerial scouting -- flying in the great hall felt like a truly bad idea, because eventually the necessary state of mind would collapse and there was no guarantee that she would have landed first. Getting up to the surrounding walkway and staring down, however, seemed to have something going for it, and so Twilight adjusted her path. Pinkie continued to stay with her.

It wasn't a smooth passage. There were more ponies to meet, ponies who insisted on being met, and Twilight couldn't dodge them all. Could not, in fact, dodge any. It seemed as if she could see all the local Weather Bureau members she wished. But she'd lost track of Spike. She couldn't find her friends. She hadn't seen Quiet since the circulation had begun. And that wasn't all.

Was that his --

-- no. That's the dress' hue, not the fur.

That really isn't a very good dress. Somepony should send her to Rarity. Immediately. No dress should ever try to simulate a stallion fetlock clump -- maybe I've been spending a little too much time being shown all those trade magazines... wait. Is that his spouse?

And over and over, the answer remained no. Not Quiet's wife. Nor Quiet. She did spot a light green coat with swirls of soft yellow, but had no way to reach the thaumatology supply shop's owner, and the most she could have done was ask if he'd seen Spike. He seemed to be busy, anyway: Weaver Shine was clearly speaking with another pony and while Twilight couldn't make out any of the words through the party's buzz, his expression suggested they were important ones.

Spike still wasn't visible, but even with all the interruptions, she was getting close to the ramp. She'd have the elevated view soon enough --

-- a flash of orange fur, added to blonde mane (which still had too much of the upper crest exposed) and tan fabric, resting within a surprising bubble of open space.

A deeper instinct had its say, and Twilight diverted.

"Applejack!"

The farmer turned. "So y'haven't broken for the loft yet." There was a smile attached to that. "Not having a loft probably helps. How are you getting on so far? I'm mostly just watching ponies go by. And around me. Plus you've got to see some of their faces --"

It was just about a whisper, and all the stronger for that lack of volume. "-- House Rosaceae?"

"I'm impressed," Applejack placidly stated. "Most ponies can't pronounce that first go. Softtread had to rehearse three times."

Twilight stared at her. Applejack shrugged.

"Twi," the farmer calmly said, "just about anypony who held land early in a settlement phase can qualify for the nobility. Or occupied sky, for the pegasi. You know that. You know some Houses are just the ponies who were there first before the Unification began, and their titles are the concession they kept for having their territories come in. And my family -- was directly granted land rights in what wound up as Ponyville -- by the Princess -- and we got there first. What did you think that meant?"

The stare wasn't exactly decreasing in intensity.

"You went," Twilight quietly said, "more than three years without telling me you had a title."

"So? It took you just about two before you just happened to mention having an older brother. And only because there was, you know, a sort of event, and you showing up for it would have been kind of hard to explain away without going into some of the little details. I told you, Twi: you keep your secrets, even when you don't have to. And if they'd both been into prolonged engagements, I'd probably still be thinking you were the first branch on that part of the tree." Followed by, with a deliberately wicked tone, "But y'know, as far as my title goes, if somepony had just gone and asked me..."

Currently at 50% Fluttershy and rising. "But why didn't you --"

The words were pitched for Twilight's ears alone. "-- because it doesn't matter." A short pause. "Titles are mostly good for two things, Twilight, and one of them is saying you have the thing." Thoughtfully, "Well -- maybe three. I guess somepony could get paid to write something florid enough to say. Come to think of it, whoever did -- Quiet's? -- should have gotten overtime."

"Did anypony know?"

From behind her, "Yes." Twilight glanced back just in time to see the embarrassment rushing through Pinkie's fur. "After a while. But I wasn't supposed to say..."

"Plus," Applejack added, "maybe a couple of ponies around town. Two or three. Anypony who's really into reading those Peerage books, all the way through the last twig on the biggest trees. The mayor might have an idea. And that's probably it. I ain't even told Apple Bloom, because I knew the first thing she'd do if she found out she had a House was go all 'Cutie Mark Crusaders Nobility --'" the sarcasm was automatic "'-- yay,' and Sun only knows what she'd decide that meant, especially once the other two got involved. I figured the best case was them deciding they were supposed to be the government and we'd wind up losing Town Hall. Again. Twilight -- I don't care about my title." This pause was longer. "Well -- not much, anyway. As a family thing, it's a little special. To know that the Princess thought so highly of that family, she told them that she wanted the Malus line as the first ponies in. That we were chosen. When I look at it that way, it's something to be proud of. But that's all it means. Generations back, somepony else got her respect. I still had to earn it on my own."

"Then..." Completely confused now. "...tonight? Why tonight --"

"-- because," Applejack smoothly, softly cut in, a small smile twisting her lips, "the thing a title's good for which I didn't mention? Some ponies need apples kicked in their faces before they get some sense. Others gotta get hit by words. Every pony here tonight got a little reminder, Twilight. That earth ponies can be nobles. Maybe some of 'em are gonna decide their own titles mean less because of that. Others? They're just gonna be mad. Hardly anypony here knows how to deal with me. Can't trot up, can't talk. Because they'd have to at least pretend to treat me as an equal until nopony was looking any more. Maybe even a superior, depending on their own House. And every last one of those ponies who can't talk to me is trotting past with the bruises from words on their snouts. Because for some of them, their titles are all they are, all they can be, and now I've got one..."

Ponies were going by, because a party's circulation flowed until something blocked it. But that tide passed around them. Nopony was truly watching. And if any of them were listening, then the forced stoicism on so many faces told Twilight that the last thing they wanted to do was hear.

Applejack could clearly see all of it. And so the farmer rolled her eyes -- then sighed, as the smile faded away.

"Ah've gotta watch that," she quietly said. "Maybe it felt too good. Like something I could get used to real easy, and want to do over and over. I don't think I'll be kicking like this again for a while after tonight, not without a really good reason. But maybe when you've been kicked enough, anypony's entitled to kick back once."

Part of Twilight's rather occupied mind was beginning to consider all of that. The remainder was dealing with what had suddenly become a rather pressing question, and so managed to beat a path to the vocal cords before the majority had a chance to notice.

"Applejack?"

"Yeah?"

"Remember that whole 'garden party' bit?"

The farmer's lips quirked. "Fondly."

In some ways, that provided the next answer -- but the question emerged anyway. "Did you do that on purpose?"

Which brought the smile back. "So where are you heading? You kind of look like a pony who's trying to get somewhere."

"Applejack, I know you're trying to change the subject --"

"-- already apologized to Rarity. A while back. Besides, everypony else was having so much fun, and there was a little dance craze getting started... So where were you going?"

Twilight, for lack of any other options, sighed. "Just up the ramp. I have to find Spike: I just realized we might have some problems if he gets a sending right now."

The green eyes went slightly wide. "Oh -- yeah. Do that. Pinkie, how are you holding up? It's not the worst party, but even with you helping out on the setup, and Ah ain't blaming you..."

The baker's eyes briefly sought out the floor. "Maybe an apple bobbing tub would have helped."

Twilight had been wishing for one ever since the circulation had begun. "So I'd better get up there," she recommitted. "Pinkie?"

"Um..." A little wince. "Actually... will you be okay by yourself for a minute or two? I think I need to talk to Applejack. Right now. About -- looks. And -- not looking. If that's okay?"

"Pinkie," Equestria's newest confessed noble said, "I'm fine --"

"-- and I say," Pinkie carefully insisted, "that we need to talk. Just a little. Right now."

There were times when they had to trust Pinkie. Twilight had already decided this was one of them.

"I'll be all right," Twilight assured her, and hoped it would be true. "The ramp's close, and nearly everypony's down here. I'll just go up and scout. Maybe I'll wave Rainbow over if she gets close on a swoop. But once I'm overhead, it shouldn't be that hard to find Spike."

It was.

There had been three we-must-talks! on the way to the ramp, and she'd thought it was about to be four until the pony who was right in front of her had abruptly moved out of the way. She'd also had a harder time getting away from such interactions without Pinkie there, ponies seemed to be coming up faster now, and she'd had some real worries about being followed --

-- but once she'd reached the surrounding walkway, she'd had a minute to herself, for even in a culture where a third of the population could be airborne at any moment, groundbound ponies who didn't possess constant low-level concerns about where Rainbow might be crashing next didn't spend a lot of time looking up.

She found Rarity first, and hadn't meant to. It also didn't take long to realize she wasn't going to be interrupting that interaction, because the designer had a very distinctive sales are in progress set to the elegant tail, one which told Twilight that of the six mares who had surrounded her, at least one was extremely interested in a commission. (Based on Twilight's hours within the boutique, two others were probably just keeping up appearances, and the other three would ask for a calling card, followed by very carefully losing it.) A Rarity who had the chance to expand her contacts and profits needed to be left alone, because the Fund would only do so much and there was always the chance for true Discovery to be a single client away.

Fluttershy... well, it was a very defensible corner. Twilight had seen Fluttershy insert herself into any number of corners during high-pressure social situations, and so could expertly say that the pegasus had made an excellent choice. Of course, it wasn't perfect, because Fluttershy was the most attractive of the Bearers. There were other pegasi at the party, and that allowed for three angles of approach. And with the corner in play, there was nowhere left for the animal caretaker to retreat. All Twilight could do was hope another friend reached her. Quickly, because the shapely body could do a rather impressive amount of damage in full charge, and when Twilight considered the way Fluttershy was currently trying to hide just about every last tenth-bit of tail she possessed, which was a near-impossible project to start with...

Applejack and Pinkie were where she'd left them. The set of their ears told her the conversation was a rather serious one, and might go on for some time. A small bubble of space maintained around the discussion.

A noble.

Twilight's House had existed for generations before her birth. She knew it was a strictly moderate one as Houses went: not too many members, not that much power, and pretty much no caring about either of the previous factors. It had gained some minor extra status when Shining had reached his rank. But then the wedding had come, and -- well, ponies paid real attention when somepony married a Princess, especially when it seemed to be the only such wedding in Equestria's history. Then she had changed, and... she didn't know exactly what the status of her House was, but she had several reasons to suspect it wasn't moderate any more.

She was, technically, a noble. She always had been. But she had something in common with Applejack: she didn't care. She didn't even know how her House had been founded to begin with: she had learned about the lives of so many great casters, but when it came to her own family history... well, there weren't all that many great casters in it. Her parents hadn't seen the other ancestors as a worthy subject for bedtime stories, and so she'd left that part of the past alone.

It had taken much less than two years for the others to find out about her status, and Twilight hadn't been the one to tell them. Pinkie, bringing in the library's mail for her, had splayed out the envelopes on the main desk while Twilight was busy with some extremely necessary reshelving, and that had given Pinkie the chance to read it -- for when you were a unicorn in a House, you were in the Peerage books. That was automatic. Twilight could find her entry any time she liked, and had only glanced at the relevant page in an update volume once since her arrival in Ponyville, mildly curious as to just how Cadance had been written in.

You were in the books -- and, if you weren't careful, you also wound up on mailing lists. Requests for donations to all sorts of causes, political appeals from your supposed fellows who just knew you'd understand and all sorts of other missives, every last one of which wanted her to send a prepaid voucher in the return envelope. (She couldn't even get rid of the catalogs, although she'd managed to redirect some of them to the Boutique: Rarity could at least appreciate the intent behind a ridiculously overpriced mail-order dress, if not always the design.) And they were lists which followed you. The process for doing so didn't seem to be a magical one: Twilight had never found so much as a single lingering thaum on any of the mailings, and attempts to dispel what didn't appear to exist had mostly led to a lot of singed envelopes. She couldn't get a given journal's subscription mailing address reliably updated, much less get off the list. There had been a few moons of peace -- and then the letters had found the tree.

Pinkie had read the full designation on an outer envelope, immediately fallen into a cascade of giggles, and by the time Twilight got close enough to learn just what was so funny, the secret (such as it was) had been out. But Twilight hadn't really cared. Ask her to describe herself and in the time before Ponyville, she probably would have begun with 'student' or, after graduation, 'researcher'. 'Librarian' had only arrived after she'd taken custody of the tree and learned what the job truly meant. 'Bearer' hardly ever got pulled out unless it was the only way through. 'Noble' might have reached after about five hours of steadily working her way down the checklist until she finally she reached the dusty entry. Her friends had all enjoyed their share of the laughter, especially after they'd seen what Twilight was being asked for and worked the figures against her actual salary. And then they had treated her no differently than before -- if you left out the typically-once-per-season opportunity for a minor joke at Twilight's expense. It was a cost which generally worked out to zero, at least once you subtracted the blush.

And now Applejack is -- always has been, and just didn't see any need to bring it up -- a noble.

Why am I having trouble with this?

Is it because...

...maybe I should get back to --

-- no. Stop it. I don't always catch myself when it happens, but this time, I know I'm trying to dodge. Let the words go through. Is it because...

It hurt. It shouldn't have hurt, and yet the pain worked its way across her snout, contracted fur as a hard wince rippled her face.

...is it because she's an earth pony? Am I really somepony who can't see an earth pony as being a noble? Am I...

All the ponies milling below, and so few coming close to the two that lacked both horn and wings.

What do I think of when I think of nobles? What does being a noble mean to me?

-- okay, for me, it mostly means that when I get one of those government forms where you have to fill out your absolute real and true ultimate full name, I need more space. I'm really going to need some extra space the next time that happens -- actually, come to think of it, maybe that's why Applejack never accepted any of my offers to help with the family's taxes. But what does it mean when I apply it to other ponies?

It should just mean 'ponies with a title'.

Applejack is -- still herself. Even with everything that's happened, all I've learned -- she's still Applejack. She's just Applejack with some new things added. I see her though the filter of a title and I see...

...I see my friend.

And when I think of nobles, what I mostly think of is the ones who are -- what she said. The ones where the titles are all they are. All they ever could be. It's the most they can even dream of for themselves, unless they're dreaming of being the only ones who have that title at all.

But Quiet's not like that. Neither's Fancypants. And there are nobles who just -- fill out their forms with a little more ink. But when I think of nobles, and try to think of Applejack -- I can't see her acting like the worst ones do. Ever. And all that time in the palace, at the Gala, even at that garden party, when I'm seeing the worst of them... it makes it hard to remember the best exists.

I think of the worst of them, automatically. That's the shame of it. Maybe it's something I need to be ashamed of, having taken that in as a stereotype. But that's not my friend.

She's a -- noble pony. And a pony noble.

Ponies can be both.

And somewhere, she found a smile.

I wonder what Big Mac's full title is? Probably something really embarrassing. I'll ask Applejack what it is. And if she won't tell me, I'll pull it out of him eventually. Maybe by yoke -- come to think of it, how are they staying off the mailing lists? Now that's something worth calling 'the Secret'! Or is there another mailing list for the non-unicorn Houses?

-- okay, now I'm just distracting myself. I can see four of my friends from here. Can't spot Rainbow right now, but maybe there was a stunt she just had to show off outside, storm or no storm. And I can't spot Spike. If he was just taller -- bad wish, bad wish! Just look for his crest --

There were hoofsteps coming up the ramp. She didn't look in that direction: it would have been time taken away from the search, and she'd used enough of that already in getting past her own thoughts. If somepony was trying to meet her, she would be met. There wasn't much she could do about that. And for that matter, there was a chance that if the new arrival was asked politely, or by a Princess, she would have the help of extra eyes.

But the hoofsteps stopped, and the voice which replaced them was familiar. It was a voice she had spent years listening to, one she'd dearly wished to forget, and it would never be a sound which offered help. But it addressed her in what were almost caring tones, a falsehood which even the tiny portion of bare empathy she'd retained in school had always seen through.

"Twilight?"

And with all the echoes rushing forward, those school years suddenly surrounding her, pressing on her body with the weight of memories and shrinking the pony at the center -- there was a moment when all she could do was stand there. Unable to move. Waiting to see just what was going to go so horribly wrong --

-- I'm not a filly any more.

I'm not that pony.

I'm me.

She turned, looked directly at him.

"Is there something you want, Coordinator?" she snidely asked. "Is there a legislated maximum viewing time for this area? A minor law requiring that I find a coin-operated telescope and start dropping bits in? Because if that's the case, feel free to send the resulting paperwork for the fine. That would be care of Tartarus --"

"-- Twilight." And it was half put-upon sigh. Frustrated, somewhat bemused exasperation. Another lie.

For him, it can be Princess. "What. Do. You. Want? Because I really want to reach the part where I just say no and --"

But the dull grey field had already ignited, and glow was descending towards the chest pocket of his own garment, fishing within. This time, the paper had the chance to emerge, and Twilight's words died as she saw the multiple colors of ink which covered the exposed portion of the folded sheet, and all the things which had been scribbled in some of the worst mouthwriting ever seen.

"If you have a moment," Coordinator calmly said, "I'd like to return this. As a --"

The pause, if not for the word which followed it, would have been the worst part. The pause was when he smiled.

"-- friend."

Frame

Twilight was trying to stay some distance behind Coordinator as he led her through the castle. It still left her well within the aura of self-importance, perhaps because it had swelled outwards by another two body lengths in all directions. Part of her was wondering if it was currently acting as acid against the stone, while most of the rest was focused on keeping her legs trotting forward. Even when he was the one leading the way, with the trap yet to close.

He was happy. It was a state she'd seen so often at school, and it had never meant anything good for anypony other than himself. Even back then, she'd realized that he was most often happy because somepony else was not, even drawn a few of the tentative lines which threatened to link him as being the source of that second condition. And so she wanted to continue berating him, just as she'd done at the burnout site. To make him feel a portion of what he'd put so many others through. The words were currently somewhere in her throat, with more arriving every second. The ongoing pileup of unexpressed vocabulary seemed to have left something of a lump.

She wanted to say every last one of them. And she would say none, because Rainbow's manuscript

He stole it, he must have stolen it, but what can I do about it?

was more important.

And why would he take it at all?

Because it had belonged to somepony else. Easy to see that with Coordinator. But why hadn't he kept it? No suspicion had turned towards him: in fact, she'd practically forgotten he'd even been in the castle at all on that day, perhaps because remembering his presence would have been thinking about him at all. He would have easily gotten away with the crime.

But here he was, casually leading her onwards. Tail gently swaying to the rhythm of perfect internal contentment. All four legs seemed to be moving in a personal dance, although it lost something to the off-kilter movement of his clothing. Twilight didn't know much about stallion outfits, even after seemingly having picked up some of Rarity's other views through pure osmosis. Perhaps it was because her friend seldom did anything for males unless it was either a direct commission, an extremely desperate day which had the designer once again considering whether it was possible to somehow lure the huge missing percentage of her potential customer base into a dress shop, or a Clearance sign was being placed over the resulting (and failed) line of pocket squares. But it seemed as if she'd absorbed enough to spot when somepony was wearing items which had clearly been rented: the fabric had the harsh sheen of cloth which had been washed too many times, with all of the cleanings performed by somepony frantically trying to get it ready for the next customer. And even with the extracted papers (so few compared to the whole) now in Twilight's possession, the jacket was still being pulled offline by something in one of the chest pockets.

It shifted oddly against the fabric cup when he moved and during the moments of greatest impression, just before it tilted back, seemed to have the rough shape of a bottle.

He's trying to do something. No matter what he says, no matter what he claims, there's a trap waiting at the end.

He led, and she followed. She hated it, and he knew that. He had to know it. But he just kept trotting --

-- then stopped in front of a door, one of the many in the castle which Twilight had never been through. The dull field coated it, tugged, and Coordinator stepped through the opening. Twilight remained outside just long enough to take one more breath of clean air. And then she went in.

The room was -- cramped. There might have been some degree of design and intent behind the original layout, but those had been lost to the current assignment, one which had been given to so much of the castle: to host still more of the results from generations of pony shopaholic hoarders -- and for that, it was visibly overworked. The hall had been cleared for the party, and that meant just about everything which had previously been occupying that space had required temporary storage somewhere else. Pinkie had mentioned helping with some of that, and it was easy to picture pink curls flattening as a determined head helped push a particularly tricky wardrobe along. Some of those relocations had ended here, and it left Twilight with what felt like just barely enough room to stand. To pace would have put her into a dresser, going in a circle would have required going through shelving, and a slightly-leaning hat rack seemed to be considering whether it wanted to go directly for her spine. There was a window, but the night and storm had combined to turn that into something which only provided reflection.

Somepony had poorly wedged a clock into a gap between shelves, one of those odd purely mechanical specimens you found every now and again. It was currently at least three hours off, and that gap between machine and reality was audibly accounted for by gears which couldn't adjust for the changed angle and as a result, turned at something other than one beat per second. Sometimes it was a little faster. There were other moments when it slowed, and some when it skipped. Time itself rendered into disorder.

There was also a desk, a rather large teak one. Coordinator had already made his way behind it.

"Here you go," he said, and that grey field exerted again: one desk drawer slid open, and the rest of the papers were levitated onto the slightly dusty surface. "There was too much for me to just slip into my clothing, of course, but -- I didn't think you would come with me unless you knew I had it." A small, rueful, and what Twilight instantly decided was a completely false smile. "We don't have the kind of relationship where you would just -- take my word for things, Twilight, and... some of that is probably my fault. But a lot of it is just the years. Old school hurts stretching across the void, with nopony talking about them." Thoughtfully, "There are ponies who say embarrassment is the one emotion which never truly fades, and I think there's something to that. But it's a subcategory, really. Humiliation -- that doesn't go away. And misunderstandings can be forever, unless somepony is brave enough to make the first effort towards clearing them up."

The words were almost wise ones. They were nearly worthy of placing into a letter. And when they came from Coordinator, Twilight couldn't make herself believe any of them.

"How did you get it?" That too would be a lie, but it was a falsehood she needed to hear.

The shrug was just as small and rueful as the smile, with the untruth also matching to the last degree. "It's a price of the job, Twilight. Everywhere I look, there's piles of paper. Forms. All of which I need to review and, too often, collect. I go around the settled zone dropping off forms, picking them up, I was here for the birth forms --"

"-- that was a delivery," Twilight cut him off, because that memory was suddenly crucial. "You were dropping off forms so Doctor Gentle wouldn't have to go back and forth all the time."

"But there had already been two births," Coordinator calmly said. "I also needed to pick up the resulting paperwork. And it was early, Twilight. I hadn't really eaten yet, I saw a group of papers through an open doorway, and when you're in my line of work, papers are just something you automatically gather. I took them into my field, and -- well, I didn't look at them until I got into my office."

"Why didn't you bring them back immediately?" How much of this lie have you planned? How much can you come up with on the spot?

"Because I started reading them," he sighed. "Once I got a look, I knew they weren't forms, of course. But I wanted to see what I'd gotten by accident, so I went through a few pages, and... Twilight, do you understand just how little most ponies know about the Bearers? The original articles following that Summer Sun Celebration -- there was barely anything there about the six of you, and then it all got lost in the crush of the Return. Then things were almost silent for nearly two years. We'd get the occasional story, but there were barely any details. Even after the wedding -- well, you've seen some of what was written after the wedding. I certainly have. And what I had, getting to see those pages, was the truth of events. Reading your friend's words made me into one of the only ponies in the world who understood what had happened, at least for that first year. It was -- a privilege. It was something I didn't want to give up before I had to, and --" the hesitation felt measured, and the clock completely failed to do so "-- I felt like a moon was as bad as a minute. That no matter how long they were in my possession, you'd hate me all the more just because they'd wound up with me. That it would have been the same hate after an hour, or a day. So I kept them because I was reading, because you already hate me, and -- well, that's it, really. Once I had them, I wanted to read them. And it didn't feel as if I could make things any worse between us for doing so. I'm not sure I still could do something which would accomplish that -- unless it was failing to return them."

The dull field nudged the manuscript, pushed it a little closer to her edge of the desk.

"I stalled," the stallion admitted. "I kept them as long as I dared. But you were all staying for the party: that was the only amount of time I could be certain of. You might have been gone in the morning, I imagine your friend's been frantic this whole time, it's only been getting worse because there was no way she could have ever found her work, and that's my fault. If there's any pain I'm familiar with, Twilight, it's having somepony misplace a paper and not being able to find where it went. I tore most of Town Hall apart once, searching for a single property tax form. I'm guessing she was just about trying to dismantle the castle, that's my fault and..."

His gaze went down. Rain beat against the window, and every drop sounded as if it was a single tail strand away from breaking through.

"...I'm sorry."

Would the rhythm of the full speech have sounded normal to other ears? Or would the sounds have arrived a little too quickly for some syllables and with too much spacing between certain words, like listening to an actor who'd phonetically memorized a foreign script? Too fast and too slow, almost all at once. Like a clock which couldn't keep time.

There are some ponies you can't make friends with... not ever...

"I couldn't bring it directly to her," he said, still looking at the desk. "I think that would have had a good chance of ending the party while it was still in the starting gate. You're probably going to tell her it was me, and -- well, whatever happens because of that, happens. But when you give it back to her, Twilight -- tell her I'm sorry. And that it was an honor to have met her, and the rest of you, through reading the truth. Please."

In her silence, she remembered: everything her younger self had once thought, everything she'd never been able to prove. She knew who he was. What he was. And she was only moments away from one of the strongest surges of self-hatred she would ever experience.

"I don't know what I'm going to tell her," Twilight finally said as her horn ignited with a partial corona, her field carefully collecting the precious words. (She did have some idea of when, and that time wouldn't come until they were well away from Trotter's Falls, because few things would delay Discord's mission like having a Bearer held on charges of very public assault.) "But I'll pass that on. That you -- or the culprit -- told me they were sorry."

"Thank you."

She turned away from him, started towards the door. So little space available in the cramped room, but just enough of it led out.

"It's not the worst thing which could have happened, really," he decided, with whatever expression he was wearing currently directed at her tail. "Not even close."

Twilight nodded, not bothering to look at him. Nearly out --

And with the true humor finally in his words, synergist blending and changing the self-satisfaction until the final result emerged as pure poison, "Her manuscript could have been eaten by parasprites."

Her right forehoof had been about four tail strands from triggering exit, at the moment she heard the trap close. In the instant when she loathed herself for, no matter how briefly, having started to doubt.

From just about anypony else, they could have been innocent words. A casual jest, almost a private joke between two of the scant number who shared knowledge. But not from him.

Twilight turned, and lost the burst of outer thunder in the hideousness of his smile.

"I mean, that's what happened to the bank's records, after you miscast that spell?" A bemused head shake. "The parasprites ate them. And that's why you're not allowed inside the bank, which I'm presuming is an ongoing condition because by that point in the story, Rainbow was starting to get much a better mouth grip on her tenses. Sun and Moon, Twilight, one of the first things they taught us at the Gifted School was that you never try to send a spell directly from theory to horn! Maybe it would have worked if you'd been wearing the crown at the time, but none of you ever seemed to go for the Elements when something was happening. But you tried it anyway, by yourself: concept to corona in one glowing leap. So there went decades of ledgers, into their gullets, along with everything else they consumed before your other -- friend -- finally got her instruments together." Which was followed by the ugliest chuckle in the world, with all of the sound produced by true mirth. "It's a wonder you didn't wind up spending the next two years in small claims court. At a minimum."

She couldn't move. She couldn't speak. The jaws of the trap were around all four legs, and all she could do was wait to see how deeply they would cut.

"Which still wouldn't have been as bad," he bemusedly continued, "as starting a war with the buffalo -- at least when it comes to a certain kind of public relations disaster. Admittedly, having a few less of the charging carpets around would be a benefit to the desert settlements, especially once the first unicorn attempt begins. But there are ponies who don't see it that way."

Rainbow was writing about our adventures.

Everything which happened to us during that first year. All the good. All the bad. The times we got it right and all the ones where we did it wrong.

Everything.

She wrote about everything and he read all of it.

"I admire your luck," Coordinator said. "I really do. Ponyville doesn't seem to have anything beyond a school paper, and Appleloosa -- well, I imagine an earth pony settlement has concerns other than sending out news about how they're progressing. Not much to write about, most of the time. Their magic claims another square body length of soil and makes it suitable for an imported apple tree -- if the pegasi can ever be bothered to drop the local temperature a bit. That's not a story which is going to race across the continent. A near-war is. But none of it ever really got out. And just the smaller things... Twilight, can you imagine what the gossip columns would have done, knowing the Princess had lost her pet and the pony who stole it was a Bearer? Yes, it was just an attempt to provide medical treatment, but once the writers got ahold of it..."

A slow head shake.

"It is so easy," he softly said, "for reporters to learn about things, so much of the time. You've probably seen some of the ones who came here, following you. I don't doubt they're asking as many ponies as possible about just what you've been doing: they'd be doing it in the castle right now if our local Lord hadn't screened them out. I know they ask in Ponyville, about the things you've done. But your settled zone is getting a reputation for lockjaw: most of the residents are very defensive when it comes to their adopted daughter. Perhaps that's even why they've forgiven so very much, seeing her as a child. Of course, there is that one pony -- what was his name? Thistle Burr? I think he'd talk if he wasn't scared about having every word traced back to him, as the only one who would. But you've been lucky, Twilight, so very lucky..."

He reared up on his hind legs, planted forehooves on the desk. Looked down at her.

"Luck," Coordinator finally taught her, "runs out."

She couldn't move. Could barely feel the manuscript within her field. The crash of lightning never reached her, lost in visions of horrors to come.

He slowly returned all four hooves to floor level. Shook his head again, looking briefly weary.

"I know she meant well," he sighed. "Rainbow, I mean."

Don't say her name, you shouldn't get to say her name, any of our names...

Her feathers were shaking. The fabric of her dress vibrated, and stars vanished.

"Creating the record," he continued. "Telling the true story. It's a noble thing. But when you tell stories, Twilight -- you somehow wound up as a librarian, I'm sure you'll understand -- you have to consider who's going to hear them. And that in the end, most of those will hear not what was written, but exactly what they wanted to. There are so many ponies who would love to know about all six of you. And so many who would take the events and -- reframe them. Innocent mistakes made by those with no real training in anything they were trying, will turn into something else entirely. Just trying to get that red dragon out of the cave -- the sequence of attempts, the prioritizing, and if it wasn't for your yellow friend's warp --"

"-- what?" She just barely got that out, and it emerged in confusion. The speech felt so practiced. Rehearsed. Every syllable memorized, if not their true meanings. And in the middle of the performance, there had been a word which didn't belong at all. A word which hadn't been said so much as spat.

He stopped.

"Local slang for talent," he eventually shrugged. "I was born here, wound up coming back after school, when my original plans fell through. I've never heard it anywhere else, so I'm not surprised you haven't either. At any rate -- if not for your yellow friend's special skills, things might have ended with no stories left to tell. And with nopony alive to do the telling. Something which, if the wrong ponies ever read about that, would start to look like the best of all options. Twilight, anypony who had a few minutes with that manuscript could take notes. Make copies of whatever they wrote down and secure them in places nopony could find. They could give other ponies instructions, that if anything ever happened to them, or if they just weren't heard from for a while, those notes would go to the newspapers with an interest in reading them exactly the wrong way. Or... they could simply decide to publish directly."

A pause, with a thoughtful expression on his face.

"She worked in a little foreshadowing for future volumes, towards the very end," he noted. "I can't even imagine what the Smarty Pants Incident is supposed to be. Still, I suppose just having the name would be enough for somepony to start looking into it --"

"-- what... do you want?"

The next peal of thunder reached her. Perhaps it was because the sound was so very much like a world breaking.

"It's all out in the open right now, you know," Coordinator quietly stated. "On your face. How afraid you are. How you've just realized that information can have power which mere Magic will never match. She let those stories out, and stories want to be heard. She just can't control how ponies choose to hear them. She didn't know, Twilight. None of this is her fault."

you it's all you it's you

"What I want," the unicorn told her, "is for there to never be a situation where you have to feel that fear again."

A little sigh, and he settled back on his haunches, with his eyes never leaving her face.

"Naive," he said. "Not understanding how the world works. That's the truth of things, isn't it? None of you really know. If Rainbow did, she never would have tried to write a book and if the rest of you understood, you would have stopped her. Information needs to be controlled, and there isn't a single one of you who knows how to do it. Even our local Lord doesn't have that much of a clue, because when a stallion takes six mares under his roof while his spouse is away -- can you imagine some of the things ponies could be saying there? He certainly didn't. It takes a special kind of pony to forsee such things, exert the control which prevents words from forming at all. Twilight, you've been going at this alone the entire time, and you didn't know it. As a Bearer, you got away with it -- somehow. But now the regalia is -- well, somewhere, and I'm sure there's a crown which can come out at need. Now, you are an alicorn. A librarian was lucky because somehow, nopony was truly watching her. And even now, you're still operating without Guards, because you don't see the dangers. Or realize there's more than one kind of protection."

Legs trapped. Mind frozen. Heart paralyzed.

"A Princess needs a staff," Coordinator told her. "Ponies who control the flow of information between her and the rest of the world. A different kind of guard. You just found out you need one, and you did so in a way where nopony was hurt." (She hated the smile.) "I suppose that means your luck is still holding. But now you know it can run out. Twilight -- I know we didn't start off well, all those years ago. But we're both unicorns -- well, I know: wings. But you're still a unicorn in your heart. We're old Gifted School mates. I don't want to see you hurting, and I know how to stop it. I can give you advice. Tell you about things you should be doing, and a few which you might want to consider stopping immediately. I can sort what comes to you, and then tell ponies the things they need to hear from you. Speak for you, in those times when you're not sure exactly what should be said and need somepony to pick out the words. What do you think the Canterlot staff does for the Diarchy? They shield them, from things coming in, and those which might get out. And I know I'm just one pony, but -- I'm a talented one. I understand things you don't. I can help you. I can protect you. Because if there's nopony doing that job, or the wrong pony doing it -- eventually, information will escape."

She'd never seen his eyes so bright, much less truly looked past them to what lurked within.

"There's no telling where that could wind up, or what the original words could turn into after being distorted by dozens of articles and thousands of throats. The things ponies could end up thinking about you, or worse, believing... well, let's make it easy by never finding out." And with that horrid smile at its widest, "I offer my services to you, Princess Twilight, as the first of your staff and true Guards."

Ponies who won't trust me. Ponies who'll -- Sun and Moon, the Smarty Pants Incident, we were all still recovering from Discord's inversions, but only Ponyville knows that and everypony else...

They'll be afraid.

Of me.

"I think," Coordinator calmly finished, "you now understand why you have to accept."

Rain beat against the window. Dark wood absorbed the light of the room. Seconds kicked against her ears.

"...I..."

Her eyes closed, for there was nothing in the world she wished to see. Even her inner visions had turned into something she wanted to escape, and so she retreated inside herself. Going to where the shadows were.

"Twilight?" Waiting for her answer.

"...why..."

Trotting now. Starting to come out from behind the desk. "Twilight, you know this should be what happens --"

Her eyes opened, focused on him through the thin layer of welling tears. And when she spoke, it somehow felt as if her voice was not entirely her own.

"...why am I supposed to care?"

She saw the shock as control broke. The whip-end twisting inside him, starting to bleed his body from within.

"What do you mean, why are you supposed to care?" It hadn't been all that much of a volume increase. Compared to what had come before, it still remained a shout. "Ponies will hate you! Be afraid of you! Ponies will believe --"

-- and then she got to watch as her words kicked him, driving him back. "-- they believe I can bless! What can they believe that's worse than that?"

So close to frantic now, and it was good, it felt so good to see him going through it. "You don't understand --"

And then she was the one who was shouting.

"-- that ponies will hate me? Fear me? Ponies hated me from the day I went into the Gifted School, because I was her student and they weren't! You were one of them! Ponies were afraid of me because --" and the memory was stopped before it could truly come forward "-- I didn't always know what I was doing in class! Because when I get things wrong, parasprites stop eating food and start eating the town! Ponies were afraid, and some of them hated, and I didn't understand how anypony would ever like me, could ever, and I wasn't worth that, it was never going to happen and then, with everything I'd studied, everything I thought I knew, then I was wrong! I found ponies who liked me, who love me no matter how much anypony else feels hatred and fear! I found my friends. And I always had my family, even if it took me so long to remember that's what Spike is, to take him back into my life as my brother, and he loves me, my little brother loves me, my big brother might even try to understand one day, and my friends were there for all of it, Coordinator, every last second! All the times when I tried to save them, and every one where they saved me from myself! They know what happened, because they were there! Their feelings are the ones I care about! Strangers I'll never meet won't say my name in their invocations? Nopony will ever ask me to bless them again? The worst you can do is just about the most I want!"

He heard all of it. He only responded to the words he understood. "I never said I would do anything --"

The heart of it had come out, and so the next interruption was decidedly quieter. It still completely stopped him.

"No. No, you never do. I guess you don't have to. You brought me to a place where I could just imagine it." A soft, tiny laugh. "So the mark for that is red tape. Who knew...?"

"You are making," and those words were a hiss, "a mistake."

"I make a lot of mistakes. You read about some of them. I'm not going to make the one where I start caring about what you think." She turned away from him, took a quick count of her field bubble's contents. She was fairly sure all of the manuscript's pages were present. "There are ponies who need staffs. There are no ponies who need you." Trotting for the door again. "You were born in Trotter's Falls. You can stay here." A little bit of field lanced for the door.

"It's a rare pony," the voice behind her shakily stated, with her basking in every vibration, "who feels that way."

She didn't answer. Almost out --

"Do your friends feel the same?"

-- she froze.

"Start with the farmer," he spat. "Somepony who creates edibles for a living managed to put half your settled zone down with food poisoning: that's not the sort of reputation which would be good for business. And the other one, who should have caught her -- what was it that happened, when she thought nopony wanted to attend her parties? It read as something very close to a minor breakdown. Well, it's not surprising that being warped would make somepony mentally fragile --"

Her soul froze.

And then all the ice shattered from within, as she spun to face him with eyes gone to white and that soul set to blazing, all the anger and frustration and fear and confusion set alight because the world had beaten her, tortured her, changed her -- and then provided somepony she could take it out on.

The stallion was within the newest of field bubbles, hoisted so close to the ceiling. There was a chance she'd already slammed him against it at least once: she really hadn't been paying full attention. She could feel every contour of his form, distractedly verified the presence of a bottle while not caring about it in the least. He was shaking, his body vibrating within her field's grasp -- and that was all he was doing. His horn wasn't even lit. It was something she didn't understand, for he had entered the Gifted School when she had, graduated on the same day, and anypony who'd been there with her, even when unable to match her field strength, would have been capable of something. Of fighting back. But he wasn't even trying, he was just shaking and

she didn't care.

"IF YOU EVER TOUCH MY FRIENDS -- IF YOU EVER TOUCH MY FAMILY...!"

She could feel his body.

think of me as Magic, which gives me a very long list of options for the next thing I might want to do

She could feel how easy it would be to squeeze.

Some of the speckles in the exposed portions of his coat were visible. The hue of her field had distorted their true shade, making it appear as if he was covered in tiny flecks of blood.

He was so scared

the exam

and so was she.

The confining bubble winked out.

He crashed down, she collapsed against the shelves, and the combined impacts dislodged the clock. It fell to the floor, shattered there. Rain pounded the window, the uneven impacts filling in for the sounds of the lost seconds.

Nopony moved. Nopony came in to find out what had happened. Somewhere, there was a party, and it had sounds of its own.

She couldn't look at him. She couldn't look at herself. Staring at the door and nothing else through purple eyes.

"You..." Twilight finally gasped. "You were born here. You can stay here. You can die here."

Her forehooves slammed into the door. Twilight half-ran, half-fell into the hallway, her hind legs kicking the first available barrier shut behind her. And then she collapsed, a small body huddled against the stone.

A mare on one side of the door, a stallion on the other. Neither had any way of knowing that their bodies were in the same position, much less that the cause for their mutual shaking was now, at its core, exactly the same. Those two things would have given them more in common than they'd ever truly had. But there was a third factor in play, and it had its way with both of them for some time.

Eventually, each would pick themselves up. The mare would force herself to trot back towards the party, because there were friends there and she needed somepony, anypony she could talk to about what had just happened. Somepony who could help her to deal with nearly all of it as she desperately tried to dismiss the part she so badly needed to forget. And she would find somepony, very quickly. She would find exactly the wrong pony, and in so many ways, their meeting would be the beginning of the end.

The stallion, who had finally taken his own test, with his core already refusing to recognize that the failure had fully been his own (for he was, and had to still be, perfect in every way), managed to acknowledge his own survival, along with the minor irony of it. After all, he had spent so much of their school time cautioning ponies not to be too close to her in case she lost it, and... well, it turned out he'd been exactly (and naturally) right all along. She was dangerous. It was almost impossible to imagine any bodies standing between the two of them and trying to serve as shields, even when the act would have been so much less than voluntary and, given her hideous strength, futile. But there was still a way out, and not the one which the fool doctor would undoubtedly begin to enact once some form of information about what had just happened reached his ears, after it had been controlled. For the best counter to an angry Princess...

They both got to their hooves in the same moment. One tried to wipe her tears, while the other made sure his bottle had come through intact. Each began to move, although the stallion wouldn't risk coming out for some time. And as they each forced themselves towards what they were hoping would be their solution, with both wrong, they continued to share an emotion. Something neither could voice, and one would never acknowledge.

For in those scant seconds of strange reflection within the mirror of the final storm, both mare and stallion felt like they were drowning.

Guilloché

Words were important.

There were the initial choices, finding just the right words. Organization according to the rules of grammar, or even making the decision to break those rules if doing so would serve for a dramatic moment. (It had taken her some time to appreciate that last part.) The preservation of words, that could be crucial, and it was part of why having had the Princess place her in the Archives after graduation (as opposed to a pure research posting, where the only ponies to visit might have been the ones who finally found her body) had eventually lost some small portion of its sting. The tree had been through a library remaindered sale during the spring, and she'd done everything she could in order to prevent the destruction of words, for anything which didn't sell had to be discarded or -- worse.

The writing of words. The reading of words. Being the guardian of the words. Things she understood. Things she cared about.

But now she was carrying words with her, sentences made still more precious by the identity of the author. Before she could do anything else, she had to secure those words, make sure nothing more could happen to them. So Twilight forced herself through the castle, back towards her assigned quarters, the sounds of the party slowly fading within ears which could barely recognize them at all. And as she did so, she finally began to truly think about what happened to words after they had been read. The ways they could resound in the mind, set up echoes -- and the thing about echoes was that they were, in part, distortion. It took a perfect situation to bounce the true sound back. Otherwise, with each successive passage, the original words would become fainter, and as the listener strained to pick up on what was being lost, they would reach the point where the only way to hear anything --

-- was to hear exactly what they wished to.

Ignore this clause. Discard whole sentences. Editing performed by the mind, until the author's original intent had been not so much lost as discarded for something which suited the reader -- and nopony else.

Twilight carried Rainbow's words and for the first time, questioned whether they ever should have been written at all.

What... what do I even tell her? That no matter how much work she puts into it, even if all the commas are finally in place, she can't ever try to publish? That there are ponies who would do exactly the wrong things with her words, because... we made mistakes, we all made so many mistakes and it was all right because everypony came through it in the end, but there were mistakes and when everypony learns about them...

It was, in some ways, self-distraction. There were other things she could have thought about, but there was a memory still in the process of being buried again, and so every kick she directed at her own flanks provided another layer of concealing pain.

She lost some time in the bedroom, trying to find a place where the manuscript could be secured. The mattress was initially raised, with pages layered underneath, right up until she considered whether the castle's staff would try to use what should have been guaranteed time of zero occupancy to do some cleaning. Her traveling saddlebags were quickly rejected. Under the bed didn't seem to offer anything real in the way of security, and the weather meant there was no real way to try and hide things outside.

Or perhaps outside would be best. Open the balcony doors, raise the stack of papers to the storm. Recede her field until the topmost sheets were exposed and -- let the wind have them. One by one. The world would be Rainbow's final audience, lightning her applause with raindrops for critics. The paper would quickly become soaked, wind would act as a final series of shredding edits, and that part of the problem would be... gone. Lie to Rainbow: say Coordinator had kept the manuscript, destroyed it, hidden it behind spells which Twilight couldn't work out. Tell her that, and then tell her she could never write again. Not about their adventures. Never about anything real. Because words were many things, and Twilight had just been reminded that when pressed under the wrong hooves, they became weapons.

But these were Rainbow's words, and so she ultimately placed the stack in a desk drawer, then cast the smallest, strongest shield she could raise. The dome would hold until morning, and she would know if anypony tried to break it.

I charged down a hydra.

The memory didn't make her smile.

That was in there. Coordinator didn't mention it. I'm sure he read it, though. And missing the jump, I jumped and everything worked out okay, we laughed about it after a while because if we were laughing, then it wouldn't be scary any more and I could stop thinking about nearly having died and

the healing of harmony. That's how Pinkie was introduced. It's what she does for us. We laugh and the fear goes away.

But when somepony reads about it... they'll see somebody who was too scared to cast, couldn't focus on a teleport, somepony incompetent. Somepony who only survived because she was lucky, and

luck

runs

out.

It was perhaps strange that Twilight had never thought about recording a true personal account. But she'd had her scrolls. The Princess had been her readership and in so many ways, that had been enough. One pony in the world whom Twilight had cared about impressing, making happy with her progress, right up until the moment she'd looked up and realized the number had become six...

...no, seven. There was Spike. There had always been Spike, and it had taken her so long to realize his opinion was important. That she cared about what he thought, even when instincts she couldn't always discard instructed her to ignore her little brother.

He recorded her words, sent the scrolls to the only party she could truly see as being interested in the true details, and some of those scrolls had been, quite frankly, trivial in their content. Because friendship wasn't just adventures: it was the smaller moments -- in fact, it was mostly the little things. The first time she'd turned to a pony instead of a book. Being in the center of a ponypile. Having makeup put on her and trying not to react as if her face was being painted with acid. Making plans to see her friends during hours which could have been used for research, because there were times when research could wait.

Knowing somepony cared about her. Knowing she cared about them.

The words in the manuscript had just barely been composed. For the earliest sections, there was an argument to be made for excreted. Nearly everything she'd seen within needed editing, and most of the rest needed to be kicked into pieces in the hopes that the fragments would make more sense. By any pure measure of literary value, so much of the writing was horrible. But they were Rainbow's words, and that made them more precious than any Guide.

It also made them capable of doing a similar amount of damage.

What can I tell her...?

Twilight didn't know. And with her emotions still floundering, she forced herself, one hoofstep at a time, to leave the bedroom. To return to the party, find the ponies who would make everything better

can they?

before things had a chance to worsen. To find somepony she could talk to, tell them everything which had just happened. To figure out a strategy, a plan of attack. Fields and mouths scribbling out a checklist until the disruption to their lives had been caged within bars of pure reason, and then everything would be okay again

will it?

because as long as they stood together...

against this?

What can we do?

What can anypony...

The corridors felt cold. Drafts seemed to sink into her fur. Autumn forcing itself into the castle. Autumn was the death of the world, and pounding hooves created seas of drifting corpses.

The storm outside was getting stronger, and was still no match for the tempest in her heart.

Turn this way. Force another step, and then another. Gaze cast down, looking at nothing more than stone, with the occasional glimpse of her own fabric-covered legs. The dress expertly shifted with her. But the light sources in the hallways had left her staring into her own shadow, and so all the stars had gone out.

I have to find them.

The sounds of the party were starting to reach her ears now: music, conversation, laughter. Every vibration seemed to foul her fur.

We have to find a way out of this.

And from one of the deepest parts of her soul, the next truth rose on typhoon-churned seafoam.

I want to go home...

"I was wondering where you went," the warm voice said. "Believe me, I understand completely about taking a moment for yourself. Getting some clean air, and that counts both everything touching my ears and the words it carries. I thought I'd take a break, and --"

He stopped.

So much more carefully, tones filled with open concern, "-- Twilight?"

She forced her head up.

"You've been crying," Quiet softly said. "You've been -- what happened? Is everything all -- no, that's a stupid question: of course it's not all right, not if you've been crying. Twilight, if something happened --"

She looked at him, just a few body lengths away -- or tried to. It felt as if there was a moment when it was hard to find a grey pony within grey corridors, and she'd just realized his suit made it worse: he was wearing still more fine gradients of grey hue, so the pony blended into the suit, which vanished against the corridor, which was... empty.

But then she blinked, and he was just a few body lengths away.

"I --"

It was instinct, wanting to talk. To share her pain, and the math of the divided burden somehow never added back up to the original weight.

But she could hear the party. Hear where her friends were. The ponies who knew her best. The ones who would understand. Who might even be able to help. Those she had to save from what Coordinator still might do.

"-- was just thinking about things," she told him, and so lied by omission.

He was looking at her.

"Things," he carefully repeated.

"It's... been a moon," Twilight tried. (She hadn't thought about tear tracks in her fur. She didn't look in mirrors...) "And there's been a lot that's happened, and... sometimes it just kicks, Quiet. What everypony did when I was introduced, the way they reacted, it felt just like a kick, like I was a tree which Applejack was trying to harvest, like I was being punished for not bearing the right kind of fruit, for being wrong, and..."

Where had the words come from? Why were they emerging now? All she'd wanted was a simple lie, something where she could get away from the topic, she could have just claimed to have been washing her face and let the water run exactly the wrong way...

Her field belatedly began to smooth the tracks. At least she could keep the guests from wondering what had taken place.

Quiet took a step forward: a small one, almost partial. The left foreleg moved first, hesitated, nearly returned to its original position before venturing forward.

"We can stop right now," he told her. "I'll tell everypony that you took ill." A quick smile, one which fled in embarrassment as it realized just how poor its timing might truly be. "Just telling them you tried some of the griffon cuisine will do for a reason. And --" faster now, blush adding a new tint to the grey fur "-- Tartarus chain it, I was part of that introduction, if it was something I said --"

"-- it wasn't you," she half-whispered. "It's never been you. You've been the only one here who's treated me like -- me."

He took a slow breath. She wondered if his ribs hurt.

"I'll go make your excuses," Quiet decided. "You go rest --"

"-- no. I have to go back down there."

More music drifted up. She couldn't identify the composition any more than she could work out the contents for the conversations. It all merged into the same susurrus after a while. A river which seemed to be flowing faster.

"You're sure?"

He would lie for me. He would stop the entire party for me.

He would...

"Yes." It was the only answer she could give, for she needed her friends.

After a moment, he nodded. Trotted up to her, turned, placed himself at her side.

"Stay close," he whispered.

She nodded, drifted closer still. Her wing brushed his flank.

She looked out across the gathering from the top of the ramp. Left to right, and back again. Her gaze crossed Quiet a few times along the way. And with every attempt, she failed to find a friend. For it appeared as if some ponies had in fact decided to be fashionably late, and it also seemed as if that fashion was just coming into season.

How many had arrived, while her heart was being besieged? Too many. Enough to crowd the hall, turn even the air into a seething tide of fur and feathers. Dresses everywhere, suits adding to the display. A color wheel had exploded, with every piece randomly spinning in its own currents. Just trying to focus on any part of it made her feel sick, and at every moment when she thought she saw the right hues emerge in some part of the tossing sea, they quickly submerged again.

Some ponies looked up (or across), saw them together. They generally kept right on looking.

"There's so... so many," Twilight half-whispered.

She could feel the concern within the words. "Yes. There were -- a lot of ponies who wanted to be here. You can tell the newest arrivals by their slightly damp state. I think the charge on the desaturator is running out. Twilight, if you're sure..."

Twilight tried looking down again, felt her stomach churn. She still managed to keep the survey going just long enough to truly spot familiar colors for the first time -- but they weren't the hues she was after: Doctor Gentle had finally arrived. He was close to one of the side hallways, looking oddly weary and, at least from what little she could see, completely dry. He'd probably come in shortly after she'd gone up the ramp.

"I'm sure."

Quiet nodded. "No announcement this time." Another quick smile, one which really wasn't certain that it was appropriate to the occasion. "I'm just about out of words anyway."

"They were good words."

He blinked. "You really think so?"

"Yes," and the truth took a little of the pain away. "You told Softtread to give Spike that title?" He nodded. "What made you think of that?"

"It... fits him," the reply eventually came. "Besides, there are far worse ideas than giving a dragon his due. All right: I could ask if you're sure again, but even I can occasionally recognize when I'm pushing my luck. Down we go..."

She had to force her legs to work.

Twilight thought she had some understanding of parties: time spent with Pinkie could do that. But one of Pinkie's typical events was nothing like the Gala (or the disaster which had taken place during it, Luna's shoes, that would have been in the manuscript too), and this gathering was related to the Gala only by rumor and, perhaps, a few non-Bearer attendees which it just happened to have in common. There were too many bodies, packed far too tightly. Words blended together, then warred with the music until everything turned into a single warbling discordant note.

It wasn't a party. It was a chaos storm. The place where the world broke down and tried to take you with it.

"Is there any goal we have in mind?" Quiet whispered, mere hoofsteps from the bottom.

"A friend." Trying to ignore a stomach which felt as if it was in open revolt. "I need to find a friend..."

Softly, "I'm right here."

She looked at him. Focused on him, the only stable thing in the heaving ocean.

He is. He's right...

"I know," she quietly said. "It helps."

Forward. Some ponies moved for her. Others closed in. Quiet did his best to intervene here and there, but it was a task much more suited for Pinkie: there were ponies who almost trotted through him, and she saw him wince at one impact, found herself once again wishing for the ability to take away pain. But still, he was doing everything he could, even as the colors swirled faster and the noise got louder. The music was still lost to her, but now whole words occasionally escaped to twist within her ears. So many of them were the same word. Princess, over and over, it was always Princess and --

-- that was when the first sentence broke free.

It was a short sentence, and it escaped through blasting its way out of prison.

"SHUT UP!"

The concussive force knocked ponies back, created an open sight line from Twilight to the stallion who had just shouted, a reared-back unicorn in early middle age, one whose swirls of soft yellow were mostly covered by his suit.

His landing was heavier than the words had been, and twin impacts blasted through the hall.

"I don't care what you say!" Weaver Shine shouted at the coffee shop owner, who was already starting to pull back. "I know what she did! Not just for Equestria, and who cares about anything else which might have happened along the way, when we're all still here? You can stand here, in front of me, questioning her, accusing her, and you..." His voice suddenly dropped: one more impact. "...you forget. You forget what she did for all of us, and you forget because you want to. But you did something worse. You forgot what she did for me. For me, and my spouse, and our family. I have a family because the Princess was there, because the Princess saw fit to attend, to watch over him, to grant time under Sun, and you think you can just come up to me and start saying things about her when my Dusk --"

Which was when the gap closed, for there was little ponies loved so much as street theater, even when the weather had moved it indoors. But the movement required to block her view created brief gaps for further visions, and so there was a moment when Twilight felt as if she had spotted ears. Brown-and-white speckled ones, flattened against the skull.

No... no, please, no, not...

...was that a prismatic tail? It wasn't a guarantee of a friend being nearby: that kind of variegated display was hardly unique in Equestria. Rainbow was part of a category because there were enough ponies to create one, and having that glimpse take place on ground level seemed to lessen Twilight's odds of getting the right pony. Still, it was a chance, and she turned in that direction, just barely heard herself ask a self-proclaimed noble for a small postponement of their first meeting, tried to trot forward --

-- Quiet matched her pace.

"I'm sorry." The whispered words were sincere and somehow, they cut through the clamor, seemed to reach her ears alone. "I -- I saw your face when he said that, and..." For the first time, his flank seemed to push into her side. Into the wing. Guiding her a little further to the right than she'd wanted to go. "...once again, even knowing it's not going to do any good, I can get you out of here, right now. Well, perhaps not right now. It'll take some time to reach a ramp. Or you can just teleport out, and I'll make your excuses --"

She tried to adjust course. The effort put them into the closest of contact. She could feel his breathing now, pushing against her feathers. She could see him monitoring every inhale, regulating the reverse. To make sure the next one was coming.

And then she wasn't moving any more. She was just standing next to him. Feeling his presence. Knowing he was there.

"I..."

The chaos storm churned around them. The lone stable element held.

"I... I think..."

"And there you are," came the mare's voice, from just off to her right.

It was an interesting sort of voice. It came with harmonics. There was a little trill of aristocracy, a vibrato of superiority, and when it reached Twilight's ears, it created a perfect chorus of recognition. She had never heard that mare speak before, and yet Twilight knew who it was.

Interesting things happened within Twilight as she turned to face the one who had returned at last. For starters, her stomach seemed to teleport its contents away, while her blood mastered heat-shifting and left her two degrees colder than she should have been. Features which should have responded in an instant appeared to have gone far beyond that smaller temperature drop, or perhaps the internal controls were what had frozen.

And yet she tried to rally. There was even a moment when the chaos terrain began to shift back towards party, when the noises began to make sense and colors separated back into ponies, every tenth-bit of focus dedicated to getting her looking up (for the mare was taller than her) with a welcoming gaze and a smile on that slow-to-answer face, because this was suddenly a mare whom she very much wanted to make a good impression on, somepony she hoped would like her because

"Even in the very rare times when invitations remain open, the spouse must fully accept the new arrival."

The memory momentarily locked up everything which the temperature drop had missed, and so Twilight initially found herself looking at dress instead of features. One of Rarity's. Twilight had been in the Boutique during its initial creation, and for two of the desperate revisions. The final result fit the mare's form quite well, and all of that was ruined when Twilight's eyes finally reached the face.

The picture in the bedroom hadn't quite captured the richness of the leaf-green coat, or the little fringe of muted orange within the eyes. But it had done quite a good job at reproducing the boredom, and so Twilight could easily see that none of it was present now.

"Twilight," Quiet softly said, "I would like to introduce you to my spouse. This is the Duchess Bella Donna, of House -- well, formerly of House Atrotine, and now part of House Deluge."

Forced, torturous hours of Gala-based hoof-pressing took over.

"It's a pleasure to meet you at last," Twilight said, and somehow, even in the wake of what wasn't quite looking back, a smile came forth as her right foreleg started to come up. "I had so many questions! Just to know who the mare was that managed to --"

"-- you're really not much of anything... are you?"

The foreleg froze.

The taller mare continued to haughtily speak, her voice addressed to a place which existed a full hoof-height above Twilight's ears. "Look past the wings, and there's barely anything there. Perhaps it's only the wings which let anypony see you at all. Otherwise, there would just be a perfectly wasted dress collapsing onto the floor..."

There was nothing Twilight could say. The mare's words were weapons, and nothing could be found within the wounded which would serve as a shield. But as weapons went, they were expertly crafted. They cut through the noise. They sheathed themselves in every ear. The edges sliced like a paper cut made a thousand times deeper, and bleeding gaps vowed to never close.

The taller mare looked down at last. Briefly regarded Twilight's face, then shifted to Quiet.

"Which," she concluded, "makes the two of you into something of a... matched... set."

She didn't snort. It would have been better, somehow, if she'd snorted, made an open expression of dismissal. Instead, there was silence, because Twilight clearly wasn't even worth the effort of a snort, or much of anything else. Instead, she simply trotted forward, directly towards them. Aiming for the exact place where they were making contact, and so forced them to separate before her passage rammed a way through.

The elaborate curl of orange-white tail lashed once as it cleared the new gap, and then vanished into the heaving sea. Twilight knew that tail had lashed, because she had turned to follow its passage.

She looked away at the same moment her stomach's contents teleported back, having somehow doubled in mass during their journey, and her eyes found Quiet -- who wasn't looking at her. His own eyes had closed, all the better to look at things which only existed inside.

Twilight didn't teleport the two of them out. Teleportation required a moment of focus. It meant picking a destination. Considering the consequences of recoil while calling on the memory which would keep them safe. It took thought, and thought demanded too much time.

Instead, her wings flared, pushed. What should have been stable atmosphere in the upper levels of the hall felt as if it was becoming extremely complicated from the movements of all the pegasi, but it wasn't anything that couldn't be dealt with, and the fact that she'd never previously carried anypony in the four-leg inwards press used for desperate evacuations didn't seem to matter. Her target was small, she was sure she could take his weight for just long enough and if she couldn't, then she'd just do her best to catch him before he hit the floor or, more likely, somepony who was occupying it.

There were gasps. She largely ignored them, mostly because anypony who was impressed by this would probably faint if they saw anything approaching a real stunt --

-- and then they were in an empty corridor on one of the upper levels. Near the entrance to Quiet's bedroom.

He gasped a little as she released him, a little further above the floor than she'd intended. She swooped in front of him, twisted to face him as she landed --

--what?

What did I just --

-- and felt her wings slam against her sides.

Quiet's ribs were moving in and out, quickly. Too quickly. She'd been pressing her legs against him all the way up, she might have hurt --

Desperation blended into worry and was served as a new kind of Baked Bads, something far worse than griffon cuisine (modified) and threatening to manifest heartsickness as something else, "Are you okay? Did I --"

"-- I'm fine," Quiet gasped. "I'm all right, Twilight. I just wasn't -- expecting that. Sun and Moon, you've got some kind of teacher --"

"-- what happened?"

For the first time, the wryness sounded forced. "I don't spend a lot of time in the vicinity of our fire personnel, but I believe they call that a Holly Mountain carry. I'm not completely sure why --"

"-- your spouse!" It was nearly a yelp. "Did you two have a fight when she got back? Was it -- was it because of me?" Speaking faster now. "Because you were hosting six mares while she was away and ponies have been talking, she finally heard what they were saying and --"

His words weren't whispered. They weren't the least bit soft, and the only weariness carried within had already been there. It meant they emerged as plain speech: a simple, basic statement of truth.

"No. That's just how it is, Twilight. That's how it's always been."

She stared at him.

"But you're married."

"Yes," he said, and took a slower breath.

Desperately, the pain now echoing within her own ribs, "You don't marry somepony if you don't love --"

"-- we married," Quiet steadily said, "because when we were very young -- possibly even before we were born, I never asked -- our respective parents approached each other and, after some discussion and -- well, discussion. Let's... leave it at that. There was a discussion. That if there were children, and there was a chance for a pairing -- not stallion with stallion, although mare with mare would have been fine, with The Most Special Spell available -- then there would be a marriage. And so there was. We... do things a little differently out here, Twilight. My status isn't unusual."

She was still staring at him. Trying to see through the calm to what had to be the wound within.

"But she doesn't... the way she talked about you, the way she didn't even look at --"

"-- she said worse to you," he sighed. "With me, it's reached the point of repetition. I didn't think she'd do it at the party, but... well, it's not as if it matters, really. It's just words, Twilight, and --"

"-- she doesn't love you!"

The stone refused to absorb the shout, and where the words echoed to, or how those echoes would be heard... somehow, Twilight didn't care.

"I..." The grey eyes briefly closed again. "It's not news, Twilight. It's not even gossip now, at least with me. Not that ponies talk about it much. It's not important."

And she didn't understand. She didn't know how anypony could understand, could just live with -- "You're married! You're married, you're going to be with her for the rest of your life unless you --" Wait. "-- you could just get a divorce, I know it doesn't happen very often, but sometimes, when ponies change --"

"-- our parents talked," he gently cut in. "They also wrote some things down. Divorce would be difficult. There's something of a... well, call it a forfeiture fee. It mostly covers money. Plus some furniture." Thoughtfully, "But nopony thought to include books, so on the whole... "

"But...!" There had to be words to make it right, to fix things, to help... "She doesn't love --"

Which was where words ran out.

His lips quirked into something which never quite made it to a smile.

"Twilight, we've never even --"

And he stopped.

"...never even... what?" she slowly asked. "You've never even -- kissed?"

"No," Quiet admitted. "There was a kiss, at the wedding. That was expected."

And nothing since. "Then... never even -- what?"

"Danced," he wryly replied. "Let's pretend I was going to say 'danced,' even though we both know that isn't it. Although that at least has the benefit of being true. We didn't dance at the wedding because she decided to make a comment about not wanting to -- push me too hard. I'm sure it amused the audience, which is to say, it amused her -- Twilight?"

This tone was lightly concussed. "...what?"

Not without weary amusement, "You just worked out what 'danced' substitutes for, didn't you?"

Which was followed by something more suited to Fluttershy. "...yes. Sun and Moon, Quiet, I... how can you even... how does anypony just... live like that?"

"Because," Quiet softly said, "it's not her fault. It's the weakness in my blood. She didn't get the stallion she was expecting, and that's where every problem begins and ends. She could leave, but there's a price for the one who breaks first and... well, she gets access to my coffers, what there is of them. She travels. I suppose she has her fun when she's away from the settled zone, and maybe she even -- dances, here and there. But I have my books, and the playgrounds. I get to coach the children, and... it's enough, Twilight. Until the day a cure is found, it's enough."

She was back to staring.

"It's not enough," she declared, and watched her chosen weapons bounce off the shield of a personal truth. "You don't -- you don't deserve to live like this! Not without love, and --"

He was about to say something. There was every chance that he did get a word out, somewhere along the way. But that was when instinct flared within Twilight and for the second time that night, thought stopped being important.

Quiet winced a little as his hooves hit stone again. It was unlikely that anypony had seen it: she'd set him down on the hidden side of the upper level approach, just before the final bend would have rendered them visible. "Twilight, I think you have to tell me when you're going to do that --"

But she was already moving ahead of him, and her flared wings beat at the air as she strode forward, to the upper edge of the ramp.

Ponies spotted her. Babble slowed, threatened to stop. The swirling colors gradually became limpid pools. Improvement. Not that she was currently looking for anything within those waters. There was something more important to do, because when you came up with a plan, you acted on it. Hesitation ruined plans, as did thinking about them too much, or giving anypony else the chance to consider what you were about to do. The best way through was to act before anypony could stop you, and so she did exactly that.

"Your attention, please," she called out across the crowd.

It wasn't a Canterlot Royal Voice: she wasn't entirely sure how to manage that, and suspected it took more lung capacity than she strictly had. Regardless, ponies shut up, and the crowd stared at her. Waiting.

"As per royal tradition," she openly (and perhaps magnificently) lied, "when the Lord of a settled zone is gracious enough to host a Princess and her companions, he is owed a minor boon. Something freely given in return for the gift of hospitality, which in itself was offered without price. The Princess chooses the gift, and the Lord must accept. It would be... improper to decline."

Quiet had been steadily moving forward: she'd just become aware of that, barely registering him on the outermost periphery of her vision. Good. That made the next part easier.

"And so, Lord Presence," Twilight declared to the crowd, "I believe I owe you a dance. So if everypony would clear a space near the band...?"

He blinked. Other ponies swallowed. Some had gasped, but Twilight decided that wasn't important. Three pegasi collided in the air, but they all wound up falling into cushioning tapestries, so no harm done -- well, none to the ponies. Actually, it would probably be a good idea for somepony to check on that one weave: she hadn't gotten a chance to catalog that --

-- I...

I -- just...

...what did I just do?

What was I thinking?

...was I thinking?

The change. The mission. Everything which had happened with Coordinator. Everything which had happened, period. She didn't seem to be thinking straight. In this case, she wasn't sure she'd been thinking at all. And yet somehow, just about all of the things which might come from having acted on a single unstoppable impulse didn't seem to matter just now. She was completely sure that every last one of them would wind up mattering later, she was dreading the inevitable creation for the checklist of Things I Just Did To Both Of Us, and there was still a single frozen horror which had priority.

Quiet was right next to her again. Ponies who'd been given an order were clearing space. The chaos was shifting to the sides, leaving room for what would have normally been order.

Except that it couldn't be.

The terrified words forced themselves through a narrow gap at the left side of her mouth.

"...Quiet?"

"What?" was subtly whispered back.

"...I don't know how to dance..."

A steady, barely audible, "Really?"

"...it took three years before any of my friends felt like they could tell me I couldn't dance... there was this garden party, and then at the coronation, I sort of... they took a vote, they made Applejack tell me because they knew I'd have to believe it coming from her, I can't dance, I just sort of... flail, and now I've got two more limbs to flail with..."

A thoughtful pause. "Can you copy?"

"...it's not a spell. I looked for a spell --"

"-- no. Just -- follow my lead. Do what I do, a second after I do it. Sapients' Dance. Can you?"

Her eyes widened.

"Yes. If I'm just watching you, focused on you... yes."

A tiny nod, just barely visible, and then he raised his voice. "As the honored Lord," he announced, "I get to choose the dance. And when two come together for the first time, a meeting where both had to travel so very far to even learn that the other existed... well, there is a certain, traditional dance. Our lead ambassadors in the other nations still perform it once a year, when they meet their opposite number: each traveling home to speak of what they have learned, and both will pause to dance. We have met, and we have learned... and so we will dance. Fillies and gentlecolts of the band, I believe you know the beat..."

It was, in many ways, among the oldest of the dances. For those which had survived the centuries, it ranked high in seniority and low in performance. There was generally little need for the original use in the modern day -- but that need had never fully evaporated: so much of the world could still be thought of as a wild zone, and one never knew what was waiting to be discovered. To be met.

The Sapients' Dance was, of necessity, one of the simplest, at least during the first stages. It was a dance which could be adapted on the fly, and this would sometimes become literal. The moves had to account for variable limb counts and differing body configurations. Pegasi had their own beats, which only became involved when their partner had wings. Dancing with a minotaur meant adapting the foreleg movements, and keeping time with a kudu often asked a pony to shake a pair of horns they didn't actually have.

You made a move. You repeated it, creating a pattern. And an animal would watch. It might stare, trying to figure out if there was an attack coming, or if the thing moving around was better suited to prey. But something which could think -- it would see the pattern. Enough repetition and it might recognize an attempt at communication, start to copy the movements in an attempt to reply. You didn't have to know what was being said, just that someone was attempting to speak -- and you could recognize that, show that you were willing to find some way to talk...

Ponies had stared at creatures which moved on the wrong number of legs, had strange appendages where hooves should have been, had the wrong number of horns or fur which didn't show enough variety of shades or whose mouths displayed the pointed teeth of predators. And the bravest of those ponies, looking into the eyes of what felt so much like a fresh kind of horror -- had begun to create a pattern of movement for the new ones to follow.

Animals stared.

Monsters attacked.

Sapients danced.

They stood facing each other, within the cleared space. Looking only at each other. There was a band, and they were starting to play -- but the music wasn't ultimately important, and so Twilight paid very little attention to it. It was quite possible that some of the ponies watching them were important, especially since some of her friends might have made it through (or above) the crowd to get a view from the edge. But she didn't know where they were, for she was focused on the stallion, five body lengths away.

He was a little shorter than she, so unusual for a stallion. It left her looking slightly down at him most of the time, and that was a strange feeling when she spent so much of her life having conversations which left her with a sore neck from excessive craning. But when you were the personal student of the Princess, there was a price to pay...

Differences were important in the dance, but only if they might affect the movements. That one participant was slightly taller wasn't important: that one had limbs which the other did not was. So she simply noted that rare state once again, kept her wings locked against her sides, and waited.

Quiet brought up his left forehoof, carefully stomped it once. Paused. Again. Then the right foreleg, but with two stomps in rapid succession. The pattern repeated three times.

Twilight raised her left foreleg. Stomp. Pause. Stomp. Switch to the right...

He moved to the left. She moved to the left.

Heads dipped, one after the other.

I have come so far to find you.

Tails swayed.

I never knew anything like you existed.

Bodies shifted, almost at the same time. (She was beginning to anticipate him now.)

I didn't even know I was searching.

Circling each other, getting closer with each series of movements. Closing the gap.

We are so different. But no matter what our differences may be, there is so much we share.

A pair of jumps. Four eyes sought out a blocked sky, and found internal illusions filled with stars.

We are in the world. We are of the world. We are part of the world.

Two body lengths apart. They twirled, orbited a common center. She was looking at him, and only him -- but he was a little smaller than she and so during one spin, she caught the briefest flash from furious orange-fringed eyes.

I have come so far to find you...

One body length away from each other.

"...it hasn't all been coronations and dances, has it?"

Turning. Matching. Nearly touching.

There can be one dance.

(There would only be one dance.)

His left foreleg came up, presented the flat of his hoof. Waiting for her touch, her recognition, as the final step.

She nuzzled him.

And there were gasps (she knew there were, even if she only truly heard them so much later). There was rearing back and thumps from the spontaneous collapses of multiple pairs of hind legs, and one tail lost its elaborate curl during a mighty lash. But it was a dance about matching and so as the dance dictated, he nuzzled her back.

It could be said that it was the nuzzle meant for friends. Such things were easy to say. After all, it hardly would have been the first lie of the night. And it would not be the last.

Later, she would wonder where her friends had been. (She would find out.) She would question why they hadn't come up to her as she'd quickly left the area, moving on hoof. (They had tried and for one, it had been in desperation.) But when they left, she was simply thankful that a mostly-stunned crowd had finally just started getting out of her way. And Quiet was following her. Admittedly, he probably wasn't entirely sure why he was following her, for she had hidden her field and surrounded him in an invisible bubble. Doing so with a working could make it operate improperly: for simple movement of what was, for her, a rather low weight, he simply appeared to be adding a certain amount of surprised skid to a rather unbalanced trot -- at least until he realized what was happening, and adjusted his motions to suit.

She got them through the first available door on the ground level, then went through two more before risking a stop, making sure to close everything behind them. And then she turned to face him, for Twilight had made her decision.

"I think," Quiet immediately said, "I may be in trouble." But his expression didn't reflect the words: the little smile held no fear, and not a touch of terror reached the follow-up sentences. "No, strike that: unless I do something, I know I'm in trouble. The fact that you've just dragged me off doubled my trouble. And I can't find it in myself to care just yet, at least not until the trouble starts moving from ear to ear, and maybe not even after that. Twilight, I --" and he paused, which gave her more time to sort out her own words "-- should tell you something." More slowly, the tones of a stallion saying something which might have never been voiced before, "The reason you might not need to worry about anything --"

But she raised her right foreleg, and he stopped. If she had truly been looking, it might have been possible to see the sentences being locked back in their cage.

"Rule Three," the memory of Discord reminded her.

"...Twilight?" Quiet asked. "I know when you're thinking about something by now..."

"It is just the seven of you -- to start. You may recruit any help you like when you get there from anypony you choose. In fact, you may recruit any help you can."

Twilight had made her decision. And so she made her mistake.

"Quiet?" The tone had been soft. "I told you that -- we were all just here to find Doctor Gentle, helping Pinkie and Fluttershy. Or everypony thought that, and I just -- let it happen, because that was the easiest way."

He froze.

(It seemed like such a natural reaction. It was a natural reaction. She would remember that the reaction had been completely natural, and it would be mere hours before she realized what he'd been reacting to.)

"I'm... not going to like this," Quiet slowly said. "Am I?"

She took a deep breath.

"Shortly after we arrived," Twilight told her friend, "we found a pony. Or she found us..."

Lithography

She told him so much while they were in that room (a spare pantry, with most of its shelves emptied for the party: there was some spare flour left and a few grains, but not much more). She talked to him because he was her friend, truly her friend, they were allowed to recruit any help they could and in the chaos storm of both mission and world, he was the newest barricade point which could represent stability. The buoy which would keep her from drowning.

But she didn't tell him everything.

There was a reason for Twilight's verbal editing, and it wasn't due to lack of trust. It was the absence of exposure. Quiet hadn't been through it all with them, hadn't heard the vast majority of the stories and for most of what little had reached him -- just by way of example, the Murdocks' fictionalization which had resulted in an army of earth ponies who were, for some reason, pink -- there had been... some degree of distortion. Only those who had experienced all of the events could truly be braced for how the mission had begun: even Coordinator, who had only seen an account of that first year, might have been justified in openly questioning Twilight's sanity for having accepted it. There was only so much she wanted to kick Quiet with at once, along with an absolute limit to what anypony should be asked to believe -- especially when it came to the oldest enemy known.

And so she didn't tell him about Discord.

There were moments of self-loathing when she held back words, because this was her friend and she wasn't being completely honest with him. But she had to ask him to believe in so much, and... she didn't want to scare him off by telling him who had truly sent them. It left the draconequus' part on the cutting room floor, and Twilight made plans for apologizing to Quiet when it was all over -- or, given the paths along which her luck frequently galloped, at the moment after Discord appeared in front of them. But she'd also convinced herself that for the moment, lies of omission were justified, and so she let the partial truths flow.

When she reviewed her words later (and there would be ample opportunity while locked within chains of sorrow and steel), she would perceive the totality of the illusion which had been constructed from sound. That news of Doctor Gentle's disappearance had reached Ponyville, as it had reached so much of Equestria. Two of his had asked their friends for help, seven had traveled to join the massive search and then, lost in the wilderness, while making camp and standing guard against the wild zone... there had been her.

Twilight spoke about portions of the encounters. Of what they'd found so close to the orchard: bodies buried, but not the words Pinkie had spoken over them. About surges of magic born from fear -- but only two kinds, because there was a Secret in play and the part of her which could truly understand what Applejack was going through also recognized those words weren't hers to say. (It was surprisingly easy to leave those details out.) She talked about the snitcher, brought up deathstones, and invoked the possibility of somepony else while being unable to provide a hint towards any such pony's identity, for she seemed to have no sudden instincts that could be offered.

She told Quiet about many things and he listened to all of them, not entirely in silence. There were times when he swallowed (the accidental attack at the lake did that, even with all of Applejack's actions removed) and others when the winces were nearly audible (such as Twilight's near-fall from the observation tower). She briefly touched on what Rarity had felt might be going on internally during the transformations, and his very breath had shuddered. She spoke of Coordinator and watched eyes narrow, his tail lashing with instinctive rage.

She didn't tell him everything. She didn't mention the original Bearers, or that the sisters had once been ordinary ponies: she couldn't bear to shatter any faith he might have possessed. And with the North thus far silent, there had been no need to bring Cadance into the tale. But she had made her mistake, and so she told him enough.

He was almost completely still within the narrow pantry after she finished: head slightly down, with only his tail twitching. There was a certain amount of sag to his posture, as if he'd just been through a race: one where he'd oddly completely stopped moving immediately after crossing the finish line, instead of wisely proceeding into the much slower trot of a gradual cooldown. And he was very visibly thinking. It seemed to be something of an underreaction for a pony who'd just learned about a disruption to the very foundations of the world. Or perhaps there was simply no outburst which ever could have been large enough.

The next words came easily. "I'm sorry," Twilight softly told him. "I know it's a lot to take in. I understand how scary it might be. Just -- looking at her mark..."

He nodded, although it didn't really feel as if he was nodding at her. A general acknowledgement being directed towards the air.

"And I'm sorry I lied to you," she added. That I'm still lying. But it's Discord, and... is this what the Secret does? What Applejack has to go through every time? It hurts... "I didn't want to. I know it might hurt, thinking I didn't trust you..."

"You..." A shallow breath, and then a steadier one. "...you had your reasons, Twilight. Good ones. This isn't -- it isn't news which should just be casually spread around. Even if you'd just gone to Chief Copper..." A quick, rapidly-suppressed shudder. "...no, that is something I don't have to think about right now. Let me focus on the nightmares I can deal with. Or at least -- want to pretend I can. Twilight..."

Another breath. She watched the pain travel from ribs to features, got ready to move closer in case she needed to tap there and there.

"...it -- means a lot, that you told me this. That you... trust me with it. But..." His tail steadied. "...I'm pretty sure I have to ask some questions. I think anypony would."

She wished she could find a smile. "I'd be shocked if you didn't."

He managed a bare nod. "I guess..." And now it was a very familiar expression: that of somepony trying to figure out just which order the checklist was supposed to be in. "...the first one would be 'Have you tried to contact Canterlot for help?' If anypony might understand about failed attempts to become an alicorn -- the Princess might have seen a few over the centuries, maybe even something just like this..."

Twilight slowly shook her head. "We can't." Discord had not been mentioned, and so neither had his rules. "At the very least --" and this was a form of truth "-- we'd need to have her with us and willing to travel there, or to let herself be met here. We couldn't ambush her with the Diarchy: that would scare her, and... so many things happen when she's scared. I've seen her strength, Quiet: I've had to fight it off. If she doesn't want to go..." She needed a breath of her own, and took in flour-scented air. "...if it came down to it, the Princesses could beat her in a fight: I'm sure of that. But it would destroy any trust she had in us. It might bring her to the point where she wouldn't accept our help, and -- just the fight could do a lot of damage."

She tried to fight off the internal image of a single working getting through and only managed to push it slightly to one side, leaving her looking at him through the edges of apocalypse.

"So I've been asked for help," he decided (and there was some wryness returning to his tones, something which was so good to hear), "where the palace hasn't. I feel either extremely flattered or decidedly overestimated. Possibly both. And given that we're still talking about somepony with alicorn-level strength, is there any chance of reinforcements appearing on the horizon?"

"Right now, it's just Trixie. And she's still a few days out." Twilight repressed most of the sigh. "She doesn't even know why she's coming. Just that there's a situation which requires a pony who knows about essence, in case that's what was involved. I actually told you more than I told her, but... there are things I couldn't put in a scroll."

Another, somewhat steadier nod. "It's hard enough to hear. It's... having you speak which lets me believe it. Just reading the words..." A long pause. "So the next question is probably... her. Twilight -- when it comes to her, ultimately, what are you trying to do?"

"Help." It was the only possible answer.

His head came up all the way, and a thin smile just barely managed to manifest on his lips. "I think I need a more exacting definition."

She sighed. "I don't know what can help her, Quiet. It's her mark. The mark doesn't change. It just is. But -- I think..."

And she truly thought about it then, as he watched her. Being patient. Waiting for her, exactly as her friends would.

"...she isn't a bad pony," Twilight finally went on. "I believe her, when she said she was trying to change in order to help the broken. Even if --" and she felt an odd blush beginning to suffuse her cheeks "-- I still don't know what 'broken' means. Maybe she's fooled all of us, but -- right now, I think she has a good heart. But she's still killed, if only in self-defense, or by accident. She's still dangerous, and... it's the mark. It may not be possible to stop her cycle, and the pain..." It was her turn to shudder. "I want to help her, in any way I can, and I don't know if that's even possible. I just -- want to try." Her right foreleg came up, went down: a single small stomp. "And I feel so helpless, because it's so hard to believe anything could ever work. I don't know if it's possible for me to do anything, for anypony..."

"Helpless," Quiet softly said, "is -- a rather large portion of what I'm feeling right now. Twilight, if you feel as if there's nothing you could do for her, then what are you hoping for from me? I understand that you may need a fresh reason for remaining in the area, or that you might wind up hiding in the wild zone while you seek her. If you need to stay in the castle, I can do that much. I can help find a story to suit. But beyond that... how can I help you and her alike?"

It was both question and request, and it came from a friend.

"You're a native," Twilight told him. "I've been hoping that she lived around here. That she didn't gallop or teleport across the continent to reach Trotter's Falls. I can't judge by her accent, because there's... too much pain in her voice to find one." A faint smile, one with no real humor behind it. "But -- a mare. Maybe one of her three aspects is close to her original appearance. I told you her colors, and she's around Fluttershy's age, maybe a couple of years older. A mare who maybe wore dresses a lot, ones with thick collars, because she would have had to hide the snitcher and --" this had just occurred to her "-- Doctor Gentle was surprised to see somepony wearing one of the deathstones -- shiftstones -- one of them as jewelry and he's from here, so she wouldn't have had that part on display. A mare who kept to herself a lot, who studied, who..." Stopped. Sighed. "I don't know, Quiet. Anything you might somehow know, anything you might have heard. I'm sure the resonance bomb sent her home, because I know what it made me feel. But we don't know how far she came to get here, or how long she's been like this. It's possible that --" and the thought just barely made it through "-- she's like the Princess, she doesn't... age... and she could have been like this for --"

But that was when his left foreleg came up: stop.

"Anything I might know," Quiet thoughtfully said. "Anything I might have heard..."

There were emotional states which Twilight would never need to record on a scroll in order to understand, tones instantly recognized by something close to the core of her being. She knew the sound of a pony putting an idea together in a hurry.

"Quiet?"

"There are..." A moment of visible struggle, trying to find the right words. "...whispers. Things ponies talk about in undercurrents, things I've ignored because they're not subjects I care to hear discussed in public. Everything you just told me -- it's bringing those memories back, forcing me to view them through a new lens. I know time is precious, Twilight, I know the party won't reach morning and you need to think of something before then -- but please, if you can, give me a minute... I'm sure -- I'm sure there was something I heard..."

She did, watched as he breathed. Thought. And finally, he spoke.

"This," he softly told her, "isn't the kindest of settlements, in so many ways. The land is barren, and... more than the soil lies fallow. I try not to think of my home that way, because there are things I don't want to think about at all. But now I have to, Twilight. I have to think about poisonous words, and the ponies who speak them. Things everypony would be better off without. Ponies. One pony..."

It wasn't quite a guess. "Coordinator?" And something rose within her, something partially comprised of blame with aspects of rage, all bound together by a need to find somepony she could take it out on...

Twilight focused on Quiet: what he was about to say, with no doubts regarding why. It was perfectly naturally to do so, for he was her friend, and there was every chance he was about to tell her what she wanted to hear.

"He wants power," Quiet reminded her. "Finding a way to become an alicorn -- that would be power he'd desire, don't you think?" The words were now being forced out from between his teeth, syllables half-bitten by rage. "Power he would do anything for. If he had even a hint that it was possible, he'd chase it to the end of his days."

Her eyes widened.

If anypony would try to convince somepony that they were broken...

"He wanted me," Twilight said, her voice suffused with a mixture of realization and fury, "to stop doing things. He was trying to chase me off the search, wasn't he? He was trying to get us all to stop looking for her!"

He was in the Gifted School... there's so much he could have seen...

(She didn't consider that just about all the things at the Gifted School were texts she could have accessed -- and possibly more for her, if the Princess granted permission. She simply considered his ability to talk his way past things, to blackmail, for this was a pony she already hated. A pony she could believe anything of. It was so easy to place him in the role of what Pinkie had called the worst pony in the world. So natural and welcoming.)

"He has to be part of it," Quiet slowly nodded. "If anypony is wrapped up in this, Twilight, it's him: I can almost feel that. And --"

This time, it was his eyes which went wide, and she watched the spark of realization ignite within.

"-- there was something I overheard when I was going into his office, something about the castle and the party..."

She needed to place blame, and so readily accepted the target. The actual range, however, was unexpected. "Your castle?"

"He was talking about slipping away," he went on, anger still building. "A conference. And he stopped quickly enough, as soon as he realized I was there. I thought he was just going to use the party to solidify a few connections. And it's possible that he was just talking about what he intended to try with you. But now, thinking about all this, seeing some of the ponies who are here tonight..."

The growing anger receded, if only for a moment, and he smiled.

"Forgive me, Twilight," Quiet said, "but... I've been hearing some rather odd accents tonight, and I was thinking that... it's a rather long way to come, just to meet a Princess."

She recognized it as half a tease, an attempt to boost her spirits in the midst of horror, and also knew most of the remainder was theory. It still left something unexplained. "But -- your castle? Why would he need your castle? And how could he slip away?"

"It's an old castle," he reminded her. "Planned out in Early Canterlot Look What A Strong Field I've Got. That part of history when ponies still had to worry about the possibility of invaders. That encourages a few interesting design choices, Twilight. Hidden passageways. Secret rooms. When all else fails, one final means of getting out. I'm guessing the Princess has a few of her own, things so old as to leave only two ponies who remember them. There's a chance he knows about a few of the ones here, if only because one of his spiritual ancestors forced one of my direct ones to render a few partial blueprints or pay a rather large fine. Or because he's just been sneaking around, like he did when he stole Rainbow's manuscript. But I grew up in this castle, Twilight. I know them all. It's still possible that he was talking about you, but..."

He blinked.

"It's too early," Quiet cut himself off. "It's too early. He clearly used the first opportunity he had to try and blackmail you, but there was a time in what I overheard. And unless I've completely lost track of the clock, it's still too early..."

"A conference," Twilight tried.

"Yes. I only heard a little, but.. let me think..." Visible concentration. "He used a plural. Multiple ponies."

It brought up the natural question. "Who was he talking to?"

Which triggered a sigh. "I don't know. He was using a speaking tube --" and spotted her confusion. "You haven't seen them. They're just channels for sound, Twilight: talk into this end and somepony listens on the other. There's no magic involved. Some government buildings are trying them out, to keep ponies from going up and down ramps all the time. He saw me, and he rotated his end against the wall." Carefully, "Twilight -- this could still be a false alarm. He tried to blackmail you. This party is an opportunity to directly blackmail ponies from all over the continent --"

He stopped. Shook his head, two hard tosses, left to right and back.

"Directly." It was half a mutter. "A direct blackmail attempt. It could have been an anonymous note slipped under your door, but..."

"He -- wanted me to see him as..." She sought out the word. "...necessary. That I needed him as the first member of my staff."

"Necessary," Quiet slowly nodded. "Yes. And he could wind up trying something else before the end of the night. Something which isn't connected to her. But if there's a chance..."

She waited.

"Let's go back out to the party," he suggested. "Let me wander around a little. The seven of you stand out, and -- I don't. I'm not a Bearer: I'm just the local Lord, one whose use of the title generally centers around paying what feels like the majority of the local taxes. I can get fairly close to ponies and they won't change the topic because I'm there. You get your friends together: tell them whatever you can, and let them know we all may need to take a little side trip. But --" another wince "-- and I already know you're not going to like this... it means you have to leave Coordinator alone, at least for the rest of the party. I know you must want to try turning him in -- but if he's any part of this, we need him running loose for a while longer, just to see where he runs to."

"I don't know what I can do about him," she softly admitted. "He talked about making copies..."

Quiet sighed, dipped his head -- then brought his gaze up again. "We'll think of something."

We will. What did the pronoun indicate? The two of them? All of her friends, with a sibling providing a little extra advice? She didn't know. She just understood that he was part of it.

His right foreleg came up, and the hoof thoughtfully rubbed his chin. "Let me go out first? And give me a couple of minutes before you go back. Keep some separation between us once we're both out there: ponies already got to see us together and if I'm going to eavesdrop, they have to see you without me. If I learn anything, I'll make my way to you."

She nodded -- and then felt her skin go pale beneath her fur. "We -- Quiet, I know I got you in trouble with your spouse, I just didn't think about it, I wasn't thinking and --"

"-- it's my trouble," he gently interrupted. "And it's not as bad as you might think. I'm used to a little trouble, and..." A pause, and then, "Twilight, you could learn to dance, if you really tried. Not just the Sapients Dance. That's about spotting and repeating patterns, and that's what a lot of dancing comes down to. Memorizing and anticipating movement. Learn to dance, when you get home. It'll be useful."

She didn't know where the words came from, or why they chose that moment to emerge. "I can't even learn how to be a Princess..."

He smiled, straightened his posture, began to trot towards her.

"Dancing's more important."

And then he slipped past, just barely managing the feat in the narrow aisle between shelves. No part of him brushed against her.

The door closed behind him, and she began to count seconds. Two hundred would give him enough of a lead.

Coordinator.

It could lead nowhere: even in mystery, speaking to the pony who had just the right words to begin unlocking everything was a chance best played out within fiction. But in the here and now, it remained a chance.

Twilight was intelligent, and so the things she told herself in the name of creating personal conviction were well-reasoned. But in the end, she wanted it to be him. She needed it to be him. To know there was a monster which wore a pony's skin, and that she'd had it in her field's grip a little while ago...

Get my friends together...

Every friend she had in the castle.

It's what Rarity said. So many ponies see six. They don't understand that it's seven.

And now it's eight.

"Your spouse is looking for you." Doctor Gentle's smile was sincere, and it was also sincerely tired: the older stallion was leaning against the edge of an archway. He'd had enough rest, or what he hoped would be enough -- but there was an effort ahead, something he was used to making and one he still knew would drain him. Some of that payment was made long before the actual deed: memories came forth in the hours before a speech, placed themselves into the proper marching order, and their movement constituted an internal trampling.

Besides, he'd never really been much for parties. He enjoyed spending time with his own, and he would soon be speaking to so many of those within the hall -- but when it came to the actual festivities, it was something best done with company.

Still, he smiled at his most devoted. "Oddly, despite so many having seen the direction which you and the Princess left in, she doesn't seem to have found you. And neither did anypony else --"

But that was when Quiet glanced out at the party. A gathering which began less than two body lengths away and, for all the attention they were paying to the stallions, might have been in the rough vicinity of Baltimare.

Doctor Gentle followed his gaze, and saw no notice flowing back.

"-- exactly how much," he smoothly, worriedly changed verbal direction, "are you exerting yourself right now?"

"I have wake-up juice," Quiet quickly said. "When it comes to refreshments, I have a lot of things circulating through this party and since I paid for just about all of them, I think I'm going to sample a few. Doctor, we need to talk. Now."

"Bad enough," the older stallion steadily asked, "that we do not have time to move?"

"We can go slip into a room. But we have to slip away."

There was no desperation in the younger male's voice. But there was a hint of the underlying effort, and so Doctor Gentle nodded.

"Quickly," he said. "And I will be keeping an eye on you."

"I'll be all right."

"Every moment we continue this --" which was when he realized he was now contributing to the problem, and exchanged speech for motion.

They slipped away.

At the moment they were out of sight (an oversized closet, mostly occupied by vaguely musty coats), Doctor Gentle moved closer, his head leaning in to the thin stallion's chest. The younger male held still, permitted warm mauve ears to make contact.

"Too fast," Doctor Gentle immediately said. "Far too fast for my liking."

"It can't be helped. And it's not the last effort I'll have to make tonight." More quickly, "Before we do anything else: what, exactly, did Coordinator tell you?"

The older stallion pulled back, softly sighed. "He spoke of failure, none of which was his fault. That the Princess is insane, with no regard for the welfare of those everypony else falsely perceives as her friends. That she cares about nopony, not even herself, and a pony who cares for none cannot be manipulated. Oh, and he claimed that she attempted to kill him, and he barely escaped -- which given his original plans, would have to be from a chance encounter in the hallway which went rather wrong, although it is extremely easy to imagine him offending somepony exactly that much. So in all things other than the admission of failure -- something which may have only emerged because he seemed far too stressed to think of a way to conceal that part -- he lied. Even so, it means our first option..." his ears dipped, with tail sagging to suit "...has, at least for the moment, failed. We cannot control the Bearers through his dubious arts."

"That still leaves our second option," Quiet pointed out, perhaps a little too quickly. "And -- Doctor, we don't have much time. What happened between Coordinator and Twilight was snout to snout. He spoke to her directly."

It was rare for Doctor Gentle to take so much as a quarter-hoofstep back in shock, and the injury to his hind leg prevented the full expression of that locally extraordinary measure. It left the base of his tail poking into dusty linen.

"I had... thought he might wish to," he admitted. "Certainly I believed that he would have dreamed of it. But to actually have done so -- to have given the Princess somepony she could face down --"

"-- it doesn't matter now," Quiet interrupted -- and then immediately looked apologetic for having done so. "Twilight spoke to me. She --" a deep breath "-- just recruited me."

And that got a blink.

"Recruited," the older stallion stated.

"Because there's a mare somewhere out there who's in pain, a mare she wants to help. She hasn't told Canterlot about what's going on. It's just been them. All Twilight's done for backup is to call in a researcher, one she hasn't even told everything about what's been going on. She wants to help, Doctor, and -- as risky as that second option is -- it's the one we have left. I could do whatever I could, if I personally joined the Bearers in their search. I could misdirect and mislead and gallop them in circles for moons, and none of it helps. You said you would run if you had to. I told you I would go with you. And if this fails, that's what we'll have to do -- but if it works..."

Doctor Gentle took a slow breath.

"You do realize," he said with a small smile, "that some of this determination to place an all-or-nothing bet may be the natural reaction of a stallion who has just drastically offended his spouse and thus feels himself to have very little left which he can truly lose?"

Quiet's eyes went wide -- and then the right corner of his mouth convulsed, the first laugh started to emerge as his left foreleg came up for the facehoofing --

-- stopped, and he choked it back.

"Maybe," and there was still more than a touch of dark mirth in it. "Just -- maybe. But let me tell you what she told me, while we still have time. They've managed to assemble a small few aspects of the how: more than we thought, but much less than we feared. I'll tell you what they have, and then -- it's your decision, Doctor. It always was."

The older stallion nodded, listened. The younger talked. And when it was over, each could see the decision in the other's eyes.

"Do it," Doctor Gentle said. "I will make myself ready --" this smile was a faint one "-- which at least gives me an excuse to leave early. With all my concerns about the evening, I was already a poor partner for conversation, and so many failed to understand that the middle of a party was not the best place to approach me and ask about the reasons for an emergency meeting, one which would justify crossing a continent to attend. One of them had a concept of 'whisper' best suited to a stage, and given that she was trying to make her questions known at the moment when Fluttershy --" not without pride "-- had finally managed to force herself through the masses towards me..."

"She didn't overhear?"

"She did not. But she has her own concerns. She told me I looked stressed. That she felt as if something was wrong, and so she wished to help. A healer's empathy, Quiet: not on the level of a talent -- but in matters of pain, there are times when she perceives somewhat more than others do. I excused myself by speaking of births: always a convenient fallback. And now I know that when it comes to myself, she had no other concerns." A small sigh. "And it also explains why the unicorn wasn't wearing the chaos pearl. That might have set off a few reactions, if only from near-instinctive attempts to purchase and add it to our collection. So much of their funds has already..."

He stopped, took a partial step forward. The injured leg continued to drag.

"Go forth, Quiet," he told his most devoted. "We each have performances to give. Yours is improvisation, while mine is stagecraft. And in both cases -- they will be the roles of our lifetimes."

"We could still be fugitives by Sun-raising," Quiet softly noted.

"Or we could find ourselves with resources extracted from the nightscape itself."

Quiet nodded -- then raised a forehoof: something which Gentle Arrival recognized as taking the initiative, and it made the older stallion proud.

"Something else, clearly," he said. "Have at it."

"I'm going to prepare the area," Quiet told him. "There's some things I can take from the armory. Just in case. But I may need help at the end. Reinforcements. If something goes wrong, I can make one quick strike, but after that..."

"You'll have it," Doctor Gentle promised. "I'll speak to a few before I go down and instruct them on how to reach that section." A brief pause. "Are you guarding against the possibility of something going wrong, or anticipating that it will?"

Quiet took a deep breath. (Doctor Gentle noticed the accompanying wince, resolved to stay with his friend long enough to find that wake-up juice.) "Anticipating. They're going to hear all of it, Doctor. And 'they' very much includes yours. They're going --" a pause which was too short in duration and too strong in worry "-- to learn what they are. They'll... be the first to ever learn it. They've always known they were different, but... when they hear it... there's no telling how they're going to react."

Kind orange eyes briefly closed.

"They will," Doctor Gentle stated, "know just how special they truly are. How special they always were. There will likely be shock, but... in the end, I believe it will be good for them. It will answer so many of the questions which they were never able to fully voice..."

His ears went up. The tail straightened.

"So we both have things to do," he concluded. "You prepare the Bearers, and the skybox of our theater. I will set out the costumes. Get them there, Quiet. Whatever it takes, whatever you have to say -- get them there."

A lifetime, her lifetime, of trying to do the needful. Of learning that there was always one more thing to do and that somehow, the very next detail would forever be the most crucial...

He had said the words so many times. But certainly not with a Princess in attendance. Never to his. And now, at the moment when he stood on the balance point between desperation and hope, with one last chance to tip the scales...

In the end, she was what mattered. If it all failed, he would give everything up for her. Quiet was ready to do the same and for that, the older stallion loved him.

It all meant he had things to do. But he still hesitated, just before he opened the door.

If he listened... if he truly focused his ears, he could hear the party. Hints of music, with the lyrics made from the ever-flowing babble of conversation and concern. Ponies who only knew there was a party, those who were waiting to learn what the party was concealing --

-- and some who wanted to help, who would soon know so much...

He had made his speech so many times, and no number of repetitions ever served to dull the pain. He would remember, he would share his agony -- and when ponies truly listened, ones he had already known would hear him, support for the Great Work followed. But now for the first time, he would be speaking to his, the words would hurt him again, and...

...he wanted to speak.

"Tonight," he said. "Tonight, one way or another, at least for this stage... it ends."

And what came next was a statement -- but it was one which remained entirely within his thoughts, the inner voice sounding with absolute certainty and conviction. He knew how they would react in the end, after the shock had faded. He believed that and so for him, it became true.

An absolute statement, made in certainty and conviction.

It will be good for them to hear it.

The sound of a mind, so very practiced in the art, which was lying to itself.

Unveiling

She had never truly been the enemy. Somepony whose initial action had been to try and take just enough food to survive for a short time, while still leaving them with the bulk of their scant supplies -- ultimately, that might have created the first impression: 'I don't want to hurt anypony, but I need to stay alive, I need to fix this...' There had been attacks created by fear, abduction born from desperation. But somewhere within all of that was a good pony. Twilight had found herself truly believing that, even as she periodically reminded herself to harbor a few lingering doubts. Just in case.

But Coordinator -- he had always been the enemy. And to think about just how much of an enemy he could have been all along, what he could have potentially done to her...

Twilight caught sight of him every so often, as she moved about the party. He tended to stay close to the walls. There were times when she could just barely make out speckles within shadows. And not moving towards him, continuing to circulate, speak, and greet as if everything was perfectly normal, while knowing that the pony responsible --

-- or a responsible pony --

-- was right there...

The seconds ground against her fur. Minutes rasped, threatened to thin her hooves.

She couldn't attack. She couldn't accuse. She had to wait.

Her enemy had at least one ally, one which now was doing its constant best to work against her, and it was called time.

As long as the party goes on, I can't touch him. But if Quiet can't track down where this conference is, if we've got it wrong, if we're misinterpreting...

...if he gets away...

Well, in a very wide-ranging sense, she did know where he lived. But he'd just tried (and failed) to blackmail her. Would he feel secure enough to remain in Trotter's Falls after that? It was possible: he had likely believed Twilight to be leaving in the morning -- unless she found some pressing reason to change her mind. Such as, just by way of example, seeking revenge.

He could run.

And Twilight couldn't do anything.

She barely heard her own words as she greeted nobles, businessponies, those who felt themselves to be of some repute and so it was perfectly odd that Twilight still didn't know who they were. However, she did seem to be saying the right things, because nopony had a particularly adverse reaction to any of it. Or perhaps they were simply reluctant to point out any oddities which arose in the words of a Princess.

Twilight spoke, and would remember very little of what she'd said to anypony. More of her attention was dedicated to searching. Most of what remained was busy with thinking.

Why wouldn't he do it to himself? He wants the power.

Maybe he knew there would be a risk. He wouldn't risk himself, not for the trial gallop. And if somepony else changed first and he'd been responsible for her changing, then he could control her, maybe speak through her...

How much does he know? How much did she contribute? How did they meet? Where does she even come from --

-- slow down. He's part of it: he has to be. He wanted us to stop searching for her. It could be just the two of them, or there could be a third pony involved somewhere.

But he's wrapped up in this. I know he is.

(She knew that. It was so easy to believe it.)

Still searching, and there were so many ponies to search through: it had to be hundreds now in the great hall, perhaps with more wandering off to find bathrooms, look at the various collections on the sly, hopefully not get into the library, and -- sneak off to where a conference might be? It seemed possible. But at the same time, some ponies would become bored, tired, decide they'd reached their limits, and venture back out into the storm. There was a natural flow of departure from most parties: for Fluttershy, when attending just about anything which wasn't merely the seven of them, it was a current which frequently had her edging towards the nearest exit. Some of the earliest arrivals might have already braved the inevitable drenching. Others would follow in their own course. The crowd would thin out and that would make it easier to search, but...

I'll find them before then.

...Coordinator could slip out.

A memory rose up. An angry speech regarding names, and how one hadn't been earned.

Maybe it should be 'he' could slip out --

-- there she is!

She hadn't seen Quiet, and she'd been looking for him as much as everypony else. So many others were currently lost to her view, perhaps due to bathrooms, stuntwork, or simply having finally made a break for it. But a sway of pink curls registered at the absolute left of her vision, and that allowed the relay to begin.

Twilight diverted her course and within seconds, was next to a friend.

"Oh, there you are!" Pinkie exhaled, the normal gush partially muted by a mix of the volume constraints from both party and open relief. "Rarity was looking for you. Actually, just about everypony was looking for you, at least for a little while. More than usual. The new usual. And nopony could find you. But here you are, and you're okay!" A brief pause, one which consumed half of her current decibels. "But Rarity didn't think you were. But it was a nice dance, and --" her volume dropped further, a speech truly meant for Twilight's ears alone "-- it was nice just to see you dance. Dance for real, and have fun doing it! Even if that one mare got really mad, and it was like Rarity's fur was trying to cut through her dress, and..."

Pinkie took a breath, and the words fell all the way into whisper.

"...maybe when it comes to your dance partners, you have to think about --"

Softly, "-- Pinkie, can we talk for a few seconds?"

The baker blinked. Nodded, then altered her own path. Twilight followed. They disposed of six have-to-greeters along the way, at least temporarily. But some tried to follow, and kept doing so right up until they reached the last refuge of all mares in search of privacy, at least for those who weren't currently being followed by more mares.

It wasn't a particularly large restroom. (It could potentially accommodate more than two ponies, but anything over that number would have been waiting for the first pair to finish, and different stations would have been required for each.) They waited until the current occupants had left, and Twilight made sure to lock the door.

"Rarity," Pinkie immediately resumed, "is really really upset. And that one mare, the pretty one with the green and a little bit of orange, who looks like somepony built a compost heap right under her snout -- she's furious. She went off looking for you. I think she kept looking for you after everypony else gave up, because she hasn't been back since. Or maybe she just got so mad that she decided not to come back. Twilight, I like him... Quiet? Quiet -- and it was nice to see you dance, because you looked like you were having fun, real fun like you haven't in a while, and maybe a little more -- but you nuzzled him..."

Another breath, which came as a slight surprise. Pinkie usually got a lot more words out of a single inhalation.

"I think I know what his wife looks like now," she finished. "And what she looks like when she's furious."

Helpless blue eyes moved their gaze over Twilight. Waited.

Twilight took a breath of her own, one which informed her of just how much use the bathroom had been seeing: a few seconds were expended in coughing. "That's not important right now."

"I think it is," Pinkie gently said, an odd undercurrent of insistence lacing the words. "I think we have to talk about it. I know Rarity needs to talk about it with you, as soon as she can, but she might still be searching the castle. And I heard some other things --"

"-- it's about her," Twilight interrupted. (Anypony who had Pinkie in their lives would have to interrupt on a fairly regular basis.) "Everything else has to wait, because this is about tonight."

The baker's eyes went wide. "Something's happening? No, that's a silly question: of course something's happening or you wouldn't --" There was a quick vibration of curls, and then Pinkie refocused. "Okay. What do you need me to do?"

"You helped everypony set up for the party. That meant going through a lot of the castle. Did you see any rooms which nopony is going to be using right now?" Their group bath wouldn't be it, not with so many ponies potentially in need of facilities.

A visible moment of thought, and then Pinkie nodded. "The birthing room."

It wasn't quite perfect: there was always a chance for one of the Doctor's patients to arrive with something which could not be postponed and if so, it was the last room Twilight wanted to be found in: somepony might ask her to stay. But it was large enough to accommodate all of them, and wasn't the kind of place where most ponies would casually venture or snoop. "Okay. Go around. Find the others. I'll do the same. Make sure nopony can hear you. If you find somepony, tell them to find somepony else. Have them slip out one at a time --"

This is so risky. We all need to talk, and we have to do it in privacy. But ponies are going to notice if all of the Bearers are out of the great hall. They might wonder why. We can't stay away too long, and -- if we're all gone, Coordinator can just slip out without any of us seeing...

There were aspects of those observations which couldn't be helped. There was also one which had just acquired backup.

"-- and we'll all meet up there, just for a few minutes: I think that's all we can risk right now. But you need to find Quiet, too."

"...Quiet?" A little surprise, added to a tinge of shock, supersaturated with curiosity.

Twilight quickly nodded. "Tell him where we're going, but not to come up unless it's an emergency. He needs to be watching Coordinator."

"He's watching..." And there were things Pinkie had trouble perceiving: social lines which resisted crossing, a musician's desire not to change the tune, a crowd's total disinterest in serving as a soft place to land -- but there were others where she spotted the most crucial part before anypony else.

With both wonder and an open touch of pride, "Twilight -- you asked for help?"

It made Twilight smile.

"He's with us, Pinkie," she told her friend.

"But..." A small dip of the tail, and the blue eyes became slightly clouded. "...you didn't tell him about -- um..." Hooves rotated, twisted against the floor. "...you know."

"No. I told him about her. But there were things I couldn't say, and that was one of them." (Pinkie nodded, her face flushed with an odd mixture of relief and concern.) "I'll tell everypony the rest when we're all in the birthing room. Just get everypony up there if you can, in --"

-- how long did they have? Quiet had mentioned a time, something where it was currently too early -- and Twilight hadn't asked when that time was.

It had been a mistake. She'd been so full of hope (and anger, a targeted anger at last) that acquiring a crucial piece of information had slipped her mind. She had to be more careful...

"-- forty minutes from now. Unless you find Quiet first. And if you do, ask him what the time is. If it's less than that, or we couldn't get back down before then, tell me and we'll think of something else." Thinking fast, reminding herself that she had to think. "Try to find him first if you can. I don't know how long we have."

Pinkie nodded, the downwards portion of the movements almost frantic as the unknown deadline placed extra weight against her mane. "I'll go! But I'll have to go up to your room. Or send somepony there. Because while you were gone, I found Spike and told him about the scroll problem, and he was really grumbly but he sort of understood, so that's where he is. Being grumbly."

And they all had to be together for this.

Not without regret, Quiet won't be able to come up. Not if he's watching Coordinator. But it still gave her a chance to let the others know.

"Okay. Have everypony looking for each other and passing the search along except Spike: I don't want to risk having him down there. Just send him directly to the birthing room."

Pinkie nodded, and they both headed out. But Twilight was finding more things to worry about by the second. They didn't have a plan. They might not have time to make one. They just had to do whatever they could...

Well, Rainbow, and most of the sarcasm in the thought was self-directed, at least this fight won't suffer from overthinking.

Coordinator was the enemy, and there were ways in which time was his ally -- but it wasn't an entirely reliable one. Pinkie managed to reach Twilight ten minutes into the search, and whispered a pair of words on the trot-by: "Two hours."

They didn't have as much time as Twilight might have wished for. (On an emotional, completely unreasoning level, they had too much: she wanted to kick him now.) But they had enough for a quick conference, even though having ponies notice they'd all left might still turn into a problem. However, to conduct a briefing in stages...

Maybe we should have. But it was too late now.

Twilight was the one who found Fluttershy tucked into a different corner, and all she needed to clear it was to provide a reason for leaving. She saw Pinkie locate Applejack, briefly spotted a lightly-lashing purple tail (with half of its elaborate curling disrupted) going around the corner of an upper rim hallway. Pony by pony, the whispered word seemed to be getting out. But time was against them: she couldn't be sure everypony had been informed, she didn't know how all of those on the ground level would react to even a brief group absence, and if Coordinator realized something was going on...

Pinkie talked to Quiet. He'll watch.

There were clocks around the border to look at, and that helped her keep track. But she was trying not to look at them too often. Trying to act normal.

Then again, maybe looking to see when a party will end is normal. Or had felt as if it was normal once on her first night in the tree, waiting for everypony to recognize that her refusal to participate meant she didn't want them there, didn't want anything to do with anypony, didn't want friends...

She spoke with ponies who would never be her friend. She spoke with those who simply wanted to use her. Some felt she could use them. She circulated alone, unable to control the current, and it felt as if the only thing keeping the party from dissolving into a fresh chaos storm was knowing there was a place she could go. Perhaps more than one. Her friends would be waiting in the birthing room, and after that...

Let it be him.

It almost would have been a prayer, if she'd still had faith in anything she could pray to.

She was the fifth one in. Spike, looking vaguely nauseous (and prone to occasional glances at the scorch mark near the doorway), seemed to have been there the longest. Twenty seconds after she trotted inside and quickly asked the others to wait a little longer (with Rarity's steadily-lashing tail giving silent protest), Rainbow and Pinkie arrived together.

"I know this has to be important," the pegasus muttered as she kicked the door closed behind her, "but I really hope it's good. What's going on?"

Rarity took a half-step forward, moving away from the medicine shelf and what was now somewhat more comprehensive contents than Twilight had seen during her first involuntary visit. "I believe," she tensely declared, "that we have all been seeking answers for any number of permutations regarding that particular question." And then, just slightly louder and at least twice as harsh, "What is going on, Twilight?"

Who almost stepped back, impacted by the sheer force of what felt like a verbal assault -- but then glanced at Pinkie, and the baker quickly shook her head.

"We can talk," she said. "Nopony's listening. But we may not be able to stay long. Parties notice things because parties are sort of alive. So after a while, it'll notice we're gone, and it might just decide we're taking a break so we can gossip about everypony we've met. But if we're here too long, it might get mad, or even start to disperse because it'll decide we're done for the night." A small head tilt in Twilight's direction served as a cue. "What happened?"

Twilight abruptly winced.

"Twilight?" Spike asked. "Something's wrong? I know it's about her, but --"

"-- no, that's not it." She'd just realized something, and so used a little of their scant time on a very important request. "Rainbow --" and watched ears perk "-- I need you to promise something."

"Okay..." the weather coordinator cautiously said -- then, more quickly, "Which isn't me agreeing. Not until I hear what I'm supposed to be agreeing to."

And with Twilight already knowing she was in trouble, "That no matter what I say, you're not going to go hurt anypony. Not right now. You can't. It might ruin everything."

"Which means," Rainbow shot back, her left forehoof already beginning to scrape at the floor as cyan wings flared, "there's somepony I'm gonna want to hurt after hearing this. And you're telling me I can't?"

"It's the mission, Rainbow," Twilight desperately tried. "Please --"

"-- fine," and the angry stomp went into stone. "I promise. Just tell me there's some part where I get to put hurt on somepony who deserves it."

"Maybe." Which was when Twilight felt her gaze go harsh. "But there might be a line."

They were looking at each other. Rainbow could see Twilight's expression, had seemingly heard every undertone, and so the next question did not emerge as a joke. "A cider sort of line?"

"I don't know." Although it was rather easy to picture, along with the signs which would need to line the route. Wait To Kick Coordinator Into Dust From This Point: Six Hours.

"Then talk to us," Rarity softly insisted. "I believe we truly need to know what is in your head."

She did, as quickly as she could manage. It took a little under a minute before Applejack's teeth reflexively (and very nearly preemptively) clamped down on Rainbow's tail, an action which almost immediately left the farmer just barely touching the floor, orange hind hooves retaining the lightest of contact as powerful wings furiously beat at the air.

"I'm going to electrocute --"

"-- Rainbow!"

"FINE!" The landing was just about all at once, and Applejack's first move after release was to rub her aching jaw. "But if there's a line, then I'm first!"

Twilight instinctively checked with Pinkie, learned nopony was moving in to check on any echoes, then went on. It didn't take long to cover the important parts.

And then her friends were looking at her. Six different looks.

Rainbow's was the easiest to read: she was furious, and concealing that upon their return to the party would take a real effort, one which might break at any moment -- shortly followed by her target's spine. Spike's reaction felt like a muted version of Twilight's own: a slow nod accompanied by the feeling that he was waiting, for he had been through the Gifted School years with her, and so belief came easily. Fluttershy was openly worried, but there seemed to be a deeper layer to that concern. Applejack was almost unreadable, taking slow breaths through narrowed nostrils. By contrast, Pinkie was bearing a rather visible expression of mixed evaluation and extreme concentration, almost as if she was trying to put all of her resources towards a single goal and finding herself becoming distracted along the way. And Rarity's tail slowly halted its movement, just before her horn ignited and the light blue field began to restore the curls.

"There are other subjects," she quietly stated, "which we shall be discussing in time. But I recognize that time is not now." A near-loop was carefully added to the purple fall. "For now -- I have been listening to ponies for most of the night. I have heard the word 'conference' drift through several times. And there are certainly ponies here tonight who might not have seen each other in some moons, years, or not at all: ones from far away, whose accents cross the continent. Perhaps some are using the opportunity for other things: business, contacts, and connections. But 'conference'... that implies a large gathering. Pinkie, have you been hearing the same?"

The baker just barely nodded, and it struck them all as a decided underreaction -- but she was still concentrating.

Applejack took a half-step forward. "I ain't sure about this," she said. "About --" and a reluctant glance at Twilight "-- Quiet."

Who instantly went on the defensive. "He's my friend."

Rarity, a near-whisper, so soft that Twilight almost doubted she'd heard anything at all: "Oh, is that how you feel..."

"Ah know he is," Applejack awkwardly stated. "But it's just kind of hard to believe we finally found the one pony who's going to help finish things. The one who helps us find all the answers. Most of what we've found just brings in more questions, like with Grape Indulgence and that talk in a closed room. It got us a little of the way there, but not all of it. And... Twilight, he's been good to us. To you especially: I know that. But we're trusting here, and..." She took a deep breath, one where Twilight's eyes automatically went to the place where a hat would not have shifted. "...trust is hard. I trusted just about more than I ever did in my whole life a little while ago, and... I don't know Quiet, not as well as you do. I just know that you decided to trust, so now we've all got to, and --"

Another breath. Orange hooves shuffled, and looked as if their owner almost wished to bolt.

"-- I don't suspect him of anything," she went on. "I don't have any bad feelings or nothin'. It's just -- taking a chance. We've been taking a lot of those, and it almost feels like something has to go bad eventually. Or..." A brief pause. "...maybe it's me not feeling right because of everything, so he can't feel right neither."

Fluttershy's head tilted, slightly down and right: the coral manefall swayed inwards. "...we've been trusting a lot," she softly agreed. "Taking chances. But we took a chance on Discord, and on her... I think we can take one more."

Silence, filled only by Twilight's grateful look -- and then Applejack nodded. "Yeah. We can. Sorry, everypony. I'm just -- well, y'know." She looked as if she wanted to sigh, and did not. Instead, there was a small smile. "By the by, nice work there, Twilight. Telling the truth without tellin' all of it."

She managed to smile back. "Let's just hope nothing happens with her if the green loop is up."

"Ask Moon, 'cause that's more of a prayer," Applejack stated, and each word had its own shudder. "Anypony else?"

Spike nodded. "I understand about the scroll and not going back down there. But I have to be with you guys if Quiet finds out where the conference is."

"It's a risk," Twilight immediately protested. "When we don't know --"

"-- it's the seven of us," he cut in. "That was the rule. Want to find out what happens if we break it?"

His sister's lips briefly quirked.

"It's a risk," Twilight repeated. "But so is everything else. All right, Spike: somepony will come up and get you when it's time. But if the scroll comes in, do whatever you can to keep its arrival quiet and small." He nodded, and she wondered if she'd just made another mistake.

"I'll get Spike," Rainbow offered, feathers still vibrating with badly-repressed tension. "It'll give me less time in the hall. It gets me away from him." Now mixing in disgruntlement, "I was doing some great small-scale stuff for ponies, just with the space I had to work with, and now I can't because I might see him and just change course..."

And that alteration would occur on instinct. "All right. We wait for Quiet's signal."

"And hope he finds something where he can give one," Applejack added. "And that there's something at the other end which isn't the trotting horse apple just trying to get money out of a whole bunch of ponies at once." Her own tail was now beginning to lash. "Baked Bads -- wouldn't tell anypony about Mac's injury... yeah, there's gonna be a line..."

And hope. False leads. Chasing the wrong tail. They could be going after exactly the right pony and still have something go wrong.

"And hope," Twilight said aloud as she turned to lead the way out: nearly everypony else followed suit. "Let's --"

"-- wait." And it had come from Pinkie.

They all turned, looked at her, so close to the birthing table. Watched as her ears bobbed out of rhythm with each other. Twisted, rotated, nearly danced: partners with no interest in matching each other. And then they stopped.

"I... usually can't use my Pinkie Sense when I want to," she said, with an odd hesitation in the words. "Hardly ever, and maybe even practically never for when I was a little Pinkie. But that's most of the time. I've had to try a lot lately, trying to find out if ponies were listening to us, and I feel like that's been getting easier, because I've had to do it so much. So I was trying to use it now. I wanted to know if this would help. And..." A horribly awkward pause, and the curls dipped. "...it's mostly a new sequence. I don't have anything I can compare it to, because a lot of Pinkie Sense is having it happen and then seeing what happens next, to make the connections. So I don't completely know what it means. I'm guessing, and guesses aren't good right now. But..."

"It's okay, Pinkie," Twilight gently said. "We all believe in you. Guess."

Pinkie briefly smiled.

"I think," she finished, "something big is going to happen tonight. Something where things change."

Spike's question was immediate: "Good change or bad change?"

Which banished the smile, replacing it with a small, helpless shrug. "I don't know, Spike. I'm sorry. I wish I did."

Finding a way to help her. Stopping Coordinator. Finding out what's been going on and making it right...

Twilight knew that not all change was positive. But she had hope, and the emotion was so much easier to keep a mouth grip on when you had friends.

"We'll be careful," she told them. "Let's get down there."

In the time to come, it would be hard to remember certain aspects of the party. It was something like being with the Princess at the Gala, pressing hoof after hoof: after a while, ponies began to blur. It didn't help that she was paying more attention to those who wouldn't speak with her. Trying to listen in on conversations as she passed little eddies in the flow, discussions which frequently felt as if they'd just changed because she'd gotten close.

It gave her very little to hear, and none of what they were speaking about concerned what she wanted to know. None of them even seemed to be discussing nuzzles, at least while she was in range.

The party wore on, tried to grate away fur and patience alike -- but no matter how variable the seconds seemed to have become (and they were probably taking their orders from the shattered clock), they passed. It was starting to become late, and so ponies began to leave. That was natural.

She hadn't gotten to see all of the arrivals: there had been ponies present when they'd all reached the hall, and she'd seldom been in a position to notice the stragglers, fashionably-late, and hopelessly-lost as they finally staggered in, the order of their arrival indicated by the progressive dampness of elaborate clothing, with the last pony in miserably squishing her way about the floor. But she'd been to so many of Pinkie's parties and so understood that departures, while not occurring as an exact reversal of arrivals, had a certain pattern. Barring fights, couples who'd come in together left the same way. (A big fight could lead to some of those pairings swapping members.) A pony entering alone might be fortunate enough to leave with a partner, and truly friendly groups tended to coordinate unless one member had a pressing need to get up early, or was trotting out with a formerly-single pony.

(It felt something like watching the flight of dandelion seeds, an activity which she'd insisted was completely pointless all the way up the hill, right up until Rainbow had sent a single gust across the blooms, leaving Twilight and Pinkie to quietly sit back and watch a dance nopony would ever be able to completely replicate: subtle patterns which only the seeds truly understood and could never articulate. Pinkie had stayed with her the whole time. She'd said that when you understood dandelions, you could understand a little more about ponies. Twilight, unable to find the lesson, had never placed anything in a scroll. But there was a moment on that night when she looked at the flow and nearly perceived drifting puffs of future life.)

What Pinkie had noticed was that some of them were leaving in clumps.

"Do you see it?" It was a whisper, coming in from her left: Pinkie had taken up bodyguard duties again. "Those six. I don't think any of them have been near each other all night. Maybe it happened while we were in the Doctor's room, but now they're all leaving together. And that's not the main way out. Maybe they just decided they all really really like each other, but there's been some weird groups coming together, just before they go away..."

She wanted to see it, and couldn't quite make it out. But she trusted her friend. "I believe you," Twilight whispered back: such communications were becoming easier as the crowd thinned, the party wound down to its natural conclusion -- and the time approached. "But we can't follow. We have to --"

-- and from her right, a very soft "Twilight?"

She'd been looking for him across so much of the night and the task had rapidly turned futile, just before threatening to go into a small-scale version of eternal. But of course, he would have been trying to stay out of sight, and Twilight almost considered it a miracle that Pinkie had managed to make contact. "Greetings, Lord Presence," she smiled. "The hall has missed your company. Why, one would almost think that you weren't particularly suited to parties..."

"Or," Quiet wryly replied, "that one boon, and dance, are my limit." He subtly glanced around, and she wasn't sure what he was looking for. His spouse, perhaps -- but there hadn't been a hint of that mare for hours. (Twilight felt absolutely no guilt about that, which was overbalanced by the bale-tons of concern about what would happen when Quiet was finally in the same room with Bella Donna again.) "Do you have a moment? As we're getting a little scarce on those right now..."

He nodded towards the bar, which was currently occupied by ponies taking advantage of last call, ponies who were too drunk to understand what 'last call' meant and were thus prepared to argue any alcohol-unfavorable definition for some time, and a great deal of uneaten griffon cuisine (modified).

"Yes, I do," Twilight replied, keeping up appearances. "So..."

The three began to trot together. Five hoofsteps in, they went through a dry place in the gradually-draining flow. And Quiet's warm breath wafted against her right ear.

"I know where," he whispered. "I've been watching. I saw three of them slip away. And now Coordinator is heading after them. It's not quite time yet, but -- they're gathering. Maybe getting there early, before it starts."

Both of her ears instantly perked, and she fought to get them back into a more neutral position.

"What do you want to do?" she whispered back.

"It's late enough," he softly replied, "for us to leave without getting too many questions. Softtread had to cover for your trip upstairs, and he'll answer anything anypony asks in a few minutes. Signal --"

He stopped as they all went past a mutually swaying couple, dancing to music which was no longer playing.

"-- the others," Quiet eventually resumed. "I'll meet you outside my library." And with that light hint of implied tease, "Do not get distracted -- actually, I may just lock the door. Especially if we somehow solve all this and you wind up leaving tomorrow, because then I'll know exactly what you'll be leaving with --" a wince, and then his words became more of a self-directed mutter. " -- teleport. She can teleport. Full inventory it is."

Potential danger was rapidly approaching. The chance for answers added to the hoped-for organization of a very long kicking line. And she still felt the urge to giggle, something which felt so good...

"Outside the library," Twilight whispered agreement.

They reached the bar. They had a drink: non-alcoholic for all, with Quiet downing a full mug of wake-up juice. An incredibly drunk pony tried to tell Twilight about how his mark represented a talent for being in bed with a Princess and she had no right to deny destiny. Pinkie flicked her tail a few times until an overhead Rainbow spotted the movement and sped away to get Spike.

The party was ending in fits and starts. There would be those who wanted just one more drink, where 'one more' was actually just about any number larger than one. Some would attempt to remain in the great hall for a while just in the name of staying dry, and there were probably a roaming few who were still looking for things they could slip into their saddlebags. But the party was ending and with it, the Bearers' officially-announced time in Trotter's Falls.

Twilight would never return.

This time, the seven of them arrived together, and found the eighth waiting outside the extremely (if pointlessly) locked door.

The small stallion looked up at them with awkward-seeming grey eyes, shuffled his hooves a few times.

"One of these things," he softly declared, "is very much not like the others. I feel..." A long pause, and then "...very out of place right now. Ridiculously flattered and nightmarishly overestimated. I'm not a stallion who goes on adventures, and... I'll try not to get this wrong. I just have very little idea of how to make it go right."

Twilight looked at him, wished for words --

-- and Rainbow flew forward, landed in front of him. "You know how you do adventures?" she asked him. "You look for something you can do. Then you do it. You see what happens from that, and then you do the next thing. And when you're all out of things you can do, you're home." A small, oddly wry head tilt followed that. "Twilight doesn't go on adventures with ponies who can't get through them. She doesn't hang around ponies who aren't cool. If she wants you here, you're good enough."

It was, Twilight considered, if not a blessing, the direct equivalent of a benediction. It was possible to see every last one of the words as they settled in behind his eyes.

"Only you're home right now!" Pinkie chirped. "So maybe we're already halfway done?"

"Hopefully much more," Quiet said, and forced a breath. (She would have to keep an eye on his breathing.) "All right. I saw the passage they used. It has some branches -- but there's only one destination large enough for anything approaching even the smallest of herds. My parents blocked that end off when I was young, so I haven't really been down there -- not in the room. But it would be easy to clear for a pony who knew the right spellwork."

And Coordinator was a Gifted School graduate, while Twilight was prepared to improvise. "So you can get us down there," Twilight checked.

"Yes -- but I've been thinking about it," Quiet replied. "I don't think it's advisable to just storm the place, not when we don't know just how many ponies are inside. You're all Bearers, and I imagine dragonfire is a help in a fight -- but I'm pretty sure we're outnumbered. Plus you all need evidence. If we break in and he just gallops for it, he might manage to escape in a crowd. Too many ponies around would make it hard to aim a field bubble."

"So where exactly are y'taking us?" Applejack carefully asked.

"There's another passage, one I don't think he knows about," Quiet told them all. "Unless he had the foresight to replace dust, because I already checked the portion just beyond the entrance and found it unused. It leads to a fairly large hiding place, just above that area. One which allows the occupants to spy on those below." A small, wry shrug. "I'm not sure if that was originally intended as a means of watching invaders who might have somehow gotten that far, or if somepony just happened to enjoy voyeurism. But it gives us the chance to watch, and listen. You need evidence. A conference more than suggests talking, and there's going to be ponies he'll be talking to. We watch, we listen..."

"And perhaps," Rarity inquired, "there will be an opportunity for Twilight to project a field bubble from above?"

"Not without kicking a hole -- well, you'll see," Quiet replied. "I haven't been there in a long time, but I remember what it's like. Is everypony ready?"

They all nodded.

"One more thing," he added. "Let me go first. These passages were designed as defenses, which means -- I have to be blunt: there's traps. As Lord, I can shut them down. But the rest of you don't know where or what they are. So don't get ahead of me, because I do not want to end my adventuring career through explaining to Princess Celestia exactly how I managed to let one of you plummet into the sharp drop under the trapdoor. Because there is a sharp drop, which was maliciously placed with plummeting in mind --"

Rainbow's mouth began to open.

"-- to go with a shaft so narrow as to allow practically no room for a full wingspan," he finished.

Rainbow's mouth closed.

"Traps," Applejack tried.

"Yes --" and then he facehoofed. "Sun and Moon, that just reached my ears. The Lord of the castle is leading the Bearers down a secret passage filled with traps. There's every chance that if I saw this in a story, I might start shouting at the page in a completely futile effort to keep the heroines and hero from going in there." Ruefully, "Actually, if anypony wants to back out now, I will completely understand."

"...it's a little silly for the villain to warn everypony," Fluttershy smiled. "We would all be watching for traps now anyway." (Rainbow, perhaps recalling Daring Do Canon #6, quickly nodded.) "...we'll just -- be careful."

"And if you somehow miss anything, or find a spell too decayed to recognize you," Twilight added, "we're all here." She could snatch ponies back, Rainbow might be capable of rapid evacuations should the width of the passage allow it... "And like Fluttershy said, we'll be careful. All of us."

He took a deep breath, winced at what Twilight guessed to be a twinge from aching ribs.

"Wonderful," and that emerged with more than a tinge of sarcasm. "The safety of the Bearers is now at least partially pressed between my hooves. If I wind up meeting both Diarchy and shadowlands tomorrow, in that order, my last living words will be to blame all of you for not talking me out of this." A small sigh. "Fine. Off to adventure, then. Which in this case means going down the hall, making a pair of right turns, and then pushing an armoire. Again."

It was not dark. It merely wished to be, longed for it, tried to achieve it in nearly every moment of the trip, left them constantly fighting against it. At least some of the spells in the hidden passage had aged poorly, and those were the ones which illuminated it.

No unicorn who'd been through puberty ever truly had to worry about the dark: Twilight had told herself that a few times over the course of her life, until the too-long night when she'd seen the first of the Nightmare's shadows. And as it turned out, she was now twice-wrong. Quiet's field was colorless, almost impossible to see in operation: she'd learned to watch for the hint of sparkles around his horn. And as it turned out, such a field could be intensified normally. Quiet could even bring his corona all the way to the full triple if he wished, with all the risk that would create -- and no amount of effort he made would make his horn shed any real light.

There had been a working device just inside the perfectly-hidden entrance: it had given them enough light to see by. Twilight had been the second to peek inside as the others stood guard, watching for unexpected traffic in the hallway. She'd seen a narrow gap between stone walls, enough to allow her and Quiet ready passage, gave Spike room to spare, restricted Rainbow and Fluttershy's wings, placed Applejack on constant guard against scraped flanks (without weather, care, or regular travel, the inner surfaces were rough-hewn), and would have turned the life of a larger pony into torment. But then they'd all slipped away, the first device had winked out as they'd moved away from it -- and the second hadn't activated.

So it had been left to Twilight and Rarity: the first stayed just behind Quiet so as to let him see what he was doing, with the other mare towards the rear of the line, showing the others where they could move. Pinkish and soft blue light moved across the harsh ridges, interacted at the center. (It was more than those two ponies were doing.) The result was a rather muddy violet, and there was a moment when Twilight thought she heard Rarity mutter about the sheer tastelessness of it all.

The passage didn't wind: it couldn't, as it needed to follow the constraints of the outer walls. But it did bend here and there, and the turns were hard to navigate. It also slanted, moving steadily down. Down into the dark, with only ponies to provide light.

Quiet's horn sparkled, and little glints of field pushed at the walls. Twilight was paying close attention, trying to feel exactly what kind of spells he was shutting down. Some of them were familiar, others were not, and all were old.

"It's been a while," he whispered. (For what little discussion was taking place, they were just about all whispering, as if the passage was also pressing in on sound.) With open worry, "I've remembered everything so far, because we've gotten this far, but..."

"I'm right behind you," she reminded him.

"I know." A slow breath. "It helps."

Another glint, followed by the soft click which created safety. And they moved down.

Even whispers were dying out now, as they all shifted between layers of stone. Twilight could hear nothing from the hallway she was sure bordered the right side, couldn't seem to remember what was on the left --

-- there was no way to see the flash of lightning and in the silence of the passageway, the boom of thunder felt like an explosion.

Some of them jumped. Two reared up. Applejack bit back a gasp as her right flank met the wall. But there was no stampede, no flaring of herd instinct using stress to steal away thought and replacing it with the need to run. Six of them had been through too much for that, Spike was immune, and they all allowed Quiet some time to get his breathing back under control.

"I wish I was outside," Rainbow whispered -- and the lack of volume wasn't enough to hide the quaver which rode in every syllable. "I could shut this down if I had some time. I could get rid of all of that, at least around the castle. I could make it quiet..."

Twilight glanced back, saw Rainbow's heaving rib cage, too-shallow breaths added to eyes opened wide enough to hurt and ears which constantly rotated, listening for any means of escape. The prismatic tail flicked and would not stop.

"Easy, Rainbow," Applejack softly told her. "Easy..."

"It's... not much further, right?" Almost frantic now. "Tell me it's not much further..."

Rarity: rupophobia. A fear of becoming dirty: on another level, the dread of contamination.

Rainbow: no room to fly, no possibility of even spreading her wings, stone surrounding her, the atmosphere so close and yet impossible to reach.

For pegasi, claustrophobia was the second most common terror known. And Rainbow, so extraordinary in other ways, still retained one in which, for her species, she was just like nearly everypony else.

"...think about the sky, Rainbow," Fluttershy whispered. "You'll see it soon. You know where it is. It's waiting for you. Close your eyes for a second and see the sky..."

"I can't get there, there's walls, there's walls and dark and we're moving down --"

"...think about how brave you were in the Diamond Dog tunnels..."

"I could spread my wings! I could move! I can't --"

"...you're Rainbow," Fluttershy softly said: yellow ears steady (if discolored by dual applications of fieldlight), the incredibly full tail showing no more than its natural sway. "You can do this."

"I..." The weather coordinator forced a breath. "...I just need to know -- how far it is..."

"Maybe sixty body lengths, Rainbow," Quiet gently told her. "Can you make it?"

After a few seconds, "...yeah. I can." Bravado was trying to push away tremble and was, at best, battling to a tie. "You said it's -- a pretty big room up ahead?"

"Much larger than this," he reassured her. "And we'll be looking down into a fairly significant space. But remember, we'll have to be careful: we'll be able to hear what's going on below while we're in there -- and for this, that means if we make enough noise, they might hear us."

"Got it," Rainbow mustered. "Again. Keep it down." And a shudder. "Down... why is there so much down...?"

They moved forward, as best they could. And about fifty-five body lengths later, with so much of it spent on a descent so steep that Twilight had to force attention away from her hooves... the passage widened, flaring out as if their part was the apex point of a triangle, creating enough space in the new portion for four ponies to stand side-by-side. Rainbow came within a hoofstep of bowling Pinkie over in her attempt to reach it.

"All right," Quiet whispered. "We're past the traps. But we still have to be careful from this point on, not to be heard. Let's just hope the door cooperates..."

He moved forward. Twilight followed, intensified her corona slightly until the heavy wooden door stood out as more than mere outline. Quiet's field exerted, and he stepped back as the door silently swung outwards.

"Well, that's holding," he exhaled. "All right. Forward."

They moved forward, into a fairly large, mostly empty space -- at least for width and depth: an extremely low ceiling provided what Rainbow's very soft snort declared as a significant flaw. (Everypony could stand at their full height, but Applejack's ears were mere tail strands away from stone, and the absent hat would have been due a trip to Fedora's shop.) There were a few old-seeming boxes stacked in two corners. The air was somewhat stale (although not as bad as it could have been -- Twilight could make out two small air vents in the ceiling), and dust lay thick upon the floor.

There were no windows, and the door silently swung closed behind them.

"Now," Quiet whispered, "if this spell has faded, I am going to look, and feel, like an idiot. Just remember: even if it works, sight is one-way. But -- yes, I know I keep repeating myself -- sound, if we're loud enough, will travel in both directions. It was a flaw in the original casting, nopony ever fixed it, and this possibly isn't the time to try. Ready?"

Most of them nodded. Rainbow, with the air of a pony trying to do anything which would calm herself without making it look as if that was exactly what she was doing, had been caught preening her feathers.

"All right," he said. "And remember, no matter how it looks, it's still solid." He glanced up at something metal within the ceiling, and the barely-visible sparkles around his horn increased in number. "Here we go..."

The floor vanished.

There could have been jumps. Yells. Desperate dives and instinctive scrambles for the door. But he'd warned them while the armoire was being moved, and so they were mostly ready for it.

Rarity's reaction was the most severe: she quickly backed up, which only ended when the base of her tail was pressed against the door. (She'd already had a major plummet and, while taking responsibility for it, still had no objections to being on something opaque.) Spike, who'd seen a lot of magic in his life, slowly bent down and ran his claws across the surface before looking over to Twilight.

"It's the Gilafim, isn't it?" he softly asked.

It was and under other circumstances, Twilight would have proudly acknowledged Spike's recognition of the working. She would have even guessed at what had let him figure it out: the slightly changed texture of the stone, the way it was just barely possible to distinguish an outline of where the floor of one room became the ceiling of another. Gilafim's Revelation hadn't turned the floor invisible: it simply created an illusion of everything going on below, doing so with no perceptible delay between event and reproduction. It required a true master of the craft to execute and as the world's current foremost expert in that category of magic was currently busy with taking care of Moon, it was a spell nopony saw all that often. Twilight had been in the presence of a successfully-enchanted area all of twice, and the more recent of those workings had been cast more than two centuries before her birth.

Normally, she would have taken a moment to admire the working. Internally, she might have even experienced a moment of pure relief in finding an enchantment which was still fully operational, because she didn't know how to tweak this one and trying to do so might just put a realtime image of what was happening within on the ceiling side. But she did none of that, because where Spike had felt, she had looked.

"No..." she whispered. "Oh, no..."

There was in fact a fairly large space roughly five Celests below, made seemingly more so by the displacement of furniture. She saw (mostly) antique couches, serving tables, lamps, and a book-holder which still held a tract. The majority of that had been shoved to the perimeter, and she was sure most of the lamps had been shifted around. A number were currently near what she identified as the room's exit door, brightly illuminating what appeared to be a hastily-constructed, slightly-raised crude stage: anypony coming in would have had to jump slightly onto it before entering. A single basic ramp led down to the floor level.

She could see almost nothing of the walls, for every last one had been draped in dark fabric. It seemed to absorb the light from the nearest lamps, putting that portion into extra shadow.

The movement of the furnishings had left a decent hollow, one which at least eighty ponies could fit within. It was something she could say with some certainty because there seemed to be at least eighty ponies below them. Or for most intents and purposes, it could have almost been eighty zebras, because...

She heard Spike's sharp intake of breath as her little brother looked, the tiny gasp from Fluttershy to go with Rarity's snort, the one which was half anger and half sheer offense at the color. For every living thing below them (shuffling, shifting about, waiting and becoming impatient with it, a miasma of worry mixed with growing irritation and a need to get things started) was covered from snout to hidden tail in a thick black robe.

"Who are they?" Twilight desperately whispered. "I can't see anything of them! And there's so many..."

"That," Rarity quietly declared, "is rather large for a conference."

"It's about the right size for a cult," Rainbow's limited reading experience decided: the pegasus naturally had no trouble with looking down from high places. "That would explain the robes."

Cults meant worship: something Twilight didn't want to think about just yet or, if possible, at all. Instead, she continued staring down, doing so until extra details began to emerge -- none of which were helpful. Bulges at the sides of the robes indicated pegasi: a sharp rise under the hood was a unicorn. But that was all she could see.

Rarity shifted her position, just enough to change viewing angle. "The hoods become masks," she softly told them. "I can see eye colors. And that is all. Unless somepony speaks in a familiar voice or finds some reason to disrobe, we cannot reliably identify anypony in the group."

"...did they know we were coming?" Fluttershy managed to ask. "Are they hiding from us?"

Quiet slowly sank down, carefully pressed his barrel against the still-there floor.

"Maybe," he carefully suggested, "they're hiding from each other."

Everypony looked at him.

"So nopony there knows everypony else," he clarified, the words emerging with fair evenness under so much scrutiny. "That way, nopony could ever sell out the entire group. You know the pony who first spoke with you, and anypony you spoke with. That's it."

Twilight managed a tiny nod, sank down next to him. (Pinkie came up on her right: Fluttershy timidly forced herself forward and finally settled down on his left.) "I understand. I think there were illustrations like this in some history books, in chapters about conspiracies. But... it's so strange to see. To see it actually happening..."

"Eighty-two," Pinkie counted. "Eighty-four. Eighty-six..."

"...what do we do?" Fluttershy softly asked.

Twilight looked down. Focused on the crude stage and the feel of the floor against fur and skin.

"They're still waiting," she told them. "And so will we."

It almost seemed as if there was the faintest of murmurs coming through the wood and in some ways, it was a sound he knew by heart. The mixture of worry, fear, desperation, helplessness, and hope. For him, it generally existed on the other side of a birthing room's door, only intruding when emotions reached their crescendo -- or if there was an extremely large family praying that he would emerge with their newest love. It was the sound of the world as it held out for a miracle.

He would provide.

They were ten body lengths away, on the border for the deliberately-shadowed portion of the passageway. Ten body lengths from whatever might ultimately occur.

"Is the medicine holding?"

"Yes." Her voice was not as steady as he could have wished -- but he suspected some of that was from her own fears. She had been presented to ponies before, in the minutes before she was given further education towards the day when The Great Work would be complete -- but never more than one at a time.

"Take this in five minutes." His field set the borrowed mug down: a quarter hoof-height of fluid shifted at the bottom. "Nothing else."

"I will." There was some tremble to the words.

He sighed. "A flaw in your education," he admitted. "My fault." Her expression told him she didn't understand. "We talked about speaking in front of the masses, but -- we hardly had masses to practice with. And at no point did I ever think about stage fright..."

She giggled, just a little, and it made him smile.

"You know you can do this," he told her. "You just have to do it in front of them. Show them. No matter what happens, no matter what you see -- show them your miracle."

It seemed as if something flickered in her eyes, and it only came at the last word. As if the pain was returning far too early. But then it faded, and she gave him a small nod.

"The next time the door opens. If I am still standing there -- that is when you come in. No other time unless I call for you. No matter what you hear. Not until then."

Again.

"But for now --"

One breath. A breath which lowered the last of the inner walls, brought the memories back, summoned the past and prepared it to direct the future.

"-- it's my turn."

He trotted forward, as she retreated into shadow --

-- and then he stopped. Turned back. Asked the question yet again.

"Can you feel her?"

Her eyes slowly closed as her head dipped, weighed down by a different kind of pain. Slowly, as if every movement would rend her heart from within, she shook her head.

"When the medicine is right," he softly reassured her. "When you're used to it. And if not then, when you're fixed. You will." And then a statement: "I know you will."

She said nothing and with eyes still shut, she slipped into darkness.

He turned to face the wood again. ignited his horn, surrounded the lever, pulled the door open. And with injured hind limb dragging as his forelegs pushed him up, without robe, without mask, fully within the light, his form exposed to the world as he readied his heart for the same... Gentle Arrival took center stage.

Presentation

Faith had so many sounds and often, they came within the music of desperation: a voice would call out one final invocation, praying for intercession to save them from fast-approaching death -- a prayer which Twilight now knew would never be heard -- and any words which followed were generally spoken in the shadowlands.

But at other times, there was a contented smile lurking within the notes. Reassurance, created by the speaker and then delivered to the same pony via the circuitous route of belief. Hope, frantic hope staring at her from a birthing table while preparing to falsely assign all credit in the event of miracle.

Faith had many sounds, and the one which described its shattering was a soft dual whimper.

"No," Pinkie whispered. "No, no, no, Sun and Moon, please, please no..."

Twilight could hear Fluttershy's breathing, abruptly accelerated until each exhale emerged as a series of trembling shudders. Looked to her right, saw darkening --

-- was it always that shade? Is it the lighting in this room?

-- mane hair starting to fall across blue eyes, and not enough of it to hide the welling tears.

She had thought something was wrong, after meeting the older stallion in the tower. Upon hearing the words which had come just before his departure, the strange questions which had seemed so off. But... this?

...not Coordinator? Or he could still be involved, there's so many ponies down there, 'somepony else' is a plural and...

Pinkie. Fluttershy.

What's it like to be them right now? To look down and see your first friend standing there, with all those ponies facing him, waiting for him, to know that the pony responsible for your even being alive just might be responsible for so much else...

There were words to bring comfort, gentle sentences which would reassure, rebuild, perhaps provide the first step towards healing. There had to be.

"I..." Twilight tried.

And so she learned there were none which ever would.

"I can't," Pinkie softly wept. "I can't... I don't want to believe, I don't...."

And then there was Quiet, also one of his. Quiet, who had taken a single sharp breath, followed by dipping his head until the small grey chin touched illusion-coated floor, his eyes half-closed.

"I never thought..." The words were the barest waft of breath against stone. "To look down and see him like this, with his features and fur alone in exposure to the world..."

And on his left, Fluttershy. The eldest. One eye squeezed shut from pain, the other hidden behind a manefall of coral, a small portion of which was beginning to darken. But that was a familiar sort of change, produced by nothing more than tears soaking into the strands.

From behind them, a soft "Oh," and then Rarity's words accelerated. "I am... dearest ones, I cannot pretend to understand everything you must be feeling, but we are here with you: know we are right here..."

Applejack audibly swallowed. "Everypony... Ah know you've gotta want t' get down there and face him. We can't. We've got to listen. We need that evidence." And with a fierceness muted only in volume, "But when he's done talking -- that's when you just might get to say something of your own. We'll be there when you do. Pinkie -- breathe slow, breathe steady. It's what Rarity said: we're right here. We're all right here and we ain't going nowhere."

Twilight heard claws scrape against stone, forced herself not to look back at Spike. Listened to Rainbow's tail lashing increase in frequency and strength, to the point where it seemed as if the next sound to come would be the crack of a whip.

"I'll kill him," the pegasus softly stated, the words far more even than they seemingly should have been. "I'm gonna kick him into --"

Spike's half-whisper cut her off. "-- there's a line."

Pinkie sobbed. Fluttershy trembled. Quiet simply stared. And Twilight, still without words, forced her gaze to shift until she was once again looking at the unicorn on the stage.

I curtsied to him. In recognition of his contributions to Equestria, I bent my forelegs in the presence of...

While they had been talking, he had made his way towards the forward edge of the raised platform, moving far too slowly for even the injured hind leg to explain away. Forcing himself forward, visibly marshaling inner resources along the way. But now he was close to the drop, standing near what appeared to be a rotating mobile blackboard, one set into its frame on a central pivot. There was also a small stack of papers next to it, some larger than others: she'd missed both things during the initial survey of the crowd.

His horn ignited: just a basic partial corona. A thin shimmer of silver coated the door through which he'd arrived.

"Twi... Twilight?" Pinkie, words forced to emerge between little gasps. "What... what did he just cast?"

The spell hadn't been that powerful, nowhere near enough for her to get a true feel for the working through stone. But there were other ways to determine what a spell had done, and Twilight spotted the little shiver along the glow's borders, the way sparkles seemed to be pushing against the heavy wood...

"It distorts sound," she softly answered (and hated herself, because for that, she had been capable of speech). "Not much. Just enough that if you were on the other side, you'd know someone was talking and how loudly, but you wouldn't be able to make out the exact words. It's like a really weak version of Lyra's trick. I've been trying to learn it since the reporters showed up, but..." Well, at least that meant she'd known what a successful casting was supposed to look like. "But who is he trying to keep from overhearing?"

Which was when she finally shifted position on the floor, moved until she was pressing against Pinkie. Hated herself all the more for having taken so long to move, for not having offered presence first...

The baker's body trembled against her own. Vibrations traveled through fur and feathers, began to set up tiny unknown echoes near her core.

"Basic security measure?" Quiet offered, with a different kind of pain audible in his voice. "It won't stop us, though."

Two mares, with no other outlets available for their emotions, wept. (Spike shifted his own position, went to Fluttershy, pressed scales against fur and refused to leave.) And all looked down at the floor, one illusion which had shattered another.

Waited for him to speak.

He looked at the shrouded walls first, then the shifted furniture, and finally at the covered forms. Ponies gathered from across a continent.

"Before we begin," he steadily, almost softly told them, "I would like to apologize. None of you were originally expecting to be here tonight. The speed and urgency of the summons, along with the lack of full detail as to why... well, even when sending by the most private of couriers, there are things nopony can trust to put in a letter. I know you have many questions, and some of them have been born from dream. But when you knew I truly needed you, everypony here left their homes and came to me. I thank you for that. Your attendance, your contributions to our Great Work, and your hope. Ultimately, it is hope which brought us together. Which kept us on the path, and holds us here."

(Above him, at the moment he named the Great Work, for the two mares which were his, the last portion of desperate doubt collapsed into shards of sorrow.)

He took a slow breath. Bodies shifted in the audience, making it easy to look beyond the garments to the impatience within. Here and there, the fear, which was almost strong enough to scent. But yes -- look upon them all and see the little vibrations which indicated desperate hope.

"Before we disperse, I will answer at least some of those questions," he continued. "And even so -- I still wish to apologize, because a number of you have been part of this for a long time. You heard me speak, you listened, and thus you joined me in hope. But there are also those here tonight who are new to our gathering. They have heard just enough to come... but perhaps not enough to believe."

He didn't look up: there was no need. Instead, he briefly, visibly focused his attention at a little group towards the center of the room, for a very few on the floor level would be listening for the first time. There normally would have been a slower feeling-out process added to a much more personal approach, but... well, perhaps some part of him had known it would come down to an all-or-nothing wager all along.

"So before I reach the new," he told them, "I must return to the beginning. Most of you have heard me speak of it before and to those ponies, I am sorry. For making you wait. For forcing you to live through an old stallion's past once again." A weary, pained half-smile. "And... his nightmares. You've heard my words, but there are those who have not, and... it hurts me, to speak of this. It hurts all of us. But where so many can only make their way through life by choosing to block their pain -- by forcing it away from their nightscapes, so as to relive it no more than they absolutely must -- tonight --"

His eyes briefly squeezed shut, opened again.

"-- it is necessary for me to suffer," he finished. "So that nopony else ever will."

Silence. Waiting for him. Waiting for news and knowing it had just been postponed, but also knowing that waiting was all they could do.

"We do the needful," he told them. "We do what we must, in the name of that Great Work. But for a long time, I did... nothing."

His head dipped, the soft red mane depressed down by the weight of shame.

"Did you know," he quietly asked the room, "that all pegasi, given any choice, any at all... will give birth on the ground?" Still looking at nothing more than the edge of the stage. "It was news to some among you. Others were taught it early on. But I would appreciate it if, as you listened, you kept that fact in mind for a while. Because I had to learn it, and did so after it was already too late."

He raised his head. Warm orange eyes steadied their gaze, looked out over the group.

"I was given a choice early on, of what to do with my life," he told them. "And I did nothing, for I had no need to do anything at all. Not yet. My parents were wealthy, you see... well, that is hardly a rare statement for this room." A few chuckles worked their way through the robes, and he managed a smile. "They weren't nobles: I belong to no House -- although I've assisted a few towards seeing their next generations." Fabric shifted again: multiple ponies nodding. "They simply had the luck to inherit funds which others had accumulated over centuries, enough of a collection to allow one a comfortable existence on the compound interest alone. When they passed into the shadowlands, I then inherited that wealth -- and decided that all things considered, the bits were doing enough work on their own. I had no need for anything so draining of time as an occupation. I had my mark. I knew what I was meant to do. And I simply waited for the opportunity to arrive. It didn't seem to be so long a wait..."

And now he had to will his eyes to stay open. To let them see the here and now, when every other part of him was already looking back. Going back.

"But until then, I used my time for pleasure," he quietly told them. "The joy of simply being. And then..."

A small breath, for with the past having arrived, there was no room left within him for anything more.

"How many of you remember her?" he softly inquired. "Only a few. But that is for lack of opportunity. If you had met her -- you would remember. I saw her one night, and she became all I could remember. I thought about that first meeting until the review took me all the way back to Sun. How I'd ruined everything in my life by not going up to her immediately and asking her to become part of it, because surely everypony else would recognize the opportunity I'd failed to seize. But as it turned out..." a tiny smile "...my settled zone lacked for bravery in more ponies than myself, for when Sun appeared, she was still available for courting. She was even still there two weeks later, when I finally found the courage, and after a time, she was with me at the first touch of dawn, with Sun shining from her..."

The first tear fell.

"Her name was Primatura," he told, taught, reminded them. "And no time spent basking in her light was ever wasted."

It was possible to identify the elders of Trotter's Falls simply by their dipped heads.

"We freed each other," he made himself continue. "She gave me the rare honor of allowing me to perceive the world from a perspective other than my own, truly seeing. A gift she wished to grant to so many, freely offered to me. All I could contribute was resources: the chance for her to listen to the whispers of her mark without worrying about mere survival. No price at all. She gave me love and hope and dreams, and all I could give her was mere love. I often felt as if I was failing to make it an even bargain, and when I told her so from within her radiance, she would laugh at me. She said I was spending my life in underestimating what I could bring to the world, what I was already bringing to her, but she simply gave and in time..."

He had said the words so many times, in trying to make ponies understand. And whenever he reached this stage, they had to be forced.

"...she told me that she would be giving me... my destiny."

A slow exhale, one which failed to carry any of the pain away.

"A few of you remember her," he said. "Given the sheer number of empty bottles and fallen forms, I doubt anypony truly remembers the announcement's celebration party."

And finally, somepony, brought back to half-assembled fragments of revelry, laughed.

He smiled. Paused, gathered strength. And still did not look up.

"His spouse..." Twilight whispered. "But... what does he mean by destiny? What did he think he was supposed to...?"

Pinkie simply shivered. Twilight tried to press more tightly against her, loathing the spy perch which would not allow them to fight the pain with the warmth that came in the center of a ponypile. Felt the wing getting in the way.

There were words coming forward now, but they only sounded within her own mind. They repeated themselves, moving in a circle.

Somepony else.

"Well... she did," he ruefully added. "As she was the only one who wasn't drinking. But she never told me the details, other than what might have been suspected through responding to seeing certain ponies with a sudden burst of giggling. I suspected she might have... recorded a few portions, but if so..."

A slow head shake.

"We made plans," he went on. "We postponed others. We divided the world into the things we could do before, and those which would come after. We... were going to attend the Games, in the moon immediately following. We'd been talking about it before she'd told me, and it didn't feel like something we had to change. We were going to Baltimare first: we'd planned that for the dividing line. But afterwards, there was going to be a moon for adjustment and after that, surely we'd be ready to travel. She had no great love for the Games, but she knew I did and so she indulged me. It would be our first time attending together, the first time for all of us, and..."

The breaths hurt now. Every one kicked at his ribs from the inside, and he once again distantly wondered if this was how his most devoted felt all the time.

"...I haven't been to the Games in more than two decades."

And finally, he looked up.

But that gaze did not go to his, not in the place from which they were watching. He made no attempt to view the Princess through what, on his side, appeared to be a simple ceiling. He wasn't looking at anything which existed in the here and now. Instead, he looked up simply because of where he was. As the last thing required to place him at the true beginning.

As a reminder that when it had happened, they had been underground.

Surrounded by stone.

The estate is an old one, nearly matching the local castle in years, and so there is a part of it hidden from view: more than mere basement, but slightly less than full retreat -- although given those centuries, it was built to provide a means for that. But in this part of his life, their life, the now of memory brought into the present, his distant spoken words only providing the faintest echo of events, there was no true need for those rooms -- until the day she'd married him.

So there is a wine cellar now, because they have parties now and again: it's best to both attend and host such things with company. (Admittedly, it's more of a wine about-twenty-percent-of-a-very-small-wall.) And there is her place.

He doesn't entirely understand her process (although he's now capable of appreciating the results, and is studying on the sly so that he can appreciate them with a more appropriate vocabulary). He's not certain he ever will, and so he had questioned why she'd asked to lock herself away from natural light. She had simply jested about not needing to factor certain things out and besides, if he was going to keep saying that Sun shone from her, then clearly she was up to any need for emergency illumination.

(There are devices in the ceiling, newly-installed ones, which shine with an oddly white sort of light. The results take some getting used to.)

She's working when he comes in, because the desires of mark and pony aren't going to be stopped by anything so simple as a bulging belly, one which has occasionally produced questions about twins. He likes to watch her work. Again, he doesn't fully understand it, but -- he loves her, and this is the other great love of her life. Hours which he might wish for are expended down here and... well, spending time together as a threesome should, in theory, help to cut down on the jealousy.

He watches in silence. This is a holy place of sorts, and to speak out of turn would feel very much like a sin.

Finally, she pauses, sets everything down, turns to look at him.

"Hello, you," she smiles. "I heard you come in. I think. I was... well, you know." A small nod towards her work. "How long were you there?" A pause. "Actually... what time is it?"

"Sun's just been lowered," he tells her.

"Oh," she considers. With just the slightest note of false concern, "In which moon?"

It makes him smile. "The same one. Are you coming up to dinner?" It's a frequent question: when she's truly within the heart of her mark, she takes her meals here -- and only does so because he finally recognized that the best way to keep her eating regularly was to provide a way of doing so with no distractions. He still considers it to be a rather fine feedbag, although she keeps telling him that they have to work on his taste in hues.

And much to his surprise, she nods. "Yes -- but in a few minutes. I just want to check this last portion again."

Which means possibly redoing that section, and likely requiring repeated reheating of the okra. "Do you mind if I watch a little more, then?" Solidarity in appetite.

"If you must," she smiles, and turns back towards the newest piece. Her horn exerts, and things move just so. He often marvels at her precision, the dance created while legs remain motionless and only eyes shift from place to place. The complexities of the movements and all the wonders which they birth.

They are together in that room for perhaps twenty minutes (and now the okra is cold) as she works. He watches. He is starting to truly feel the hunger now, and he does not care.

Her field flickers. Something slashes to the right. Purple eyes wince shut, just before that movement would have prevented them from seeing the marring.

It gets his attention, all of it put together, and perhaps nothing does so more than that cruel mistake. "Are you okay?"

"I just..." She's breathing too hard. "...I think I just felt --"

The next moment remains with him for the rest of his life.

Her horn goes dark. All four of her knees buckle. She starts to fall as instinct flares, makes her almost fling herself to the left, to land on her side instead of her distended belly. Protecting, to the very last.

The dropped items, released just before she began to plummet, hit first. They clatter on the floor. Two hit with softer sounds. Things roll and bounce and scatter. Her impact, which has somewhat more weight, moves them a little more. A few other items vibrate. His world begins to crack.

And then liquid emerges from her, from two places in three gouts. The first is vomit. The second emerges as something which is only referred to as 'water' because he has yet to learn the proper term for amniotic fluid. The third comes from the same place, and the only word needed to describe it is 'blood'.

He is at her side in an instant, dropping to her level. (She is writhing, twisting, with spasms of agony sending her legs into involuntary kicks.) And his horn ignites. He can teleport: that working became his shortly after coming into his magic. He can go for help --

-- but he does not. He can't leave her, not with sweat coating her body, rapidly heading into the danger of froth. Not upon seeing her pain, not... he can't, and he does not.

It's too early. She wasn't due for another moon. They were going to travel to Baltimare for the birthing, because there is no true hospital in their settled zone and he doesn't think much of the local midwife, while none of the doctors specialize in deliveries. It's too early and something is wrong, horribly wrong, he can't leave her and so his corona surges, he pushes because he knows there is a way to teleport with another, he probably can't reach Baltimare but he can at least try to get her to any help, normal movement could make things worse and while he'll be risking recoil and all the dangers therein, he's not really thinking about that. It could be argued that he's not thinking at all. There is a stallion next to his helpless mare, and silver light builds, surges, temporarily distorts everything in the room as he fights, he fights to find a way to bring her into the between, he tries to teach himself the means of escorting another with heartbeats in which to do so and --

There are so many things to remember. So many which cannot be brought back as part of the memory, for within those moments, he never thought of them at all. That he could have tried to appear in a physician's home just long enough to scream alarm and location, then returned. That he might have attempted to use whatever strength he possessed to levitate her, keep her perfectly still within the bubble: perhaps he could have reached town before fainting. But he could not leave her. He would not. He did not.

-- he does not know how long he has been trying, praying, for while caught in its grasp, there is no true way of measuring eternity. She is screaming, screaming and it just keeps coming, no words within the sounds, she screams so much that it seems as if it must be keeping her from taking any breaths, she kicks out and her right foreleg slams into his ribs. He barely notices. He is fighting against the fabric of the world, something which will part for him alone, he needs to bring them both, to bring them all and so he fights for that, he is pushing and knows that a miracle will come because this can't happen, not like this, not to her and --

-- her right foreleg comes up again. Touches his face.

He looks down as his corona surges, the primary layer twisting in shape with every moment, silvering the world. And he sees the pain in her eyes. He sees helplessness. He sees everything except the soul which rests within that agonized form, for its last act under newly-risen Moon was to reach for him. There is no heart, no mind, no Sun shining from within.

What remains screams again and the sound shreds memory, makes the whole of their lives together into a single instant in which the only thing which has ever existed is that scream.

The joints of her foreleg tighten, then go limp.

The sound stops.

His forelegs are resting within vomit. His vision has been blurred by the drain from his failure. Weakness and tears combine, leave him barely able to see her. To see anything. There are two ponies buried within the stone and the one who is still breathing regards his living state as a rather temporary formality.

He could not. He did not.

There is no movement within what had been her place of dream. There is a corpse, one he cannot look away from, and things surrounding them which he will do his best to never look upon again.

(He will fail. Even for that, he will fail, over and over, until he finally blocks them from his sight. And even then, he fails to close the very last way in.)

The truest part of her is gone. He cannot leave what remains. Perhaps they will simply decay together.

And then she moves.

Part of her moves.

It catches his attention. It makes him hope, just for a moment, that a miracle has been granted. He looks, and -- it's a shift in the skin, a tiny poke pushing against the inside of that distended belly.

Then it stops.

The words tear through him.

mother dead, foal might still be alive, mother dead

He tells himself there is no time, and perhaps that is true. (He will, hours later, find a clock and finally make his best guess as to how long it all took, from beginning to end to beginning. He will never allow himself to believe it.) He could not leave his spouse: he cannot risk so much as a second away now, not while there's any chance. But his horn is not a sharp one. Even if it was, he wouldn't be sure just how deep to cut, and the thought of doing that to her body --

-- he would, if it was possible. There still might be a life there, the last of her, the last there will ever be, and he will do anything to save that life, anything. But he doesn't know what he can do. He cannot push on her belly from the outside, guide the foal with hooves. There are no living muscles to contract, push, aid in a final effort. There are knives in the kitchen and perhaps some could cut into flesh, but it would be the same issue: a tail strand too deep and there will be two bodies. And yet that seems to be his only option, but just the time to find something he can use...

mother dead, foal might still be alive, mother dead

To cut is to risk another death. To leave is to miss the only chance. The foal cannot be reached. Cannot be moved. Can't be --

She had said it: that she would be giving him his destiny. And in that moment, with everything else having failed, with no true thought to block the way, that which defines him speaks without words. It has happened to so many ponies over the centuries. She claimed it happened to her every now and again. That when the time was right, when guidance was needed, when you were acting within the heart of who you were meant to be... there would be communication. A upwelling of instincts, all leading to direction.

His mark whispers to him, and his horn ignites.

A partial corona at first. Then the full single. Double, as the field surrounds the corpse, pushes at cooling fur. Triple, everything he has left to give, effort until exhaustion or success. Possibly until death or success, for he had been trying to move all of them for so long, those attempts cost him, and he doesn't know how much strength he still has. But there is a triple corona, and light warps around him as he gives everything he has left of himself for the last of her, payment for a scant period of happiness rendered in full, his vision is going dark and he can't sense the air against his fur anymore and there was nothing to hear but his own final scream to begin with, the scent of blood and vomit is fading away as the room narrows down to the last thaums he can commit, with his only remaining sensation of the world as the feel which slashes at what had been perceived as an unbreakable law of magic and tries to create a wound large enough for a single exception --

-- there is a tiny hoof.

He can feel it. He can...

He can pull.

There is blood, and then there is more blood. (He continues to fight. He does not look, never sees the sparkles vanish from his corona's light.) Dead muscles cannot assist: he is forcing the foal to move through the birth canal. But he can't think about what he's doing to the interior of his spouse's corpse. He can only fight, try to retain that tenuous new feel, believing that a single second of lapse in his concentration will take it from him forever. He can't watch the distortions under the corpse's skin as they slowly (too slowly) travel in the right direction, he can barely see at all, he may be screaming or there may be nothing left for such pointless expression, he can only fight until there is nothing left which can fight at all.

Blood. So much blood. And then a sickening sound, one which forces his ears to work simply to include that detail in the replays which will rule his nightscape for moons until the right working is finally found to block them. The sound of flesh tearing due to pressure from within, a wound they had been told might come naturally, something minor which would readily heal, but this is nothing normal and that which has died will never recover.

There is that grotesque sound, and it goes on for something just short of forever.

And when it finally stops, he hears the tiny cry.

His horn goes dark, all at once. He nearly falls into darkness, might have plummeted into the shadowlands immediately after if he had. But he forces himself forward, towards the last of her, the last there will ever be. He is not thinking about what he just accomplished. (It will be some time before he sees it as any kind of accomplishment at all, and it will forever be tainted by what came before it. Failure and success: the themes of his existence.) There is death in the room, and so much of his heart can be counted among the lost. But there is also life, and that tiny cry has created something he can live for. He will protect her final gift to him. He will devote his existence to that. And so he pushes forward without ever quite managing to stand, fur scrapping against the floor, moving through blood and vomit and fluids he has yet to learn names for, a single body length to cross, a literal body length which takes so long to journey through, he forces his eyes to focus and sees the foal, the filly, her body anointed in the residue of life and death, fur stained by that and one other thing, for the smaller items dropped first and so there is an additional source of discoloration available.

He sees her fear and confusion: no comprehension of the world she has been pulled into, the stench of death forcing terror onto a newborn who knows nothing of how to resist her instincts. He sees that --

-- and then his eyes are pulled towards vacuum.

Absence.

The last joke which can be played by a world which extracts a price for every gift.

He was granted a partial miracle, life within death, and in exchange...

There is no horn.
There is no horn.
There is no horn.

There were no words. Not in the room, not from those watching from above. There were no words at all, until he raised his head again. Blinked away the tears, even as so many of those who believed themselves hidden did the same, along with a few in the much lesser audience. And then he spoke.

"I have shared my nightmare," he softly stated. "And now, for the unicorns in the room, those hearing this for the first time -- I must ask you to share another. To, for a moment, imagine that you are a pegasus, one about to give birth. That there is no time to move you, that labor ends within mere minutes, for such can happen. So your newborn foal's first sensation of the world is the floor of your cloud home..."

He took a slow breath.

"...and the next is the plummet."

Gasps, added to a tiny, quickly choked-back scream.

"Given any choice," he quietly told them, "all pegasi will give birth on the ground. Because some of their foals will not be pegasi. Unicorns and earth pony foals come into their families and for those newborns, a single moment of resting upon a vapor surface may kill."

He looked away from the audience. Began to pace along the edge of the stage, the injured hind leg dragging.

"There are ways in which I know very little about the mysteries of our blood," he admitted. "But in that, I am just like everypony else, for we all learn the same chant eventually, do we not? Even if it takes so many more school years before we understand what it truly means. 'An earth pony and an earth pony make an earth pony, a unicorn with a unicorn is a baby unicorn, pegasus plus pegasus equals pegasus -- but add any other --'" and the last words were just a little louder than what had come before, which still provided enough contrast to make it arrive as something close to a shout "'-- even once...'"

Moving a little faster now.

"I had thought myself pure," he told them all. "I never asked her, because I loved her and so she was pure to me. Perhaps it was her. But it could have been me. Both of us? It's possible. I could have researched both of our family trees until I reached the Discordian Era -- and then there would be no going on. But ultimately, it would have been pointless. I would have been shouting at the shadowlands, and I would hardly expect to receive an apology, much less restitution for the crime. For it was theft in the end, was it not? Children are robbed of their heritage. They are helpless to stop it, they will never be repaid, they enter the world broken beyond all repair...!"

Another breath, followed by a visible centering.

"She was broken." Almost a whisper. "It was nothing she did. Nothing she ever would have done. Somepony sins but once, and that sin is visited onto the innocents of our future."

He stopped moving. His head dipped again.

"A moment," he quietly asked. "Please." And those within the room waited for him.

There had been times when reactions came to Twilight later than they should have, emotional responses arriving after what she now felt was a shameful delay. The gap had lessened over the years, occasionally vanished entirely, but there were cruel moments when it exerted itself and placed a wall between her and the world, leaving her desperate to find some way of breaking through. The surest weapons she had in that effort were formed from ink, scrolls, and those who helped her find the words.

Those friends were with her now. All of them were, along with somepony new. But it wasn't helping, and perhaps that was because this problem was also new. It wasn't being late to an emotion. Simply not knowing what to do was already present, and felt as if it might never leave.

She was having an emotional reaction. She was having several of them, and she didn't know which ones were supposed to be there.

Part of her wanted to grieve, for she had heard his pain and knew it was a true agony, one which would never fade. But then words had come after it and hate had surged, a cold fury which was trying to ignite her horn, send bursts of field into stone until the true view had been opened and she could reach him. Underneath that, a trembling fear, anticipation building into terror as a deep portion of her mind realized that the story could only worsen. Helplessness, for Pinkie was shaking, crying, and there was nothing Twilight could do to help, no way to fix things, no words or actions or...

Within her, the conflict raged, beat against internal barriers which had already been disturbed by echoes, mission, and the moon which had passed since the change. Fresh cracks appeared in inner barricades. One storm howling outside, another within.

Somewhere in the room, hooves scraped against stone, then forced themselves to be still: Applejack, perhaps, fighting back the urge to charge. Quiet was simply watching, listening: it seemed to be all he was still capable of. Fluttershy... the tears had never stopped, and perhaps only dehydration would end their flow. And from behind her, a voice normally filled with brash confidence began to brim with fear.

"I..." Feathers softly rustled as cyan wings trembled. "...I never thought about that," Rainbow whispered. "About having a kid, and... if they couldn't fly, if I didn't reach the ground in time..."

She wanted to say something. To find any way of bringing comfort to anypony.

But then he began to speak again, and all of the storms raged on.

"My world had been shattered," he finally went on. "Shattered beyond all repair. I looked at her corpse, then at what we had produced, and... I thought about it. Just for a moment, I thought about sending on. But... it was the last of my spouse. The last there would ever be. I looked at the filly, and I realized... it wasn't her fault."

He started to move again, heading for the blackboard.

"She had a right to her heritage. To her magic. Something which had been torn from her forever. A choice she had not made, would have never made, and... it was too late. The sin had been in the blood, and now that sin was expressed as unchanging flesh. A punishment for a sin which had never been hers."

Stopped, his forelegs near the papers.

"My world had been shattered," he repeated. "I could see no path forward. And so I did... something small. Something I could still do. I found what little remained of my strength, and took the filly away from her mother, for she didn't understand what had happened. She was trying to nuzzle against a cooling body when I carried her away, still crying for a parent she would never know. I took her --"

Upstairs. I took her upstairs.

Even without what had happened both before and after, it would have remained distinctive simply for its singularity.

"-- to a bath," he continued. "I washed her. She was covered in blood, and then she was not. That much I could control. I washed her, and looked at where her horn should have been." A pause. "Primatura had talked me into -- saving the cap. Not that she'd really had to try."

His eyes closed, remained so for three breaths, opened again.

"The gift was her life," he finally said. "And the price for that gift was the death of my spouse, the theft of her heritage, and... I couldn't send her on. Even broken by sin, she was the last of Primatura, and to give her up... I couldn't. But she was broken, and I could barely stand to look at the unhealing wound which the world had inflicted upon her. So I cleaned her, I fed her, I calmed her, and I brought the bassinet into the lower level, as far from her mother's corpse as possible. I ate, because I had realized I needed to live. And then I began to think. That she had been robbed of her heritage --"

Which was when that warm orange gaze began to grow bright.

"-- but that did not mean she had to stay broken."

His spine went tight. A soft red tail held steady.

"I had done the impossible. I recognized that. Differentiation, the law of magic which no unicorn had ever violated, an unbreakable wall between us and whatever may lie within -- wounded by my horn, enough to let a single ray of light through. And once the impossible has been done once... you start to feel like so many other things could be accomplished. Breaking through differentiation was impossible: I had done that. Everything else might simply be a matter of finding the way. And so I began to do the needful."

They were listening, all of them. Admittedly, there were postures which told him a few were now doing so in light boredom: they had heard this part years ago, they had been convinced, and they were just waiting for him to reach the new. But those ponies weren't important and in some ways, neither were the new arrivals on the ground level. Ultimately, he was speaking to six.

He wished he could see them before him, in that moment. Answer their questions immediately. Watch their faces in anticipation of that instant when they would truly understand, for he knew that such would come.

Soon enough.

"I hid her away before I notified the authorities," he calmly stated. "Before the body was removed. I told the doctors that I didn't want an autopsy. I barely managed to get through the funeral, and I thank all of you who were there to give what support and comfort you could. And nopony asked about what had happened during the birth, because the assumption was that I had... sent the foal on. But she was still there, being tended to within stone. I went back to her regularly: teleportation provided that much comfort. But most of my time was being spent away from my home. I needed to do research, and some resources were close by. I had, in some ways, already started on the path. Certainly in one way, for I had not named her. Some might choose to see that as simple luck, but with what came after... that was the assistance of destiny. The first of her two great moments had passed: she had been born. But a lesser? Avoided. Without a name, the future granted to her could be shaped. I researched, and in time..."

His horn ignited, and the silver field surrounded the papers. Began to separate the topmost sheets, move them towards the board.

"I still had these," he quietly said. "The notes I wrote on the night when the Great Work truly became my life."

The first sheet of parchment was placed against the dark plane. There was but a single line of writing upon it.

A cutie mark cannot be spontaneously created.

"'Cutie mark'," and he chuckled. "There's a story in that, actually: one hardly anypony alive knows. I'm not certain I've ever told anypony here about how 'cutie' came to be part of the term. Perhaps this might be the night for it, or it could simply frustrate those who feel that tale is lengthening the delay. But once you know the story, you may find yourself simply calling it a mark. In seeing the full term here, please forgive my relative innocence of youth." A small smile. "But this is something you all know, I'm sure. Some of you -- of us -- all right, the number includes myself -- did foolish things in our childhood while attempting to create the marks of our personal choice, and the stories of failure could be told for a thousand years and more -- but then, our destinies had been set."

The next sheet floated up.

A cutie mark can be temporarily concealed, albeit with great effort.

"And may Sun and Moon help the pony who tries to make it permanent," he wryly added. "So many criminals have assigned themselves to, if not a life in prison, then one in pants. But it is part of what we all know: that the mark itself is inviolate. Or... is it something we only told ourselves we knew?"

And on the third sheet:

A cutie mark can be transferred, but only the mark itself moves: not the talent it represents.

He -- he couldn't have known that. Not that far back. Only two living ponies should have known that, could have known...

"Twilight?" Pinkie, even while steadily sinking into the depths of her own pain, was still capable of sensing the shock. "How... how can he..."

She didn't know, and so said nothing. Her eyes simply widened, and she watched.

Shockwave. A small one, confined only to those ponies who had never known it -- but a shockwave all the same, one he was entirely used to seeing.

"A few of you are currently fighting to believe that," he observed, "and in doing so, are largely fighting against yourselves. For now, I ask that you simply accept it as true. It can be done. But there are many problems involved with the incomplete version which is all that exists of that spell, starting with the fact that simply exerting one's true talent will begin to unravel the entire working. Destiny reasserts itself. The working is not worth learning, and given the identity of its original creator... well, if he couldn't finish it, then I doubt it can ever be fixed." A small shrug. "But we will reach that. The next fact --"

A cutie mark can be delayed, sometimes indefinitely.

"There are many means of doing so," he stated. "Every last one of which, if known to the authorities, will place the delaying pony in prison. But it seemed to me that I had little choice in the matter, and so I turned to the surest method. Within the first moon of her life, she had her first... jewelry. Something which became more complex over the years, but the heart of it was always there. Training had to begin early and so even as an infant, she was taught to never remove the snitcher. She wasn't told what it did. Simply that it had to be worn at all times, until the Great Work was complete."

"He stopped her Surges," Applejack half-hissed. "No earth ponies in this town, nopony to hear her, and then he went an' tore out her throat! Her whole life without magic, because he'd decided she was broken! And what in Tartarus is sending on? Ah think I've got an idea, but if I'm right, ponies have been --"

She stopped, all at once, as her ears dipped and even her breaths became momentarily silent. Twilight simply continued to stare down, as the colors began to leach from the edges of her vision.

And then the fifth sheet came up. Waterstained parchment, and something within her recognized that the discolorations had been produced by tears of joy.

A cutie mark can be manipulated...

The world went white.

She wasn't aware that she'd almost started to scream until she felt Quiet's field desperately clamp around her jaw, and still the sound pushed against Twilight's teeth, demanded release as the horrors of what a filly's life would become presented themselves before her and sought a way into the world. She was struggling, she was fighting as deeper cracks appeared, a simple effort would dispel the other field and then she would

she saw Quiet's face. The sudden fear, and perhaps it was a terror of her reaction giving them away, the knowledge that he'd never be able to hold her if she found a moment of focus, or it could have been fear of --

-- the scream, so pure and pained, continued to echo in her mind. But to gain strength for that assault, it had to abandon the attack on her throat. The fear (his, and the much more experienced army of her own) was immediately recruited as an ally and together, they relentlessly battered the inner defenses.

The white faded. Color returned.

"Easy," Quiet whispered, his field releasing its unsteady grip. "Easy, Twilight..."

She forced herself to nod.

"I..." The word barely made it through the storm. "I'll be careful."

He nodded.

And she watched.

It would be hours before she realized he'd reached across Pinkie to stop her. Intercepting from the wrong side.

"Many ponies try," he said. "Of course, some of that is simple parenting: we feel we know what's best for our children, after all, and there are certainly marks we would prefer them to have. But in the end, we are fighting destiny. Among the earth ponies, I would imagine that a farming family might wish for every generation to contain farmers, but... there are times when the world chooses something else. Again, some forms of manipulation would bring punishment from those who discovered them, but... I had already acquired a snitcher and placed it upon the filly in my basement." Not without a touch of wryness, "Going forward from that seemed to be something much less than impossible."

He resumed his quarter-limping pace, with his field still holding the sheets against the blackboard.

"At the time I wrote those words, I had already learned a few things," he told them. "It was... surprisingly easy to learn more, and I started to wonder how much of that might have been destiny -- although finding some of what I initially needed within trotting distance hadn't hurt. But then I was ranging farther and farther away. I learned to keep multiple safe points open, so that I could return to the lower levels at any time: there was nopony taking care of her other than me, after all. And the things I then learned..."

He paused, took a deep breath.

"There have been times when I have wondered," he declared, "if anypony could have learned it all. Because we've all asked the questions, haven't we? When we were very young, and foal questions were all we had. But we never acquired the answers. We were only taught to stop asking. But I had so many questions, and the truth could not hide itself from a determined mind. I sought truth, and this is what I learned: our world is a lie."

The last five words resounded, and echoes did their share of damage within a place he could not see.

"One alicorn did not wield six Elements," he told them all. "Nor did two. Six Elements were matched to six ponies. Destiny then provided them with a protector, and seven went out into something so much worse than a wild zone to try and save the world. They succeeded -- and paid a price for that gift. But among their wielders, there were no alicorns at all -- at least, not at the start."

More gasps, from that same little section. He ignored them.

"I needed to learn about ways by which a broken pony might find what should have been their magic," he continued. "And so I asked myself a foal question: where do alicorns come from? In searching, I found a partial answer: those who so many see as deities incarnate began their lives as normal ponies." A brief pause. "And they were not unicorns. Their magic was granted, created, and gifted by the Elements themselves. I now knew that it was possible to make a pony into an alicorn."

A small smile.

"I could," he stated, "settle for that. So I --"

And from that tiny portion of the audience which held the first-time public attendees came the first shout.

"I know what you did!"

It was a west coast accent, from a very specific region, and it was somepony he'd never had the chance to directly speak with. That narrowed down the possibilities to one, and he momentarily considered Coordinator's priorities in searching for assistance. How they so frequently seemed to locate those who would only want the power for themselves, mostly because such ponies typically possessed a wealth of blackmail material.

"Do you --" and he couldn't resist "-- Duke?"

A gasp of terror, quickly suppressed, which still left the overweight body shaking under its damp robes. "I-- I was told there would be no names!"

"It's not a name," he calmly stated. "It's a title. There are Dukes all over the continent, and so much else, depending just what titles the House insisted on retaining for joining Equestria during the Unification. And I was told that you have an odd insistence on being properly addressed, if not necessarily towards arriving on time, or at any point while the desaturator still had any portion of its charge. I think you're the only pony here who went directly from entrance to conference. And what was it you were told I did?"

"The..." And now the body was shaking with outrage. "The hybrids!"

There was now a degree of confusion before him. (So much more above.)

He simply sighed. "Well," and added a small shrug, "at least you were mistakenly gossiped to with the polite term. Very well. We move forward, then, in the name of providing you with correct information."

Back to the blackboard, which rotated under the prod of his field. The blank surface came around, and an ancient scrap of paper was pressed against it.

"I realize that's hard to read," he said as more scraps came up. "You could have said many things about the writer, and none of them would be that he had excellent fieldwriting. But the exact horribleness of it would be familiar to many scholars, even those too far away to make out exactly what he wrote. You are looking at --"

"-- Star Swirl," Twilight just barely whispered. "Those are Star Swirl's personal notes..."

"-- or at least a fraction of the incomplete portion which survives." A small sigh. "He hid copies, and others were passed on -- or perhaps acquired and then passed on. Some were left in their original locations: I didn't feel it was safe to move the ones with the strongest lingering protections, and perhaps others have read them in the time since I did. Others are missing, and I suspect the Princesses destroyed whatever they could. But I took a few, if only as proof of both what I had read and who had written it. And I recognized what would have to be written in the absent sections. So as I have experience in deciphering his writing, allow me to both translate and educate."

An equally ancient sketch was levitated into view.

"These are the Elements themselves, as they existed in Star Swirl's time -- yes, I know they don't look like the sketches you've seen in the newspapers, and that comes from something other than inaccurate reporting. This is how they looked then." Casually, "The central jewel reflects the mark of the Bearer, and those of you who have devoted even casual study to astronomy should now be asking yourselves some interesting questions regarding the constellations within The Barding Of The Ancients. As for there being a pair of crowns, count the members of our Diarchy."

He looked at the images for a moment.

"They were six," he softly said. "Because it requires six." And turned back to the audience. "And Star Swirl, as their Element of Magic... he believed it should have been him, as the one -- and likely only -- who changed. But he had lost the opportunity. His moment of destiny had passed, and with the war against Discord ended -- as far as he knew, the path of the Elements had been closed for the rest of his lifetime. I doubt learning that he was right about that aspect would be any comfort to him."

A small sigh.

"As it was closed to me," he sadly admitted. "I found where they should have been. Where, as it ultimately turned out, they were all along. But they did not reveal themselves to me, and in his case... an incomplete set. But he still wished for power, and so he began to search for other means of acquiring it. He found one."

More notes, all illegible from more than a few hoofwidths away.

"Some of you have heard of essence," he noted. "Most likely from me. It has been referred to as the shadow cast by a soul and for those of you new to the idea, try to start there. It may be that, and it could also be so much more. Even Star Swirl only began to tap into its possibilities, and I have not advanced his studies as much as I might wish. For now, know that it is something close to the heart of us. Something which helps to define us. Something which, unlike the soul, lingers after death, and the proper working can harvest it. But your own essence is safe, because in the course of a normal life, there are only three times in which it can be reached -- and two where it might change. Star Swirl had missed both of those opportunities. Still, he tried..."

A long pause.

"At first," he admitted, "he did not travel that road. Instead, he attempted to use a spell which would grant Princess Luna's mark to him, in the belief that gaining her icon would also mean acquiring a stallion's version of her form." And just for a moment, he chuckled again. "I have wondered if he would have been content should it have worked in all aspects but his hoped-for gender... but it did not function. He gained her mark, but neither her form nor talent. Additionally, multiple marks were transferred, something he had not intended -- and there was some confusion of memories to go with that. But the working quickly fell apart, and he was able to convince the Diarchy that it had been an accident -- to a degree. From what happened afterwards, it would appear they retained some suspicion. But with that having failed, he turned to essence, for it was what he knew. And he began to experiment."

"He," declared that shaken Duke, "made monsters."

"No," the older stallion stated. "Try to listen..."

Another sketch.

"Some of you," he dryly said, "are undoubtedly wondering why I'm showing you a drawing of an oyster. Are you aware of how pearls are made? A grain of sand gets inside the shell, irritates the flesh. The oyster secretes a substance which builds up around the grain, isolating it, creating a surface which the oyster can bear. And our world... is, in one way, very much like that simple creature. It knows what hurts it, and it will do its best to protect itself by isolating the source. Only in this case, the irritant, or perhaps the poison --"

And the time had come.

"-- is chaos. The chaos of Discord."

Other than the increased scent of fear in the room, nothing changed. He exhaled, went on.

"In the time of his rule," he told them, "chaos randomly battered the land. When that attack became most intense, it took the form of a storm, one which remade -- and sometimes unmade -- reality itself. But when the storm passed, some of that power would remain behind, soaked into the very soil. The changes created... those tended to linger, and they are the reason for those places where even wild zone explorers fear to tread: the patchwork nightmares we call chaos terrain." Some notes came down: in their place, three maps were pressed against slate. "But the world tried to protect itself from that power, and so it built up layers around its core. Ultimately, this created what the earth ponies have termed the perpetually-changing jewel of deathstone. The rarest of gems, in no small part due to the risk inherent of going to where one might be found. But a more appropriate name might be chaos pearl. Each contains a portion of Discord's released energy -- his signature, if you prefer, only with very little fading. They encapsulate the potential for, and power of, change."

It was just barely possible to hear some of Pinkie's words between the soft sobs.

"The places where bad things... are still happening..."

"In Star Swirl's era," the older stallion continued, "some unicorns would, for their own protection, learn to sense the energies of chaos. It is... not a kind learning process. Disorienting at best, and I recommend not eating too much before or after an attempt. I went to the only source which might openly exist in our time: the statue in the palace gardens. Arriving when nopony would see me, staying for as long as I could, trying to feel any traces that might be within. And within that statue... power was still present. Confined, weakened, but power. I had the feel for chaos, and so I sought it out within its own terrain. With that new sense as my guide, it didn't take long to acquire the first pearl -- and then to use it as Star Swirl had. For the pearls could hold more than chaos. They were also capable of retaining essence. And thus I began to harvest." More quietly, "The first stop... with the first of my pearls... was a grave. Because you must harvest from the dead, or the dying. To possess any strength would resist the process, and if somepony chose not to resist... the harvesting might be fatal. I asked the dead for their help, and the shadowlands gave their only response: silence. But still -- help was there."

Back to that slow, pained pace.

"I was uncertain as to how much essence would be required," he admitted. "But one pearl, one -- harvest... I knew that wouldn't be enough, and so I began to acquire more. And I also knew that in order to understand what would ultimately need to happen, I had to experiment. I would have to take things further than Star Swirl ever had, to understand the effects on a pony before the true attempt was made --"

"-- you created monsters!"

It had been a scream, and the portion of silver field which coated the door shivered.

"I," Doctor Gentle softly stated, "saved lives. And the lives I saved... are the reason for your life, Duke. Whether you wish to acknowledge that or not. Very well. I will move ahead, if only to make you understand."

To make them understand what they truly are...

"In the course of a normal pony's life," he continued, "there are two great moments of destiny. I had already commenced my public studies, because the singular trick I had acquired was something of worth to Equestria. I became a midwife, and that allowed me to have a presence at the first of those moments: birth. The time when a new life makes itself known to the tapestry of the world. Star Swirl had experimented with essence, and found that because he missed those moments, he could not incorporate it directly into himself. Even if he had somehow managed to make it enter his form, he believed there would be displacement. But it was a theory untested, at least on ponies. And so I waited for what every midwife sees: the dying. The foals who cannot be saved. It... turned out to be a rather short wait. The very first mother to be brought into my new facilities had been in labor for far too long. Her filly was dry in the womb. Was dying, and should I have done nothing, even with the Exception in play, she would have been stillborn."

(She was somewhere above him. She was hearing all of it. He so wished he could look at her, meet the gaze of that sole visible eye as he spoke words of destiny...)

"As a race," he quietly said, "at best, we can only trace our ancestry to the Discordian Era -- and there the trail vanishes. Nopony can truly know whether a sin lurks in their family line. I had a dying filly within the womb, one who would never know any time under Sun. A filly who could have been born as -- anything. And so when I reached out to her with the Exception, I opened a channel. I sent the energies of change to her, along with the essence that pearl had also been asked to contain." Ruefully, "I had meant to use unicorn essence, but it was my first birth and... frankly, in the panic of preparing, my field lanced for the wrong chaos pearl. I wished to see if she would be born as a unicorn. And if it failed... if it hurt her..." His eyes briefly closed. "...then she was already dying."

Opened again, looking at past and present superimposed upon the world.

"Instead, it saved her life. For Star Swirl had written of something which I didn't truly understand until I saw it. He called it hybrid vigor. All of the animals he experimented on came into the world with a determination to fight for every breath. Those who should have been stillborn lived, thrived -- as did what was, in truth, the second pony I ever brought to Sun. And as I had become somewhat attuned to essence by that time, I felt something happen within her. The earth pony essence was incorporated into her form. But there was a price to pay for that: the displacement which Star Swirl had feared. And I was unable to change the whole of her: no matter how much essence I channeled, something of the original was retained. Not an issue when changing a pony into an alicorn, but..." A small, almost casual shrug. "Well, in short, a portion of her natural essence was lost, and the earth pony essence replaced it. And it was my first use of the pearls during a birth. I didn't know how much to use, what was safe, where the limits were... but she lived. She thrived. And... she was born as a pegasus -- although it took a few hours before I checked my stock and realized that another part of the failure was my fault. I was unable to transform her in the womb, and that failure has lasted throughout my career: I never changed the species of a single newborn. But I discovered that the essence infusion granted strength. Those who stood on the border of the shadowlands could be brought to Sun. And so I continued to experiment upon those who would have been lost. Discovering what happened when chaos met essence and they both merged into the shadow of a soul..."

His head dipped, very slightly.

"It was... a learning process," he softly admitted. "I count my true failures in the numbers of those I could not save. Some were too hurt for my efforts to bring them back -- but I made sure their essence lived on. And there was one time, a year into my career... a breech birth, the most difficult I have ever dealt with, what I felt was purely a chance encounter from hearing a scream at the exact moment I was about to use what I thought was a barren land of rocks as a teleport relay area. Given what became of her, I believe I can call that destiny now. But at the time... unicorn essence didn't seem as if it would be enough to save her and in my fear, I used a second pearl, for its potential to change alone. The imbalance... nearly killed her, along with almost taking the life of her mother. I never tried that again. But she lived, and..."

He looked up. Found his gaze going too far aloft, brought his attention back to the audience he could see.

"...even with no changes visible," he went on, "I felt it was worth it. Fillies and colts lived. If nothing else, they lived, and so I continued to use the pearls to save those who would have otherwise been lost. But as they aged... I began to hear of what I felt were side effects. None of them had visible Surges. Some of the parents felt that was due to the difficulty of their births, that their magic had somehow been impacted, and I could hardly tell them what had truly happened. All were slow to come into what should have been their proper magic, and when it did appear, that power was weak. A pegasus child confessed to me that she could barely tolerate the sensation of standing on clouds: that they felt tacky beneath her hooves, as if she was slightly sinking. But every affected pegasus could fly. The unicorns would muster sparks, and the earth ponies didn't seem to have sacrificed any of their physical strength. Still... the loss of the original essence had done something..."

He sighed.

"I had given them their lives..."

And then came the true smile, the beaming of purest pride as his voice swelled with joy.

"...and I had created a miracle. Because their marks began to appear. Their talents manifested. And where some of their original essence had been lost, the new had been fully incorporated into their very souls! They were the proof that the Great Work could succeed, that transformation was a matter of power and essence added to the proper mindset and moment! You wish to call them monsters, or warped, or any of the other terms which fearful ponies whisper into what they hope will be receptive ears? They are miracles one and all, Duke, and two of them saved your life! They saved the lives of everypony here, they are the reasons why we still have lives...!"

Silver flashed, and the pictures were taken from the pile, brought into full view.

One at a time, so he could speak about each miracle in turn.

One by one by one by one by one by...

There is a pegasus whose wings lacked their birth caps, who had fragile bones irreparably shattered by the pressures of labor, whose second experience of pain was the emergency partial amputation which shaped what remained into something which could pass for wings -- ones which were forever stunted. He should have died within a day, was given a name which reflected ultimate fragility, and he lived. He flies, for an unexpected kind of strength substitutes for lost surface area and magic and everything else. His sheer determination to live still pushes him forward and when the muscles behind that power slam a hoof into dirt, the earth reverberates at his touch.

There is an earth pony who has spent her life dreaming of the sky. She has never been content to rest upon the silent soil: her childhood was mostly spent in attempts to get above it -- but ponies make poor climbers. Still, she hiked to ever-greater heights, she learned all she could about methods for parting hooves from land, and when her mark came, it was for aeronautics. She pilots her own balloon, scouting wild zones from overhead, and those around her marvel at her luck in somehow always encountering favorable winds when outside the realm of control. None of them, not even her, have recognized that the winds do not merely favor her. They love her, and make sure nothing ever happens to their wayward daughter.

There is a pegasus who was always fascinated by devices. She spent her childhood taking apart the creations of unicorn enchantments, and found her mark manifesting at the moment she finally reassembled one in working order. She has no talent for wonders, the creations of pegasi which channel that form of magic. But with that made by unicorns... she understands them, on the level of the mark which no other pegasus has ever possessed, and this has allowed her to open a repair shop, one where nearly everypony has to adjust to the strangeness of the proprietor. For she has no ability to cast, and so some things are forever beyond her -- but there are times when adjustments to the physical aspects of a device suffice. There are also times when she knows how to proceed because upon her touch, the device just might whisper to her soul -- and at the moment the doctor speaks of her, she is minutes away from learning about the power which truly flows through her blood.

There is a unicorn who studies botany. His field is weak: he struggles to move the heaviest of flowerpots. But he gains some benefit from his personal trick, one he has yet to discuss with anypony other than his first friend. That to simply focus his magic upon a plant is to understand some portion of what that plant does: whether it's edible, where it can thrive. There are times when he begins to recognize medicinal benefits, and always knows what has to be avoided. He keeps that secret (on the friend's advice) because he feels other will think less of him if they see magic instead of knowledge. And because there are times when he's among his charges when he thinks he hears something very much like music. The trees await the day when he finally and truly listens.

There is an earth pony who understands workings. It's not the education of a dedicated scholar (although he's studied whatever he could): it's instinct, an understanding which comes from the core of him. He will never cast a single spell, and yet his comprehension is so complete as to make him capable of teaching them -- if only anypony would accept his tutelage, and that acceptance has never come, not when ponies can see what he is. So he left his home, went to where nopony knew him, and never takes off the hat. He sometimes claims disease keeps him from casting, the world's most persistent victim of Rhynorn's Flu, and has assembled a list of other excuses to be brought out at need. But it doesn't always work. He has been exposed, had to move on -- but his mark has told him what he is meant to do, and so he continues to travel, tutors whenever he can. And through all of the lessons given to the young, all of the little accidents so common to those trying out their fields and tricks for the first time, he has never been hurt, not by their magic, for he dispels every spark which comes too close, and doesn't know he's doing it at all.

There is a unicorn who yearns for the sky. She lacks the field strength to levitate herself, tried to master the spell which would grant temporary wings and didn't have the power for that either. She looks at clouds and sees not just shapes, but a home denied. In her dreams, she swoops over the land, flying through loops and spirals which few pegasi could ever manage, and so she tells herself that those dreams torment her. She both longs for and loathes the release of sleep, for it is the only time when she can truly be herself -- and yet she must always wake. She has yet to realize that the night is when her soul flies, projected into the sky to soar as it will. That everything she sees during those dreams (and she always remembers them) is real. Nopony has told her of the pegasus made of shimmer and desire who sometimes appears over her newest settled zone. So she's saving up for a trip to Cloudsdale and the casting of the spell which will allow her to visit at all. She thinks it'll wear off in, at best, three days. She doesn't know it isn't needed at all.

There is a pegasus, and she was the first. Her flight is typically slow, her maneuverability poor, and she fears using even the most basic technique within a group effort, because she can hardly ever get anything to even partially work and believes her mere presence could sabotage everything. Her parents were strong, she should have been destined for weather college... it takes very little before she starts to resent her weakness. She begins to hate herself. She retreats from the world, and there are times when she thinks about leaving it. But then her mark comes and the world reaches out to her, accepts her in a way few ponies ever will. Ground calls her, and she descends. The natural inhabitants of the land come to her, provide the support and love she so desperately needs. She understands them, as they understand her. She feeds some of them with plants which have no right to grow on her property, located just behind the Cornucopia Effect's true border. And when something less natural approaches, when the anger which one of her many fears has driven down into the darkness starts to surface, her fear of herself -- that is when the monsters see what lurks within her eyes. A shard of chaos stares them down, and so many will do anything to make it stop.

There is an earth pony who should have died, and spent much of her youth wishing that she had. The chaos within her interacts with the unicorn essence which displaced nearly all of who she could have been and finds strange ways of emerging into the world -- but she longs for the acceptance she never found in her birth home, and the thought of being seen as too different, strange enough to trigger rejection, terrifies her. That fear has created a near-constant aspect to her abilities: that nearly all simply see it as just her being herself, and prevents them from thinking anything more of it. It takes a particularly questioning mind to maintain focus on what's truly happening, or one so hidebound as to never be capable of conceiving that the supplies which went into that first party were conjured. The accusation of theft ultimately drove her to Ponyville, where the happiness she found allows her magic to bring laughter for so many -- but only as long as she herself can be happy. She is the experiment never repeated, the first known to create miracle -- but her mark, her magic, her existence is tied to her emotional state, and to lose that inner joy leaves her as nothing more than the adult version of the filly hopelessly pushing the rock along the furrow, forever alone.

He spoke, and the barriers crumbled.

His words reached her ears, and walls which she hadn't known existed simply dissolved.

He educated, and the final divisions fell.

She lived in a world of order. One which had begun as a place where marks had never moved, ponies didn't agonizingly shift between the races, where the appearance of a monster would match its soul. And one by one, all of those rules had been broken. But she'd felt herself to have weathered the storm -- until the words joined everything which had happened, the things which were still happening, and the next thing to break would have to be her because the world was chaos, discord, nightmare from which nopony could ever awake and

they were around her. Everypony was. But she no longer fully recognized that. They were all reacting to the words in their own ways, and those ways would not truly reach her for some time. As far as noticing what was happening to them was concerned, she could have been alone within that high perch. She felt as if she was.

The words crashed through her, leaving very little intact. And the final rule broke, a law so fundamental that she'd never had to think about its existence.

A unicorn is a unicorn.

An earth pony is an earth pony.

A pegasus is a pegasus.

Except when they were not.

Picture after picture, and a shred of sanity realized that he was only showing some of the adults. That there were those who were younger, so many who had yet to manifest their marks, and...

...one who had just been born.

Dawn Sky. He changed her, right in front of me. He made her into...

The words had led her to the familiar. The pictures confirmed it. Images rammed into her skull, joined the howling storm, twisted...

...the trembling forehoof touched her shoulder.

Later, she would recognize it for what it had been. A desperate attempt to reach out. The simple act of asking somepony to acknowledge them, to see them as nothing more than themselves. That in the time of greatest pain, of an inner agony she could barely stand to imagine, that pony would be still be with them. As a friend.

But she looked at where that darkened hoof was touching her. Realized just how much they were touching.

And she screamed.

Her eyes did not go white. Her horn remained dark. But she screamed, and nothing could have stopped it. A moon of chaos broke free, a lifetime only it was somepony else's lifetime, the world was wrong and the only way she could deal with it now was to scream and scream and scream --

-- the restraint slammed onto her skull.

She instinctively recoiled, hooves scrabbling at stone, trying to get away. But it was too late: the straps were under her chin, had somehow gotten there without her ever noticing, and the other thing she hadn't noticed until it was too late was Quiet standing over her, his field just now winking out as the door slammed open, ponies flooded the room --

-- there was no space in which to fight. There was barely any chance to fight. The sound of a net (registered immediately, acknowledged far too late) landing on Rainbow, tangling her wings. A red unicorn field lashed out with a length of cloth, wrapped around coral mane and covered eyes. She would later learn that Applejack had been hit by shackles which locked themselves around all four ankles, ponies were going after Rarity, more were closing in --

-- there was a burst of space-clearing flame, followed by a pony scream as claws swiped across a sensitive snout. Scrabbling noises, something more than keratin on stone, walking claws fighting for purchase and then --

"-- he's getting away!" somepony shouted. "The dragon is getting away!"

"Stop him!" another yelled. "Go up the passage! Don't let him --"

And from Applejack, just before her jaw was bound, "Run, Spike, Sun and Moon, run --"

But Twilight, restrained and broken, could do no more than to look past Quiet, who had just silently stepped aside. She didn't truly register the now-opened box behind him. Instead, she looked at nearby dark pink fur, utter rejection writ large in devastation. The only emotions that entity, who had never been able to raise a single hoof against those who were now binding her, was now capable of experiencing.

An entity who had been her friend.

Her friend, who had never truly been a pony at all.

She screamed. And she continued to do so until the fourth pony to try finally managed to place the gag.

Cum Cera (With Wax)

She had screamed, and so those below had heard.

Part of Twilight registered what had now started to ebb into a still-desperate background babble, just before she was pushed out of the room. The noise of their entrapment, added to that which still seemed to be echoing within her skull, had covered up most of the earliest parts -- but even then, it had been there. There had been a certain tension in the meeting, and hearing the scream coming from above had almost unleashed it. Under so many circumstances, it would have sent robed and hooded ponies instinctively scrambling for the only visible exit as fear of discovery drove them to get out, trampling anything and anypony in their way --

-- but the older stallion had apparently said something, words which bought just enough time for more words, and so he was still on the stage, currently holding the crowd back with speech alone. Telling them that this wasn't unexpected, they simply had a few more ponies in attendance than the rest had known about, there was no danger and those ponies would be with them shortly.

Only he didn't describe them as ponies. He'd said 'guests'.

So many of those below wanted to run. But words held them back long enough for fear to, if not vanish, drop to a level which was easier to fight. The gathering was shifting, kicking out questions, they needed to know they were safe --

-- but then Quiet, the last to leave the room, shut down the device. And so Twilight heard nothing more.

She was not the first in the line being forced through the passageway: there were robed ponies in front of her, making certain she didn't try to go anywhere. Not that she could: her horn was restrained, her wings had been wrapped within netting, and she seemed to have very little true control over her legs. She mostly moved when prodded, shuffled along towards whatever would happen next. Trying to think and finding that every idea of escape had been equally bound, negated before it ever had the chance to work.

The others were being pushed along. None among their captors seemed to care about whether Applejack's flanks scraped the rough walls, and the single grunt of pain which couldn't be held back was met by a harsh burst of laughter.

"Don't." Quiet's voice, somewhere well behind her.

"Scraping a clod off on stone. You can't tell me that's not funny --"

"-- a Bearer," Quiet softly said, "is on her way to speak with the doctor. Try to remember that."

Her ears had not been restrained, and so rotated back and down, pressing against her skull. Trying not to hear him, and so much else. But it didn't form anything close to a perfect seal, and so Fluttershy's muffled sobs continued to reach her. There was only a single source of true silence, and the traveling sonic vacuum simply indicated Pinkie's shuffling position in the passage.

They had all been gagged, with one unable to see. But nothing been done about their hearing, which allowed the frantic approach coming down the passage to reach them all.

"It got past her!" A gasp from a desperate mare voice. "We're trying to find it --"

"The staff will lock down the castle," Quiet stated. "All the windows, all the doors. There are security workings which can be activated, and he can't cast. We can at least keep him from getting out." A pause. "And let me tell them to do it. Any words they might have to repeat should be safe ones. Can somepony escort me back to the main hall?"

There was probably a nod, because then there was a flash. And then Quiet was gone.

Up the passage. Back into the main halls. Marched down the ramp or, in Rainbow's case, levitated. The pegasus had been completely immobilized: wings, legs, jaw -- and, after she'd tried for a few too many whips, tail. Her magic came from movement, and so all the impotent rage was left to harmlessly radiate from furiously-darting eyes. Rainbow was picking out target after target for her revenge and couldn't reach a single one of them. Multiple loops of field had been added to the bindings of nets and ropes, and so her flight was no longer her own.

Spike. Spike's still free...

One little dragon against an entire castle.

She wanted to have hope. She kept waiting for somepony to kick a scaly body in front of her before laughing and putting a hoof into the crests.

Through the main hall, and a moment of what would have often been normalcy turned into surrealism: there were servants cleaning up after the party, and one mare thoughtfully got in front of them long enough to make sure no crumbs would impede their hooves: it wouldn't do for the prisoners to get dirty.

Quiet rejoined them as they used one of the exit hallways: something other than that which had been utilized by those attending the conference. He took the lead as they stopped at a wall, and faint sparkles tapped at stone. The new passage opened, and they went down.

This one was even narrower, and the working lights did no more than show them how much trouble they were about to have.

They moved, and Applejack repeatedly bit into her gag. Pinkie remained silent. Small bursts of gag-muffled muttering occasionally came from Rarity. Fluttershy cried. Rainbow's anger continued to build into something which felt as if it should have been producing ozone on its own. And Twilight shuffled forward.

Then there was wood in front of them. The colorless field pushed again and the hidden entrance swung inwards, cloth rippling along its forward edge. The scent of old paper filled Twilight's nostrils, failed to bring comfort.

Robed ponies turned at the sound. Saw him, then some of their fellows -- and then Twilight. But there were no shouts. No fresh outburst of panic, although one damp coating was slightly mobile: the overweight flanks beneath were shaking with poorly-repressed fear. Only one pony spoke, and the calm words easily reached her.

"Our true guests on this evening," the older stallion evenly stated, "have already been introduced. They have also been welcomed. Nopony here will do anything to change that. Clear an aisle for them, please."

Slowly, they were brought forward through the new gap. A myriad of eye colors watched them pass. Warm orange ones simply took a count.

"The dragon?"

Quiet sighed. "Still in the castle, Doctor, because we're locked down now: there are just ponies trying to find out where." Ruefully, "I had some ancient restraints in the secondary armory. I always have ropes for the hoofball practices. But somehow, over the course of all the centuries this place has been standing, nopony ever thought to purchase something that was meant to automatically stop a sapient who breathes fire -- and no, nopony was hurt, at least not by that. He managed to claw through cloth: the snout scratches are being treated. But it looked like he aimed the flame to miss. Clearing space for the run."

The older stallion slowly shook his head. "And all anypony saw was the flame, and so they gave him that space. Very well. Thank you for your efforts, my most devoted: I know you did what you could. And as we know he cannot break the security spells, we will simply trust to the efforts of the searchers. One of you, go back out and make sure everypony knows not to hurt him: from my time in his presence, I doubt he will attempt to use his flame for more than fear. And as he is no true part of what must come next, there is no need for additional delay. Would those at the front please shuffle back somewhat?"

Eventually, they were essentially sitting with the audience -- in the front row: hindquarters were pushed down to put them in that posture and, in Rainbow's case, uninverted. And finally, he nodded.

His most devoted...

She was overflowing with reasons to hate herself (with the largest source of flooding sitting silent on her immediate right), and so temporarily relegated that one to the back of the floodwater current.

"As I explained to those on this level while you were on the way," the stallion (whom she no longer wished to give the honor of a name) told them all, "you are here as my invited guests, and will be treated accordingly. It was necessary for the six of you to hear my words, whether it was from concealment or in the open. You always would have been among us at the end, and -- I had hoped you would trot down at my most devoted's side, of your own accord."

Looking right at her now, and her head dipped, eyelids half-closing. The only means she had of escape, and it wasn't enough.

"I know the scream was yours, Princess," he told her. " And I am sorry, for the truth having upset you so. I have some idea of what your life has been, because change can feel as if it will break you, and I have been through my own shattering. You were the personal student of Princess Celestia. You studied at the hooves of what you must have believed to be a deity and now, with what you have heard... I can understand a scream, because I remember my own from the night I lost my spouse. I learned a working to keep that scream from my nightscape, and I would be honored to be your teacher." He took a slow breath. "I had hoped you would trot in at Quiet's side. But you may still trot out. You are restrained -- all of you -- only so that you will stay and listen. I asked everypony here to wait for you, and so they have. I told them that the Bearers may be the most important part of our Great Work. For I know what you told Quiet. It is why I wanted you to hear me."

His calm gaze moved to Pinkie, moved over the lank fall of mane, dropped down to darkened fur. Went to Fluttershy, and there he could look at nothing more than the cloth of the blindfold, doing so for five full heartbeats.

He sighed.

"This too," he softly said, almost as if speaking to himself alone, "will be fixed..." And back to normal volume. "You must hear all of it, Princess. You, your friends, and the two among you who are mine."

His. The word could not foul her tongue, and so its sewage backwashed into her stomach.

"We left off," he reminded them all, "with an extremely partial display of the lives I have saved. There is no need to go over them all, for it would take us all the way to Sun -- and perhaps quite some distance beyond. I remember every last one of them, Princess, and I am proud of what I have given to Equestria. Proud of what they have accomplished. For those who call them monsters, a word I know has taken up residence in at least one mind, look upon the six who have saved us. The living reasons why everypony here still draws breath in a Sun-lit world, or can take a step across the land without feeling its surface turn to water. You are looking at our heroes -- and destiny does not accept monsters as Bearers."

Ponies were staring at them, with expressions impossible to read through the hoods. But Pinkie merely looked at the floor, and oversaturated cotton allowed one of Fluttershy's tears to seep through.

He looked at that. And then he did not look away so much as through, before returning his attention to Twilight.

"Later," he said, "if all goes well, I will ask you of Snowflake, Fluttershy, for I remember both your words and letters." (He wasn't looking at the caretaker when he said those words, although it could be argued that there was very little point.) "How you trust him to look after the cottage while you are here, think of him as something very much like a brother. You should think of him that way, for the two of you are so very much alike. More intelligent than others give you credit for. Stronger than anypony believes --" which brought out a small, brief smile "-- although for him, that takes some saying, does it not? But the two of you also share that fear of being among others, and... essence. For I harvested from lost siblings, and so new siblings were born..."

Fluttershy sobbed. He smiled, and she could not see it.

"I have longed to tell you that," he softly admitted. "I often have, within my dreams. And Princess... Ratchette was so happy about the talks the two of you were starting to have, when I saw her last. She seldom finds anypony she feels comfortable speaking with. You have been a comfort to her. She would never tell you that, and so I wished to. I could speak of so many -- but there are ponies waiting. Some have been waiting for a very long time. And so we go on."

And with that, he once again began to pace across the stage, with the injured hind leg dragging.

"I brought those to Sun who otherwise never would have trotted and flown under its light," he continued. "But even when channeled during one of the two great moments of destiny, essence could not change a race. I continued to use it, for Equestria was better off in having a number of extra hoofsteps about. But I was starting to experience doubts. There was but one other possible moment before me, only so long it might be postponed, and I did not know if my attempt could work. There was no evidence. None of those I had helped displayed a single external change. So many of the young were having difficulties. And so I focused my search on yet another path, for Princess Cadance had not been born from the Elements. It meant there had to be another way. But everywhere I looked -- secrecy. She arose when Princess Celestia had something much closer to full control over information getting out of the palace, before portions of the press became so -- inquisitive." A sigh. "Or, in too many distressing cases, creative. But in reviewing the stories from that time, it seems that most ponies simply believed a long-long relative had been discovered in a place nopony had ever heard of. I went to that place, to find only ice -- and the Barrier around what was still Sombra's lands. Star Swirl wrote of what had happened to the siblings who traveled with him, and thus there was an account to uncover. But for Princess Cadance... silence and swirling cold."

He sighed, briefly glanced back at the shimmering main door.

"I began to despair," he softly said. "I can admit that now. And the question of resources had already begun to arise. I knew I would need more than one pearl, and I had more than one. Many more. But... I kept using them. Every foal saved was a pearl temporarily expended. Oh, they could be recharged with the energy of fresh chaos -- but there was but a single source. I spent so many Moon-hidden nights in the palace gardens, ready to teleport away at the first sound, pulling out the residual energies from the core of the statue. Long hours during which I sometimes began to think I --"

Stopped, with head dipping as his tail briefly dropped.

"Perhaps I did," he confessed. "Perhaps it was more than fear, lack of sleep, and imagination combining to make me believe that there was something still alive within the stone. After all, the proof for that became -- active. But it could not have been aware. No awareness, and no memory. Still... a weary mind sometimes believed there was at least a dream of... resistance. And I had to be careful in more than not being found within the gardens, because to take too much would leave nothing which could rebuild for the next harvesting."

It was Discord's mission: the detail she hadn't even told Quiet. And ever since the madness had begun, the question of why the draconequus would do that had echoed through everypony's mind. Fluttershy had only believed there was a true reason, to go with true caring. With Twilight, even after they'd met her, there had been rather more doubt -- and nothing had appeared to create a motivation.

But every other rule had broken, and so more fragments crashed through her mind.

He was harvesting Discord's essence. Something where a living subject has to be horribly weak, unable to fight back, something which would normally kill...

And Discord... remembered.

This isn't a mission. It's revenge --

-- no. He could have come here himself. Even with the Princesses trying to monitor everything he does, he could potentially have gotten away with a lot. Maybe even -- deaths. But he sent us, because he was...

...was what?

...afraid?

It could have been the fear of once again finding himself trapped within stone: it felt as if there was some sense to that. And yet the storm howling in her mind would not let the concept find a safe haven of belief.

He harvested from Discord. Over and over...

...what... what would that have done to the bindings? He had to reach inside and create channels for the power to escape. He could have been creating cracks...

"Essence," the false doctor went on, "was always easier. There are forever more graves." Sadly, "And forever one more foal I was unable to help, whose essence would be asked to save another. Essence and pearls, I could gather -- but the pearls came with a cost. It is not easy to find chaos terrain: it lies in those places where ponies fear to tread. I knew of a few roughly mapped areas -- but after that, I needed to hire scouts. Then the search expanded beyond Equestria, for the Discordian Era was his rule over the world entire, and so pearls existed within the other nations. And while I could cross a continent by using a sufficiency of safe points at the borders of my range -- to travel beyond, and hope to return to the cellars... no. Even personally searching within Equestria was becoming more difficult: my fame was spreading, and more ponies calling for my services meant more chances to save lives -- and less hours to gather the things which could do it. That meant paying ponies -- and eventually, others -- to go into chaos on my behalf while never understanding what I intended to do with the results. It is not something a sane sapient treats as a low-risk venture, and they charged accordingly. One might think it would be easier to simply purchase the ones which had already made their way to the public -- except, of course, for their being the single rarest gem to exist. I did what I could there as well -- but when it came to resources, I had inherited wealth: enough to comfortably live on the interest. Now I was spending the principal. And my income as a midwife... nowhere near enough to replace it."

During their time in the underground room, it would be the only time he fully looked over Twilight. To where the robed ponies listened.

"And thus," he quietly said, "all of you. I knew that there had to be others who wished to purge the taint of sin from their blood. Some were around me. Others had to be found, starting from the suggestions of those who were the first to help. I approached carefully, spoke of my pain -- and you gave to me. Replaced the bits I no longer possessed, with the understanding that I would devote them all to the Great Work. You gave me your hope -- and in every moon of my life, I channeled that hope through chaos pearls and essence, in the name of going forward."

He seemed to be looking at somepony specific now: his head had stopped moving, eyes focused --

-- but then he was pacing again.

"But I had no evidence," he admitted --

-- and stopped in front of Pinkie.

"-- until the day I met a miracle."

She didn't look up. She didn't seem to be looking at much of anything.

"One who hosted a party in the hopes that it would make her father love her," the older stallion stated -- and now there was a faint wash of rage coloring the words. "A party for a pony so angry and hateful and hidebound that he promptly concluded the supplies for that party had been purchased using money stolen from his coffers, with no thought as to how a filly who lived on a rock farm could possibly reach a store -- and he wouldn't exactly have been all that accepting of the truth, either. But he hated you in those mistaken beliefs, didn't he, Pinkie? There were so many days when he kicked you, and it led to the one where you finally kicked back, just before you ran away. Do you remember the wild zone? The party we had together after destiny let me find you, to celebrate going to Ponyville? I found myself with a party hat upon my head, one gifted to me by a pony with no saddlebags. A hat which hadn't existed until the moment you wove it from dream."

There were little gasps behind them now, murmurs racing through the crowd. Waves of disbelief, laced with the foam of something which might have been prayer.

But Twilight didn't know what they were praying for.

"For those whom I had saved were finding their marks," he told them, no longer looking at the baker. "Essence is part of what defines us, and as their manifestations took place, that new essence expressed itself in their magic. Outer transformation had not been achieved, but an inner alchemy was bringing forth new miracles every day. Essence defines -- and now it had redefined. My own were willing to talk about their discoveries, if often to nopony other than me." Another smile. "They were, after all, speaking to their first friend. I advised many to keep a few things hidden, recognized that others had yet to explore their full potential -- and if any thought to look for a true source, then none of it was ever placed at my hooves. I had learned that I could grant new magic -- and so hope was reborn, and the training continued."

He returned to the blackboard, and his field began to sort through papers again, delving somewhat lower into the stack.

"We have yet to speak of her training," he said, "other than the part which the snitcher played in it. And some degree of summary is necessary, because it took place across a lifetime. I wrote enough about it to create -- and bind -- my own books, and perhaps when we finish here, the Princess will be interested in reviewing my work."

Once again, she didn't have words. But this time, it was simply because she didn't know any curses which would have been foul enough.

"The snitcher..." A soft chuckle. "I may be one of the few to use it for its intended purpose. I needed to know just how close she was to her mark at any moment. There were some early years of relative peace: I was fairly certain I would be safe until we'd reached the world record for youngest manifest. But she had to be taught. And the first lesson -- was that I loved her. In spite of her being broken, in spite of everything, I would love her. And so she loved me too. She was remarkably bright, rather quick to master certain subjects..."

He sighed, as his eyes briefly closed. But then he was looking at them again, and papers moved. Course subjects. Titles consulted. Study schedules.

"It made me think of what she could have been," he told them. "What she could still be, if only the Great Work could be completed. So I trained her for what was, at the time, just about a singular occupation. I trained her to be a Princess. She studied government and diplomacy. Negotiations and arbitration. There was a..." (And to Twilight, the pause felt odd.) "...passing attempt towards mastering bureaucracy, but with only the two of us, there didn't seem to be much point in passing papers back and forth. And magic. She learned about workings she could not cast, techniques with no wings to drive them. Everything I could perceive as going into the life of a Princess, I taught her. When I could not learn a subject myself, I provided books. And when even books ran out... I had found those who were willing to help in the name of hope, and some of you came to me for a day. Went down into the stone and in doing so, learned that I had also taught her to be gracious, welcoming, and kind. So many in this room contributed to her education, and I thank you again for that. She needed to master so much, and... her mind had to be right. Not just for what she would learn, but for what she had to believe. And the difficulty in that..."

Sheets went down. Sheets came up.

"She needed to learn how to be a unicorn. She needed to dream of possessing the abilities of a pegasus." Wryly, "Fortunately, excepting certain rather limited circumstances, there isn't any real magical need to learn about being an earth pony --"

There was a squeal of stressed metal as multiple chains went tight, and Applejack stopped pushing at her bonds at the moment before the failed effort would have sent her crashing chin-first to the floor.

"-- and so I was able to excise a certain amount of material from the curriculum," he smoothly went on, having ignored all of it. "She has some concept of what earth ponies are, of course. But I needed her to think of her identity in a single way: as broken. To have that burning desire to become something other than what she was." Thoughtfully, "Actually... now that I think about it, she may have wound up associating a degree of broken status with earth ponies as a whole. But I taught her the most important aspect: that she was not the pony she should have been. That there were ponies all over Equestria who shared that status, and she was to blaze the trail which would save them. And she was..."

He took a deep breath.

"...well, nervous would be fair," he admitted. "It is, after all, rather a lot to ask of a single filly. But I told her how much I believed in her and in time, she began to believe in herself. She studied. She learned. And as a snitcher has no known maximum sending range, I could monitor her ongoing potential for manifest from afar."

Every sheet came down, leaving the blackboard bare. The papers restacked themselves.

"There were years of safety," he said. "And there were years of fear. There was so much to learn. To reach manifest too early, before her studies were complete... might have produced something less than a true result. We passed the youngest known age in safety. We had quite a bit of time after that. But then... there would be times when her deepest magic began to rise. And it always seemed to happen when I was outside her halls. Little advances, for the most part. Small surges moving up, during the years when I still felt her education was incomplete. And to prevent any of those surges from leading into a full-fledged manifest, I had to keep going back, calling for her, distracting her, finding new subjects to talk about and... well, those of you with children will be familiar with their universal magic of somehow making themselves hard to find within a limited space. There were days when I almost swore she had come to teleportation earlier than I had, and done so without a horn. And others when it felt as if her mark was getting too close to her fur, that if I didn't find some way to excuse myself and cross a dozen gallops in under a minute, everything would fall apart. And perhaps I was wrong: I can admit that now. There may have been times in her youth when she was on the verge of true insight, and it was my silly concerns about her needing a few more books which held everything off. In the end... well, we nearly set a new record: that for most postponed mark..."

And that made every wave crest, deluges of excitement crashing through the room.

"It happened?" somepony called out: the accent was a Canterlot one. "She manifested? Doctor, did you call us here tonight because -- because it worked? Because she's an --"

-- and he was smiling.

"-- yes, I thought you would all pick up on the wording. Settle down, everypony -- no, I mean it." With just a little more insistence, "Be calm. We will not continue until some degree of false peace is upon this room."

It took about two minutes, along with repeated tries: there always seemed to be somepony who felt their question could be answered immediately. And all Twilight could do was wait.

None of you have seen her... you don't know what broken really is...

What was the older stallion trying to do? To tell them about what had really happened...

She remembered her reaction upon seeing the mark, multiplied it by a full room, one whose occupants now seemed desperate to believe, and pictured a different kind of backlash.

We could still wind up with him being trampled.

The brief, vicious fantasy brought her no true comfort.

And finally, "Thank you. So. We are close now, I promise you. I simply wish to provide our guests with a little more concerning the methodology --" and then he looked directly at Twilight.

"-- although I believe that with what she's heard so far, our Incarnation of Magic has begun to work some of that out."

The weight of a phantom necklace pressed against her fur.

Essence. Essence and chaos and...

He looked at her widened eyes, and simply nodded.

"In the typical pony's life," he confirmed, "there are two great moments of destiny. The Princess and I briefly discussed them in the birthing room, for one is birth -- and the other is the manifestation of the mark. Consider what happens during the latter. Something within us shifts, and we find ourselves with new magic. It is the moment when a pony's body is clearly the most receptive to change, because that is the instant in which change is already occurring. I gave her the snitcher and over the years, I added to it. Chaos pearls, charged with carefully-selected essence."

But there were mountings for thirteen of them. How much essence was he --

The partial answer cut off the rest of the unspoken question. "I believed that I would need more than the single pearl I used for births. At a minimum, the process would have seemed to require two: one charged with unicorn essence, another with pegasus. But the Diarchy was part of a sextet. That increased the number. And I was not working with the Elements. Even Star Swirl still had questions about certain parts of that process, and to attempt duplication without them... It was a rather large change to be making, and so it seemed to require an equally large amount of power. Eventually, I felt I had enough to try. And given that there would only be one attempt possible..."

He smiled again.

"Her mark came," he said, looking at her alone. "And in the instant it began to appear, I attempted to channel all of the essence and energy into her form, in the only possible moment of her life when her body might accept new magic without displacing any of the old. Her body took it in. And..."

His fur seemed to shine. The radiance of a personal truth.

"...it was beautiful."

She looked directly at him, and another kind of transformation took place. It only occurred behind her eyes, it changed him, and it was permanent.

He blinked. Almost took a hoofstep back --

-- but that was when the room began to erupt again, and he cut them off with two words.

"We failed."

And with that, the herd began to revolt.

"You failed?" somepony screamed. "We gave you all that money, we did everything we could to back you, protect you and --"

"-- my family, my family is never going to be --"

"-- I knew it!" There was now something vaguely familiar about that voice, the perpetual anger within that singular west coast accent, the refusal to listen. "I knew you were a charlatan! Monsters and nothing more! Playing with chaos for decades -- what does that do to a pony's head? You're a fake, you got money out of everypony else and you called them here tonight to excuse the waste, but I'm not going to --"

"Stop talking." For the first time, it came across as a patient, oddly even order. "Now."

"-- forgive it, even on a first meeting! Somepony has to stop you, and --"

Which was where what little reason that Duke had ever possessed ran out, and the overweight body charged. Went right past Twilight, jumped onto the stage, the point of the hood showing where his horn had been angled to hurt --

-- stopped, as silver glow wrapped itself around his body. Silver without a single sparkle present.

"And what's this?" The sheer bemusement had momentarily frozen him. "Do I look like a pregnant mare to --"

-- and then there was only the scream.

It was a familiar scream, for Twilight had heard it shortly after coming to Trotter's Falls. It was the cry of a pony with no way to escape from their pain, somepony facing a lifetime of agony and wishing for that life to end. The desperate prayer for death that came from a body which had turned against itself, and it dropped the Duke's robed body to the stage floor, twisting and kicking, as the older stallion quietly looked at him with a patient, almost relaxed regard.

Looked and nothing more, with the double corona blazing, as Twilight watched in horror and the audience pulled back.

"Somewhat," the older stallion stated, timing the words through the bursts of torture. "You're heavy enough, although in your case, that may be because you're so full of yourself that it's starting to bulge out the sides."

"What..." The word was broken, and that too was familar. "Please... stop, please, what, stop..."

"What you are feeling," the older stallion calmly told him, "is my field. I just gave your heart a rather minor squeeze, which provided rather shocking proof that you had one. I currently don't care to make the same investigations for your brain. But if you wish to prove that possession yourself --" and his horn went dark "-- you will return to your place on the floor. And you will listen."

I... Celestia, Luna, I...

Differentiation had initially been wounded by a single stallion's horn, and the tear had spread.

It was a discovery. It was something which could have been the subject of a thousand journal articles. But in that moment, it was nothing more than nightmare, one which had sent Twilight into almost instinctive prayer --

-- one nopony would ever hear.

The Duke got up, eventually. Nearly fell again upon reaching the floor. Staggered through the crowd, and the hoofsteps didn't stop until he'd reached the absolute back of the room.

The false doctor sighed.

"Again," he told them, "I apologize. I should have foreseen an outburst, and arguably been less dramatic in my speech to begin with. But this is not the waiting area outside my birthing room, and so I will not permit anypony to attack me. Please allow me to continue, because there are more words to be said -- and then, there will be something which was worth coming to see."

Nopony spoke. They simply waited. And Twilight, her own magic restrained, had to wrench her eyes away from that mauve horn, because there was no point in watching for an event she couldn't do anything to stop.

"We failed," he repeated. "Or... perhaps I did. Or it could have been her, or both of us. In that way, this failure echoes the first. The death of her mother -- which was followed by my bringing her to Sun."

This scream was only internal.

Did she ever see Sun? Once in her whole life until you pushed chaos and death into her, because you'd told her that was right?

"I fail... and I succeed," he quietly finished. "The pattern of my life. I did not create an alicorn. Instead, I simply brought forth a miracle."

The shimmer coating the door vanished. A little prod of his field opened it, just enough for a glimpse of the wide stone corridor beyond.

"Come to me," he called out. "Give them something to believe."

There was a moment of silence, as everypony stretched out their senses. Strained to listen, see, feel...

Hoofsteps, coming down the passage. Heavy ones, created by a pony who was larger than the majority moving at a slow, even pace. A deep purple foreleg, one so dark as to almost shade into black, came up, planted itself on the back edge of the stage, pushed...

...and she was in attendance. The guest of honor at what had truly never been a party.

There was a new emotion in the room, thick enough to scent. A miasma of disappointment and regret filled the air as the earth pony slowly made her way towards the front of the stage, with the one who had summoned her quietly watching --

-- and then there was a snort.

It was a familiar sort of snort, and just about everypony else missed it. The sound wasn't one which indicated hatred or loathing. It was simply an exclamation which said that Rarity had just gotten her first good look at the horrible, clearly homemade disaster-in-approach which was that dress, and it was the only normal thing which happened during the entire meeting.

It was normal, and so a tiny part of the inner storm began to calm.

She's -- moving well. Better than I've ever seen her move. And there aren't any twitches. Like her pain is --

-- no. She stumbled a little there. But it didn't look like pain. More like there was a second when she wasn't sure about planting her forehoof, and --

-- her eyes...

Blue, in this form. But also slightly -- hazy.

Just a little unfocused, even when she's mostly looking at the back of the room and nothing else, and add that to the light sway of her head...

Drugged. That has to be it. He didn't find a cure for her pain: he's just given her something strong enough to drive it down for a while, and she trusted him enough to take it. And we're so close to the stage, but none of us can talk...

She stopped at that front edge, and finally risked looking down.

It wasn't a position where she could see Twilight, not first. Instead, her eyes found Fluttershy, and only wet cloth looked back.

Her head quickly went left. Right. Saw all of them, and her body began to pull back as her questioning, panicked gaze desperately, instinctively sought the older stallion, three body lengths away on her right --

"-- there were complications," he gently told her. "But they are here to listen. And if all goes well, you may find yourself speaking with them. Very soon."

She nodded. Took a breath and then forced herself to look forward again, with most of her focus directed at draperies.

His words had traveled farther than they normally would have: the relative lack of volume would have been stopped by even minimal buzz among the crowd. But nothing came from them, for everypony was waiting.

What is he trying? He could keep them here for enough time to see the change, but --

"For a few here," he said, "this is the second meeting. And this, but for a greater degree of mass, is how those ponies know her. But for nearly everypony else, this is their first encounter. And so it is my honor to make the formal introduction. Fillies, gentlecolts, Bearers..."

It happened all at once.

The dress bulged at the sides, revealing what Twilight had taken as ill-fitting folds to be deliberate rips. A rush of color moved across the fur, with a different hue racing along mane and tail. Legs slimmed, the rib cage shifted, eyes were suffused with shade and --

-- dark purple wings beat at the air, then folded into the rest position against the tan pegasus' sides.

"This," Gentle Arrival proudly stated, "is my daughter. And I believe the time is now right to take a few questions."

Patronage

The death of faith had a sound all its own, and Twilight would have the opportunity to reflect on the echoes of that pain. But in so many ways, that which began to arise from the conference at the moment of transformation... that was far worse.

She just barely heard the start and didn't immediately recognize its true horror, for she had been distracted by the same thing everypony else had just witnessed. But in her case, the process came with slightly more... analysis. For an act of magic had just taken place and so part of her hearing turned inward, listening to the murmurs which arose from the heart of her own mark.

Her breathing just accelerated, and her rib cage is vibrating under the dress. The muscles along her neck are tensed and -- there, her forelegs just bent a little.

She voluntarily accelerated the changes, stopped them at the point where she would be either at the apex of the white loop or close to it. But it was an effort. She's reacting like a pony who just finished their first Running and never learned how to pace themselves to get through it -- no, maybe not that bad, but that still cost her something. It took thaums to make that happen, and --

-- there. That twitch. And the little wince while she's standing still, like she's afraid to move, like she's trying to get centered again...

How much agony would the sped-up transformation have put her through, without the drugs? Enough to potentially kill? And just how powerful was the medication, to keep the visible reaction down to a level which the vast majority of the audience would readily overlook or dismiss?

Whatever the drug was, Twilight was certain it was nightmarishly strong. The sort of thing Fluttershy only used on animal patients as a last resort, and never for long. Concoctions powerful enough to mute the sensations from that level of pain, used for too long, would also silence a life.

"Doctor," an unsteady voice softly called out from the audience, its Canterlot accent implying an extra degree of internal sway, "I don't want you to feel as if I mean to insult you..."

The stallion smiled. "As I recently somewhat more than implied, I feel a degree of questioning at this stage is rather natural. Ask what you need to."

A minor swish of fabric seemed to indicate a nod. "I didn't feel anything just then. I'm still not feeling anything, and I'm straining for it."

"Checking for illusion?" (Twilight imagined a rather abashed nod.) "I don't blame you. However, no such working is in play. In fact, using that kind of spell would drastically limit the duration of any attempt to fool a crowd. Not only would the unicorns among you realize there was an ongoing effect, but that category of workings as a whole tends to be rather complicated. Making one pony look like another is hardly a simple process, and when that pony begins to move -- flap your wings, please..."

She carefully spread them, displaying all of the joints. A gentle breeze began to waft against Twilight's face as the new limbs shifted.

"...keeping all of the small details consistent, such as the shifting of individual feathers -- well, there is a reason the vast majority of casters only use illusions for what amounts to some rather quiet versions of fireworks. There is no illusion present. No spells were worked upon her before she stepped onto the stage, and no magic will be used on her before she departs. This is her miracle."

"But I didn't even sense anything when she..." The swallow was perfectly audible -- as was the slow building of that first sound, rising up from the level of background murmur. "...changed. What kind of magic is --"

"-- new magic," he smoothly interrupted. "Ultimately, it may be possible to develop a feel for her change -- or that part of the process may forever be beyond the reach of the pony sensorium. For my own part, all I can say on that subject is that I've been trying to get a sense of it for a little while now -- and thus far, I have failed. But for other aspects... well, there are certain things I will never be able to register, and every unicorn here can say the same. And so I must ask the pegasi among you to inform their neighbors of reality's true nature..."

He nodded to her, and the wings accelerated.

"Naturally," he continued as her hooves parted from the stage, raising his volume to get past the gasps, "she is new to flying, and so asking for advanced maneuvers within a confined space would be slightly unfair. But the unicorns here can tell that there is no levitation in progress, nopony hiding their field from sight while using it to levitate her -- while the pegasi are aware that this is true flight. The transformation is more than physical, fillies and gentlecolts: it goes to the core of her being. She changes her form and in doing so, changes her magic."

The murmur swelled, began to approach something very close to music.

"Techniques?" a new, excited voice called out: this accent was a Cloudsdale one. "Does she have --"

"-- I could ask her to demonstrate," the stallion smiled, "but I would ask you to remember two things: she has just as little experience with that kind of magic -- and we are indoors. There is only so much anypony should ask for, at least if one intended to leave the room no more disorderly than our grouped presence requires. Still... if our host would agree to, shall we say, a dust devil...?"

"A small one," Quiet steadily said, and Twilight's eyes briefly shut. "Well away from the draperies."

"Very well. If you would...?"

She carefully landed. The wing movements changed, shifting into a new pattern...

Twilight didn't look up. She didn't have to. The faint sensation of wind pulling against her mane, added to the growing note from the audience, told her all she needed to know.

"At a distance?" that Cloudsdale mare gasped. "She's -- Sun and Moon, Doctor, do you have any idea how difficult that is?"

"A slight concept, yes," the stallion replied, now openly beaming. "But I see fabric rustling along the walls, so... enough for now, at least for this category." Her wings slowed, folded against the shoddy dress. "Are the pegasi among you satisfied as to the authenticity of her efforts?"

"I felt her," somepony new just barely managed. "But it was..." The pause felt too long. "...off..."

A small nod. (For her part, she stood stock-still, unable to look at anything or anypony, gaze directed at an empty section of floor, and Twilight watched the muscles around those slightly hazy eyes as they fought for stability.) "I'm not surprised: I noticed something similar in her third aspect. But she is something new in the world, and so has brought a new kind of signature with her."

"Her third..." a stallion voice tried -- and then, in a rush of something more than mere excitement, "Celestia's heated hooves, Doctor, let's see it!"

He looked up at her. "If you're ready?"

She nodded, and Twilight thought about the tightness of the movement. The forced control.

"Then -- once more," he instructed her. "I believe they are more than ready for it."

Blue suffused the visible portion of her coat as a wave of tan rushed through her eyes, dark purple wings involuted just before a cone of something not quite bone rose from her forehead...

This time, there was a little gasp, and a spasm of the newly-altered tail. But the majority of that audience failed to notice it, caught up in the transformation. The only visible reaction came from the stallion at her side, who moved a little closer.

"As some of you may have noticed," he smoothly said, "this is not a casual effort. It takes a deliberate act of will to move between the pony races at this level of speed. She is capable of more than this, but as with her other magics, she has had very little opportunity to practice. As such, I ask for this to be the last such change tonight. But as she has achieved what was requested..."

The unicorn mare was still mostly looking at the floor.

"Again, for those looking for displays of truly spectacular workings, I ask you to consider the time which has passed -- the rather scant amount of it," he went on. "It has been much less than a moon since her manifestation, which means the transformation of theory to practice is an ongoing one. In particular, we have yet to discover her personal trick -- assuming the ability to change races somehow wouldn't qualify." Another smile. "But as our pegasi friends gave the unicorns the truth of what they sensed, that favor shall now be returned. Would somepony care to volunteer as the subject of a basic levitation?"

A clamor of voices, and it took a moment of open bemusement before the stallion picked one. "Yes... yes, you have been part of this for longer than just about anypony. I know how much you have given to the cause and ask that, if only for a moment, you consider it as the price of admission for a rather basic ride at a settled zone's fair." His eyes twinkled -- then briefly turned misty under the weight of memory. "Or the game which so many of us play with our children, while they remain small enough for such joys. As unicorns, we can only grant them a short period of false flight -- but still, to hear their laughter as we bring them a little closer to Sun..."

The dark purple horn ignited, and gold lanced over Twilight's head.

There was a moment of awed silence. And then there was laughter.

"This is what you consider failure, Doctor?" This mare's merriment was now coming from overhead. "To change her race, her magic? This is worth every bit I gave you, every expedition I funded! This is the lives of my grandchildren! To know they can be unicorns, just before they decided that they could be anything...!"

Tan eyes slowly closed, and she had to force them open again.

"This," the stallion quietly said, "is not what she meant to accomplish. It is, in so many ways, a success. It is the ultimate proof that true change does not require the Elements, or the path which Princess Cadance found for herself. We set out to find a new road and in doing so, have found ourselves at an equally new destination. She is not an alicorn. And in that -- among other things -- there is failure. Lower my friend, please."

The murmur should have twisted more than it did: some parts of the music changed, briefly darkened -- but not enough.

Twilight heard hooves contact the floor, saw the golden field wink out.

"Over the years," he quietly told them, "you have given me your assistance. You have done your best to protect me, and stand ready to do more. In return, I can only offer you truth. An attempt was made to create a new path, one for others to follow. And it failed, for she is not an alicorn. She changes, in form and magic -- but she must change. If she does not speed the process to become what she wishes to be at need, then the transformation still proceeds. From my observations, under normal circumstances, she passes through all three races twice per day. And that transformation is a cycle: earth pony to pegasus to unicorn -- and then to earth pony again. Her magic is powerful: I have had some evidence that her raw strength may approach that of the Princesses themselves. But her form is not stable. I learned that change is possible -- but she is unable to stop it. I have not found the answer we have all worked towards, wished for in our heart of hearts during the darkest hours under Moon. There is a new path -- but it does not lead to where we meant to go."

The audience was silent now, and she could not face them. Her eyes closed, forced shut by a different kind of pain.

"There was one chance," he softly said. "Her mark has come. It will not, cannot change. Everything we learned, every theory, all that we did -- it led to failure."

Several ponies were taking audible breaths, and still none of it was enough to drown out the murmur.

"Her mark," somepony said. "What is her mark?"

"Also new," the older stallion replied. "And... animated." His right forehoof almost jerked up, and it still wasn't in time to cut off the babble. "Yes, I know, everypony: we have seen the breaking of any numbers of rules tonight, and I wasn't expecting that one to shatter any more than you were. I will sketch it for you --" silver surrounded a piece of chalk at the blackboard's base "-- but I ask that you accept that sketch as truth. I know, from my own experience, that to see a mark move is not something which an unprepared mind should go through, and everypony here has already been through a sufficient number of shocks. This is the icon..."

The sketch was a rather rough one. It completely failed to capture the twist in the loops and when viewed against the slate, the vacuum at the center was nothing more than a circle.

She didn't look at it. Didn't move. Didn't speak as the stallion explained the movement of the clock. She simply stood upon the stage as the weight of eyes pressed against her fur.

"As far as anypony knew, there was but one chance," the stallion finally repeated. "And we found a new kind of failure. But -- at the same time, there was a degree of success. It has been proven that change is possible. New paths can be forged. We simply need a degree of... refinement. And as for there being but one chance..."

He stopped. Trotted up to her, aligned his body until he was facing the audience again, a mere hoofwidth away from her flanks. The unicorn mare trembled.

"...until a moon ago," the false doctor softly said, "nearly all of Equestria thought it was impossible for a new Princess to arise from the masses. Half a moon, and I would have told you it was impossible for a pony to change her race at will. Two kinds of impossibility have recently entered reality. And as I told you all, after one has seen the impossible, accomplished the impossible... it becomes easy to believe that so much else could be done."

And he was looking at Twilight.

"There was a notable side effect from her first transformation," he told her (and perhaps only her). "To wit --" a small, somewhat wry sort of sigh "-- it set my estate on fire." (The trembling accelerated.) "Yes, everypony: that is what happened. Looking back, I believe it was pegasus magic which had yet to find any degree of control: heat being concentrated along a border to the point where the first flame ignited. And as I was both rather distracted and happen to be a unicorn, I was unable to get it under control. I have told her that she bears no fault or responsibility: neither of us had any way of knowing that would happen, and we both emerged intact. But we did so separately, for she spontaneously teleported away."

The smile was a sincere one, and all the more horrible for it.

"Well..." he considered, "some workings do run in families... But it meant we lost track of each other for a time. Still, destiny smiled upon us: her arrival point was relatively close by, and she eventually came home. But 'eventually' meant time was passing, and all anypony knew was that my home had burned down, that I was missing, and relatively few were aware that there had been two residents..."

He sighed. She twitched.

"One seldom has the opportunity in life to learn just how loved they are," he quietly told them. "Having so many of mine join the search was an education. And the two of mine who bear Elements... the tale reached them, and they asked their friends for help. But they began their search not at the burnout, but in the wild zone -- and in doing so, gained an opportunity. For some of you are meeting my daughter for the first time, others for a second -- but destiny did its best to assist the Great Work through providing a pony who had completed it. For our newest of Princesses, this is the fifth encounter. And as I told you all while she and her companions were being brought to us, she has not told Canterlot of what she discovered. She met a pony in the wild zone, one who was still trying to adjust to her new reality, she asked to meet that pony again and again, and did so for a singular reason: one which is no less than we should expect of her."

And with that, he carefully jumped down from the stage.

The injured leg gave him some trouble on the landing: he stumbled, needed a breath before he could fully orient himself. And then he trotted up to Twilight, stopping a mere four hoofwidths away, orange eyes steady and warm.

She forced herself to look at him, and managed that much.

"Princess Twilight," Doctor Gentle softly stated, "is a new alicorn, born from the Elements -- just as Princess Celestia and Princess Luna were, nearly thirteen hundred years ago. In that, she is the impossible. And she also happens to be the current Bearer of Magic. Her raw power is considerable, her understanding of theories well beyond what most ponies will ever accomplish. To talk about magic with her is to gain an education: to dream in concert with her might change the world. And she is a pony of compassion, one who met a stranger, somepony in distress -- and wished only to help."

I told Quiet...

She finally understood why she had been brought to the observation perch. Why she was among the audience. Why they were all there.

This is for us. He's been speaking to us the whole time.

A crash of thunder sounded outside, and fabric hangings shook.

"When the Elements were rediscovered..." the older stallion continued -- then wryly shrugged, just before he smiled again. "I admit, I briefly thought about trying to contact you. It would have been easy enough, with two of the new Bearers being mine." He briefly beamed with pride. "The direct help of Magic... that found itself playing out within my nightscape in less than a moon. But I learned that you were the personal student of the Princess -- and Princess Celestia has her reasons to be cautious when it comes to ponies attempting to ascend. Some of those were born from Star Swirl's actions, and others -- well, over the centuries, there have been more than four hooves trying to forge new paths: let us currently leave it at that. I knew nothing of you beyond what my eldest and most determined had written about, and they were very clear regarding how much you valued the respect of the Princess. I felt that speaking to you would have you talking to her immediately after, and -- I suspected her reaction would be less than kind. So ultimately, I kept my distance. But now I know what kind of pony you are, Princess Twilight. Not only a pony who does the impossible every moon, but a pony who cares."

He briefly glanced back at her, and those eyes were still closed. Back to Twilight.

"Your path was not hers: the Elements are responsible for your change," he went on. "But you are Magic. I have told you about the basics of the path she followed. Given the opportunity for direct consultation with me and uninterrupted magical analysis, you could learn so much more. You could refine the path, find where the errors were, and perhaps -- correct them. For six Elements can create an alicorn. Perhaps they might also complete what was originally meant to be a different means of transformation, or even stabilize my daughter as a unicorn. That power might grant her full control over her changes: the ability to be whatever she needs for as long as she needs it. The possibilities for discovery are endless: I know you can see that. And you would be doing what you told my most devoted that you truly wished to do. You would help. Not just her -- but ultimately, all of the broken."

A partial step back, just enough to let him look at the others -- Rarity silently stared at him, Pinkie's gaze remained on the floor, Rainbow radiated fury, Applejack's bound jaw tensed, and all Fluttershy could see was tear-soaked cloth -- and then his attention returned to Twilight.

"I have shared my pain," he told her. "I have shared it with so many over the years. And at the end of that sharing..."

His horn ignited: a partial corona, soft silver changing the highlights of his fur.

"You are," he continued, "their leader. In this age, Magic leads. They will have questions of their own, and undoubtedly there will be arguments -- but in the end, they will follow your decision."

His field pressed against her muzzle, began to unwind cloth.

"I have shared my pain," he softly repeated, and she saw something new in his eyes: the simple sadness of a stallion who had reached the current limits of his dreams. "And at the end of that sharing... I ask for help."

There was a fresh gaze upon her now: Twilight felt the weight. Not the audience, staring at her from behind: they didn't seem to matter. This was a sad, pained one which came from above, radiating from tan eyes. A desperate stare carrying a silent plea.

"Will you help us?" Doctor Gentle asked. "Will you join our Great Work? Shall we learn what the Elements can do to fix the broken?"

The binding fell away from her jaw. And he waited.

Words echoed in her mind, bounced off the memory of rock crystal.

"The Elements..." she began.

He won't believe me.

She won't.

I don't even know why I believe it, and I do...

His patient gaze moved across her face.

"The Elements won't solve this," Twilight told them all.

He blinked.

"You can't know that," he stated. "Not without experimentation --"

"-- they won't solve it," she broke in, because whatever he was going to do after a refusal would happen whether she was polite about it or not -- and then the rest of the words came. "I swear on Discord's antler that when it comes to her, the Elements would only make things worse!"

He pulled back. Nearly everypony did.

For him, it was only a little distance: half a hoofstep or so. But he pulled back, and it took a deep, visibly steadying breath before he spoke to her again.

"That," he observed, "is a rather unique way of putting it. I have never heard anypony swear on him before. It certainly adds something to the sheer force of an oath. But again, Princess: you don't know --"

"-- I do. I know."

That orange gaze wasn't quite so warm now.

Softly, "How?"

Because he told me it would. And right now, I trust him more than you.

"Of the two of us," Twilight softly asked him, "which one is Magic?"

There was a moment when he could say nothing, and she dearly wished for it to last forever. It didn't.

"I suppose," he finally resumed (and with a faint smile, she hated that smile), "I have to trust that level of authority." (There was more pain radiating from the stage now, and very little of it seemed to be physical.) "But there are other options. If we researched together, with Magic joining my efforts --"

The mission, which had already provided a seemingly-endless series of opportunities for Twilight to hate herself, offered up one more.

He's learned so much. He has some of Star Swirl's original notes and knows where to find a few of the others. He knows the names of the original Bearers, and what the Princesses were before they changed. He could know more about the Elements than I do. He might understand what happened to me. And when it comes to her... how her body has to operate on the deep levels, the way her magic changes...

All the facts he'd acquired. Theories created and advanced, added to a new kind of magic, one which was standing on the stage. A chance to make discoveries which nopony else had ever dreamed of, and that was before she considered what had to be in his own notes, all the observations about what could happen when chaos met essence and they both merged into the shadow of a soul. When it came to so many kinds of magic, he could know more than anypony alive -- but he wasn't Twilight. He didn't have her mark, her instinct for understanding. With the two of them researching together...

She wanted to know. It was a desire which arose from the heart of her mark.

"-- no."

And it taught Twilight how to loathe what had once been the defining aspect of her life.

"You said," he carefully reminded her, "that you wanted to help."

"I want to help her. I would do everything I could to help her. I'll take her to Canterlot, to the Princesses and the Archives. I'll put the best researchers the Gifted School ever produced on this. I'll channel every resource of Equestria I can think of into helping her, and then I'll go beyond the borders. I would do everything I could to help her --"

The next words were nearly spat.

"-- but not you."

He stared at her for a few seconds.

"The Great Work --"

"-- is that the lie you tell yourself?" she asked, and was amazed at the steadiness of her own voice. There seemed to be no fear on the edge of death, even when she knew her own demise would only be the start, not even when an ending was inevitable and there was no point in watching for the sparkle-free glow of that horrible field. "That you're doing something great?" And before he could speak, "I heard you up there. I heard what happened to your spouse, and I'm sorry. I know the word barely means anything: that it doesn't fix things or make them have happened differently. But I heard your pain, and I felt it. Nopony should ever have to go through that. I'm sorry about what happened to Primatura, for her death. You lived through a nightmare and you brought forth a miracle. But she wasn't broken. She was never broken --"

"-- stop it," with his tones beginning to drop. "Princess, you don't know what you're saying --"

"-- until you broke her!"

(And from the stage, there was the smallest of gasps.)

He leaned forward. The dark horn nearly touched the restraint.

She stared directly into his eyes, and failed to see a pony.

"Let her come with us," she asked, already knowing what the answer would be. "Turn over all your notes. Every document you have, everything from --" she almost had to force the name "-- Star Swirl, everything you've written. Do that, and I swear I'll dedicate my life to fixing her. But you --" and now it was a plea "-- Doctor Gentle, you have to stop --"

"-- no. She is my daughter. We go together, or not at all."

She'd known that would be his answer, and the foresight did nothing to dull the pain.

"You won't help," he slowly said. "You told my most devoted --"

"-- not on your terms."

He took a slow breath, and Twilight used the moment to look up, saw the pain and confusion in tan eyes. The betrayal.

"Then will you leave us in peace?" the stallion asked.

Twilight blinked.

"If you won't help her," he went on, "then would you allow me to continue my work? So that I might find some way to stabilize her form, to permanently restore what was stolen from her? We have come so far..."

She was staring at him now. She felt as if she might never blink again and given the probable length of her remaining lifespan, that might just be for lack of opportunity.

"To leave you," she repeated, mostly to see how the insanity would taste on her tongue, "in peace."

"If my life was disrupted," Doctor Gentle softly told her, "by something along the lines of a national hunt, I imagine I would lose my practice. And should I cease my work, Princess... foals will die. You know I have never been able to teach the Exception to another. You were also present at Dawn Sky's birth, and I believe you now recognize what I did. She will have her first flight under Sun, at her mother's side -- because I was there. Because I saved her. Whatever you might think of me, Princess, for whatever reasons you have conjured under Moon, things so harsh as to leave my daughter in pain --"

It was the first time he'd used the word concerning her, and Twilight's ears briefly twisted towards the audience, listening -- but with the exception of the still-present murmur, there was only silence.

"-- you know what I have given to Equestria. Two Bearers, two of your friends, only know time under Sun because of me. Should I tell you the numbers, Princess? How many foals the Exception saves each year, even without the help of the pearls? Foals who will die without me, the first great moment of destiny ending in nothing more than a funeral. Should I stop, hearts stop with me. Hope dies on the birthing table, parents mourn, and not even essence lives on."

and she looks up to find herself surrounded by ash and the remnants of walls and dead foals, dead foals everywhere

"I give life," the stallion told her. "Who are you to say that should end? I know you have yet to find your full title, the thing you can be a Princess of. Does the world require a Princess of death?"

There was a moment when she could no longer see the room, or hear anypony there. Simply blood and screaming mares, desperate voices calling out in prayers which she could never answer. The scent of corpses reached out for her from dream, threatened to pull her into nightmare unending.

But she was already within it.

She could have lied. She could have tried to tell him anything. That she would leave him be, or that she had changed her mind, she would help, and kept that up until the moment opportunity presented itself. There was a chance that he might have even wanted to believe her. But lies always fell apart in the end: perhaps that was something Applejack had taught her unawares. And before that happened, they led to more falsehoods, to secrets and... the lies ponies told themselves.

"I can't."

He silently turned away from her. Trotted down the line, stopping in front of --

"Then I ask for your help, my eldest."

-- Fluttershy.

"I had hoped," he softly told her, "that this would be part of the -- general agreement. But your leader has refused to help the broken --" a slow head shake of self-imposed disbelief "-- and so I must speak with you alone." His field began to work on her gag. "And when it comes to perspective, you have every reason to see things differently. Every sight, every sound, every moment you have existed under Sun and Moon, you owe to the Great Work. To me. I know you care about me, my eldest. I know how much you wish to help those who are hurting: you would not have found your mark without that empathy. And now... now, I need your help, because there is something only you can do."

The gag fell away, with the blindfold remaining in place. The yellow jaw shifted a few times, choked on the first word before it could fully form.

"...what... what do you need me to do?"

He sighed, and smiled at her. A smile she could not see.

"I have read all of your letters," he reminded her. "All of them -- including, perhaps, things which Princess Celestia might not have wished written down. She asked you not to speak of Princess Twilight's change, and you have kept your silence. It does you credit. And without the chance of having all six Elements at work, there is no need to ask you about that any more. But... you wrote of something else. Of a statue in a garden -- one which is no longer there." A pause, one insufficient to remove all of the disbelief from his tones. "Of an entity whom you believe considers you to be a friend."

"...Discord."

It was, Twilight considered, a somewhat familiar sort of shockwave.

He nodded. "You still have doubts. Concerns, worries about manipulation. But he at least acts like a friend, within his limited understanding of the term. Forever pushing the boundaries -- but not so far as to find himself facing the Elements again." Another, shorter pause. "I have what would be considered to be a vast collection of chaos pearls. A quantity likely hide within the ocean, with others in places where nopony could be paid to tread -- but for those which have ever been unearthed, I have every reason to believe I possess the majority. But there are very few left which could be found. And no matter how many I acquire... each can hold but a single charge. I have tried winding them in platinum, and such seems to help in the channeling of their energies, along with maintaining the concealment spells -- but it does not draw in fresh chaos. In all the world, there is but one source of that power, Fluttershy... and even if it lies, it still calls you friend."

"...he... he's still... trying to -- figure everything out..."

"One pearl expended," Doctor Gentle reminded her, "is one life saved. I could show you your pearl, and list every foal it helped bring to Sun. But while there was still a statue in the garden, I could recharge them. Now there is an entity whom Princess Celestia, for reasons known only to herself, allows a degree of freedom. A pearl expended is a life saved -- and a pearl which will never save another. And if the pearls are the solution to her state... then there are only so many we have to use."

"...unless..." No fresh tears were seeping through the saturated cloth. "...I help."

"There is the possibility," the stallion said, "of tricking him. Remember, he knows nothing of what was done: our continued existence is the proof. There are also ancient magics which could be tested, ways to try and draw off some of his power, things which not even the Princesses might remember. Or... he might simply be convinced to donate a portion of strength, by a friend. He might participate willingly, once he was told the purpose was to create a form of change." Smiling, unseen, "Of course, our ultimate purpose is to enforce a new level of order upon the world, one where no sin could ever steal a foal's heritage -- but he hardly needs to know that."

"Heritage," Fluttershy repeated, and the word emerged without hesitation. It also didn't seem to have any real emotion behind it. The utterance was just... there.

"I know how much I'm asking of you," he admitted. "With the Princess having denied me, you would have to leave at least one of your friends. You would need to abandon the cottage. We would be running together, my eldest. But... your passion for saving the lives of animals would find a new direction. You would have the chance to save the lives of ponies. Think about all the foals who would live as you have, who would have their time under Sun --"

"-- no."

She was crying again. Tears ran through tracks of fur which could absorb no more moisture. And her first friend made no move to wipe them away, much less comfort her. He simply stared.

"Fluttershy --"

"-- no."

Her word had been a declaration. His response just barely reached the level of a whisper.

"I gave you your life."

Softly, with no emotion in the words, "...I know what you did."

He looked at her for a few seconds, and it seemed to Twilight as if most of his regard passed through that eldest. And then he turned away, trotting again. He ignored Rarity, visibly dismissed Applejack --

-- stopped.

"Pinkie?" The gag was removed. "I think we would both... appreciate a touch of joy in our lives. It wouldn't be the first time we've traveled together..."

The perfectly straight manefall, cascading about a darkened head which had spent the entire time within the room facing the floor, obscured most of the blank expression while putting a frame on the silence.

There was a new expression on his face, one Twilight hadn't personally seen in years. The disappointment and confusion of a parent who felt he had raised his children to always do the right things, and didn't understand why they wouldn't obey.

"Then we have reached the end of our choices," he softly said. "The Bearers as a whole will not join us, while Kindness forgets her compassion and Laughter falls silent. You leave me with a single option, Princess -- but that was the decision you made..."

And from the far right, a familiar voice finally said what it had been longing to voice. Two words and just that many syllables, utterly predictable in both emergence and source. Twilight had been waiting for that voice since the moment of refusal and for the first time in her life, it did not disappoint her.

"Kill them."

Doctor Gentle's head jerked up.

"Repeat that," he tightly requested, even as a new kind of murmur began to race through the room.

"Kill them," Coordinator ordered. "They know about the Great Work, and they've decided not to become a part of it. They know who was here tonight. They know you, because you appeared without robes or the most basic spell to disguise your voice and as you keep saying, two of them are yours. The only way we all remain free, the only way for the Great Work to continue at all, is if we kill them."

For that was how it had to end, and Twilight had known it at the moment before she had offered rejection. That to say no was to place them all within the shadowlands, for luck always ran out. They had faced down the intangible terrors of Nightmare, the near-infinite strangeness that was Discord, Sombra's twisting, and perhaps there might have been a way to stand against Doctor Gentle's sickness had he been alone -- but Coordinator, who acted merely for the sake of what dark joys might come from it, was simply evil. Twilight had rejected him, and so he would deny them breath and heartbeats. It was the only response he could conceive.

"They wouldn't listen to reason, any level of it," the petty stallion continued, with the self-satisfaction riding openly in his tones. "And so there's just one option left. They're restrained and bound and helpless. It'll take seconds..."

Gentle Arrival looked at the six of them. Not into the audience, where something more than brown and white speckles lurked beneath a robe. At them.

"No."

The fresh murmur became louder.

"It's the only thing which makes any sense," Coordinator argued, his volume increasing enough to get past the new level of background noise -- and then still more. "If you don't want to do it yourself, fine: step aside and let somepony else remove this taint. It's the only way to keep everypony here safe!"

"Safe from Nightmare?" Doctor Gentle steadily asked the room. "Safe from changelings, or whatever might appear within Equestria next? Centuries passed without Bearers: centuries during which Princess Celestia did her best to hold the line on her own, or with the help of the heroes who arose. Heroes who ultimately fell, without Elements to bear them up. The Elements have chosen again, and part of what they chose was the time to reemerge. You might argue that it was simply for Princess Luna's restoration, with all that has happened since as mere coincidence -- but since the Elements have returned, things have been happening. More has happened in a relatively short time than has occurred in decades. There may be more coming, things their magic has foreseen, events which will require the Bearers to stop. I was willing to ask mine to accompany me, for Star Swirl's notes have taught me much -- and one of the things they told me was that at her core, Princess Celestia can be a rather pragmatic sort of mare. Should a crisis come which required six Bearers to combat it, she would allow the reunion of the group: better to accept those falsely seen as criminals than to lose a continent. But to kill -- to reward our saviors for their efforts through sending them into the shadowlands... what kind of pony thinks so much of himself and so little of his nation?"

His spine straightened as his tail lashed and the orange gaze steadied. Became angry.

"I will not see them harmed," he told the room. "I, and my daughter, will stand against any who might try. Are there any who care to test us?"

There were enough of them: Twilight knew that. More than enough unicorns in the group to counter Doctor Gentle's efforts, a sufficient number of bodies to potentially overwhelm her. If they had attacked, as a herd, they would have won.

But that first level of sound had never completely vanished. And so nopony moved.

"You're a fool," Coordinator sneered, and the disdain wasn't enough to conceal the panic. "The Great Work is being led by a --"

"-- the safety of those in attendance," Doctor Gentle cut him off, "has always been my primary concern. Ultimately, there were more than three hundred shielding ponies at the party tonight, not all of whom found the chance to introduce themselves -- with some of that neglect purposeful. The master guest list, in so far as it exists in paperwork, can be made to vanish. For memory, it is known to but three ponies, for nopony else here knows all of the others. And of those three, two are about to disappear."

He began to pace again, with the movements slow and thoughtful.

"The palace," he continued, "can do their best to trace who was here tonight -- but servants forget. The escort network was provided with names other than the true. Ultimately, they will learn a portion of those who were in the halls -- but when it comes to the identities of those in this room, the number they can prove, after the subtraction of the Bearers, can be counted on your hooves. At best, they will suspect a few. But they cannot bring charges based on suspicion, and they cannot watch us all. In terms of permanent loss of status and the need to run, I have risked only those who volunteered for it: Quiet and myself. Those names -- and one other -- are all the Bearers could reliably identify."

A singular west coast accent sounded from the back of the room, just barely managing to carry shaky words towards the stage. "They... they know me! The Princess..."

"Do they?" the older stallion placidly asked.

"...she's -- we've met, I was in Ponyville --" and abruptly stopped.

An angry stallion in front of the library desk, demanding that Twilight fix a device which had nothing wrong with it because the pegasus who ran the repair shop was so clearly unqualified...

"Then I would be rather careful," Doctor Gentle stated, "about reminding her of that. And I will still not allow you to harm her, or anypony else. The realm will not lose its Bearers tonight."

This time, Coordinator yelled. "It doesn't matter if any of them die! If we kill them, the Elements will just choose new Bearers -- !"

The mauve horn ignited: a partial corona only, with the normal complement of sparkles. It was still enough to drive Coordinator into silence.

"They didn't before," Doctor Gentle softly said.

Thunder sounded, shook the draperies, vibrated fur and pressed ears flat against skulls. The echoes took their time before departing.

"I told you," the older stallion stated. "Star Swirl found the path of the Elements closed to him, for the rest of his lifetime. And in his case... an incomplete set. Lose but one, and Harmony breaks. I will not be responsible for a second shattering. And I promise you that anypony who tries to do so while the Bearers are under my protection will reconsider their final choice among the grasses of the shadowlands." A slow head shake. "Even if you care so little about your own nation... do you really think that those six deaths would bring no reaction from the palace? Quiet, my daughter, myself... we can vanish and in time, Canterlot will find itself with more important responsibilities than continuing the search. But to end their lives would be to bring the full wrath of Sun and Moon upon us all, an effort which would only cease when everypony here had been brought to whatever the Princesses might decide was justice. And that is without taking a moment to consider what chaos might do if it lost somepony which it had truly decided to see as a friend. Their lives are more important than yours, perhaps more important than that of anypony here. And so they live -- and you will listen. All of you will listen."

Pacing faster now, with the injured leg beginning to show signs of strain.

"As has recently been pointed out," he told them all, "the Bearers are currently both helpless and harmless, with their sole ally trapped within the castle. They are no threat to us, and so they will be simply be confined. Quiet's castle is an old one -- old enough to have its own cells. We will place them within, remove the remainder of their gags and provide them with feedbags." Some visible thought. "Two to a cell, by race --" and then, with a degree of amusement "-- original race. And while they are confined, the three of us will make preparations for our own departure."

"But we can't keep them confined forever," somepony called out. "Eventually, Canterlot is going to come looking."

He nodded. "An extended absence would eventually do that. However, in this case, we know when rescue is scheduled to arrive. Princess Twilight never contacted Canterlot -- but she did reach out to a friend: a researcher of some skill, somepony who has a rough familiarity with what essence can achieve. That pony will be here in a few days and when she arrives, she will be taken to where the Bearers have been confined. She will free them. The servants will say they were simply following orders, and Quiet can give them in such a way as to leave those who carry them out innocent of all but obedience. Those who were in attendance tonight will have long since returned to their homes, with the memories of their presence already having begun to fade. The escort network will carry you back, as it brought so many here --" a pause "-- well, once you get outside the castle: we are on lockdown, after all. There will likely be an investigation, and it will ultimately fail to place blame on just about anypony other than myself. And as for myself..."

The older stallion stopped trotting. His left foreleg came partially up, hoof angled as if about to contact his muzzle -- then lowered again.

"I will run," he simply stated. "I will not be able to use the network: even with fur dye and aliases, three traveling together, with one so much larger than the majority... we would be remembered, and our initial destination repeated. But three can move quite some distance on hoof, especially with an entire continent to run in and more familiarity with wild zones than most ever gain. Additionally, I do not necessarily intend for us to stay within the borders. But in time, we will reach a place where we can rebuild. We will contact you when we can. Because this stage of the Great Work has failed -- but in that failure, we have found a measure of success. We have found the hope we all sought, and know that the ultimate destination may be closer than ever. You have all helped me to come this far -- but with my efforts exposed, the risk will be greater than ever. And so I ask you all once again: will you help?"

The murmur swelled.

"She's... not the miracle I hoped for, Doctor," the Cloudsdale mare said. "But she's still a miracle. You've done more than I believed possible, more than I thought could ever be done at all. I can't speak for anypony else -- but I'll help you."

"And so will I!" a proud Windicity voice called out.

"And me!"

"And me!"

"And..."

It went on for a while, with the older stallion quietly basking in the acceptance. Not all of them spoke, there was one notable gap in the chorus, and even Twilight felt as if a few were speaking only because they were expected to -- but one by one, they vowed their devotion. And when the herd finally fell silent, Gentle Arrival smiled.

"Thank you," he softly told them. "Thank you for your faith."

Carefully, he climbed back onto the stage, with a shimmer of gold field providing the last boost. And then he was facing them again.

"Should there be an emergency, I may call upon some of you along the way," he said. "But I will always be careful. I will always do my best to protect you, as you have protected me. But when I reach safety, I will let you know where I am -- and in preparation for that day, I have one more request. I may yet find other ways to recharge the pearls. New paths could await us, or the one Princess Cadance followed might open itself to us at last. But when that happens..."

He hesitated.

"There was one attempt," he told them, "because at that time, there could only be one. And in part, it was because there was but a single mare dedicating her life towards it. There are many requirements for success: devotion, study, discovery, faith --- and somepony to try. Eventually, I may find the means to stabilize her -- but even then, in time, we will need to try again."

They listened, and six did so in horror.

"Some of you joined the Great Work because you feared that one day, a broken foal would arise from sins which had not been yours," he continued. "That you would have to think about sending on. The Great Work remains incomplete, and so such births are still inevitable. But when it happens... instead of sending them on... send them to me. For our efforts have reached their next generation, and..."

He smiled.

"...I admit... I have been looking forward to hearing the sound of children in my halls again."

Gentle Arrival raised his left foreleg. Extended it outwards, hoof slashing into a salute.

"For hope," he said.

"For hope," so much of the room chorused. He nodded, began to turn --

-- and Twilight, whose gag had never been replaced, used the only opportunity she had for the failure she had already known would occur, and called out to her.

"Come with us!" It was a cry of desperation. It was a plea. It was utterly futile. "You don't have to go with him! Run away, find us again! We'll help you, I swear we'll do everything we can to help..."

She twitched. Eyes which were just a little less hazy than before briefly winced shut. And then the unicorn shook her head.

The next words made up only one of the questions rampaging through Twilight's mind. But the gathering had nearly ended, and so they formed the only one she would get to voice. "Why are you letting him do this to you?"

The sudden expression which formed the first part of the response was a familiar one, for Twilight had seen it at the shore of that freezing lake: the confusion which came from hearing a pony ask a question which had already been answered through the simple act of existing. But words followed it. It was the only time she spoke during the gathering and as with all of her words, they were broken by pain, agony produced from a wound which could never heal.

But this time, the pain was something far more than the mere physical.

"I killed. My mother. And he loved me anyway."

Her father started to turn back upon hearing those words, was just beginning to look up at her --

-- and that was when Pinkie's soft, half-weeping voice broke the world.

"If he ever loved you at all... then he wouldn't have loved you for what he thought you should have been, he would have loved you for who you are..."

Twilight saw the words as they went behind the mare's eyes. Recognized a moment of impact, a solid double-kick doing its best to shatter every barrier there was --

-- but then all she could see was the silver corona which had just ignited, coming closer as the stallion jumped off the stage again.

This time, the injured leg failed to take that portion of his weight, and he nearly collapsed to the side: a quick flare of his own field propped him up.

"Separate them," he called out to the room as he moved forward, closing in on Pinkie. "Now. The unicorn and the Princess in one cell. Fluttershy and the pegasus in a second. The earth pony and this one in the third. Remove their gags, provide feedbags, send somepony in twice a day to assist with their toiletries. Keeping those with horns under restraints should be obvious, along with making sure the pegasus remains bound. But under no circumstances is anypony to remove Fluttershy's blindfold, and simply keeping her indoors will do the rest. And when it comes to the true wild card among the grouping..."

He had reached Pinkie now, and his head dipped to let him speak directly into one dark pink ear.

"They all know what you are now, Pinkamena," he softly said. "They know that you're the freak you always feared you were, the monstrosity which your father recognized on sight. He was right about you, don't you know that? He was always right, to reject you, to hate you... because nopony could or should ever love a hybrid. And so nopony ever will again."

She didn't move. She didn't speak. She didn't cry. She simply collapsed to the floor, darkened legs splaying as much as the heavy chains would allow.

He straightened. It gave Twilight a glimpse of his face, the pain and regret etched across aging features --

-- emotions which almost instantly vanished.

"Remind her of that every so often," he harshly ordered. "It should keep anything particularly interesting from happening. And when you find the dragon, give him a cell to himself and feed him as little as possible: you'll want to cut down on any opportunity he might have for exhaling. Quiet, take her from here: give her a room in which she can pass some time while we prepare for departure, then start to see our guests home while making sure no scales try to sneak through any exit. And --"

He moved again, a few hoofsteps along the line. Stopped in front of Rarity, whose very fur seemed to be spiking in fury.

"You didn't wear the first of my pearls to the party," he stated. "It's still in your assigned quarters, correct? Then in that case, Generosity, as compensation for a portion of my losses, I'll be taking her back."

He half-trotted, half-stalked away. Quiet carefully climbed onto the stage, lightly touched her flank (producing a tiny, startled jump) and then began to lead her towards the largest door. She glanced back only once as she shuffled towards the exit, her movements now visibly somewhat pained (with nearly everypony failing to notice, lost in the music of the murmur), and that horribly confused gaze fell upon Pinkie.

The baker didn't acknowledge it. She simply allowed herself to be dragged away as multiple corona loops pulled on limp limbs. Applejack, who was brought along in her wake, put up more of a struggle, enough that some of the weaker fields briefly winked out. One such failure came as she was being dragged past a drapery, and the minor freedom it briefly gave that limb allowed the forehoof to snag a bit of fabric.

Nopony noticed that at first. They simply continued to pull her, and so the hanging came down.

Twilight's last sight, just before she was pulled from the room, was of the rows of tomes which filled the shelves. Books which went beyond mere scarcity, texts which had previously existed only as rumors, now crystallized into words which had originally emerged from nightmare. Enough to make a snitcher, and so much else. More than enough to place a pony into custody while they tried to find any way of explaining just how such aberrations had come to be in their possession.

But there were two things which she heard. One began with Doctor Gentle, who was speaking to a robed pony at the left edge of the room.

"You're letting them live."

"I believe that's been established."

Tight, controlled -- with neither factor sufficient to hide what she recognized as an underlayer of fear. "There are three ponies who know the names on that list. There are three ponies who could be identified..."

"Yes," the older stallion stated. "Perhaps one of them should run."

And the last sound, just before the newest secret door swung shut behind them, was the same as it had been all along, only with fresh excitement added. The official part of the gathering had ended, and it was allowing the attendees to speak with each other, serve as living amplifiers as they talked about the miracle they had seen. Not the miracle they had sponsored, worked towards, longed for -- but a miracle all the same, something nopony had truly believed was possible, and now that one miracle had been achieved, so much else seemed as if it might be done...

It was the sound of excitement. It was self-delusion in perpetually cycling action, with ponies quickly moving from what they had witnessed to what they believed was possible, all the things they might see. It was refusal to acknowledge the possibility that so many kinds of failure could still come, for the miracle would protect their lives. It was dreams brought into the waking world, distorting reality until the truth could no longer be seen.

It was the song of faith being born.

Twilight had been forced to attend a conference, and was dragged away from a cult.

Sotto In Su

She knew of the small grey stallion, trotting so very slightly ahead of her as they moved through the castle. (She looked around whenever she could, noticed ponies cleaning and putting things away. They didn't look at her. It seemed as if they were taking special care not to look at her, and it was another kind of pain.) It had been a lesson from years past: if something happened, if he didn't come to see her for a very long time, if she began to suspect he... could never return -- then she was to use the emergency passage and in time, somepony at the other end would take her in, continuing the Great Work as best he could.

She knew of him. But she was beginning to wonder if she also knew him. (She had met so few ponies, and the vast majority had been for a single day.) He didn't seem to be the least bit familiar: nothing about his person brought any degree of recollection forward. But he looked like something. He looked like...

...and it came.

"You look like one of my -- memories."

The wince which followed those words had two kinds of pain behind it. She didn't talk about her memories, for she knew how much being among memories hurt him and... the day she'd forgotten had been the day which destroyed their world.

(They were going to run, he was going to lose his practice, his life, she had hurt him again...)

She wasn't supposed to talk about their existence, much less the presence of the other ones. And the fact that she could both reach them and make them...

There had been so many mistakes, and they had spoken of very few of them. Nothing about what had happened at the end, when all of the errors had been hers.

She didn't, shouldn't talk about it. But the medication (which was wearing off quickly, faster than it should have) made words into slippery things: they fell onto her tongue and tumbled into the air, a split-second before she realized the damage they could do. It was one of many reasons to hate the drugs: the way they fogged her thoughts, how sick they sometimes made her feel. A liquid reminder of her failure.

Quiet had stopped moving. He glanced back, looked up at her. The grey features, which had previously been locked into what had seemed to be a sort of neutral concentration -- she'd often seen that on him, on those occasions when they read together -- abruptly shifted.

"You remember me?" The volume was muted: about halfway between whisper and speech. The shock was not. But the rest of the tone... she'd noticed it happening with him, when the drugs were in effect. That there would be something within his voice which suggested he was once again treating her as if she was very young, barely capable of understanding anything beyond the simplest (and first) lessons.

He's part of the Great Work. He's the one I was supposed to come to, if anything happened. I can talk to him...

But not to the ones who had said they'd wanted to help her. The ones who had ultimately refused. The pony who had said --

"If he ever --"

She froze, felt a muscle spasm trying to break through the deteriorating chemical shield. Looked at Quiet, who was waiting for an answer. And in place of the thing she did not wish to think about, she focused on that memory.

So few ponies had ever come to teach her: it had been important to make a memory for each, so that she would always know who they had been. And even away from her place, without having it in sight... even then, thinking about the memory brought everything back.

"You came... four years ago. The lesson was hospitality. He thought I was a -- good host, but... there would be grand events. When the Great Work was -- complete." And she had failed. "So you came to see me. Because he felt that being -- a good host... you knew more about that..."

"...than anypony else," he softly finished. "Yes." The grey head briefly dipped. "I'm starting to feel as if the doctor might have overestimated my skills."

She didn't have any response for that, and so they stood in silence for a while.

Finally, he looked up at her, too far up, and there was a small, wry smile on his face.

"It's nice to be remembered."

He turned forward, began to trot again. She did her best to follow, and found her left foreleg beginning to hitch as the muscles within shifted.

They went up a ramp. She wasn't used to ramps and when it came to being indoors, was just beginning to develop a nodding acquaintance with up. There were deliberate imperfections in the surface, placed to give hooves purchase -- but now it was both forelegs, and it made progress that much more difficult.

"Everypony here tonight," Quiet eventually said as he turned to the right at the top, gestured a forehoof for her to follow, "will remember you for the rest of their lives."

To her, the words had been fairly steady -- but most of her conversations had been with him, and so she had never truly been exposed to certain undertones. And she wasn't really trying to identify the unfamiliar elements (at least not just yet), because his statement set off an instant reaction within her, something which made the fading drugs rally just long enough to let it slip free.

"I wish they wouldn't."

He stopped, looked back at her again, waiting for her to continue.

"I..." she began -- then stopped.

This is his most devoted. The one who knows more than anypony.

She was looking at a pony's features. Not endless dark robes and staring eyes. Not six of the seven (and where was that strange little seventh?) who had ultimately rejected --

"If he ever --"

...if she could talk to anypony else now, it would have to be him. They would be running together. There was a chance that for the rest of their lives, there would be nopony else.

"I... failed." A simple statement. Two words which had to summarize far too much. The endless agony of not having been the One, the one he had believed she would be. Having disappointed him. Letting him down. Her wasting all those years of his life, a life she had just destroyed... and that for the second time. "There was. One chance. And I --

"-- you're still alive," he told her. "As long as you're alive, there's a chance."

She didn't know how to answer that. She just waited for him to move again, for there was only one structure in the world which she truly knew. She didn't know where to go, or what to do, or...

"If he ever --"

He seemed to be examining her face a little more closely. The grey gaze then moved to her legs, came back up again.

"The medication's wearing off," he softly observed.

She'd been trying to hide it. "You can --'

"-- there's spasms in your brachialis muscles. You're also having some trouble speaking. And there's other signs which..." A brief pause, followed by "I... know something about pain."

There was truth within his eyes, and so she simply looked at them for a time.

"I can't give you any more right now," Quiet finally said. "I don't even have anything on me: that's for the doctor to dispense, and he said your body needed to recover from the dose he used for the conference. And once I get you situated, I have to gallop all over the castle, trying to get the last things ready for our departure. That's going to take a while: probably a few hours. We have to pack up the chaos pearls, just for starters. So I can't even stay long enough to --" He sighed. "There's breathing exercises. Meditations. Things you can use to -- drive some of it down for a little while, or just make it look like you're feeling better. Even when you're not. I don't have the time to teach them to you here. But when we're out there together, I'll make sure there's time."

The words had been soft. Gentle. Sincere.

"Thank you." It seemed to be the only response possible.

He smiled a little. "I'll always --" and stopped.

She'd been looking at his eyes, and so she saw it happen.

"...you're -- hurting."

Eventually, he nodded.

"It passes," he told her. "For a while. Come on. It's not much further."

It wasn't. And then there were books, so many books, with some of the titles familiar because of course there had been studies of history, others were new to her -- and then she wasn't looking at the books any more.

"Stay in here until he or I come for you," Quiet said. "Nopony else. Read anything you like. I don't know if you enjoy adventure stories, but -- what is it?"

She'd been caught staring: she knew it... "Just... looking. Outside. Any book?"

"Any book you like," he assured her with a smile. "Is there anything else I can do?"

Make it not have happened.

"I'm... hungry," she reluctantly admitted. The near-instant changes had done that.

Another nod. "I'll send somepony up with food."

He stayed long enough to help her pick out a book, eventually pushed two of the reading couches partially together in order to give her a little more resting space. And then Quiet left. A few minutes later, the door opened, just enough for a basket of fruit to be pushed through the gap, then closed again.

She didn't open the book, not immediately. It looked old, and... the horn was already starting to go away. There had been many reasons for timing the conference carefully, and not among the least had been making sure she was in a place where she could give demonstrations: they'd already learned that accelerating her transformation made the drugs wear off all the faster, and she'd had to do it twice. At the moment, as far as her cycle went, she was still capable of using that form of magic, but -- the book was old, and turning pages by field, without damaging them, was something which required fine control. One spasm at the wrong moment, a loss of focus, and she could easily tear the book. It was safer to simply nose the story along, as a broken pony would. And she was certainly --

"If he ever --"

She wanted the thought to stop, and so she kept her focus on the place where it had been for so much of her time inside the study.

In one sense, she'd seen it before. There had been pictures in some of the books, and a few of the oldest memories (none of them hers) had included such details. But in another...

So that's a window.

She looked at the clear glass, the rivulets of water running down the outer surface, listened to the thunder. She had some experience of thunder, although it had been considerably more muffled. Rain... that had come shortly after her failure, and she remembered the little agonies which had come from drops pelting against her twisting skin. The lightning, however... that was new, and she softly gasped as a streak blazed towards the ground.

How would they leave the castle? Would they use a passage, or would the three of them (three) be outside, with little explosions going off within her at every impact of moisture? It had to be the former. Or... they could simply wait until the storm had passed. There was time.

It's just pain.

I deserve it.

It's just being wet.

I've been more drenched than --

-- I was, I'm sure I was, but he told me that's not how it happened, not how it could have ever happened...

He had told her to look back, to find the truth which he had known was there. That, as with her recent attempts to do something else entirely (all done while he watched, waited with an expression on his face which she had never seen before), she would succeed. But as with everything else in her life, all she had done was fail.

She was alone. She had time. It was something to think about other than the increasing pain. And so she looked back again...

...there is nothing, and it is everywhere.

There is no room. There is no stone. There are no memories. There is no fire. He is gone. She is surrounded by nothingness, a voiding of existence which claws at her mind and forces her to think of something else, anything else simply so that the nothing will not enter her heart and convince it to join the vacuum.

She's just barely starting to focus, turning back towards her lessons, the first lessons, those teachings which make up the core of her -- and then the nothing is gone, replaced by too much.

Light assaults her eyes, a brightness she has never known, a new kind of pain lancing through her skull. And there are no wings. There is no horn. (She can't remember a horn, he says she must have had a horn, but she can't remember...) It almost feels as if she is herself again, the self which had existed in the second before it all went wrong, but there are differences in size and mass which she has yet to recognize, especially as there is a much more important fact calling for her attention, screaming for notice, breaking through the pain and making her focus on a single aspect of reality.

There are green things, and that is not what matters. There is light (too bright, it hurts) and that doesn't matter. There are colors she has only seen in memories (and not hers), because she has no direct familiarity with sunrise or dawnlight.

What matters is that she has no wings. She has (she still believes it) no horn.

And the teleport, created by magic she didn't understand, performed without any understanding of a place she could safely go -- has brought her to the world. To the sky.

She is more Celests above the green than she knew to exist.

She is falling.

Her body begins to tumble. The very air beats at her, increasing a pain which has only existed for, at most, two minutes and now seems as if it must have been eternal. It will last the rest of her life, because that life is about to end. She will fall into the green, and the impact will kill her. She is tumbling, her jewelry feels as if it is cascading around her neck, pure habit brings up a forehoof up to adjust it but it does no good, she is falling and she has no wings and no horn and she is going to die in the same way she lived, the reason she's going to die at all. As a failure, a sin. She will die broken.

And from the core of her, her soul cries out. It is a cry which will be heard by nopony, for he is not there. In fear, in desperation, in the heart of deepest instinct, she calls to something she has never truly known, something she didn't realize was only waiting for the moment it could finally hear her voice.

It emerges as song. It resounds as something very close to a chorus.

HELP ME!

When she hits the green, the trees, she will die. Find a gap between them, hit the ground, and she will die. But there is more to the land than wood and stone. (She feels that, she feels for the first time and nearly loses it in the sensory assault.) There is always what lies within.

She asks the world a question, and the world splits.

Rocks separate with a sound like a rumbling scream. Trees are jammed against each other. (Animals are running, birds flee, and some will eventually return to their tilted homes.) Vibrations begin to travel outwards, are quickly muted within absorbing soil. The world yawns open beneath her, the channel for what had moments ago been a completely underground river twists to align with her plummeting form, and she falls to where the ground had been, tumbles into the ravine, hits the water.

It is still a shock. She doesn't know how to dive. (She has never been to an ocean, or a river, or a pond.) She doesn't know how to pierce the water. It creates more pain, adds it to her towering tally, and then that hideous total starts to account for the drain: the opening of the ravine took so much strength from a body which had very little to give. Between agony and sudden exhaustion, she comes very close to blacking out. But the water, colder than anything she has ever experienced (she does not know snow, only sees ice in drinks, has never stood within the drifting heart of winter), unites with earth pony endurance and durability, helps to prevent that final degree of mercy. It all combines to keep her awake, lets her have full awareness that she is no longer tumbling through the air, but doing so underwater and cascading down the flow of the fast-moving river.

Still lost, still helpless, still broken and about to die, but now that condition exists in a somewhat denser medium, one she cannot breathe. She is also still tumbling, and her body momentarily inverts. The necklace, her most constant companion in life, never to be removed until the day the Great Work was complete, falls away, hits the riverbed. One chaos pearl is dislodged from its cradle, catches against a projection of rock: the rest rushes away.

She is being swept along with the current, and it will take her underground. She is trying to reach the surface, but she can't get oriented, she's in too much pain and shock to find her way and she never learned how to swim. She has seconds in which to find air before she will be in a place where all that waits above her is rock, perhaps a minute beyond that before the water fills her lungs and she drowns --

-- but the song is still resounding, that desperate verse not yet fully answered. And so a wedge of rock wells up from below, contacts her body, pushes it to air and a Sun she has never seen and life.

The tilt of the extruded plane sends her rolling down to a riverbank which has known less than twelve seconds of existence -- then, with the question answered and a way out awaiting that once-silent daughter, sinks back down.

She spends some time in coughing up water, more in mindless pawing at her neck while trying to reconcile the absence of something which had always been there. Endless seconds in trying to figure out what had just happened as the pain crashes through her, does its best to distort the music which arises from the land itself. And there are more kinds of agony than that of whatever's happening within her (still happening, never ending, always and forever changing). There is the arrival of a brand-new sense, something which had been blocked from her for a lifetime until the manifestation of the mark --

-- her mark. She... has a mark. She knows it (and doesn't understand how, can't think about it just yet). And she is still broken. She isn't an alicorn (and there is the agony of failure, something which has yet to fade). She hurts more than she ever has in her life and she doesn't understand why. There is stone below her prone form and it gives her a place to try and center, for stone is what she knows. But instead of stone above her, there are green things along the edges of the split -- trees, they have to be trees -- and the too-bright light and sky, that's the sky added to feel and the rushing noise from the river and a song previously unheard trying to find a place within her senses...

She vomits. Several times. It is the least possible reaction to the utter sensory overwhelm. So many minds would have broken then and there, with others temporarily shutting down in an attempt to escape. She does not.

It hurts... Words far too small to describe the fire burning her from within, but they are all she has. It hurts...

She doesn't know where she is. She doesn't know what happened to him. (She tried to protect him, she knows she did.) She only knows that she failed. She has her mark. She isn't an alicorn. She doesn't understand why she's in pain.

So she looks at the mark (with her desperate stare needing to travel across an increased distance, something she's just barely starting to register) and does so at the exact moment the smallest fraction of a growing wingtip begins to push against the skin.

It will be three minutes before the screaming stops, and there is only Sun and world to hear.

He had told her... that she'd had a horn when it happened. That it was the greatest feat of unicorn magic he'd ever heard of. It had been his opinion that it might have only been possible because of the True Surge: so many ponies were strongest at the moment of the mark's arrival. But he had accepted that she'd done it...

...with a horn.

He had told her that her recollections were confused, first from pain and then from drugs. (He'd never really said anything about disorientation, not even after she'd admitted how many hours she'd spent flinching at the sounds of the simplest breezes.) He had said she'd had a horn, and... no matter how many times she went over it, tried to remember... there was only the voice, and that had not been the one he was still waiting for her to hear.

He's right. He must be right. He's always...

But she couldn't remember it that way.

Hours in this room. Hours to spend in reading, in agony, in failure, and she was so tired of failing. Of thinking about what she had done to him. Of everything which had come from it.

I shattered his life.

Twice.

I just wanted to give him something...

...no. She couldn't go over that again, not immediately after thinking about the fall. She had to think about something else...

...there were so many ponies in that room.

Admittedly, there were ways in which it would make for a rather monotonous memory, assuming she ever got to make one again. (A new wave of pain, entirely comprised of crashing emotions, all crested by guilt.) There had been more ponies at the burnout, with fur and mane and (for some) feathers and horns out in the open. She'd even spotted a few broken ones. There had been so many colors... and at the conference, but for those at the front of the audience, it had only been robes and eyes.

That, at least for variety, made the scene at the burnout (her fault, forever hers) into a much more interesting sort of memory. But there were other things about the conference which made her reluctant to think about capturing it.

There had been eyes, just about nothing but eyes. And the way they had been looking at her... she didn't know what that look was. She didn't know what the rest of the expression looked like, not when it had been hidden under those robes -- and yet, somehow, that grouped stare had been familiar.

The eyes had been bad enough. It had been made worse by the sound of a voice she had wished to never hear again. And that still hadn't been as horrific as the six among the audience whose faces she'd fully been able to see.

Those who had rejected her.

They won't help.

There were so many kinds of hurt, and she seemed to be going through every last one of them.

"Not on your terms." She doesn't understand that he's right. He must have told them about so much, he must have told them about me and what happened and... she didn't listen. She didn't care. I thought...

Her right hind leg spasmed: it took a few seconds before she could make herself continue.

...I thought she understood.

And then the pink one...

(The hue... it had still been pink. But there had been something different about the shade, she was almost sure of that. A change to the mane and tail? Something...)

...what she said...

And just like that, she'd brought it back. The words she didn't want to think about. A statement she would have given so much to never hear echoing within her mind again.

"If he ever loved you at all... then he wouldn't have loved you for what he thought you should have been, he would have loved you for who you are..."

The sentence seemed to have a certain mobility. It raced through her mind, kicking at everything it could find.

He loves me.

That had been the first lesson.

The pink one's voice faded, just for a moment. Older words took the stage, sentences she'd heard time and time again. They might have even been the first words to ever have been spoken to her and over the years, they had lost the cadence of speech, becoming something much closer to a poem.

I love you
I love you, and so you will love me too
In spite of what you did, I love you
You killed your mother and I love you still
You are broken...

Her eyes squeezed shut. Tears began to run down her face, but fur was not glass: the little rivers were quickly absorbed by strands which darkened with moisture -- and then darkened further still, as blue continued its relentless march towards deepest purple.

I killed my mother and he loved me.

I was broken and he loved me.

He told me I didn't have to stay broken. That if we succeeded, nopony would ever have to...

I failed him.

Please let me --

No. She couldn't let herself think that way. They would find a new place. There would be different theories. Something which would work.

...this was supposed to work.

Her fault. Her failure. Hers.

She had spent her life in failure, simply through the curse of her existence. And then she had extended it.

There was the quilt...

It had been such a small thing -- and like everything in her life, it had been a reminder. She didn't even know why she was thinking about that, unless all of the failures were trying to line up within her mind while failing to recognize any kind of proper order. She hadn't thought about the quilt in years, and refused to do it now. A small thing, and it had taken hours for those tears to stop.

Something else. Think about anything else. Anything.

She tried to read the book. It quickly proved to be a good one, and just as rapidly taught her that with everything which was churning within, she was incapable of focusing on it for more than three sentences at a time.

Something else.

I... just wanted to give him something. And that's why I failed. That has to be it.

I -- don't know if I can ever make a memory again. If I ever should. (And with that thought, her soul hurt.) Not when it led to this.

But there's still... something I can give him. The thing he wants...

She wanted it too. She longed for it. She'd had dreams, and they had been channeled in exactly the wrong direction. She had to try again, to do it his way.

I'll try. Maybe it'll work.

Please let it work.

One thing. Please let me do one thing for him. One thing right.

She closed her eyes, all the better to block out the endless distraction which existed within the lightning. Flattened her ears as best she could: it didn't do much to stop the thunder, but she had nothing else to block them with -- well, technically, she could start ripping up books or tear up the couch, but... there was hospitality and even with a place she would never return to, which the host was about to abandon, there was being a good guest.

Star Swirl said... to look inside. To listen with my soul...

He had said that and from what had been passed on, there had been very little about the how.

Still, she tried. She delved down into the dark as best she could. Pain followed her, trotted at her side as that new most constant companion, locked its jaw around her tail and tried to pull her back. But this was for him, and so she gritted her teeth (which felt as if they might fracture) and forced herself to go on.

Down into the darkness. But... it felt as if it was simply the darkness which came from having her eyes shut. There were moments when it was broken by little flashes of light and color, but those could have simply been the result of having her eyes shut tightly, something which grew all the worse as the pain built and surged. As a filly, she had learned that putting pressure on her closed lids could produce the appearance and sensation of racing down a geometric checkerboard tunnel, something which had provided hours of entertainment during the times when she could study no longer and there was very little else to do. Her delving wasn't even producing that much.

But she had to try.

Hello?

Silence.

He said... that after it happened, I would be able to feel you. I know it went wrong. I know I failed, and... maybe that's why I can't do it. But you should be there. You have to be there. He said so. He...

...are you mad at me? Because I failed? Are you there and not letting me feel you, hiding, because you...

...please don't hate me.

I already hate mys --

-- please. Just once.

Something.

Anything.

So I know you're there.

I've been waiting all my life and

you have so many reasons to hate me

everypony does

they won't help me and I'm making him run and I shattered his life again

you have more reasons to hate me than anypony, and -- maybe that's why you're hiding. But even after what I did, he loved me and I hoped -- I prayed -- I wanted you to --

I don't deserve to live

I don't deserve to be loved

"If he ever loved you at all..."

And so she failed again.

Neue Sachlichkeit

Despite her having rather recently learned to loathe him, Rarity would have (eventually) admitted to Doctor Gentle having been right about one thing: when something major happened, something which disrupted one's life... it was often best to begin the recovery process through focusing on a single minor detail. As a designer, her artistic life depended on such minor details: look after a sufficiency and the whole would often seem to assemble itself. And as for the time she'd spent as a Bearer -- well, it seemed that openly complaining about how one's mane might look after a fast-approaching fight tended to provide an inner distraction from the question as to whether one's head would still be attached.

Their imprisonment certainly seemed to count as a disruption to their lives, and so Rarity was currently in the process of reviewing the accommodations. But that was not the process of inspecting their surroundings in order to find a means of escape: she had already tried that. This was a review.

The towering column of negatives located a foundation stone in the lack of choice. They had been led (dragged, really, with no consideration of what it was doing to their dresses, she could feel where a rent had opened under her barrel and somepony was going to pay for that) deeper into the castle, further down than ever. (Rarity had been formulating multiple internal questions as to just how much 'down' the structure possessed: the distance implied by the slopes seemed to be turning it into the architectural equivalent of an iceberg.) And once they'd descended enough -- well, a certain stallion had stated that the grounds which currently hosted sports equipment had originally been intended to repel invaders. Planning one's residence around anticipating such assaults now seemed to include the concept that one might capture a number of attackers, and thus the cells. There were, in Rarity's opinion, a completely ridiculous quantity of them. It created a query as to whether the personality of the builder had been one which encouraged ponies to attack him, and this was added to the rather recent speculation about the current Lord not being any real improvement on his ancestor.

There were a multitude of cells -- but for those who had dragged them to this level, the problem was that just about all of them were already occupied. Those occupants were presumably being tortured, although all the displaced furniture could potentially confess to was being out of style.

The debris from generations of pony shopaholic hoarders confronted their captors, who quickly concluded they wanted nothing to do with it. Cleaning out cells would take time, the removed items would have to go somewhere... it was simply easier to scout the area and see if anything suitable remained before making any efforts at shuffling armoires. And it turned out that there were a few empty cells left -- but only one of them had been specifically designed to contain unicorns, and so that was the cell they had been dragged into.

From what she remembered of her history classes (not much for a fifth-year dropout, and she'd actually acquired rather more of an impression from portions of her romance novel collection), a number of castles had been built with cells -- and some of those cells had been meant to be occupied by captured generals, dignitaries, nobility of all kinds. They were cells furnished in rich woods and plush cushions, given their own little libraries to go with a selection of comfort-aiding devices which could never, ever be used to assist in escape -- unless, of course, one was particularly resourceful and happened to only exist within the pages of a romance novel. Rarity, throughout the final stage of the dragging, had retained faint hopes for being put into one of those.

However, as now seemed more suited to an original builder whose main concern in the outer design was to declare Look What A Strong Field I've Got, they had wound up within stone.

Cold, damp stone, with little rivulets of moisture running down the rough walls. (Rarity was uncertain as to whether the storm's humidity had sent that much moisture sinking into the castle, or if that quality came from being so far underground.) There was just about nothing in the way of smooth surfaces: to rub against a wall would disrupt fur at the minimum: the other end of the scale held torn dresses -- oh, and possible wounds to flesh, of course. The floor was no better: there wasn't a single square body length which was safe to rest upon, they had been provided with no blankets -- and when it came to sleeping, none of that mattered because there was a single assigned position from which they could enter the nightscape: standing up. It was all the multiple chains would allow. Some had been hung from the ceiling, others were attached to the walls, and the final taut-pulled combination had left Rarity's hooves slightly above the floor. Bodily movement had been limited to a slight swaying: certainly nowhere near enough to get any momentum going and crash into a captor who entered the cell. And the cuffs were not padded: the grain of her fur was suffering, and that status would be working its way deeper soon enough.

As far as other comforts went -- they had been provided with feedbags, and the part of Rarity's mind which wished not to make things any worse than they already were was doing its best to keep her from regarding them too closely just yet. The contents of those bags wasn't horrible: she could smell the oats. But as for toiletries... there was nothing. Absolutely nothing, especially since it was impossible to sway into a wall and collect enough moisture to wash up.

They had been told that there would be somepony sent in twice a day to assist with their toiletries. And not only was that asking their bodies to keep somepony else's schedule, but Rarity was now wondering whether that assistance would take the form of two buckets and some rather sarcastic advice regarding aim.

She could have shuddered at the mere thought. She did not, as that moment had yet to come upon them. Instead, she totaled her observations, then slowly shook her head.

The Diamond Dogs treated me better than this. In addition to the mobility issue, Spot and Rover had been willing to escort her to a corner, then stand guard with their backs mostly turned.

But when compared to that (although not the post-Gala time in Canterlot's holding cells), there was a single improvement in this particular captivity. There was company.

They had been chained up so as to face each other, with the cell door (and that strange cylinder of vacancy at its side) on Rarity's right. For ponies were, for the most part, a social species. Their captors, perhaps subconsciously if nothing else, had recognized that the prisoners would want to talk: in this stressful situation, they almost had to. She had been provided with a companion she could look at, speak to directly.

Companionship whose eyes were half-lidded, head dipped down under the weight of the elaborate restraint and so much else. A mare who didn't seem to be looking at much of anything, and hadn't since the moment the closing panel had blocked off the conference.

(There were ponies who, upon meeting her cellmate for the first time, would be visibly surprised at how small she was. They might have been equally shocked to watch her becoming smaller still, as her posture had been progressively collapsing since their first moment in the cell.)

Rarity looked at the close-set bars built into the middle portion of the door, the narrow gaps through which somepony might watch them. Nopony there. Rotated white ears, listened as closely as she could. Nopony close. Not even friends, for the others had been dragged to different, possibly distant sections of what now felt very much like a dungeon.

"So," she gently began. "As we seem to have some time... is there anything you wish to talk about?"

Silence, stretching out across both seconds and body lengths until it seemed to fill the cell -- and then an answer came.

Twilight's head didn't come up: purple eyes gazed at the floor, and she spoke directly to the chains. And the voice which said the words was, in some ways, doubly familiar. It was the voice of her friend, that blended accent tinged with Ponyville, Canterlot, and a House which lay so far to the west. It was also saturated with pain, and thus it too was broken.

"...Pinkie's sex life?"

Rarity blinked.

"Ah," she said and for five long seconds, could say nothing else. "Yes. I suppose in some ways, this is actually rather overdue. Exactly when did you learn she had one?"

"...the -- morning we left," Twilight softly replied. "A few hours before the Hall Of Legends."

Rarity nodded. "I had expected to go through some version of this conversation with you years ago." No response, and so she carefully pressed on. "Pinkie... it is difficult, sometimes, to think of how she might perceive things. But I feel that she associates sex with comfort as much as love. That to her, if it is truly necessary, it can simply be a means of -- making somepony feel better." She allowed herself a small sigh. "It is rare for a pony to feel that way: much more common for them to be judged for it. However, it is not something she does very often, and so I believe very few ponies know about it at all. For her, a last resort only, when everything else has failed -- and solely with those she loves."

No response.

"Empathy tells her when ponies are at their lowest points," Rarity continued -- then, more slowly, "Experience allows her to recognize when all other options have run out. And if she feels it would be right... she will approach them. Even when some of those ponies... don't understand why she's approaching. Don't recognize what she's truly offering. Speaking from the heart of both depression and confusion, decline -- and only hours later, deep under Moon, understand what she had wished to give." And this sigh was much deeper. "I imagine being with her is somewhat -- exhausting. Twilight, why are we talking about Pinkie's sex life?"

"Because..." A shallow breath, just enough to provide fuel for the pain which filled the words. "Because it's easier than talking about anything else."

And because Rarity knew Twilight, she waited. She knew that there were times when words rushed forward in their eagerness to emerge, that forever-lurking hope for a chance to lecture finding its hour at last -- and she also knew that there were times when it was hard for the librarian to speak. When she was desperately fighting to make sense of a world which refused to operate by logic alone, was trying to deal with emotions which had never reached scrolls. Days when words filled the air, and others when a few hesitant ones, barely able to approach the shoreline at the ocean of fear, would eventually be followed by that terrified venture into the water.

There were times when you couldn't force, shouldn't push. You simply had to wait for her, giving her that precious chance to move forward on her own. And so Rarity did.

"When we came back from the waterfall," the smaller pony finally said, head dipping more than ever. "When we told you about what we found, briefed you on everything you'd missed... do you remember what Pinkie said? About what a pony who would make somepony think they were broken would have to be?"

Rarity slowly nodded. "She said -- they would be the worst pony in the world."

And the next words were far more even than they should have been.

"Then what does that make me?"

Rarity waited, as her friend's tail went limp. Watched as the tears started to fall, and a heart began to shatter.

"I was listening to him. To everything he was saying. Thinking about -- what it meant. I couldn't stop myself from thinking about it. She... what was it like for her, Rarity? To hear him speak about her as an experiment? To learn that everything about herself, her entire life exists because he's sick and... I can't imagine that pain. I keep trying to think of things which are worse and worse and no matter how bad I make them, it feels like I can't go that far down. She was going through that, and all she did was reach out to me. Touch me. Ask me to be there with her, at the moment of her life when she was hurting more than she ever had. But I'd listened to him, I couldn't stop thinking about it, and when she touched me -- I couldn't see her. Not as her. I couldn't see Pinkie. I didn't even see a pony. I was being touched by a -- thing, and I screamed, I couldn't stop screaming, and..."

Fighting for breath now. Gasping past the sobs.

"...I told her she was broken," Twilight forced. "I told her she was a monster. I couldn't think about it too much during the conference because there was just so much else, because I was waiting for them to kill us and that would have been me, all me because I screamed, we all nearly died and... I told her she was broken. I broke her."

So small, much more so than anypony ever expected, especially with more than three years of lessons collapsing from within.

"I trusted the wrong pony," Twilight softly said. "I broke my friend. I shouldn't have wings, I don't deserve friends, I'm the worst pony in the world. And all I can do, for the next three days... is think about that. So it's easier to talk about Pinkie's sex life, or anything other than whether Pinkie even wants to live right now. I can't see her, I can't talk to her, I don't know if she'll ever talk to me again. I don't know if she'll ever laugh. I..."

There was just enough strength left in the little mare for one more sob.

"I hate myself," Twilight stated, and curled up as much as the chains would allow.

Applejack checked the view through the bars again, rotated her ears a few more times, and then began the fifth inspection of her chains.

They were thick: exceptionally so. (There was a way in which it was possible to see that as a compliment.) The density and weight of the metal maintained all the way to the walls and ceiling, then hooked into dense eyelets which had been welded to bolted-down iron plates. They'd wanted to make sure she couldn't move, nothing more than her head and tail. But far as moving her head went... that range was normal. It had to be: the feedbag had been set so that it stuck out from her body, slightly to the right, and she had to be capable of facing that way and down in order to access it.

Not that she had any current desire to, for they'd been forced into the cell, transferred to the newest set of chains as a dozen ponies did everything they could to prevent them from striking out (or, realistically, to stop Applejack and only Applejack: her cellmate had never tried to resist). One of them had placed the feedbag on her, stiff joists and all -- then stepped back and raised his robes just enough to expose a red snout.

"A little special spicing," he'd said. "For the Lady." And then he'd spat in her oats.

If nothing else, Applejack supposed that told her exactly what a title was worth.

She looked across the short distance to Pinkie, and could make out very little past the straight manefall.

It ain't been this bad in years. Not since the baker's first days in Ponyville, trying so desperately to fit in and finding that her uncomprehending efforts only served to make her all the stranger. Trying to make any kind of connection at all. But then they'd become friends, Applejack's oldest friend among the Bearers, she'd gotten to know Pinkie a lot better, and... then they'd both been afraid of it, done whatever they could to fight it off, or reverse it in those times when Applejack got there a little too late.

They'd made up a name for it: dimming. It had initially felt like a strange thing to call a nightmare, and yet the name had stuck. Over the years, there had been less and less of it, there had just been the one incident after they'd found their Elements -- and Applejack knew she should have been paying more attention, thinking about the potential consequences, but Pinkie had come so far and she just hadn't believed it would happen any more.

Dimming: initially, an odd name for a source of fear. And then there had been that one Summer Sun Celebration, when a lack of light became the most terrifying thing there could ever be.

Ah used t' think it was... strange.

Ah used t' think a lot of things.

She took a moment, listened again, heard nopony off in the distance. Safe enough.

"So I was thinking," she softly began.

Pinkie said nothing.

"About... irony."

It was the truth, of course, if a partial one. She had mostly been thinking about helping her friend. Escape had certainly been considered, and revenge took up a significant part of what was actually turning out to be a full-fledged checklist. But irony was a surprisingly significant entry.

No response. The darkened body was breathing, and that was all it did. Dipped ears might have been taking in sound, but the mind behind them didn't care to answer the words. It had screams it could listen to, all internal, and with so many having been originally produced by kicks.

"Twilight asked me a question, when we went out together," Applejack continued. "About... actually, maybe I shouldn't start with that part. Maybe it's better if I begin with what we all heard him talking about. Because that's where the irony starts. Didn't get past me when I heard it. Couldn't. Not when he sounded jus' like me..."

One dark pink ear twitched, and the head raised by a single degree. Applejack pretended not to notice.

"He was talking," Applejack said, "about marrying pure. How he thought he was, and he thought she was, and... y'know, I never really thought about it too much before tonight. That there would be unicorn families just as dedicated to making sure the kids were nothing but unicorns, and pegasus parents who had to know their foals were gonna have wings." A little more softly, "Ah can understand that part. The part with the fear. That stallion's a pretty good speaker. Ain't never really thought too much about bein' a pegasus, not past the dreams most kids --" stopped herself. "-- wrong place for that, Pinkie. But -- I saw it then. What it would be like, to just see your firstborn -- fall. I went through that terror. Just for a second -- but I felt it. Ah think we all did. So as far as that goes... I can understand. But y'know what I don't get?"

It was too early for an answer, and so she pretended there had been one.

"Only pegasi and unicorns in that room," Applejack reminded her. "If a robe didn't have wings making it bulge in two directions, it had a horn poking it out in one. He went all over Equestria looking for ponies to give him money so he could try to find some way of making sure every family came out pure -- and Sun an' Moon, did that idiot ever shortchange his fool self."

Both ears twitched.

"I..." Weak, confused, barely present, and still so much earlier than Applejack had expected to hear it -- but with the words emerging in a strange accent, tones unheard in years. "I don't understand..."

This either saves her or finishes her.

She had to trust in her friend. Believe in the brightness within, and that it was just waiting for a chance to come out.

"Took me 'bout three minutes," Applejack casually admitted, "before Ah stopped searchin' that room for your father."

Rainbow blinked a few times. This accomplished nothing. Well -- almost nothing. It let her learn she'd somehow acquired a little bit of grit in her left eye, right before she found out that she'd just successfully shifted it to a more irritating spot.

She worked her jaw, twitched and rotated her ears, tilted her neck while concentrating just as hard as she could. Every last tenth-bit of the local atmosphere stayed exactly where it was, save for the breath she expelled in an irritated huff.

Rainbow was a pegasus, and so magic required movement. She'd been hoping that sheer determination added to everything she could manage with her head and neck would produce something -- but no, her magic was insisting that she include careful shifts of legs and wings, limbs which were currently incapable of --

-- I can't move.

I'm underground, in a tight space, and I can't move.

She had been at her worst during that first Running against Applejack, going to pranking -- cheating -- places she never would have normally considered, not when it was a competition. And part of that had come from stress. The pressure of that horrible rope wrapped around her wings, a constant reminder that she couldn't fly...

This was worse. This was ropes and chains and cuffs accumulated to the point where even her tail had been bound. It was also learning that no matter how awesome she was, she wasn't capable of weaving a technique with her eyelids. And she'd had plans: as soon as the first pony came in to refresh their feedbags, she would have disoriented them with a blast of wind and -- well, then she would have done something as a follow-up, and it probably would have worked, too.

We have to get out. We have to get out...

...slow, deep breaths.

We have to get out.

She looked across the little gap towards Fluttershy, who could not look back.

The blindfold was beyond saturated: the dipped head provided an assist to gravity, and so moisture occasionally fell away. Sometimes, the damp walls of the cell added a drip from the ceiling.

Carefully, so much more carefully than she usually spoke. "Fluttershy?"

A filtered teardrop provided the only answer.

"Fluttershy? I -- know things are bad right now." Potentially the understatement of her life, and a little stab went into Rainbow's own heart as she was reminded just how bad she was with words. "But we have to talk. We have to figure out what we can do to get out. We --"

"...Fluttershy..."

The word had not been spoken, and that was just the smallest part of the horror. It had been sung. The caretaker was the best singer among them, and so it was easy for her to send the pitch into the higher tones of a child. It even managed to come across in a way which implied a chorus.

"...Fluttershy... Fluttershy... Fluttershy can hardly fly..."

Rainbow froze.

No. Sun and Moon, no, don't let her --

"...it's -- almost funny, isn't it, Rainbow?" Spoken words now, words which were as weak as so many ponies believed the speaker to be. "...I was -- supposed to be so many things, when I was born. I was supposed to be strong. I was supposed to be powerful. I was supposed to attend weather college and become part of the Bureau. But I wasn't strong, and I wasn't powerful, I was weak and I couldn't do much of anything and... it is funny, because I was right all along. When I looked out of my window in my old home, across the clouds I could barely stand to touch, a world which felt so barren, a world which didn't have a place for me, and I thought I was supposed to be something else."

Words, there had to be words which would stop this, there had to be words because Rainbow couldn't move and so there was nothing else --

"...everypony in school knew how weak I was, and it didn't take long for everypony at flight camp to figure it out, did they? All they had to do was watch. I was too weak for weather college. I was too weak for remedial classes. So they sang, they always sang whenever they thought the adults couldn't hear them, and I spent so many nights looking out across the clouds, those horrible tacky-feeling clouds, thinking I should have been something else, that I had to be something else. I was right. I'm supposed to be dead."

Imperfect words tumbled through Rainbow's mind, hit the rocks and broke up into impotent syllables.

"...I should have been stillborn. But somepony, the pony I thought was my first friend decided I was an experiment, he didn't even do the one he'd meant to, and... it all started with me. He's always said so, even if it took me so long to learn what he was really saying. I'm eldest. Not the first foal he ever delivered, because that's her. The first hybrid. I didn't die, so he just kept doing experiments on foal after foal. If it hadn't worked on me, he might have stopped, but I came to Sun and he just kept going, over and over. Every pony out there who's different, who doesn't understand themselves, who just knows they aren't what they were supposed to be... they're supposed to be dead. We all are. And it started with me."

Frozen. Unable to move. Incapable of saving her friend from the final crash.

"I was never really thinking about committing suicide," Fluttershy softly stated as the very world wept, pony and walls and distant storm. "I was just thinking about catching up."

Rarity was quiet for a time, for time they had and her words needed to be chosen carefully. It was also allowing Twilight a moment to herself, to see if the descent would end in a self-produced swoop or rebound. But the weeping continued, and so Rarity finally spoke.

"I don't believe I've ever told you about the first time I met Pinkie." (She allowed imagination to provide the minor shaking of a head and mane.) "The full story should wait for another day, but... it was some years before you came to Ponyville, and only a little while after I had first opened the Boutique. She came into the shop, because it was a new shop in town and her schedule had finally allowed her to see just who had opened it. Somepony she had believed would be familiar to her, because -- well, we are both aware that Pinkie has a certain way of picking up on new arrivals. But I had recently left my boarding school, and I was a Ponyville native: simply one who had not truly been home for some time. We had both been so busy as to miss each other, and -- as she eventually put it, I was new and not new. I suppose that kept her from -- noticing, initially. But she finally came into the Boutique as a whirlwind of greetings, one which I was fully unequipped to deal with. She quickly decided that what I needed more than anything was a welcome-home party. A surprise one, and that is part of the longer tale. But just before she left... she also felt my shop needed an extra touch of decoration. And so I looked up to find streamers stretched across my ceiling."

Twilight's only response was an unsteady breath: Rarity took it as permission to go on.

"And I kept thinking about that," Rarity slowly went on. "When had she done it? She had been moving so quickly... and then I spoke to another pony who had been in the shop, and learned that Pinkie's talent was for planning and hosting parties. Well, it seemed to me that head-tossing streamers with perfect accuracy could easily be a minor aspect of such a mark. And naturally, that sort of pony might continually carry party supplies with her within saddlebags. Except that... I couldn't recall if she'd even been wearing saddlebags. And when I spoke to that other pony, she was of the opinion that the streamers had been there the whole time."

The purple head came up, just a little.

"I spent so much time thinking about it," Rarity continued. "Had my father done it? He had assisted somewhat with the painting, but... he is not a pony well-suited to details of composition, at least for those which lie outside a playbook. And it would have required me to overlook those efforts for weeks. I thought about it, over and over, for several days. Then my party occurred, and it provided something else to think about in the form of a fresh category of disaster."

"Pinkie..." Twilight sniffled, the sound of a pony trying to clear her nose and throat enough for comprehensible speech. "Pinkie hosted a bad party?"

Rarity gently shook her head. "It was nothing she did, Twilight. Some of the guests were less than kind: we will leave it at that for now. But she came to me the next day, feeling it had been her fault. To apologize. That was when we started to become friends. And as I spent more time with her, with little oddities occurring during so many meetings... I stopped thinking about them. It was simply something that came with being her friend."

"I..." A swallow this time. "I tried to do some experiments, in my first year. On her Pinkie Sense. I didn't understand how an earth pony was doing that, especially when there was no way for it to be part of her mark. I needed to work it out."

Rarity nodded.

"And then I just... stopped..."

"Because you had accepted her," Rarity softly said. "We are among the most inquisitive of our group, Twilight, and you more so than anypony. But in time, we both reached the point where, when a mystery is mentioned, we simply wait for her to pass us the hat. We ceased to wonder where the hat had come from. There is Pinkie, and so there is a hat. It was all we needed to know."

"I rejected her." A plain statement, albeit one which was overflowing with a locally-directed hatred.

Blue eyes briefly closed, and the designer allowed herself a single sigh.

"Twilight... you -- have a need to understand. To turn the world into a group of facts which can be assembled in different orders at any time you require comprehension of a new facet. You categorize --"

"-- I'm obsessive," the little mare whispered. "Compulsively obsessive. I want to stop it and I can't..."

"You are speaking," Rarity wryly noted, "to a pony who has been known to sort out her personal wardrobe by gem hardness, followed by lying awake wondering whether there is a single ruby out of place. I believe I am rather well equipped to understand such things." The resulting silence seemed to pass for agreement, and so she went on. "There are times when the world itself confuses you. Less so in these days. But you still wish for things to operate by rules, in a given order. By a checklist, if you like. And so you categorize, because you need to: this is this, that is that. You accepted Pinkie -- and, for that matter, Fluttershy. But you also sorted them into categories. Here we have an earth pony, there we have a pegasus. And then, on top of everything you have been through over the last moon, you learned that you were wrong. That there was a new category. One of the most fundamental rules we all know, something so basic that we never even think about it... shattered. And you, with all you have recently experienced, including tonight... it's been building for a while, Twilight. So much came out at the ravine -- but then more arrived to replace it. A rule broke, along with those walls. And so you screamed."

"You're making excuses for me." As protests went, it was only weak in volume. "I did something horrible. Something unforgiveable --"

"-- I am simply explaining how I perceive, and hopefully understand, the situation. And as for forgiveness..." This was worth another sigh. "We have seen this from you time and time again. That even now, you can feel as if you are forever a single word from driving us away."

"It wasn't even a word. It was a scream. I treated her like she wasn't even a pony --"

"-- because for you, part of that category had just broken. And now there is a new one available, along with that which will once again be the most important: friend."

"But --"

"Stop."

For volume alone, the word had been soft. It had also been released in tones more suited to Canterlot than Ponyville. It was Rarity's best attempt to imitate anything about the speech of the Princess, and so if only on instinct, an automatic reaction which would need only moments to recover from, it stopped Twilight cold.

"You say you cannot understand her pain?" Rarity asked. "To wake up on one morning knowing that you are one thing -- and then to find yourself on that same night as something else entirely? Twilight, you understand the agony of that overturn as well as anypony in the world. So use it." Just a little more quickly, "You made a mistake, and did so at what nopony would argue as a horrible time for having done so. But you have made mistakes before, things which you continue to insist must drive us away... and we are still here, in no small part because you now acknowledge such things as mistakes, and do your best to make up for them. You are still learning. We all know that. And so we help when we are able -- or wait for you, as best we can. Go to her, at the first possible moment. Speak to her. She is waiting for you."

Disbelief, an almost overwhelming amount of it, and for those who barely knew the librarian, it would be all they would hear. But for Rarity, there was something else in that tone: the sound of another emotion being forced back, for the pain it brought might be too great to bear. "I went too far. This time, I went too far, Rarity. This was unforgivable --"

"-- it amazes me, at times," Rarity interrupted, "how many ponies believe their actions to be unforgivable. Especially if doing so would keep them from having to approach the one who could forgive them."

Silence, and the designer waited.

"It doesn't change what I did," Twilight finally said.

Rarity nodded.

"You can make excuses for me. I can make them. Nothing changes what happened. I know she has autophobia: Applejack told me after we came here. I knew being abandoned was the worst fear of her life. That was the moment when Pinkie needed me, more than she's ever needed me, and..."

The words were insufficient to contain the self-loathing, and so it saturated the cell.

"...I turned away from her."

"Yes, you did," Rarity gently agreed. "Now turn back."

Twilight looked up. And in her eyes, Rarity saw the horrible agony of hope.

"...my -- father?"

They almost never talked about him. About furrows and endless pushing, not since the first days. As far as experiencing the phantom pains of empathy went, there were ways in which having been told once was enough.

"Well, yeah." Applejack tried for a casual shrug, found herself bobbing up and down within the chains. (Of course they'd been afraid to let her hooves touch the floor, terrified of what could happen if she managed a hard push...) "Think about it. If there's anypony in all the world who'd pay out to make sure his kids would be the same as he was forever, who do you think it would be? Even as cheap as he is, with all that money stacked up in the basement which he never ever touches, he'd pay. He'd hate that he was paying a unicorn -- but to know there would be nothing in his line but earth ponies, forever -- he'd try to talk the price down, but the bits would come out in the end. You know he would."

It might have been a nod. It might have also been the darkened head dipping again.

"And there's a lot of earth ponies who feel that way," the farmer continued. "Well -- I guess it's a lot when you figure for everypony who'd agree with your father on the whole continent. Percentage might not be that high, but for total number of ponies, it's gotta be up there. So many ponies who would have given their money to the so-called Great Work -- but Doctor Gentle? He started by going up to the unicorns. Eventually, he got around to the pegasi. But not a single earth pony, because to him, that's part of what being broken means. He deliberately ignored all those ponies who would have helped him if he'd just rephrased things a little. Kept the emphasis on the pure. So as far as Ah'm concerned, he shortchanged his fool self, and I ain't gonna say different because that's the truth. Once I started to understand part of what he wanted, I had to look for your father. I was looking for earth ponies everywhere, for about three minutes. I was looking for..."

She hesitated, for the next words would be the truth. If voiced, they couldn't emerge any other way.

Ah don't have to say them.

But it was for Pinkie.

"...Ah was lookin' for mah own blood family."

The lank manefall shifted as her cellmate's head came up.

"Because..." Still the wrong accent, the wrong hue. "...you marry pure."

Applejack silently nodded.

"But you need farmers," those strange tones said. "You need earth ponies..."

"More ways t' farm than just the Cornucopia Effect," Applejack softly said. "Minotaurs. Griffons. Zebras, yaks, donkeys, the kudu and buffalo and everyone we ain't had the chance to meet yet. The whole menagerie. Effect's just easiest. They don't got it -- well, they don't got much of it, most of 'em. Lots of ponies living in the griffon nation, from what I hear. Rainbow's mentioned that a few times: decent native population, except they think more like griffons than ponies. And there's some other ponies scattered outside Equestria and Prance. But mostly, once you get past the borders -- ain't no Effect. And all those people, they still eat, Pinkie. Farming's just harder for them, without falling back on the magic."

"The Acres --"

A small head shake, one which took place without the familiar weight, and she wondered where her Daddy's hat was. She knew where she'd left it, but if anypony had gone into the guest cottage and collected a personal souvenir... or destroyed one.

"Acres could keep running without it. Have to learn how, and we'd probably have a rough transition -- but after that, it's just a different kind of work. An' -- Ah've been thinkin' about that for a while, Pinkie. Because we both know that whatever Apple Bloom's gonna wind up with for a mark, it won't be for farming. And... she's gonna leave home, eventually, go to wherever her best place is. Granny..." This part hurt. "I don't know how many more years she has. It leaves two of us, two ponies for the whole Acres when four was just barely enough, and that because of all the neighbors. It's why Ah've been thinking so much about dating this winter, about finding the right pony. And -- about what we'll have to do if I can't." She softly sighed. "Ah ain't much good at the dating thing. So I was thinking about asking Twi to dip into the library exchange program for me, ask for some books on --" the word felt so foreign "-- agronomy. Science farming. Just in case."

She'd known the name would produce a bad reaction, and it did: Pinkie's head went down again. She'd also known she had to say it anyway, because it was part of what had to be said.

"Which, Ah guess, kind of brings us back to the irony part."

The renewed silence was no less harsh for its increasing familiarity.

"Because Twi said something to me, when we were out there by ourselves. Something I've been thinking about. I don't think she knows just how important those words are. I didn't. I didn't want to think about them at all, and I turned them around on her right after she said them, so I wouldn't have to. But..."

She stopped. Listened again, as best she could, to make sure they were truly alone. That nopony was listening. And, just for a moment, wondered why she cared.

"...what she said... is something only she could say. As somepony looking at everything from the outside." She sighed. "For all her books and learning, for all she loves t' lecture -- sometimes, the moments when she's smartest is when she's not even trying to be. She asked me something no adult earth pony could ever ask. Can't have irony without something to be ironic, and..." She deliberately trailed off, waited.

Finally, "What -- what did she say?"

The words hurt. To say them was one kind of pain: to think about them was to ram the hooves of generations into her own ribs. But they had to be said, and they could never be forgotten.

"'Applejack, when you make yourself look weak... how much damage has the Secret done?'"

She winced as she repeated them: it couldn't be helped. It meant she needed an extra moment before she saw her cellmate looking at her again, this time in total confusion.

"I don't understand..."

"Y'know what tonight was, Pinkie? I think tonight was the Secret. The price of having it, letting unicorns and pegasi believe lies for hundreds of years. Telling them that lies are all that's out there, all there ever could be. And they believed us, didn't they? They decided we were telling the truth. We made ourselves look weak, and that meant we were weak. 'cause at least half of being a racist is deciding you're better than somepony else -- and guess what? We'd told them they were. Must have made it all the easier, don't you think? Not that some ponies ain't gonna lie themselves into thinking they're better than everypony else no matter what the evidence is, but here we all went and gave them an excuse."

She was starting to wonder how many kicks she could take. Earth pony durability didn't seem to mean much when all the blows were coming from the inside.

"So maybe that doctor --" the word was nearly spat, and the momentary release of venom gave Applejack a little more strength "-- would have always been a racist bastard, Secret or no Secret, because Ah think there's always gonna be a few around no matter what anypony does. Or maybe, if there wasn't a Secret, he would have looked at the filly he'd just saved, cried for a while, washed her up, taken her to the funeral, an' then gone around to as many homes as he had to until he'd found somepony who could help him during her Surges, teach his daughter all about her heritage." With increasing rage, an emotion which had more than one target, "He might have loved her, loved her for real, not whatever he hauled out of Tartarus and wants to call love."

"He doesn't..." the distorted voice softly said. "Not the way he should."

Applejack forced her breathing to slow, nodded once. "You spotted that, Pinkie, before anypony else did. Even like this, you knew. It ain't pure love, not where he'd love her just for being his kid. It's something else, something dark. Ah jus' hope she really heard you. That those words went deep. But I don't know if she has the strength to believe them, not when it's been her whole life of him telling her something else." And because it was the truth, because she was still trying to reach that spark inside, "Pinkie, you said it, because out of all of us, when it's about feelings, you say the smartest things." And waited again.

Eventually, if only from force of habit, "...what did I say?"

Applejack looked at the muted colors of the dress, now stained where it had been dragged across the dirty floor. (She looked at dresses more than she once had.) Hues which had become a prediction.

"'Sometimes the fastest way to turn somepony into a bad pony is by telling them they're a bad pony'," Applejack replied. "What happens when somepony spends their whole life hearing she's a killer?"

Her cellmate spent several seconds in silence, and Applejack let it happen, for it felt as if it was the quiet of thought.

"It didn't make her into a murderer," finally emerged. "She's killed, with the Diamond Dogs, but that was just being scared, defending herself when she didn't have control."

Applejack nodded, waited a little more.

"It..." Blue eyes closed. "...made her feel like she had to spend her whole life making up for it. Like she had to do anything to make up for it. Anything he told her to do, anything at all."

It was the first time Pinkie had mentioned the doctor, and Applejack decided to treat it as an encouraging sign. "Yeah. Back at the lake, when we had her down for a few seconds, before --" and her own head dipped "-- Ah lost it, Twilight said -- 'We know she's already killed at least twice.' An' Twilight meant the two Dogs. But I'd bet that when she heard that, she broke it down another way. The Dogs and her mother. She's had him telling her that she killed her mother for her whole life: I'd wager the Acres on it. Ah... don't want t' imagine what it's like, living that way, not for too long. I tried it just now, and it's like having a mountain on your back. He'd decided his daughter was weak and broken, and you heard him, Pinkie: the only way it was gonna work is if he made her feel that way too. You just said it: he told her that she killed her mother, and so she decided she'd do anything to make it right."

It's... not mah fault. Not personal.

Never met the stallion before we came here. Never said a word t' him. Maybe no part of our families ever got t'gether before this.

But Ah'm part of it...

"Look at what we did, Pinkie," Applejack softly said. "Look at what we all did. She's an earth pony: that's how she was born. That's the heart of her, the soul. A beautiful voice, could have been a great singer if she just had somepony to teach her how. And he didn't know she had a voice at all -- so he decided he could just speak for her, tell her what to say, what to think, everything she had to believe. Losing somepony hurts: we both know that. Y'remember what Ah was like after mah Mommy and Daddy died, even if Ah don't want to. An' losing his wife... it was part of everything. But some of it was the Secret. Some of it was us, every last earth pony --"

She took the deepest breath of her life.

"-- except for you."

The darkened head looked up. Blue eyes opened.

"...me?"

"You were ready to break the Secret. Because you knew when to break it, and why. Because..." Mommy, Daddy, I'm sorry "...Ah think it's gotta break. Maybe not tonight, maybe not for a few years, not until we can all figure out how. But soon, because it might have done more damage than it could ever do good. Just... sending on... there's two things that could mean, Pinkie, and I don't want to talk about either of them right now, because the better one feels like us. But the other..."

She forced herself to stop, center, push the visions away for a few more seconds.

"You're stronger than me, Pinkie," Applejack told her friend. "Y'always have been. You're stronger than some stupid words a stallion with rocks in his head wants you to believe, better than he ever thought you would be --"

"-- I'm a monster."

Soft. Steady. But not insistent. Words which almost seemed to be praying for denial as something to believe in.

"Y'ain't."

"You heard what he said, Applejack." The limp tail held steady. "I'm a freak --"

"-- you've always been a little weird," and the sheer degree of understatement briefly made Applejack smile. "We're friends anyway. We're still friends. Pinkie, I'm right here. Ah ain't goin' nowhere."

The next words were, at best, graveyard humor, whistling into the shadowlands -- but they remained some form of joke. "You're in the same cell. In chains. You don't have a choice."

"Ah call that," Applejack declared, "convenience."

Silence for a while.

"But -- Twilight..." Her head went down again. "You saw..."

"Twi freaks out sometimes," Applejack softly reminded her -- and aimed another kick at her own ribs. "Tell the truth, Pinkie, another minute and I might have been right behind her."

Moisture began to coat her cellmate's eyes, and even the blue seemed to be darkening. "But..."

Hurry, hurry...! "Pinkie... y'know me. You know my family. We talk about marrying pure. So the doctor talks and suddenly, ain't no such thing as pure no more. It was scary. It hurts to tell you that, and I've gotta because it can't be between us, not silent and secret. It scared me. And Twilight -- she puts things in boxes. She's gotta organize the world. And she had you in a box with a bunch of labels on it, like 'friend' and 'baker' and 'earth pony,' and then somepony ripped that last one off and the whole side went with it. But y'know something? Right now, there's a pony who feels just about as bad as you do, the only thing keeping her from kicking herself is the chains, and she's probably telling herself that you'll never speak to her again, an' that y'never should. Ah know Twi well enough by now to know when she's gonna hate herself. She needs you, Pinkie. She needs to know y'forgive her, that you can forgive. She needs to laugh. Ah think when this thing wraps up, we're gonna need laughter more than ever. We need you, 'cause we're all wounded right now -- and without you, how are we gonna heal?"

"...and who heals me?"

She'd been waiting for that one. "Us. The Cakes. Cranky, 'cause that jack's decided he's your grandpa, he jus' don't say it out loud. Everypony who knows you. Everypony who loves you. Pinkie, when Twilight comes up to you... can you forgive her?"

Ears dipped again. "What if she doesn't come? What if she can't see me as anything other than a --"

"She will."

"...you don't know."

Ah know she's locked up with Rarity. She was counting on the designer, and it no longer felt strange.

"Ah know I want t' see you forgive her, when she comes limpin' up, draggin' the weight of the world with her tail," Applejack quietly said. "Because maybe... that means you'll forgive me."

Water ran down the walls, dripped from the ceiling.

"You've been thinking about dating," that cellmate eventually said. "About a next generation for the Acres. I didn't tell you. I haven't told anypony yet. But... I'd been thinking about children, for a while now. Having my own foals. Someday..."

Applejack blinked.

"You can't be around the twins and not think about it," the strange accent insisted.

That was worth a small nod.

"And..." A shallow breath. "...I knew it wouldn't be easy: the twins taught me that. And... there would have to be somepony special in my life, that very special somepony... that's a weird way of saying love, isn't it? But... I was afraid. Because I knew I was deaf, and mute, and... maybe that would be in my blood. Maybe my foals would be like that too. I didn't want to see them go through that. But maybe it wouldn't be in the blood. Maybe they'd be normal earth ponies, or pegasi, or unicorns. I was hoping for that, hoping so hard..."

And with horror, Applejack saw that her eyes were now navy, tilting towards black.

"...but now I know what I am, don't I? I know what's wrong. I finally know what's in my blood. Applejack, if I have children... what will they be?"

The verbal kick went directly into Applejack's heart.

Fluttershy's the oldest. She's old enough to have kids of her own. The ones within a few years of her are old enough that some of 'em could have gotten married, or just gotten knocked up.

There's gotta be at least one of 'em who's pregnant, or who's been a sire. Maybe that foal is already here. A next generation. And those kids could be normal ponies, because it might not be in the blood, it might not be passed on --

-- or they could be just like the one parent. Mixed. A hybrid.

The walls had broken, and there was a chance that they could never be repaired.

She looked at her friend: a pony who was always different, always a little strange. A weirdness you just accepted after a while, because those oddities came part and parcel with a mare who was kind and caring and never wanted to see anypony hurt. A good pony.

A good... pony.

Applejack looked at her oldest friend as fur blackened and mane threatened to fall away, and said the last thing she could.

"They'll be the only thing they could ever be, with you as their mom," Applejack stated. "They'll be loved. Because that's what somepony who's the family of mah heart would do."

Silence.

And then, with the first of the restored curls bouncing, Pinkie's sobbing blue eyes came up to meet her own.

Words. Please, brain, please help me, I know I'm not the smartest one, I know that and --

-- I hate it.

Fluttershy needs words. Not stunts. Not techniques. Words.

Please...

But Rainbow didn't know what to say. She didn't know if there was anything which could be said at all. And so she simply started talking. Because that was better than silence and if she was talking, then at least she was doing something. Besides, it probably wasn't possible to make things any worse.

"I was thinking about my manuscript," she told Fluttershy's weeping form.

"...your manuscript." There was a bitterness to it.

"Well -- yeah. But mostly about Coordinator reading it, and what Twilight said he tried to do with it."

"...and let me guess," Fluttershy softly interjected. "If you see him... just before you kick him, you want to ask what he thought of it."

Well -- yeah. To show something to Twilight was to unwittingly -- and painfully -- engage the services of an editor. Her future favorite target would have been her first true audience.

"...it's always about you, isn't it?" The tears were seeping through at a more rapid pace. "Even now, it's always --"

When she's angry, she takes it out on the wrong ponies. She's as sad as I've ever seen her, but she's angry too.

So who is she mad at?

"-- it's about you."

Dead stop.

"...me?"

"Yeah. I was listening to what Doctor Gentle said. You wrote him letters."

"...yes," Fluttershy eventually admitted. "Every moon or so, when I could spare the postage. He was my friend, Rainbow. He was my first friend, there were years when he was my only --"

"-- letters about us."

The movement behind the blindfold suggested a blink.

"...yes. It was... something important in my life. He was important in my life. He helped me set up my treatment room, he gave me equipment, I'm still using some of the stitching needles..."

"You told him about Discord," Rainbow said. "Did you tell him about anything else? Any of the missions, any of the things we did around Ponyville? Appleloosa, Dragon Mountain... how much were you writing down?"

"...most of it," Fluttershy eventually admitted. "Why? Because he'll bind my letters and publish first?"

"Because," Rainbow told her, "that means he must have known just about everything that was in my manuscript. He even knew more, because I only wrote down the first year." Wincing, "We -- kinda had a few more screwups in the second and third. But that dumb Coordinator still went through my manuscript and tried to blackmail Twilight with that. When Doctor Gentle knew that stuff all along. Knew more. So why have somepony else do it? And do it with less than they could have? I mean, if he'd just pulled out the whole Smarty Pants Incident..."

I think I'm going somewhere with this. She wished she knew where. But there was a flight path of sorts, and the current best option seemed to be going forward.

"...I don't know..."

And much like the sign in front of Davenport's shop, it hit Rainbow right in the snout.

"He's a hypocrite."

The words had been spoken on instinct, emerged before she could truly think about them, recognize what they meant. But Rainbow's ears perked and somewhere below them, her mind began to accelerate.

"...what?"

"Well -- actually, let's go back to the chaos pearl stuff," Rainbow casually began. "And essence, whatever that is. It's all about giving foals their heritage back, right? If they're not born the same race as their parents, assuming both of those are the same and I kind of got the idea that he doesn't like mixed marriages too much. And in order to give foals their heritage back, the first step in figuring out how to do it --" she pushed the words, lent them speed "-- he tried to turn you into a unicorn. When both your parents are pegasi. So to get her heritage sorted out, he started by trying to steal yours. Heritage is important, it's the most important thing ever, it's the only important thing -- as long as it's not yours? What the buck do you call that?"

Total confusion. "...I -- Rainbow, what --"

"I mean, if it worked, if he'd gotten the right pearl, you would have been a unicorn! And if it worked with the one he'd used, earth pony!" She quickly pictured the results, rapidly concluding the tail would have been exactly the same. "Either way, no wings, and your parents would have had to move! So much for a pegasus growing up in the clouds and flying with her family because that's the heritage, right?"

"...but I was dying... he only tried it because I was going to die... but I came to Sun when I shouldn't have, I was born..."

"And as far as he's concerned," Rainbow huffed, "you would have been born broken. It's been about his daughter all along, right? His and nopony else's! Saving everypony else from having a kid who isn't just like them is a side effect!"

"...Rainbow..." Fluttershy's voice was becoming perceptibly weaker. "...he was saving lives..."

"You're defending him."

"...yes."

"A couple of minutes ago, you said you were supposed to be dead. Everypony like you, including Pinkie, is supposed to be dead. And now you're defending him."

Gasping for breath now. "...I... I..."

"Okay, he's saving lives," Rainbow admitted -- then rushed on. "And there's a while where he doesn't know what's going on, he admitted that in front of everypony. He knows the chaos and essence stuff saves lives, and that's not the worst reason for doing a lot of things. But he's also finding out that the magic's been messed up a little, right? He said that too. Weakened, at the very least. No Surges. Still, better a weak kid than a dead kid, and he keeps going. It's a little hard to blame him for that part of it. But then Pinkie's mark shows up. And as soon as he sees her, he knows what he really did. He didn't weaken the magic, he mixed it up. And this stallion, who's so concerned about heritage, who just found out he put a hundred lightning bolts through it, every foal he does this to is gonna be mixed up -- he keeps on going! He's stealing heritage here, there, and anywhere! It's all he does! As far as he's concerned, broken ponies are the worst thing ever and he's making them every moon! He's a hypocrite, Fluttershy, maybe the worst one ever!"

The gasps stopped. Fluttershy's head shot up, and the covered gaze still made a furious attempt to focus on Rainbow.

I am so glad she's blindfolded right now.

"...maybe --- maybe he would have tried to fix us! All of us! Once he knew how to change ponies --"

"-- turned you all into alicorns?" Rainbow challenged. "When he thought you needed a lifetime of training for it, had to just about have being a Princess as your mark? So he's gonna change marks now? Three hundred years from now, Twilight's great-great-whatever kids are gonna be giving lectures at some school and kids fall asleep on the thrilling story of Gentle Arrival?"

"...he -- he was saving --"

"-- you're defending him again!"

"...he's... he could have found another way..."

"And he would have had to tell all of you what he'd done in the first place." It was almost a hiss. "Kind of sounded like tonight was the first time he'd ever done that. He'd have to go up to everypony who had their mark already and tell them sorry, kind of messed around a little when you were born, but you know that magic you've had for a while? Your talent? Your life? Gotta go and fix that: hold still! Sorry about the whole cottage, guess those animals have to go somewhere else now, the ones you still need to treat just about continuously for the next week will die without you, but that's okay because now we're gonna see what you would have been like if you'd been born, what was the stupid bucking word, pure! And he's got all this stuff you wrote down, but it's bucking Coordinator and the manuscript because he just can't be the one to blackmail anypony because he's just so good, so perfect, so bucking pure --"

" -- shut up!"

It wasn't a shout: just normal speaking volume. It was also a change.

Spiral's just ahead: keep it tight...

"Why do I have to shut up? What am I saying that's not true? I'm being honest as chains in Tartarus: maybe Applejack should switch necklaces with me. I've got truths like sunrise: they just keep coming."

"He -- he was just -- he was trying..."

Stark now, a sudden switch designed to make the spectators gasp as they waited to see if she could pull the trick out. "You wanted to die. You were talking about suicide."

"I -- I want to --"

And she had it.

It was like the burst of a Rainboom. It was light and color and power, only with all of it staying inside her head. It had a chance to be the fourth-best moment of her life (mark, Element, Academy entrance) if it just worked.

"Back in the bucking room, you said you knew what he did to you. You said that right after he talked about heritage. You've been thinking about this the whole time! He told you he saved your life and you still wouldn't go with him! You're getting louder, Fluttershy, because you're mad! You're talking about suicide because you're mad and thinking about dying is easier! Who are you mad at? Why?"

And then there was a scream.

It wasn't a very loud scream: it seldom was, and the stone seemed to absorb most of it. But the pitch was high, for it was the sound of boiling emotion being vented under high pressure, emerging as something close to psychic steam.

"I love him, he was my first friend, he was my only friend, he gave me my life even when I hated my life and wanted to end it, he told me to live and when I had my mark, he told me I was exactly where I was supposed to be, who I was supposed to be, his wonder, his special filly, he lied to me over and over and over and I love him and I HATE him I hate him I hate him I love him and I -- !"

It stopped, all at once: head dropping, tail sagging, breaths coming in ragged heaves. Rainbow silently watched.

Okay. Give her a minute, because she needs one. And then we'll see if we've both got enough left to land.

Rarity had given Twilight words, something to consider, hopefully something which would be acted upon. And now she had to provide distraction: allow those sentences to drop down to the deeper levels and do what they could, while the rest of that brilliant mind worked on something else.

Besides, she had questions of her own.

"How many do you think there are?"

Twilight easily guessed. "The hybrids."

Rarity nodded. "For lack of a better term. 'Ponies whom Doctor Gentle has experimented upon' takes too long for frequent repetition."

"It's... hard to say," Twilight sighed. "I don't have all the variables for the equation. I don't know how many problem births a typical midwife would see in a normal year. Or how many births they see at all, total. But --" and she had something, Rarity could see it in her eyes "-- he didn't have normal years, did he?"

"Your meaning?"

"I don't know much about midwiving," Twilight admitted. "But I do know something about the Exception, because of all the articles. It came out immediately... and I just realized 'Foal #1' in the very first article was Fluttershy... The Equestrian Magic Society has known about it for just about her exact lifetime. It was studied, it couldn't be duplicated or taught... and word spread, Rarity. But it must have spread beyond the researchers. There must have been doctors and midwives all over the continent who read those articles, because it was medical magic and that has its own journals. And if they had a gravid mare who might be in trouble at birth, they could have told her... go to Trotter's Falls. So he didn't have normal years. He had years where mare after mare who was afraid for their foal sought him out. Think about all the times since we've been here when he had to go off and take care of somepony who'd just shown up. I thought he was late to the party tonight because it happened again, and it wouldn't have surprised me if we'd had a birth during the party."

"So as his reputation spreads," Rarity slowly said, "more and more potential problem births appear at his doorstep."

"Because he's the only place to go. And because so many of those foals are brought to Sun, that brings in more parents... it's an escalating number, Rarity: it can't be anything else. I don't know how many births he sees in a year. But the percentage for the ones which would normally be -- fatal... it has to be higher than the typical midwife's, a lot higher. I don't have the base numbers, and that means all I can do is guess -- but it's Fluttershy's lifetime. I think..."

It was almost possible to see the symbols shifting before her eyes.

"At the minimum," Twilight eventually said, "it's several hundred. I'm pretty sure the maximum is much less than two thousand. For a median... a little under a thousand sounds about right."

"Most of whom have yet to find their marks," Rarity realized.

Twilight nodded. "He only put up pictures for some of the adults..." And a sigh. "Sun and Moon, Rarity, just in Ponyville... who tells Ratchette? Who tells Snowflake? How do you tell them? Should they be told at all?"

"I..." It was hard to admit, and that was why she had to. "...I don't know, Twilight. Part of me believes they must be informed. But at the same time -- we saw what his words did to Pinkie and Fluttershy. No matter what we say to them, it will be a shock. The upheaval of a lifetime. I... don't want to do that to anypony right now. And we need to be there for our friends first, to help them adjust to a new reality."

"Fluttershy." The self-loathing was rising again. "I hadn't even thought --"

"-- there is a strict limit to the number of things anypony can think about at once," Rarity quickly broke in. Which is part of why you have yet to speak of Spike, with the rest being fear. "And Rainbow is with her, while Applejack can speak to Pinkie. Trust them, Twilight, until we are together again."

"...I'll try." A long pause. "Rarity... what does my restraint look like?"

She blinked. "Well, if you were wondering if it goes with your dress, the answer would be a decided --"

"-- just describe it to me. Please. I can only see yours."

"Very well." She focused. "Iron. It has aged well, but there was a degree of neglect and it was stored somewhere damp: there are hints of rust. The metal has spinel and howlite sunken into it along the path of a regular spiral design and should you be aware of the traditional emotional connotations for both stones, you might find that somewhat ironic. The size of the cone suggests either extreme thickness to the metal or that the hollow can accommodate a horn much larger than your own. Rather unusually, the straps are threaded with metal, but that has discolored to the point where I can no longer tell you which kind. I suppose that is to make it harder to remove by brute force. There are two buckles and one lock, with that last visually appearing to be a rather mundane specimen -- but of course, neither of us can attempt to feel an enchantment at this time. And we will not discuss the artistic merits of the design, for there are none. Why?"

Twilight sighed. "I was afraid of that. It's old, but it's the heaviest-duty model there was for its time: that's why the howlite is there. Extra opacity. I've been trying, but... I can't get anything past it. And I won't be able to. I could go to the triple corona, hold it for as long as I could, and all I would do is pass out."

Rarity regretfully nodded. "And mine? I sense metal against my fur in the buckles, but not where the straps run."

"It's a lot more basic," Twilight admitted. "There's barely any gems, and the straps are just heavy fabric. I guess they only had the one for me."

In other words, she could have potentially broken mine with a single hard push.

Rarity's field strength was strictly average. It always would be. And when Twilight was your friend, there were times...

She tried not to be jealous: as she'd been reminded, her own field dexterity was rather advanced. But there were still times when it was so easy to feel... inferior.

Twilight believed that Rarity could learn more workings. And do so as a fifth-year dropout, with average field strength, and...

...there were better things to think about.

"While we are on the subject of magic," Rarity said, "when we were brought in here..." She tilted her head towards the cylindrical hollow near the door. "One of our captors said 'You know what this does,' and you nodded. What does it do, along with its counterpart on the outside? For I did not see one next to all the doors. Only a few. And most of those were guarding against a breakout of desks." With a quick frown, "Actually, where are our guards? I would have expected somepony standing much closer watch than this."

"The conference ponies brought us down," Twilight reminded her. "Guests. There's some locals, but there's also a lot of ponies who have to head home. And the servants are cleaning. We could get guards later, once everything gets sorted out. Maybe they're asking for volunteers upstairs, or they'll leave it to the servants. Or --" a brief pause "-- if the conspiracy goes that far, they could send some of the local police. In robes again."

Twilight sighed, and the slender left foreleg briefly moved against chain and cuff: a facehoofing denied.

"He said he started looking for sponsors from those around him," she said. "In Trotter's Falls."

Rarity nodded.

"That means at least part of the town was in on it."

Again.

"I owe Rainbow an apology... The cylinder is... it's not on every cell because it's only meant for unicorns, plus it's expensive to set up and hard to maintain: whoever put it there probably couldn't afford more than they have. And it's sadism, Rarity. At the very back of that hollow is a sensor device which turns off any security spells in the cell and opens the door. The one on the outside does the same thing. But you have to press both of them inside a minute, going in or out, or -- whatever workings are in here go off. Outside, that probably sounds an alarm. In here... it might dispose of prisoners." A tiny sigh. "It's been years since this came up in class, and it's not like I can ask Spike to bring me the notes... Anyway, you probably missed seeing the pony who used his field to press them while they were dragging you towards the cuffs."

"So we could open the door," Rarity slowly said. "If we could get out of the cuffs. How is that sadism?"

"Because we're in restraints," Twilight sadly replied. "And the enchantment repels inorganic matter. Something living could touch it, but it has to be something sapient. The diameter is too narrow for a hoof to get through. That means you need to touch the sensor with a field. So it's meant to just... sit there. Reminding us that we could escape, if we just weren't restrained. If they hadn't taken our magic. And... if we know about what happens if somepony pushes their field against the outside sensor five times straight... to wait for that. It's sadism, and... I guess it kind of goes with the rest of the place."

Rarity wondered about that final sensor function, and then forced herself to stop.

Twilight looked at that hollow again, returned her gaze to Rarity.

"I just thought of something I can say to Pinkie."

"What?"

"We..." A little swallow, and then purple eyes squeezed shut. "Applejack said it, and then he... She held a party for her parents, so her father would love her. And I went out there, in front of everypony..." The next breath was forced. "I got one dance. We both only got one dance."

"This may not be the best time to talk about that," Rarity quickly said.

"Why?"

Simply, "Because you're hurting enough already. This can wait until you've rested, eaten, recovered --"

"-- that's why I want to talk about it," Twilight broke in. "Because... I want it to stop hurting, as much as it can. As much as -- I can pretend it can."

Three years of lessons. And she has learned things none of us ever taught her.

"So, then," Rarity softly agreed. "We turn to Quiet. Where did you wish to begin?"

Five breaths each, both marshaling themselves to the task, and then Twilight looked at her again.

"During the dance," Twilight asked. "What were you all doing? Pinkie said you --" the discarding of words was rather visible "-- reacted."

It didn't feel like a strange place to begin, for the ultimate subject was now betrayal, and it was easy for Rarity to see just where and when that final level of trust had been born. "Rainbow," she began, "was... well, she had a certain amount of space overhead and ponies to watch: you might have spotted what happened to that one tapestry. Fluttershy was likely in her chosen corner. I'm not entirely sure where Applejack was, but Pinkie was in the corridor above the party, coming back from having taken Spike up to your assigned quarters: I saw her approaching the ramp, and so she would have seen me as well. She saw me trying to reach you. I was doing my best to push through the crowd -- but there were too many ponies, and calling out felt like the height of rudeness." Yes, she was definitely entitled to indulge in any number of sighs tonight. "I'm not even certain what I meant to do. I simply felt you were making a mistake, a horrible mistake, and -- I had to stop you."

These words were far too soft. "You were right."

And that statement would have to be dealt with shortly. "When it ended... I tried to follow you. A few ponies did: some were rather curious, or might have been simply searching for that chance at additional gossip. But I..."

She frowned.

"...I couldn't find you." More slowly, "We all saw the direction you left in, and there are only so many rooms which lie along that path, so many hallways... but I couldn't find you. Nor did I feel the burst of magic from your teleporting away. And there are no ramps there, so trotting or even flying to another level was out of the question... Twilight, where did you go? Did he bring you into a hidden passage?"

A tiny amount of emotional distress had been replaced with confusion. "No. Just a pantry. It's right at the end of that one hallway. We only went through three doors."

"A pantry?" Her own confusion was much more intense. "How did I overlook --"

-- and the idea hit her.

It rocked her. It should have sent her flying out of the cuffs. But instead, it produced a soft gasp, as all of the little details began to assemble into a sketch. Or rather, a portion of one.

"-- oh, no. Oh dear, oh my..."

Concern, laced with a growing panic. "Rarity?"

"Twilight -- just before you screamed... remember where I was. At the back. I saw Pinkie touch you. But in the moment before that, I did not see Quiet. He had been right next to you, I never saw him move, and... I was looking down, so many of us were looking down, and so not to see him move is a reasonable thing. But nor did I hear him. The restraint... it must have been in one of the boxes. But such seldom open in silence. No sounds of hoofsteps or rummaging through contents. Nothing. And I was not the only one in the back row. Remember where he was standing when he placed the restraint upon you. He did not simply attempt to fetch it with his field. He had to get up, move past you, reach the boxes, extract the restraint, come back -- and none of us noticed. Pinkie touched you -- and then he was standing over you. Everypony in that room lost track of where he was --" and her eyes widened. "Sun and Moon, Applejack openly spoke of Surges. Well, I suppose most would accept that earth pony foals experience them, although they likely imagine flowers which spontaneously go into bloom. But for her to do so with a stranger about? It's as if... she forgot he was there."

Twilight blinked.

"The restroom," she said, and did so as if it suddenly meant everything.

A portion of Rarity's anatomy twinged. "I believe that may be some hours off."

With increasing urgency, "No, Rarity. I went into a restroom with Pinkie, right after I'd decided to bring Quiet in. Before we got everypony together in the birthing room. And she couldn't remember Quiet's name. Not immediately. Pinkie needed a second to think of who somepony was. And there was the thaumaturgy shop, where the reporter never put his name in the article. I thought she was just trying to keep all the blame with me..."

They stared at each other.

"His mark," Rarity quickly said. "Do you recall it?"

"It's -- grey. I could tell it was there, but it was so hard to make out exactly what the icon was -- I gave up after a while, and I just never asked."

"And I stopped trying. Concentrate, Twilight, as much as you ever have. Picture it as clearly as you can: I will attempt the same. Devote everything you have to the assembly of that image."

They focused. Teeth nearly ground against each other, right up until Rarity realized how much damage she might do to the enamel. They pushed...

"...it's... an outline," Twilight softly realized. "It's thin gray lines in the outline of a pony's body. It's just barely there at all..."

"What would you call such a talent?" And now Rarity's fury was beginning to build. "A mark for invisibility?"

The question reached Twilight's lecturing side, and the librarian quickly shook her head. "Invisibility's almost impossible: in practice, it's more like using illusion to cover yourself in a sort of advanced camouflage, making yourself look like your surroundings -- and if you move, you have to keep that up in real time. That's Luna's skill level. And for true invisibility -- it's not much good to have light going through your eyes, Rarity: a truly invisible pony would be blind. This is closer to resonance, it has to be. A talent for -- projecting dismissal. You don't notice him. You can't. You search for him and you overlook where he's hiding. You forget he's even there... Sun and Moon, I've never read about a talent like this..."

And it was easy to perceive how it would elude the Archives, simply through the desire of its possessors. "He could be right outside the cell," Rarity realized. "Listening to everything we say. He could be in this cell --" and it took nearly everything she had to force the stop. "-- no, he is preparing for departure, if he has not left already: he has other concerns." There was a time and place for paranoia, and there was frankly a time and place where paranoia had better be prepared to wait its turn in line for quite a while.

"But all the things we talked about," Twilight whispered. "About -- secrets..."

"Were missed," Rarity firmly said, a second before she realized why it was true. "If he had overheard us speaking of her days ago, things would have happened rather differently than they did tonight. Perhaps Pinkie Sense defeated him, or he was simply never able to intrude on us. And as for why neither of us ever felt him at work... mark magic is subtle to begin with, and his could easily include the ability to elude such perception. The means of defeating such an ability... I cannot imagine..."

"We're already halfway to beating him."

There had been anger in the words, along with the expected amount of lingering betrayal.

"Explain, if you would?"

"It's a talent," Twilight firmly said, "which works best if nopony knows you have it. When you can just -- sneak. We know what he does now. What he is. We can prepare for him."

"And the method of preparation?"

This sigh was also fully justified. "That's the hard part."

They stood in silence for a time, or rather, lightly swayed.

"Let's talk about something else," Twilight proposed. "Something... lighter. Just for a little while." (Rarity nodded.) "I saw you talking to some mares. Did you make any sales?"

"I had some inquiries regarding commissions," Rarity admitted. "I can't seem to feel very confident in seeing any of them fulfilled."

The silence closed in again.

"Have you truly taken a look at these feedbags? Examined them at all?"

"No."

With the open disgust coming through at last, "They are ghastly. If we are to be confined in a cell with no comforts befitting our status, one would think that the feedbags could at least be of quality!"

And Twilight giggled.

"Remember when the twins were born?"

Applejack nodded. "Ah remember." Followed by a little sigh. "Ah remember thinking about what kind of family tree the Cakes had to get a pegasus and a unicorn in the same birth. And I remember more or less doing it out loud. Mr. Cake's a good stallion: lots of 'em would have just kicked me on the spot, and I just got the filly lecture in basic biology."

Pinkie nodded: some half-curls quarter-bounced. "I... asked Doctor Gentle to attend the birth."

Blink. "Y'did?"

"I thought it was the best thing I could do for them," Pinkie quietly said. "The Cakes and the babies -- well, baby, because maybe I was right to ask him in one way: the doctors in Ponyville couldn't even figure out that it was twins. He'd saved me, and if anything had happened... I wanted him to be there. So once we knew the due date, I wrote him and arranged everything. He was going to stay in Ponyville as much as he could, starting from two days before. For me. I... thought it would be great, having him around town for days. I was going to introduce him to everypony. But it was twins, and those births can go faster. Or start sooner. Mrs. Cake delivered two weeks early. So I had to write him again, still thanking him, but he didn't have to come any more." A little shiver. "And if he'd been there..."

"It was a smooth go," Applejack reminded her. "A long go, but there weren't any real problems, right?"

"Not past the doctor saying 'Why is there another foal coming?'" Pinkie softly snorted. "You know, between that one Twilight took Spike to and him, we really need some better medical ponies. It's just that... I can't stop thinking about it. If it had been a problem birth. What he would have done."

"The Cakes would have loved them," Applejack made herself say, for there was horror in the vision -- and there was also her oldest friend. "Y'know they've got some experience with kids who might be just a little bit unusual..."

"Yeah." There was no giggle after the word, not just yet -- but Applejack knew such would eventually come and in time, be followed by laughter. "Did you try to -- eat around your oats?"

"Not yet." Maybe next serving.

Pinkie's tail swayed, fluffed out a little.

"My Pinkie Sense was right, you know. Things changed tonight. Everything did."

"Can't deny that." She wished she could. She wanted to make time itself go backwards. No mission. No revelations. Exist in the moments when everything seemed so much brighter. But even then, there were shadows, for light created places where secrets could cluster.

We tell ourselves everything's okay.

We can spend our whole lives not talking about it, because that's what everypony did before us.

We're earth ponies.

And we took the best of ourselves and buried it.

Hesitantly, "Do you think... it changed for the worse?"

"Ah think..." She had to reach for the exact words. "Ah think that if we come out of this, once we all get the chance to talk again -- we'll all be a little better off."

"I hope so."

She had to be honest. "Me too."

Another hesitation, and "Can you -- could you get us --"

Applejack slowly shook her head, and missed her Daddy's hat more than ever.

Ah don't deserve t' --

She listened again before she spoke: some of that was habit, and the rest was not letting the wrong ponies in on her plans. "No. We ain't up against an outer wall. Had some thoughts about trying to vibrate a little, shake a few bolts out. But that's way subtle, and this cell ain't positioned for it. Anything else... don't know how strong this place is. We might not come through anything big. But if Ah think of something, you'll know it. Maybe you will, after you feel a little more like yourself. An' if anypony comes in to remind you..."

"They get some special spice right in the face!" Pinkie firmly declared. "It's the newest food sensation for all the lords and ladies!"

They both giggled.

"Applejack?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

"'Ain't nothin'."

And with a tiny laugh, "Liar."

The ribcage under the forest-green dress was moving a little more regularly now, and so Rainbow aimed for a gentle glide.

"I thought I screwed up with the water transfer operation."

No answer.

"I -- I've always known you don't have much magic, Fluttershy. We were at flight camp together, and after we met up in Ponyville again... it doesn't take long to see. But you had something, and... every bit helps." She'd just barely managed to keep from saying 'tenth-bit': it had felt insulting. "I wanted you to see that you could help. That there was a pegasus helping. She didn't have to be a strong one. She just had to work with the team. But you hated it, and it humiliated you, you tried all that training and it barely did anything, and... even after you helped us all come through in the end, I didn't ask you the next year. You could work on the muscles behind your wings, but you couldn't do anything about your field strength, ever. I forgot about that. And I -- I just didn't want to put you through that again. I didn't want to ask you to be something you weren't."

She'd barely talked Snowflake into participating, had seen his reluctance just before ignoring it...

"...to be a pegasus. You didn't want to ask me... to act like a real pegasus."

Getting a cold thermal, I went the wrong way and it's my fault...

"No. I -- used the wrong word there. I should have said 'I didn't want to ask you to be somepony you weren't'. I wasn't asking you to be Fluttershy. Fluttershy talks bears into leaving gardens alone. She stands up to manticores. She evicts full-grown dragons. She doesn't have to do water transfers on top of all that stuff, because the rest of it should be enough. And... we were talking about hypocrites..."

This time, the silence felt like it might have been the best possible result.

"...I'm not good with words. Twilight knows it, everypony knows it, maybe that stupid Coordinator knows it too. So... I have to ask for -- help. Until I get better. And you're the only pony here. So -- "

As it turned out, emotions had their own wind shear, and so it felt as if her feathers were about to come off.

" -- the way I feel right now... I don't know if I have the right word for it. So maybe you can tell me if 'hypocrite' is it."

"...and what do you feel that way about?"

It might have been neutrality in the soft tone: emotions spent to the point where there was nothing left. Or there could have been a touch of disinterest. Sarcasm. Rainbow couldn't tell.

But Fluttershy had asked. That was the important thing.

"It's about Doctor Gentle." She hadn't expected an answer there, and didn't get one. "I -- kind of hate him right now. For how he made you feel about yourself. For what he did to her. It's like electrocution isn't bad enough, and... I can't fly high enough to give him a drop long enough to think about everything on the way down. Nopony could: they'd run out of atmosphere. I hate him, and I want to put lightning bolts through him until there's nothing left, and..." Rainbow closed her eyes. Just one more thing Fluttershy couldn't see. "...I kind of want to thank him, all at the same time."

"...thank -- him."

"Because -- "

Words hurt.

They hurt to hear. They hurt to say. Maybe when you get the right ones, they hurt to write.

Flying's better.

"-- I don't want you to be dead. I won't let you kill yourself. I'd stop you. I'd watch you every minute of every day to make sure nothing happened. Without napping. I'll move into the cottage if I have to." She thought about living with Angel, and was almost glad nopony could see her shudder within the chains. "I don't know what you would have been like, if you'd been born as what he calls pure. Maybe we'd be on the same weather team, or you'd be my superior, or -- some legendary funnel breaker out by the east coast. But if you'd been 'pure'... you would have been dead. That's what you said, Fluttershy. You all would have been dead, and... I can sort of imagine you being as strong as your parents. But I can't imagine you not being. Just... a vacuum, like that one in the middle of her mark. I think about life without you, and... it hurts. That's the only word I have. It hurts like being told to leave the Academy. It hurts like nearly failing my practical trial during the auditions. It hurts like all the times I couldn't get the Rainboom back. It hurts like all of that put together, only six times worse. It just... hurts."

Please, please follow me in...

"I think," Rainbow made herself go on, "if you asked the parents, the ones whose kids he changed, whether they'd rather have a living foal or a pure corpse... the good ones would say they wanted their kid. And you've got good parents. That's why you've got the cottage: you told me that, remember? They knew it wouldn't be weather college, so they just -- let you go to ground. They didn't have to understand you. They just loved you. And I... I don't know you any other way. I don't know pure, and it makes it really hard to care about that kind of stuff. I just know the mare who reroutes birds and plants sod on her roof so there's extra grazing space, and... who forgave me, for everything that happened during that race at flight camp, when she didn't have to. Who was willing to even talk to me after that. I just know my friend, I know what I'd feel like if I lost her, I don't want to imagine her not being there, never even having been, and... without Doctor Gentle..."

The yellow head slowly came up.

"I hate him," Rainbow finished. "I can't think of anything bad enough to do to him. But I -- kind of want to thank him at the same time, you know? Because you and Pinkie are worth thanking somepony for. Sun and Moon too. So -- I don't know if I have the right word. Does that make me a hypocrite?"

Fluttershy took a slow breath.

"...it makes you Rainbow."

Who frowned. "That doesn't help."

"...it's still the right word." A blindfolded head automatically tried (and failed) to look around the room. "...I need you to describe this cell to me. The walls."

With open confusion, "Stone."

"...more words, Rainbow."

She searched within herself. "Rough. You wouldn't want to rub against it: there's some spots which look kind of sharp. There's some tiny pieces on the ground near the edge, where some of those rough sports sort of dropped away." She looked down. "It's actually rougher in those parts. More -- piecework? Because most of the upper part of the walls, that's one piece, like the base at the outside of the castle. But the bottom, there's a few stones sort of pressed together. Or maybe somepony put a rough layer on top of stones all the way up, and it's just being exposed at the bottom? I'm not sure. Anyway, there's some little holes there. We'd have to be a million times smaller to get out through them, though. Or maybe a thousand --"

"...holes."

"Yeah. Deep enough to have some shadow. But everything's cold and damp down here, so I can't really tell --"

"...holes," Fluttershy carefully repeated. "...you can stop, Rainbow." (Who, now utterly confused, did.) "...Twilight was right, you know."

"About what?"

"...that he told himself he was doing something great. I think... I think he tells himself a lot of things. And when you just talk to yourself about everything... you decide you're hearing the truth."

The caretaker took a breath.

"For starters," she said, "he told himself that being indoors would stop me."

For Fluttershy, words dropped away. The tones of the utterances remained that of a pony, with all of the emotional complexities -- and some of those were very complex indeed. But the sounds had become a mixture of hisses, chatters, and squeaks, and so Rainbow could only listen.

Fluttershy called out into night, storm, and stone. And then they waited together, for if it failed, each had only the other for company, chained so that they were facing each other across a short distance. One could not see, and neither could truly move.

And yet they drifted closer.

He had been told to run. He had been sold out. He had been betrayed, they were using his knowledge of everything and one pony's apparent belief that the money would now simply flow in forever to effectively blackmail him into acting. And to the last, he would never perceive a single degree of irony.

There were other things he could have done, and he did not think of them. It could be argued that he'd had the option to go directly to the press, for he had his contacts there. He even could have gone to the Princesses, trading evidence for a degree of safety. But that was not his nature. Exposing his own role (for such seemed difficult to transfer onto another: who ever would have believed another pony was brilliant enough to manage it all?) was simply out of the question, and so he never truly thought about it. And to make a deal was to allow another the dictation of any terms.

He never pictured himself going to the press, not then. (The image would briefly flash within his mind, just before the very end.) He did not think about heroes, for a hero was simply a shielding body, and there were forever more of those. He spoke to no other pony as he worked out his plan, for the only entity truly worth consulting with resided within his skin. But he did see himself within the palace, because information was control. If not for the circumstances, indulging in the waking fantasy would have given him pleasure. The Princesses before him, almost begging for the reveal of each new datum, and he as the only one who could provide it to them, making it last. Oh, they might be willing to make a deal, one where everypony else saw jail time...

...one where he never held power again.

They would not allow him to be within a thousand body lengths of any Town Hall. Forms would be limited to whatever he used for taxes and census. And he would be watched, constantly watched, just in case he decided to rebuild.

He had been rejected by the palace and so had built up a life in Trotter's Falls, one where he was free to control the ones of those around him. And he had been told to give that up. For the Bearers could identify three ponies: he had spoken up during the conference, words of basic common sense, and there was certainly one mare who knew that voice, now wasn't there? This researcher would come, the cells would be opened and perhaps within mere hours after, his description would be relayed to every law enforcement agency on the continent. It might go beyond. It would be impossible to find a new position from which to construct a web anew. He would be hunted, and perhaps the two fools and their mistake could live with that. He would not.

There was a moment spared to consider what would happen following the discovery, and it was largely used to settle on how the blame would be passed on -- if the obvious conclusion were to somehow fail. (He already knew who would receive it: after all, what ponies would believe the denials of criminals who would potentially be already on the run?) Much more time was spent in sorting through an internal list of names to find those who would act on his behalf, and there were seconds available for regret at potentially losing the chance to watch.

She had rejected him twice and for the first transgression, had been punished with nothing more than mere isolation -- a state which had broken. The penalty for the second would be far more appropriate.

He waited a little, but not too long. It was necessary for the conference to begin dispersing, for the fools and the freak to be well away. And while he'd picked his names, there was also a certain need to see the ponies he would be speaking to, and that meant stalling long enough for the robes to come off.

He approached directly, as soon as he saw that his first possible target had wandered a little away from the others. (He did not think about what had happened just a few hours ago during his last direct approach, much less why he'd truly taken that route at all.)

"I know what happened in Vanhoover five years ago," he whispered into the exposed ear. "Along with where the results were buried. Would you like to know what you have to do in order to keep the press from finding out?"

For the price of his continued established, comfortable existence was a mere seven corpses, and the cause of death could be listed as nothing more than pure rational thought.

It was, as the older fool might say, simply doing the needful.

L'Art Brut

There had been a scream, followed by a betrayal. Neither had been a first.

Twilight had a number of screams. The softest one was just about a hiss, high-pressure wordless invective directed at whatever experiment was simply refusing to cooperate when all of her theories said it should be working and all of reality was steadfastly insisting it shouldn't. There was a scream for emotions which had simply found the wrong outlet: she would encounter something she didn't understand, a lesson too convoluted to be ordered into the simple message of a scroll, and then her frustrations would unite with that constant fear of doing the last wrong thing and turn into a scream. There was a scream for workings which had failed, for sugared hay twists where the coating was so solid as to nearly crack a tooth, and a rather singular one for learning that there was no way around the fact that every library which wasn't the Archives needed to have remaindered sales.

And then there was this scream. Some portion of this one was his fault.

He'd been caught by the same thing as everypony else: the presentation. He'd just about been lying on the floor, trying not to clench his claws as words washed over the spiny projections which served for his outer ear structure. He couldn't clench his claws: they would skitter across the stone and while the sound would be a minor one, any noise felt as if it might be the final mistake. Even with the others occasionally risking soft speech, it would be his mistake, and...

He'd been sent on the mission with them. Discord had sent him along, and so the words which had ensured he'd be with his family and friends... they had stayed with him. There had been some minor echoes (with a few of those triggered by worry, and others by shaky pride: even if it was Discord, at least someone had felt he should go), and they had created enough repetition to allow full memorization.

The doctor was speaking. But he wasn't the only one. Within Spike's mind, Discord's words were coming back.

"Now, mission supplies... one earth pony, one pegasus, one unicorn, one dragon. Also one Pinkie Pie, one Fluttershy, and the one and only, thank goodness, Twilight Sparkle."

He'd memorized those words. But he hadn't previously thought about them all that much, not beyond his pride in being included and his worries that his presence was somehow meant to be one of the draconequus' tricks. And just before scream and betrayal in that high perch, staring down at illusion as horror washed over them all, he became the first to realize what they truly meant.

There was only one of each.

One earth pony. One unicorn, one pegasus, one dragon, one alicorn...

...and two hybrids. Earth pony mixed with unicorn. Pegasus merged with earth pony.

Discord knew.

And just before the implications could sink in, Twilight had screamed.

His head had jerked up, as the familiar feeling of failure began to saturate his scales. He knew all of her screams, and so he knew exactly what this one meant. It was a scream he dreaded, a sound he had devoted so much of his existence to stopping. It was the anguish of a mare who had just felt her world break and believed that she would be the next thing to shatter, and it was partially his fault. He should have been right next to her, should have been watching Twilight...

He had started to scramble, getting upright. His first priority would have been to calm her: he had yet to consider the consequences of having that horrible sound heard. But what little movement he had time to manage had left him facing forward, and so he saw the betrayal.

Spike had been betrayed before. In the earliest part of his life, too many of those had come from Twilight: the hoped-for love of a sibling relationship twisted into something which had sometimes seen him treated as a particularly interesting (and not always cooperative) piece of lab equipment. (The apologies were still ongoing, even after he'd accepted the first one.) There had been just about every encounter with the adults of his own kind, every one of which had tried to drive him off or -- worse. Garble and that group, with the hopes of connection destroyed as he'd realized just what it would take to make him into one of them. And it was a rare day when he didn't have a moment of feeling as if his very body, his birth had betrayed him, left him among a trio of species who had taught him to think as they did in so many ways -- and no more. He could believe and dream as ponies did, but he would never be a pony -- and there were so many times when it felt like he could do no more than be an observer on the outskirts of his own life. In an absolute sense, betrayal was a subject in which Spike had received a significant education.

But this was Quiet betraying them. (He never saw the restraint come down: only the stallion standing over his iron-bound sibling, and it would be some time before he wondered why.) And that made it feel different.

Spike was nearly upright. On the verge of scrambling forward. Instincts flaring within him, an inner fire surging --

-- and the door had slammed open, with the sound making him turn in time to see the robed ponies (a few with horns exposed, and nothing more) who quickly flooded the room. Ponies carrying ropes and chains and so much worse.

His walking claws had scrabbled at stone: he'd turned too fast, hadn't hooked for better purchase, nearly slipped. A pony (unicorn stallion from the build) was going straight for him and for one horrible second, instinct replaced reason.

He'd jerked his head up just in time, pursed nearly-absent lips in order to make the burst into a short one. The Princess knew flame, understood it better than anypony alive, and so he'd been taught that fire could bounce. An intense jet in a space this confined might wind up going anywhere, and... he'd also been taught about burns. How quickly flesh could turn into cinder and ash. There had been pictures, and all of them were stored within memory and nightscape.

So a little burst, no more: enough to clear space, and it did just that. The incoming pony had jerked back (and not enough), with others instinctively steering around him. But it wasn't enough. Chains went past Spike, horribly bright with field glow. Cuffs were being closed.

He'd been taught so much, and the majority of it had been about control. But his handling claws swiped out because they had to. Because his friends were being hurt, had been betrayed, his sister had a restraint on her head and another of those horrible cones was heading for Rarity...

Spike had been taught to be careful: scales were rougher than flesh, claws more edged than hooves. To realize that every moment spent among ponies was an instant where he could cause harm without meaning to, and so he never did.

His family was under attack, and nictitating membranes flickered across his eyes as he swiped to draw blood.

Fabric was torn (and his inner hearing provided chastisement, Rarity forever concerned about the state of her bolts). But it had to be torn first, and so the sensitive snout beneath was merely scratched. It was still enough to make the stallion pull back still more, rear up so that forehooves could paw at the wounded area. It gave him room, and his walking claws finally started to find their grip.

They had restraints. Ropes. Chains and cuffs. But they had nothing for him, nothing except sheer weight of bodies, and there were so many of those robed ponies, a wild glance found that Applejack was already cuffed...

He had fire. But he had very little else. And fire in a space so confined might not leave anypony to save.

Instinct beat at him, ordered him to try. But there were things other than instinct, and one of them said seven caught is the end.

There was a clear space in front of him, and so he ran.

Words chased him across the level portion of the passage: orders to chase him, stop him. The only ones he truly heard came from Applejack, telling him to run.

He ran, and it felt as if that wasn't going to be enough. Two legs versus four, and short legs at that. He was no minotaur, wasn't capable of putting on a short-term burst of land speed which could beat just about anything in the world over a small distance. No room in the tunnel between walls to fly, but his pursuers still had space in which to gallop --

-- just not enough of it.

The passage was narrow, enough so that Applejack, as the largest of them, had needed to move slowly and carefully in order to avoid injury. Nopony among his pursuers was an earth pony, but all were adults, and the scant majority seemed to be stallions. They tried to gallop, and found their flanks scraping against stone. He was smaller, had space to spare, and Quiet had shut down all the traps on their way in. He could run, and short legs did the best they could.

It didn't give him an edge. It merely created a chance. He found himself glancing back far too often, had to unleash two more bursts in order to give himself some room (and he had to be careful: there was only so much flame). The tuxedo felt as if it was constricting his joints, the accelerated motion of scales against fabric was starting to do some damage there and in terms of freeing him to move faster, it wasn't happening quickly enough.

At one point, he recognized a section of stone, a place where Quiet's field had pressed in order to deactivate something. He shouted about dropping them all, slammed a palm against it, and by the time the robed ponies realized nothing was going to happen, he was that much further ahead. Moving up, a trip which had taken so long on the downslope passing much more quickly, and then --

-- it slows the world, makes the now that much more immediate, it always has and he doesn't understand why --

-- the pressure starts at the peak of his crests, then seems to move inside them before shifting to his skull. It moves down from there, heading forward, and he knows what's coming. The thing they had been waiting for, the event which saw him banished to their assigned quarters for so much for the party. It's happening now and there seems to be very little he can do to stop it. Based on previous experience, he can merely delay it for a few seconds. To attempt more makes him feel as if his efforts would lose the sending in the aether, forever beyond recovery. And they need this: even now, it may help. He can't risk blocking it out, not for more than a few heartbeats. But that duration may be all he needs, because he's just about at the exit now and there's a pony there (the shape of the snout under the robes says mare), probably a last line of defense in case somepony got away, she's just starting to spot him as the shouts reach her, tells her to block him, and she risks another kind of exposure: the horn ignites with a spiking sickly chartreuse corona.

He runs directly at her. Long years of learning measure the surge of her power, experience tells him that she's likely going for a straight field grab followed by levitation, confident enough in her ability to manage his weight to try merely trapping him in a bubble. But it takes her a moment to summon that much strength, time in which he can still move, get that much closer, and then he lets the pressure go.

All she sees is the flame. Her eyes widen with fear and so she drops, belly and barrel thudding against stone as she gets below the oddly-cool jet. It leaves her at a height he can manage, and so he jumps onto her back and runs two small steps down her body length, even as his right arm goes up. He catches the arrival before it can hit the hallway floor, and nopony sees it come in at all.

The pressure was gone. Time snapped back into its normal flow. And with the freshly-arrived scroll being tucked inside his jacket, unsure of how close they were behind him, more frightened than ever now that he was in a place where his pursuers had space for speed, flight, and magic, Spike ran.

At Spike's size...

The thing about being in a castle full of furniture (with so much of it currently displaced) was that you were also in a castle full of drawers. Cabinets. There had been a portion of his life where hide and seek had felt like the greatest game ever invented, especially when he could hide in places where nopony else could ever fit. (It had faded quickly. Twilight's time in the Gifted School hadn't really put her in the mood for games.) He was surrounded by hiding places, and all he needed in order to use one was to get within unseen.

This had required shaking his initial pursuit. Or rather, giving them something else to think about for a few minutes, and he didn't really feel guilty about what he'd done. His years of story reading told him that Quiet's actions had to cost the supposed Lord something, and a writing desk which probably hadn't seen a drop of ink in two centuries seemed to be a rather insignificant down payment.

Ponies had stopped when they saw the fire. Stopped to put it out, before it could spread. That had given him the final bit of distance he'd needed, a chance to start going through doors with nopony witnessing which ones he was using. And now...

The huge wardrobe was many things. For starters, it was located well off the hallway. He supposed it was some degree of antique, and perhaps that was why it didn't seal perfectly: a little glimmer of light streamed in through the crack between the double-doors. And until recently, it had been unoccupied.

He held his breath, waited until the hoofsteps stopped pounding by outside. Listened for wingbeats, tried not to move until those faded. And then waited beyond that, for there were such things as spells to muffle the sounds of movement, and he'd taken notes about most of them.

Finally, he rested cloth-covered spine against the cool wood. And then the hate rose up.

Not Quiet: it wasn't the time for that. Not the doctor. Himself.

I ran.

They took my family and I ran.

Applejack had told him to run.

I could have...

He'd known that using more intense flame in the little space would have risked them all. And in the reality-distorting view of hindsight, nearly convinced himself that he could have pulled it off anyway.

Too many fields. Too much magic. Too many ponies. I could have clawed, and they would have just gotten me in a bubble eventually.

"It's about -- doing things," the self of memory said (and worse, had done so to Quiet). "In that kind of situation, I usually get two options. One is Yell and the other is Fire."

Yell never would have worked. Fire might have just made things that much worse --

-- they have my family. My friends. Rarity. They...

...maybe they're going to...

He shivered. Shook. Rubbed one jacketed arm against his eyes, let the fabric absorb tears. Jammed the other against his mouth, muffling the sobs.

They might kill everypony.

And I ran.

Noises outside. Ponies roaming the halls, looking for him. But there were many halls, and more rooms. There was certainly more than enough furniture, and ponies generally didn't think about that when it came to hide-and-seek -- at least, Twilight hadn't. It might take some time before they started opening things and even then, he would get one free shot at what he expected to be a rather surprised face. But... put the servants together with those who had been at the conference and if the guests didn't go home, there were potentially more than a hundred ponies who could join the search.

To stay in the castle would mean being found. That seemed to be inevitable.

A hundred ponies or more. And to stand against them, only him.

Discord made it a rule. That I had to come.

What am I supposed to do?

What could he do?

He could have a fantasy about charging to the rescue. He was good at that. The imaginary knight-errant not only (almost) never lost, but was known to have some exceptionally snappy dialogue. He could write any number of inner stories for himself, he would save the day in every last one of them, and none of them would do any good.

Stories don't work. Not merely dreaming of them. But stories were sometimes written about things ponies had actually done.

Somepony in a story would... see what they had to work with.

His magical weapon count was woefully short and, in the event that he could somehow reach the armory, so was he. Besides, everything there had been made for a pony: armor didn't fit, and hoof-mounted weapons didn't sit well over hands. He didn't even know if there were enchantments in play for those pieces, and the devices and wonders which he knew to exist within the castle were strictly for household use. Unexpected glow-in-the-dark plates aside, it was hard to conquer a hundred ponies with a dishwasher.

Flame... he'd already used some, and his inner supply was strictly limited. He could refuel it quickly enough, but that required gems. Rarity's shortage of supplies was working against him: the tuxedo only had a few small adornments and while those were now ammunition -- the inner apology was both instinctive and sincere -- it was much less than what would have usually been present.

His scales could deal with a fair amount of impact. He could breathe normally when surrounded by smoke, treated lava fumes as nothing more than the most beneficial part of a yearly health trip to the volcano, and was incidentally lava-proof. The total lack of available lava with which to take advantage of all that wasn't much comfort.

He had blank scrolls, of course, and ink. (Redwood with belladonna infusion, cockatrice ink and quills: the manticore variant was currently in their assigned quarters.) He always carried supplies, just in case Twilight needed to send something. Not that he was carrying much. Even when Twilight entered a full note-taking or lesson-recognizing frenzy, nine scrolls usually sufficed --

-- Spike blinked.

-- scrolls.

It was him against a castle full of ponies -- now.

He extracted a blank scroll, got the ink out, used the little crack of light to make sure his writing was clear enough to read. Discord's rules said he couldn't contact the Diarchy -- but there was aid closer than that. He didn't have to know a pony in order to reach them with a scroll: it just made things easier. With enough effort, he could target those he'd never met, or send a letter to a location. Baltimare might be three gallops away, but a police department who'd just been told the Bearers were in trouble would commandeer escorts. Get the message out, let them find somepony with a useful arrival point, and help could be at the castle's front gate within ten minutes...

Spike kept it short: the Bearers were in trouble, the locals couldn't be trusted, send help. He had no way to prove the legitimacy of his desperation, but simply having the scroll arrive in the usual burst of flame tended to make the receiving party pay extra attention to the contents -- and even officers who suspected a magical prank would almost have to investigate.

Please believe me.

He finished the letter, curled it up, glanced towards the crack of light and made sure there was nopony moving by outside before risking a wisp of transport flame. The scroll vanished.

Then it reappeared.

There was no sense of pressure. No pushing from the aether. There had been a small crackle of quavering blue light, and a brief scent of rust. After that, it had simply popped back into existence and fell, with neither arrival or impact making any real sound. And that was all.

For a sapient who'd effectively been through a full Gifted School education, it was more than enough.

Lockdown.

Transport flame accessed the between by a means other than a unicorn's corona -- but in the end, both effects moved through an identical medium. The castle had been placed under the protection of lockdown enchantments, and so teleportation in and out of the structure was now impossible. Movement within the castle could still be managed: he would have no trouble in sending a scroll to the kitchens. But anything else... back to its departure point, and nothing more.

Help wasn't coming.

A very small, very scared dragon eventually managed to take a breath.

Quavering blue and a rust scent. It had been a long time since those lessons, but desperation aided with recovery. But not the usual flash at the end. The working stopped the sending, but it couldn't alert anypony that there was an attempt made or tell them where it was tried. Because nopony's attuned, because that part of the spell doesn't work any more, because the caster's dead, or... because it wasn't a field trying to get through. They don't know where I am.

He checked the crack anyway. Nothing.

Yell or Fire...

Fire had been in the wrong place to work, and... he had trouble using it on anything living, couldn't even make himself face the concept so much of the time. Spike had very few issues with singeing the tail of a thief just enough to make her leave, but... the Princess' lessons echoed. How careful he had to be. They were lessons he'd taken to heart, and fear of consequences had driven them down to the point where he'd hesitated just a little too long in the face of timber wolves. Creatures which would have burned, and knowing that they would burn, he'd... frozen.

Yell included Yell For Help. And now that had failed.

But there was a third option.

He put his right eye close to the crack. Eventually, his vision adjusted, and the shadows cleared enough to let him make out a particularly fine bench. Dusty, but well-padded in rich velvet. Obviously comfortable. Probably worth a thousand bits or, given its likely great age, potentially much more. A fine thing to own, if somepony's tastes galloped towards furniture.

Or if there was something within you which just wanted to own.

(This time, he felt the membranes flicker.)

How long would it take?

He'd never tried it, of course. He'd never even told anypony about the thought, because it had scared him too much. The idea that if he made himself want, if he drove everything else away until there was nothing left but want... that it could happen again. And if done with purpose, it might happen faster. Discard rationality, toss sanity away, trade everything there was about him for the raw want that came from Greed, and his body...

A small squad of Wonderbolts who'd been practicing maneuvers nearby hadn't been enough to stop him. All the magic Ponyville could bring to bear (which hadn't been everything: they'd held back, with so many of those who'd come to know him as a sapient afraid of hurting him, holding out for the desperate hope of a cure) hadn't done it. The right thoughts until all thought was gone: that just might do the trick. Bring the monster back. His body would swell, burst out of the wardrobe. It wouldn't take much longer before he barely fit in the hallways. Ponies would flee as his strength increased, as the rampage reached out to take everything, as sheer Greed destroyed everything it could not acquire so that no others could possess it...

...until his sheer mass collapsed the floor.

Until stone rained down upon the lower levels.

Until everypony in the castle... died.

He could be strong. He could be stronger than just about anything, maybe even stronger than her. But the first part of the price Spike would pay for that was... Spike. And the mare who'd originally brought him back would be nothing more than the scent of blood and a fast-fading echo of unheard agony.

Spike knew about betrayal. He was a dragon who lived among ponies and in his nightmares, his instincts betrayed him again and again, until there was nothing left which was not his. Until there was nothing at all.

Yell. Fire. Greed. It felt as if he'd summarized his entire species in three words.

'Betrayal' made four.

"Many of those experiences are going to be ugly. But you'll learn from every one -- and after a while, it'll give you more options than 'Yell' or 'Fire'. 'Humiliate' and 'Terrify' can work wonders, although you have to be careful: it's too easy for them to come back on you. 'Embarrass' has some staying power, especially since no amount of time ever seems to make it completely go away..."

No.

I don't want to think about him.

He was...

It had taken a long time for Ponyville to become used to Spike. He'd had to learn how to introduce himself over and over, being friendly, welcoming, giving them a chance to see him. A few never had, but... for the most part, even after the worst had happened, they accepted him -- because they'd known him for years. But if he traveled, had to introduce himself all over again, he quickly went back to being a curiosity. Worse, a familiar: a term so often misused because a true one couldn't be sapient and, after channeling the magic of another for a few moons, also couldn't have a heartbeat. Or beyond that, a pet --

-- or a monster.

Quiet had...

...I liked him.

I liked him and I was glad Twilight liked him too. He made her happy and she hasn't been happy much since she changed. I thought...

...I thought he was my friend.

He'd seen the expression on the stallion's face, as Quiet had stood over a still-screaming Twilight. (It was easy for him to read pony faces, for it was nearly all he knew.) There had been a sort of neutrality there, something which had almost felt forced. And...

...no. If he was sorry about it, he wouldn't have done it.

Yell. Fire. Greed.

No horn. No wings. No hooves.

"Humiliate. Terrify. Embarrass."

Shut up, Quiet.

His right hand clenched. Claw tips skidded across palm scales.

You hurt them. You might kill them. Anything you tried to teach me is...

...like Star Swirl's notes.

He was a horrible pony. Worse than anypony ever would have believed. But he was still a great magician. He knew things. No matter what the pony was like, his workings are still so far past what virtually anypony's ever done, even after all this time.

Quiet's horrible. But he still knows things. And what he said on the walk back from town...

Yell. Fire. Greed.

I can't get help. The lockdown spell will seal the windows and doors too. I might be able to melt my way out, but when that hits the spell, something will go off. And it'll be really loud, the spell interacting with the flame. Even if I didn't run out of fire, they might find me before I could finish escaping, and once they knew I was outside and going for help, even if they don't know I can contact --

Spike blinked, and only his outer eyelids moved.

-- they don't know.

I haven't sent one letter in front of anypony local since we got here. I offered to send some for Doctor Gentle, but the birth got in the way and he never asked what I'd meant. I don't think anypony got a good look at the one scroll when it came in.

The only thing they really know about me is that I'm a dragon. And that isn't much. It'll be like Ponyville in the beginning: it's not facts, it's mostly what they tell themselves...

Think.

He planned, as best he could. It didn't feel like it was enough, and it felt exactly like everything would go wrong as soon as he started with any of it, but that was most of what Applejack said plans were anyway.

Spike prepared: there were things which had to be done in advance. And then, before he left the wardrobe, there was one last thing. Because there was still a chance for an answer to be there, something which would help. Something they could use. And so he took out the scroll which had cleared the exit, let a claw tip break the seal, and used the little crack of light to read it.

It didn't take long. Cadance had only sent back fourteen words.

He read them three times, and the last two were in the hope that doing so would somehow break an enchantment and make them change. They never did.

And after he wiped away the newest of tears, he cloaked himself in imaginary armor and went forth to do battle.

At Spike's size...

A monster powered by nothing more than greed couldn't be missed. A sapient of his height was not only occasionally overlooked, but had a plethora of places to hide in. The castle offered shadowed alcoves, little patches of false night between furniture, and the not-so-occasional cabinet. It would have been a magnificent place to play hide-and-seek in, although the games might have gone on for hours. (If a good spot could be found near a restroom, days.)

He listened before he moved, made sure the air was silent and still. It often left him curled up in tight spaces for several minutes, waiting for ponies to pass. His plan meant he couldn't confront any number higher than one, and he was waiting for the right one to come along.

It meant he was losing time. Minutes accumulated, turned into an hour. But he couldn't rush, even when images of all the horrible things which could be happening to the others occupied so much of his inner vision. He might get one strike, and so it had to be the right one.

Just like Quiet did.

Lessons from monsters.

There were times when he had to hide in rooms, and he used them for scavenging. A few pieces featured minor jewels: a small ruby at the center of a drawer's knob, a little tanzanite setting off the peak of a headboard. It was all fuel, at least after he got them pried loose, and he reminded himself to tell Rarity that she had to stop any payment on the cannibalized curtains.

He had a brief chance at a window and saw multiple, increasingly miserable ponies making their way across the grounds in the relentless downpour. It felt as if that helped him: less ponies to search. It didn't let him out: it was too far down to drop, and his attempt at a test scratch proved that the thaums currently coursing through the glass weren't going to allow easy breakage.

At one point, he found himself in what seemed to be a master bedroom, and the picture in the ornate frame identified the owner. (He didn't take the pillbox: the gems were mere flecks, too small to do any good, and the pearl sheen didn't help. Pearls didn't taste right.) But a deep breath directed him to a large closet, where he found a cardboard box containing four metal loops at the absolute back. Each one featured a tiny pink diamond. He'd never consumed a pink diamond before, but the enticing scent promised interesting results.

(The box had some writing on it: Sacred Leg Bands. He had no idea why they were supposed to be sacred, and didn't care.)

The bedroom was exited quickly, just ahead of the approaching hoofsteps. More time was sacrificed to the depths of an armoire, and he listened to the larger-sounding of the two ponies muttering as he went by.

"He's got to be around here somewhere..."

"He can't be anywhere else," the companion mare replied, not without amusement. "By definition. Just keep looking."

"But if he got into a passage --"

"-- how would he even know to get in? He's only been down the one. Besides, the traps would take care of that for us." A brief pause. "Which means we've got to find him, just in case he does manage to kick one of those doors in."

Spike imagined the nod. "How big is he?"

"Seriously?"

"I really haven't seen him."

Very bemused now. "He's a dragon. He's kind of hard to miss."

In tones which were already fed up with the mare's mirth, "So he's big."

"No. The head crests would come up just short of your spine."

A long pause.

"Maybe we should start opening things."

He froze. Wondered how loud his breathing was, and then tried to temporarily stop.

"Like?"

"Closets, for starters," the stallion said. "And jam them open. Make sure anypony who goes by a room can look straight in." More trotting. "A physical search of all things. Why nopony's invented a dragon-finding spell..."

"We'd have to have somepony here tonight who knew it," the amused mare noted. "And besides, how often is anypony going to want to find a dragon?"

They moved on, or at least went far enough to make Spike think they had: it took a little extra effort before he could make himself jump out.

One strike...

The oldest of the servants slowly made his way down the furniture-lined hall, visibly deep in thought. The observer had no way of knowing that the stallion was pondering the fast-approaching end of his duties, which for him was exactly like contemplating the conclusion of his life. He had been with the House for all of his working years. He had practically inherited the position: his parents had served, he had felt he'd been born to serve, and then his mark had confirmed it. He had a settled zone to live in, a castle to look after, and a Lord to please: that had been true for all his life, although the Lordship in question had eventually been pressed between the hooves of the current generation.

"The last generation," the old unicorn softly said, for he had been at the meeting. To him, there was privacy and in privacy, he could mourn.

The burst of green flame went off directly in front of his snout.

He jumped backwards, and considered it to be a natural reaction. But he didn't shout: even for this, a reserved reaction was also in his nature, and it would have taken much more than that to make him scream. He hadn't been hurt: the flame had lasted but an instant, seemed to have produced relatively little heat --

-- and had just... appeared.

"...Master Spike?" the servant carefully ventured as he peered forward. The burst had been in front of him and therefore, wouldn't the same have to be said of the dragon? But there had been no jet. Nothing living at the other end. Just -- a burst. "If you are trying to gain my attention --" his horn ignited with a partial corona, preparing "-- you have it. Please know that nopony here intends to hurt --"

-- which was when he realized that something had fallen to the floor.

The old servant, who could only put up with so much untidiness in his Lord's domain, instinctively looked down and saw a scroll, one which had unfurled itself upon impact and so allowed him to read the single word written there.

Sucker.

The weight landed on his back. One hand wrapped around his horn, and he felt scales scrape against his neck as the dragon leaned into him, clamped a palm over his mouth --

Softtread reared up. A tail which hadn't done more than mildly swish with displeasure in more than two decades remembered how to lash as forehooves pawed at the air. But the weight was still there, and so he brought his forelegs down and tried balancing his weight on them as the hind went aloft, he twisted and felt the grip tighten on his horn, the horn which was being rapidly tapped by a single dense claw, backlashed at Stage Zero over and over again, he couldn't muster a single working, he couldn't even move the little dragon at that level of effort and to try anything more intensive with the constant impacts would have seen him defeat himself. So he tossed his body about as best he could, moving on instinct, giving in to a desire virtually nopony alive had ever known. The urge to get a rider off his back.

But he was old. The weight shifted, and scales scraped against greying fur. But the horrible hands kept their grip. Walking claws pressed tightly against his sides, nearly poked through the cloth. And so after a wild minute, all four hooves were in contact with the floor again as he panted with exertion, unable to rid himself of that Tartarus-freed weight.

"Trot into that restroom," the dragon whispered. "Right now. If I see a corona, I backlash you -- and you know my claws are dense enough to do it now. If you try to yell, I exhale."

Softtread noted the shakiness in that statement, and wondered if the undertone had been uncertain enough. Didn't initially move.

"I don't think I can miss," the dragon said. "Not from here."

He trotted.

"Close the door."

A very light kick did the work. He hated that. Being uncivilized only led to scuffing.

"I'm going to take my hand away from your mouth," the dragon told him. "Don't scream."

The voice was young: he'd noticed that shortly after the guests had arrived. The dragon's tones were surprisingly normal in nature: it was possible to estimate his age from speech alone. To merely hear him speak, without sight... if one could forget about the scales pressing against fur and skin -- might be to mistake him for a pony.

But he was not.

The palm came away. Not too far. The width of a few tail stands, ready to clamp back down again.

"Tell me where they are." And the young voice was audibly choking back fear. "Tell me if they're alive. I'll know if you're lying."

Could a dragon know? It would account for so many of the stories about the dangers of dealing with them... but in any case, Softtread had no reason to lie.

"They are in the castle," he steadily replied, keeping his voice low. "They have not been harmed. We have been searching in order to bring you to them --"

"-- they were captured," the youth cut him off, and he felt the trembling against his spine. "Chained and restrained. I saw --"

"-- Lord Presence -- needed you all to hear. To understand. He was hoping... that the Bearers would assist..."

It was also possible to feel the rider's muscles go tight. "Assist? To make more ponies like her? To make them hurt? Or is he just looking to create more hybrids --"

"-- to help her," Softtread managed to get out, fighting back the constriction of his ribs. "To help so many. Things happen, Master Spike, and --"

The claws tightened around his horn.

"-- don't. call. me. that."

Lightning flashed near the window, and the boom of thunder arrived a mere heartbeat later.

"You're going to take me to them," the dragon told him. "And we're going to let them out."

"And how," Softtread asked, "do you expect me to do that?"

"I've been waiting for a servant. The older, the better. Somepony who knows all the passages. If they're really okay -- if they're just being held -- then you know where. You're going to take me down there, through those passages. Making sure nopony else sees us. Because if they do..." He heard the hard swallow, the gulp of fear. "Maybe I can't beat more than a few ponies at once. But I can breathe. I'm right on top of you. Even if they try to yank me off, I just have to breathe once."

He was the oldest servant in the castle. The head of staff. He did know exactly how to get to the cells.

But he also knew a terrified youngling when he heard one.

(A child. The dragon sounded exactly like a child...)

"You don't want to do that."

"I will," the dragon shakily said.

"You don't have it in you," Softtread calmly replied. "Jump down to the floor, and we can discuss --"

The hand which had been in front of his mouth was now against his neck. Claws poked through the fur, indented flesh.

"I know a little about what I have in me," Spike hissed. "I know not to let it out unless I have to. But you've got my sister."

(Exactly like a frightened child...)

"You can't..." It was a weaker protest than he'd expected it to be. "You can't feel that way. She's a pony, a Princess, and you're a --"

And there was force in the words. "-- she's my family. You're holding my family. You don't know..."

The old servant was quiet for a little while.

"The doctor," he finally said, "has given an order. They will not be harmed. There is a researcher on the way, correct? They are only being held until she arrives." With some pride, "Somepony tried to call for their deaths, and the doctor stood against --"

"-- Coordinator," the shaky young voice said.

Softtread blinked.

"How do you --"

"-- we," the dragon stated, with fear vibrating every syllable, "went to school together."

The old unicorn couldn't manage to picture that.

"They won't be hurt," he said. "They are only being held so that Lord Presence can leave the castle with the doctor and his daughter. We would never harm the Bearers. You are our guests, the last ones we will ever host, and --"

"-- they're leaving," the dragon desperately cut him off. "The ones who don't want them killed won't be here. Coordinator will."

And for the first time, Softtread thought about that.

"My duty," he eventually stated, "is to the House and its Lord. His... final orders... were to ensure that he departed without incident, and that the Bearers would be safe --"

"-- they aren't!"

"There will be guards --"

"-- guards who have access," the dragon frantically insisted. "Who could do anything! And they're restrained, they're chained and tied up and..."

The claws had never stopped poking, even as the fear peaked.

"...it's my family..."

Softtread stood in silence, a few hoofwidths away from a sink which desperately needed cleaning. It seemed as if some of the griffon cuisine (modified) had wound up in this room, post-consumption. He'd have to take care of that.

He could feel the weight. The real on his back and the frantic pressure of an old memory, expressed as the recollection of tears soaking into a foreleg.

I lied to him.

Until I did not.

"I will need to move to the wall on the right and raise a hoof," Softtread quietly said. "Once we are in the first of the passages, there will be multiple occasions when I will require the use of my field to deactivate the traps. I will warn you of each one."

Silence.

"I don't trust you."

"I understand," the old servant told him. "I simply want you to see where they are. That they are unharmed. And... perhaps once you do, you will be willing to stay with them. To protect them. That is your role, is it not?"

"You could be sounding alarms," the youngling declared with the air of somepony who'd just thought of that. "Every time you say you're deactivating a trap --"

"-- I don't think you want to kill me," the stallion stated.

"I --" the dragon began.

"-- but not having the desire," Softtread finished, "is not the same as not possessing the ability. Brothers... do strange things when their sisters are involved. I will be moving to the right now. Be careful with your claws, please."

Anamorphosis

There were times when it was possible to measure Rainbow's patience in fractions, and the baseline number would have been provided by a Diamond Dog.

She had no issues with setting long-term goals: her lifelong drive to join the Wonderbolts proved that. It could be (successfully) argued that her entire career with the Weather Bureau was all part of the plan: Rainbow had seen it as having made the world give her a job which not only offered so many free hours for practicing techniques, but where the work itself was yet more practice. Long-term goals weren't a problem -- but waiting for something which would arrive one whole hour from now, or maybe forty minutes if Applejack (or somepony who just happened to be in the kitchen and could be helpful when nopony was looking) simply turned the heat in the oven up, more heat had to equal faster cooking and exactly what did 'simmer' mean, anyway? -- that was a problem. (The same could be said of the resulting smoke.) And the biggest issues tended to arise when she was waiting for something which she had no control over.

Fluttershy's calls (or rather, the most recent round) had stopped a while ago: the caretaker was allowing some time for results before trying again. It left Rainbow waiting to see if anything would happen. Just as bad: it left her doing so while somewhere above them, there were ponies who needed to go through electrical jolts, wind blasts, a good old-fashioned hoof pounding with added wing strikes -- whatever was available, really -- and they were getting away. Preparing to leave would eventually turn into 'packed,' quickly followed by 'moved with no forwarding address.' If they were going to have any chance of putting hurt on ponies who deserved it, they had to leave soon or even better, ten minutes ago. It might have already been too late, and there was no way to know.

Also, there was Trixie, or rather, if nothing ever happened and they got stuck there for the whole three days, there would be Trixie. Rainbow didn't like Trixie. It wasn't the boasting: it was the inability to back it up. That made other boasters look bad. Oh, and there had been the whole Amulet thing, but honestly, that was like taking an outlawed field booster drug before a competitive event: if you weren't capable of getting through on your own...

Trixie would be rescuing them and Rainbow, who had read exactly none of Twilight's correspondence with the performer, suspected the boasting on that would never end.

She didn't know how much time they had to stop everything: only that there couldn't be all that much of it. And here they were, in the cell. Waiting.

Hey...!

Cyan ears perked, with the sheer force of the idea sending them upright. They then rotated, with Rainbow once again listening for guards. She had no idea where the guards were (and Daring Do would have seen them arrive ages ago), but suspected they would show up eventually. It was another reason to hurry -- but still not hearing any meant she could speak freely.

"Fluttershy --"

"...give it another minute, Rainbow."

"-- maybe we don't have to wait! You can get us out of here, right now!"

The blindfolded head quizzically tilted to the right. "...how?"

Rainbow nodded to the nape of her cellmate's neck.

Silence.

"...I still can't see you, Rainbow."

Oh. "That thing you got, just before we left!" The next words were more careful, because not only had nopony brought it up in a really long time and a reminder might be necessary, it had been a really long night. "The only thing any of us got..."

The movement behind the slowly-drying cloth suggested a blink. "...and how would I use it?"

Wasn't it obvious? "You can make anything go away! You could get rid of my chains!"

"...and then what?"

Rainbow had to think about that. "It's really damp in here. It's enough to put a cloud together. So now we've got a weapon --"

With an odd calm, "-- what's the door made out of?"

Rainbow looked.

"Some kind of metal." It was dull, grey, and slightly wet. The last part would help.

"...which means you can't really blast it apart with lightning," Fluttershy said. "And if there was enough lightning to make it hot enough for melting, the heat would hurt us before it did anything to the door."

A fuming Rainbow spent a few seconds trying to decide if physics were stupid or annoying, then concluded it was both. "So make the door go away."

"...any one thing, Rainbow."

She gritted her teeth, with none of the anger meant for Fluttershy. Discord had given her friend this potentially awesome thing to use, and then he'd limited it... "A cell is one thing."

"...maybe," Fluttershy thoughtfully replied. "...but I think that might still leave us in the chains. Plus there would be a hole --"

"-- a castle is one thing!"

Fluttershy took a slow breath.

"...yes," she agreed. "...and if it went away, it would leave a lot of ponies standing where floors used to be. Just before they fell. I don't know how deep this place goes, Rainbow, but we both know how tall it is. If there's any servants on the upper floors, they might die. And if there's still a lot below us... the castle goes away, we're still bound, and we just... fall. Everypony falls..."

Rainbow made a quick estimate of her best possible speed catching total. Then her inner hearing provided Pinkie's final fast-fading scream, and the pegasus shivered.

"Yeah. Sorry. I got a little -- carried away there." And right back to the frustration. "One thing..."

"...yes. And... if I can think of the right thing, and there's no other way... I'll use it, Rainbow. But... I know you want to get out there. To stop him. I do too. So I'll use it if I have to, but... give it a little more time. Please. I just think..." The blindfolded head went down a little, twisted again. Not that the effort would have done any good in any case: nopony was really capable of looking at their own neck. "...that it might not be time yet."

Rainbow decided that she would have used it already. Then she realized she might have used it on the first day, possibly after getting fed up with the confinement of the squeezed-in trees.

"It's still there, right?"

"...the bubble? Yes. I can sort of -- feel it, if I think about it for a few seconds."

"Could a forest be 'one thing'?"

"...sorry?"

Disgruntled, "Never mind..."

Fluttershy brought her head back up. "...no, I understand. I think I do, anyway. A cell is one thing, but the chains may not be part of the cell. A castle is one thing, but that doesn't mean the ponies in it. A forest is a million things while still being one thing..." A soft sigh. "If I use this, Rainbow... and I've been thinking about that for days now, because I was wondering if -- he knew I would have to -- then I need to be very careful. The definition could be everyth --" and she stopped, as her ears twisted towards the outermost wall.

Rainbow listened and at first, she heard nothing.

Then she did.

It was a long trip, and Softtread had tried telling the dragon that it had to be. The passages on the upper levels wound their way through the interior of the thickest walls, which meant there were times when those using them had to nearly make a circle around the current perimeter before they could try to move up or down. Reaching the cells while keeping corridor use to an absolute minimum meant taking more than a minimum amount of time.

The dragon had been... dubious. He had no reason to trust Softtread, and also had no reservations about shakily expressing some of his doubts. And the servant had in fact entertained thoughts about trying to get into the main hallways for just long enough, catching somepony's attention -- but the dragon was also right about something: at this range, he couldn't miss. It was easier to show him the cells and then try to find some way of getting him within one.

And...

A frightened child.

He had some experience with that. More than he'd ever wanted to have. But the young Lord's parents had been...

Distant. Even a servant's natural resistance to thinking ill of his superiors was willing to let that through. They were distant. For the heir had not been what they had hoped for: physical weakness, health which had to be carefully managed. Even on that first day of listening to explanations from the physicians, they had been... distant.

And then it had gotten worse.

He had no love for the passages. Not only did they make it easier for certain members of staff to slip away, they were cramped. Dirty. Some of the lighting devices had failed. And with the dragon on his back, a being who was reluctant to allow a corona for more than the deactivation of traps, the trip often left them moving through darkness.

Dark passages seemed to lead into dark thoughts.

"Is Quiet..." He heard the dragon swallow. "...one of the doctor's?"

It was almost offensive. "Rather than inquiring about who attended Lord Presence's birth, you are asking," the old servant softly stated, "if he is a hybrid. Correct?"

"Yes."

"Then no," Softtread firmly replied. "Doctor Gentle delivered him. But there were no special difficulties encountered during the process."

More timidly, "He said he has a weakness in his blood..."

The old stallion sighed, and the sound had been forced out by a new level of pressure. Memory had so much weight... "His illness. It did not become apparent until a few days after his birth. He cried, as so many foals do. But it turned into wailing, for nopony heard it quickly enough. And then... coughing, spasms..."

It took too long to put those visions away, and the echoes of his own hooves pounding towards the heart of the settled zone stayed with him. He'd found help -- and help hadn't been enough. Not a simple illness, but something within the blood itself. Sickness for a lifetime, and not necessarily a long one.

"It has taken so much for him to reach adulthood," Softtread continued. "He has had to be so careful. Simply to still be trotting under Sun -- a demonstration of how well one can manage their life."

"He said," the dragon went on (and there was still a timidity there, now on the increase), "that there was work being done on a cure."

"You seem to recall much about what he has said," the servant noted, and kept the words passive.

"He put a restraint on Twilight's head," the dragon shot back. "It's made me think about him. Over and over."

Yes, under the current circumstances, that would do it.

Which was when Softtread realized something. The dragon isn't a Bearer. But he is... The old stallion just barely managed the thought. ...related. In that way, he may have influence...

"Lord Presence speaks highly of you," the old stallion softly said. "The way he wished for you to be introduced tonight -- those are not words offered to a sapient whom one does not respect. He did not care how much the words might upset some of those who were below." The smile was only internal. "Although he seldom does. But he truly desired for you to have a degree of public recognition. He likes you. And -- I would like to think, before tonight -- that you were at least somewhat fond of him."

The youth was intelligent enough not to answer, not in words -- but Softtread felt the rider's muscles tighten.

If he will listen...

Was it still possible for the House to be saved? It seemed, at the minimum, rather unlikely. But when one's life was the House, a final attempt had to be made.

The old servant thought about things for a few hoofsteps. What he could say, and what he should not.

"He cannot have children," he finally began as they moved into a better-lit section.

"He..." A little swallow. "He didn't say it. But I..."

"You understood," Softtread gently finished for him. "Yes. There is a weakness, and... he will not risk passing it to the next generation. And so he is the last of the House of Deluge." A few seconds of pain, plus one more for not thinking about a spouse who took most of her pleasure in shopping and none of her agonies from regret.

A long pause. The claws kept their grip on his horn.

"I'm sorry."

"A House," Softtread continued, hoping, "which will no longer exist after tonight. Lord Presence has often jested about dropping his title into the soil of the road, and..." It was not the time to weep. "...now it will happen. The castle sold to another, presuming any will have it. Some of the staff may remain, others will disperse. But the title and the bloodline... they end. I had feared he would be the last. Then I knew, after his --"

Stopped. Physically. Vocally. Stopped.

I nearly...

Too many memories, and all of them seemed to want their share of time in the now.

"After his what?" the dragon asked, because of course he was going to do that.

Not yet, if at all. Stay with the other aspect.

Although in so many ways, they were one and the same.

"There was a cure being worked on," Softtread said, starting forward again. "But that work was being done by Doctor Gentle."

That claw grip tightened.

A single choked "He..." was all that emerged. The dragon could say no more.

"That which was meant for the Doctor's daughter," Softtread risked, "fully understood and properly applied, will save Lord Presence." Which was simply a way of putting it, amplified by, "Will allow that next generation. And you have your reasons to hate him. Seeing one's -- sister -- attacked will do that. But do you hate him so much as to let his House fall? With a cure so close?"

No answer. In some ways, it was the best possible result: Softtread would have been reluctant to trust an immediate response. The silence seemed to indicate that the dragon was thinking it over, as did the lightly-trembling body perched upon his back.

A familiar section of wall was approaching.

"I will need to ignite my corona now," the servant said. "Otherwise we will not be able to proceed at all."

"...right," the dragon eventually said. "Right..."

Twilight still hated herself.

Rarity had presented her counterpoints, and Twilight recognized that they were legitimate. And if they could reach Pinkie...

...if she doesn't turn away from me...

...I deserve --

-- she did. She had more than earned that. But somehow, she had hope.

It didn't change the self-hatred. There were too many arguments for it. A flood of justifications. Things she had told herself to believe. Aspects she'd missed. Words she should have paid more attention to.

Events which had taken place as she'd done nothing more than watch.

"I should have known he had restraints." It was one of the smallest offenses, and so seemed to serve as a fine lead-in to something more major.

"Oh?" Rarity inquired. The designer was shifting shoulders and hips again: it was either a futile attempt to find comfort within the chains or an effort to adjust the lie of the rumpled dress. Given who was doing it, the odds seemed to indicate something which could best be settled through a coin flip.

"Quiet," Twilight sighed. Talking about it was a means of hurting herself. It was also a way to keep thinking about him. To try fighting off any attack from that horrible, insidious talent. "At the hoofball practice, when the pegasi kids broke rules and got penalty ropes. He said he could 'wrap horns in worse'."

"Suggesting restraints were available," Rarity nodded. "Yes." A brief pause, accompanied by a chain-muffled attempt to shift her hindquarters. "But he never used one. Not even after I counted no less than --" and stopped, with the left side of her mouth twitching up into a lightly-embarrassed half-smile. "-- well, some things sink in through osmosis. I simply wasn't comfortable in speaking about that part of my life. Not while he was present. We did not know each other well enough yet."

"The unicorn fillies and colts were committing penalties?" Twilight asked. She mostly understood hoofball to exist as a sort of barely-confined riot with its own scoring rules, which Rarity had told her was actually a rather good description.

"Several," Rarity acknowledged. "Although in truth, it is rather difficult to have so much as a single play go off without one. My father receives a rulebook update prior to the start of every new season, and it has to arrive by cart. A cart which will have one book in it." She paused. "We had to ask the neighbors to help us get the most recent edition inside. After we moved some things out of the hallway. So... restraints within the castle, in what he claimed as the secondary armory."

If for nothing more than loss of access to historical pieces, Twilight couldn't seem to particularly care about having missed the cataloging opportunity. "Yes. And then there was..."

She tried to take a deep breath. It wasn't easy. All of the emotions seemed to have left very little room for her lungs.

"...Dawn Sky. Rarity -- he did it right in front of me. I felt the energy, but... I didn't know what it meant. I just thought it was part of using the Exception. I was in the birthing room when he changed her into a hybrid."

Softly, oh so very softly, "Would she have died?"

"He said... she had the umbilical cord wrapped around her throat," Twilight slowly replied. "The bruises..."

An equally slow nod. "Yes. I saw the discoloration beneath the fur. Oddly easy to do so, with a metallic. Twilight -- think about your own words. You believed it to be part of the Exception itself. You had no way to know."

Still overflowing with resentment towards a student who never should have passed a single course, "I could have --"

"-- figured it out on the spot, when we had no concept of what had been taking place? Stopped it?" Almost a whisper, "Twilight... she would have died..."

She felt a tremendous weight pushing at her from inside, and realized it was her own heart.

"He said that. That without him..."

"Yes," Rarity admitted. "It is a truth. A filly lived. And her mother... the happiest pony I have ever seen." More slowly, "There are thoughts which I will have to deal with eventually. To hate a stallion for what he has done, while being thankful for a portion of what it granted... I am not looking forward to my dreams, Twilight." She sighed. "Or the migraine which shall undoubtedly precede them."

Silence for a little while, and they both listened for approaching guards again. Nothing.

"What did it feel like?" Rarity finally asked. "When it happened."

Twilight focused. "His field felt sort of -- twisted the whole time. Picture a length of anchored rope, and somepony turns it at the free end. That's what it was like, when it was just the Exception. That plus the lack of sparkles -- and that's a sign: if his sparkles blink out, he's getting ready to use it. We can watch for that."

Rarity nodded. "Should we have the opportunity," she said, and not enough of the fear had been blocked.

"Rarity..."

"I saw that supposed Duke upon the stage, Twilight," the designer softly said. "I have multiple images to haunt my nightscape. I trust you to protect us, if the need arises. But the echoes of that scream... they will need more time to fade. So rather than continue to review that moment... the change. Did it have its own feel? You said the twist was just the Exception."

"It widened," Twilight carefully replied, measuring words against memory. "It turned into a channel. And then there was something moving down it, something I'd never felt before. A rush. That was probably the essence."

The next question was the natural one. "What was the resonance?"

She remembered, and wished she did not.

"Hope."

Her friend slowly nodded. (This was followed by a minor head shake, but that was just adjusting the capture-disrupted mane.)

"Hope," Rarity repeated. "I... can understand that, I think."

Water ran down the walls, fell from the ceiling, soaked into half-ruined dresses.

"When he was in front of me," Twilight finally said, head dipping as she found herself temporarily unwilling to meet Rarity's eyes, "when he told me that her mark coming was... beautiful... I looked right at him. And something happened. I couldn't see him any more. Not as a pony. All I saw from that moment on -- was a monster."

No answer, not just yet, and Twilight understood that Rarity was letting her talk.

"He was in love with his spouse," Twilight eventually went on. "I could hear that. I think everypony could. He loved her more than anything, he lost her, and..."

She didn't think the next three words constituted a lesson. She doubted they would ever see a scroll. And part of her acknowledged that they came from anger, bitterness, and those continuing surges of self-hatred: it meant she wouldn't incorporate them into herself. But still... at the moment they were spoken, there was something within which believed them.

"...love makes monsters."

Rarity's entire body jerked, the designer trying to lean forward as far as she could within the chains.

"Love is the most wonderful --"

"You saw --"

"-- it is worth striving for, fighting for, defending at all costs --"

"-- it ends! The ponies you love die! And when they die --"

What did he say? "I spoke of loss. You spoke of fearing loss. It's natural. But in the end... you have so little to fear..."

I have more to fear than --

Urgent. Concerned. Nearly terrified. "Twilight!"

Her head came up.

"He loved his spouse," Rarity's desperate voice surged. "A love I would give so much to have within my own life, even knowing it would one day end. A strength of love I hope for you to experience and in doing so, to realize that the price of an ending is worth paying, for the story which came before it provided the coin. That in time, if we let it, the pain fades, and we remember the love. But you heard what Pinkie said: wisdom from within her own pain. He loved his spouse. But I do not know if he ever truly loved his daughter. That part is the monster. Something which will not accept. Something which demands that one adapt in order to be considered worthy. Something which says it would be there if only you were different -- none of that is love, Twilight. That is pain. That poor mare was in agony long before her mark came. The body merely experiences what the soul did all along, and so the torment is dual and doubled. Love did not create a monster. I will accept that loss played a part. But in the end, hatred turned what would have otherwise been a merely bigoted pony into something very much like a monster. And yet, in that..."

The blue eyes closed.

"...there is hope," she softly finished. "Hope for life..."

The first tear fell.

And Twilight couldn't move. Couldn't go to her (and could never take back that she hadn't done so for Pinkie). Couldn't do anything but talk.

"...Rarity?"

"The Nightmare," the designer quietly replied, "was... not Luna. I have believed that for some time now. One comes to know her, compares it to what that thing did, and recognizes it was no part of her." (And Twilight remembered a dream.) "Sombra... he willfully abandoned his former state, and I suspect he took glee in doing so. Discord -- whatever he is, he may remain so, or he might change. But Doctor Gentle... it is the monstrosity which ponies are capable of. I could perceive him as a monster, Twilight -- and yet he is a pony. A monster wearing a pony's skin. The sort of monster which trots by in the street, undetected. A monster born from hatred, loss, refusal to accept, and... hope. Something which should nearly have its own virtue, twisted more than his field, and yet... remaining some form of hope. A monster anypony could be, and... a monster so many might become."

It was possible to feel the pain radiating from her fur.

"It makes me feel," Rarity forced herself to continue, "as if I might have a monster within --"

"-- NO!"

"-- simply waiting for its chance --"

"YOU'RE NOT HIM! YOU COULD NEVER BE --"

"-- and what was Star Swirl?"

The simple inquiry stopped Twilight cold.

"He," Rarity reminded her, "was a Bearer. Their... friend, I would imagine. But then... something twisted. Jealousy, given that he attempted to take their form and power. He was their friend, and then... he was a monster. And if anypony among us has their jealous side, it would be me --"

"You'll never be like him."

The words had been surprisingly solid. They needed to be, in order to hold up the sheer weight of conviction.

"And how," Rarity softly asked, "can you be so sure?"

"You admitted to it," Twilight replied. "He never did."

The blue eyes opened.

"You can't know that."

"I know you won't be like him."

More insistent, "You can't know that he never spoke of his feelings. We barely know anything real of them --"

"He didn't!"

"How can you know?"

"I just --"

And then they both heard the scratching. The scritching of claws moving across stone.

"Spike!" Twilight gasped -- then stopped, her heart sinking again. "No... too light."

"And too many," Rarity sighed. "That is --" frowned, and her ears rotated towards the doorway "-- a rather large number of things moving, isn't it? And getting closer. It sounds as if it's just about right up to the -- rats! There are rats down here! There are rats and they are flooding into the cell and I cannot move...!"

She pulled back as far as she could within the chains, which turned out to be the same amount that she'd been able to lean forward: not at all. Instead, her body did a sort of jerking dance as she futilely attempted to escape from the group (a mischief of rats, Twilight remembered, because nopony could go out to the cottage without also learning by osmosis) which was swarming through the gaps in the bars, several dozen of the things and --

-- a number of voles.

You also couldn't go to the cottage and not eventually learn the difference, along with the fact that they would never swarm together. In fact, the only reason they were peacefully occupying the same patch of Ponyville ground was --

"-- Fluttershy," Twilight breathed.

Rarity's frantic movements stopped.

The swarm stopped. Looked up at them, with dozens of bright eyes glittering in the cell's dim light.

"We're underground," Twilight said. "In a big building, an old one. Rats in the lower levels, voles in the soil outside. There must be holes somewhere, and Fluttershy called to them..."

They were still looking.

"What -- what exactly are they doing?" Rarity forced herself to ask.

Twilight took her best guess. "Scouting -- I think," she replied. "Fluttershy probably sent them out to see where everypony was and how we're confined --" which was when the swarm began to turn, heading towards the gaps again "-- and now they'll tell her what they saw."

The mischief (plus accompanying voles: she couldn't recall if there was a special name for that species when grouped) left, as quickly as they had come.

"I think Fluttershy has a plan," Twilight declared. "Let's see what it is."

And they waited.

"This," the dragon said, "is taking too long --"

"-- this," Softtread interrupted with the practiced ease of a servant who knew how to get a word in, "is the final transition. The next passage goes directly to the destination. It has just taken some time to reach."

"Sure it bucking does..." the youth muttered -- then sighed.

"Language," the servant chided.

"It doesn't matter," his rider said. "It's not as much fun to curse when you're the only pony who hears it."

Softtread almost smiled. "A familiar motivation for language studies," said the pony who'd had four siblings. "Across the hallway..."

"Not yet," the dragon said, and clamped a hand over the unicorn's mouth. "I hear hoofsteps."

They waited in silence until the corridor was clear. It took a while: those trotting through were in no special hurry, and it gave Softtread time to think of what might happen next. There was one more thing he could still tell the dragon, in the name of trying to win him to the cause. But it was something he hadn't said for a very long time, words he never should have spoken at all. A secret, and one given to a being who wasn't even a pony. Who might not understand...

Perhaps...

He'd said them once. And it could be argued that doing so had led directly to this.

Finally, they crossed. The no-longer-secret entrance opened, closed. Softtread slowly moved forward.

"The first trap is three body lengths ahead," he alerted the dragon, and the claws progressively loosened their grip as they drew closer. "Let me see -- this one requires --"

His horn ignited, and the partial corona projected forward.

Then it winked out.

"-- nothing," the servant said.

The dragon tensed. "If this is a trick --"

"-- no," Softtread broke in, with some of the stun now suffusing his words. "It's already been deactivated. And it wasn't done by one of my staff, because I don't recognize the signature. I suppose the guards might have finally arrived, but --"

The grip tightened.

"Faster," the terrified child told him. "Now."

Rarity's single hard swallow nearly drowned out the sound of the rodents reentering the cell.

"Easy..." Twilight whispered.

"It... it is just that... it's..." More saliva went down. "...they're rats..."

"Fluttershy has rats at the cottage," Twilight reminded her. "You've seen them."

"Pet rats. Groomed rats. Clean rats. These are..."

"Allies," Twilight firmly said. "They're allies."

Rarity attempted to rally. "What are the more -- roundish ones? Voles, correct?"

Twilight nodded.

"They are -- actually somewhat cute."

Again.

"In a ratty sort of way -- they are looking at me. Why are they looking at me, Twilight?" A little more frantically, "Tell them to stop looking at me."

"I can't," Twilight rather reasonably pointed out. "I'm not Fluttershy."

"Then tell Fluttershy to tell them to stop -- they are scurrying up to my hooves! They are --"

"-- me too, Rarity." The swarm had effectively split in half, with an equal number going to each pony.

The next words emerged in the hiss of a pony who'd gone too far for mere screaming to still mean anything. "-- they are on my hooves! They are climbing up my forelegs!" Chains jerked and created the non-musical sound of no rat-removing results whatsoever. "They are on my dress and if not for the dress, they would be in my fur and Sun and Moon, it's in my fur now because it's on my neck --"

And now they were climbing Twilight, claws easily finding purchase in the fabric of the iridescent dress.

She wanted to pull away. It was like having a fly land on her hips: pure instinct would direct her tail into a clearing sweep. But there was nowhere to go, and all she could do was watch as they swarmed over Rarity, heading for --

"-- I can't, I can't, I can't --"

"Rarity! Stop!"

The rising song of hysteria, one where the pitch was rapidly heading towards the crash of a faint or worse, "-- I can't --"

"They're trying to get your restraint off!"

Rarity froze.

"They're... what?"

"It's just heavy fabric on your straps! They can chew through that! They must have told Fluttershy what they saw on us, and now they're going to get rid of it! We're getting our fields back, Rarity!" And once Twilight's horn was free --

-- the sudden squeal of pain wasn't made directly into her ear, but the tiny distance didn't diminish any of the outrage.

"...I," Rarity shakily said, "may be granted mine, Twilight. But your straps are reinforced with metal. They may have been able to tell Fluttershy enough about what they saw to give her a tactic, but they were unable to identify material. For they are but rats and voles, and so lack our intellect. Shape, but not substance. My horn can be freed -- but I do not have the strength to remove these chains, and there is nothing which will grant that power. And once the guards come, see that this much has happened... they will ensure it will not occur again. Fluttershy will be bound in both vision and speech, or worse..."

"The lock," Twilight desperately tried, even as she felt her own hope dying, the emotion bleeding freely as the rats scurried away from her neck: they eventually wound up staring at her in open insult from the floor. "You can try to use your field on the lock for my restraint. If it isn't enchanted and you hit the right tumblers, maybe you can get it open. We have to try."

"I'm willing," Rarity quietly replied. "I can make an attempt. But if it is enchanted, I will be unable to break it. We would need the key or access to somepony who could automatically get past the workings. But that is generally those members of law enforcement sent to correct what children see as exceptionally cruel pranks, and in this supposed settlement..." She shuddered -- and almost immediately muted it, so as not to dislodge the rats. "Are they making progress?"

"It's slow," Twilight admitted. "It may take a few minutes. I know it's hard..."

"Rather." A shallow breath. "Rats."

"They're what was available." Who? "They're just trying to help."

"Rats," Rarity firmly repeated, and said nothing more. Her ears twitched, her tail lashed and every so often, her eyelids threatened to lose their false lashes. But that was all.

They waited. It was a slower process than Twilight would have hoped.

One field free. But she doesn't know any workings which would help us, and she doesn't have the raw power to just break this off. If she can't deal with the lock...

There was something Rarity could do to get them out of the cell. Twilight just wished she had some idea of what it was.

Silence (but for the soft, slightly unsettling sounds of chewing), and it let them both hear the hoofsteps.

They froze. Sought each other's eyes, with both mares finding the other equally frantic.

The guards. They're finally coming in. They're going to see...

Rarity tried to shake herself enough to dislodge the rodents, perhaps in the hopes that a merely-chewed strap would be overlooked. But the chains held her, and the animals stayed right where they were.

Maybe they'll flee when the guards get closer. Maybe they'll...

...we tried...

The words had, perhaps, not been meant to reach them. But there were strange acoustics within stone, enough that they could now identify three sets of hoofsteps: a trio on the approach. And shortly after that, there were three voices: two stallions, one mare. The words told those within the cell exactly what was coming, and gave some indication as to why.

"The Princess first," said the larger-sounding of the stallions.

The mare was surprised. "He told us to go into that cell last. He bucking repeated it like, six times. This is what you have to do in order to beat the traps, this is how you open the last door, and you take care of the Princess last."

"I'm giving him what he wants," said a tight, smaller voice. "I'm guessing you two are doing the same. I don't care why. I'm sick of him. I bet that was him. He can talk all he wants about being an intermediary, but if you're doing this for the same reason, you'll remember the letters. He can say he's passing along orders, but that horse apple talks the same way he writes. If I didn't know he had the files ready to mail, I'd be doing this to him."

A brief pause.

"Maybe I will anyway," the tight voice said. "Someday."

The larger one snickered. "Maybe I'll help."

They couldn't move. They were bound, by chains and ropes and restraints. They were completely helpless.

"But he said the Princess last," the mare reminded them.

"So?" the larger one snickered. "He's not down here. Just tell him we did her and the unicorn last."

"He wanted," the mare insisted, "the earth ponies to die first."

They were exactly the way Coordinator would most wish them to be, with the short-term exception of their breathing.

"Look," the large one suddenly shot back, "if I have to kill a bucking Princess to get that smear off my tail, I just want to get it out of the way, all right? He wants them dead. He says he's got this great plan for making sure nopony finds out what happened and since he's had a great one for just about bucking bankrupting me over the last few years, maybe this one works too. But the order doesn't matter. I don't know what you two did that you're doing this. I just know what I did. I was this close to finding him and doing --"

Momentarily stopped, in both approach and speech.

"I'm almost out of bits," he resumed. "Bits are more important than life. Than their lives."

"But they may not even have the dragon yet," the mare reminded them. "We can't come back down here --"

"-- we can't wait!" the tight voice nearly yelled. "Too much longer and the guards will be here, you know that! We do the killing, we get out, we wait for the bodies to be found and if the dragon wasn't in a cell, we use that distraction to find him!"

The mare's voice was now thoughtful.

"That's fair," she decided, and it was followed by words which should never have been said. "You know -- this is going to be my first dragon..."

"But not your first pony," the tight voice decided, and not without a dark amusement.

"Let's just say," the mare told him, "that if you decide to go for that speckled neck and you can get rid of his pictures, I'll be right there with you."

"Princesses can die," the larger one mused, seemingly to himself. "It's a Tartarus of a thought, isn't it? They can really die. We're going to be the first ponies ever to prove it..."

They trotted, as two friends silently looked at each other. And there were no words. In some ways, there could be none. But still, they had known each other for some time. Each was familiar with the expressions of the other, in a way which could so easily lead to guessing at the thoughts behind them. And so in that singular moment on the edge of death, there was a way in which each almost felt that they heard the other, all the same.

It's my fault.

It is not.

I'm sorry. You never should have met me. Nopony ever should have --

I don't regret having known you. The lost years to come... you were worth it. And the others will say the same.

Spike...

Will live. Know that.

You're my big sister, aren't you? The one I never had...

Outstanding that you finally noticed.

I love you.

And I love you. Until we meet in the shadowlands, my dear one...

There was a tiny ping! as a field contacted the back of the outer cylinder. The door opened.

"He told me," the larger one said, with the words now meant to be heard, "to say this on his behalf, Princess. That much, I'll do. So -- to the Incarnate of a very short Future -- he initially thought you should have taken his offer. But then he thought it over. And now he's glad you didn't. This is from him. It's all from him. And it won't be quick."

A large black unicorn stepped forward enough to let them see the blades mounted on his hooves: weapons which Twilight had cataloged. It also let him see them: two mares, chained to walls and ceiling, facing each other. His initial sight line went through the space between them.

"You're going to die --"

-- and then he saw the rats.

"What the buck?"

Along with a healthy percentage of voles.

"Get in here!" he screamed as he charged forward. "They're trying something --"

Not that he could probably distinguish the species from each other, not even when they were racing away from the floor around Twilight's bound hooves, probably not even with their coming directly at him, racing up his legs and across his body, nipping, clawing, biting...

He screamed, veered off to the side, nearly crashed into a wall. And his horn had ignited, but now there were rodents scrambling across that: the impacts weren't anywhere sharp enough to induce backlash, but it had to be hurting his concentration. Or what little was left of it after the brown vole went directly into his right ear.

The other two charged in, following the screams. Two unicorns. (Of course unicorns, Twilight found herself thinking, and decided she didn't need that degree of final confirmation.)

They had weapons. Their horns were lit. And the first thing they looked at was the pony who had fallen to the floor, was trying to roll around and crush the scrambling rats, but couldn't get them off his face or out of his ears...

It froze them, if only for a second. Just long enough for Rarity's group to jump off her back and go for the mare.

The green intruder tried. Her field went forward, scattered a few, but there were too many targets: a number reached her, and then there was a new scream. But that left one pony and his puce field began to lance out, aiming to pick rodents off the others. He wasn't going for Twilight and Rarity, not just yet. But there weren't enough animals left over to go for him, and the one pony who could have told the swarm to redivide itself might as well have been a thousand gallops away.

It was a distraction. Even if some of those bites managed to hit eyes, ultimately, that was all it could be. And...

...it didn't matter.

The inner cylinder.

The outer had seen the bottom of its hollow touched by a field. But not so the one within the cell itself. The timer had started running at the moment the first contact had been made. Whatever spells resided within the cell, workings which might have been intended to dispose of prisoners -- there was less than a minute before they would inflict themselves on everypony within.

"HIT THE SENSOR!" It was a scream: it had to be, and the decibels of her desperation briefly drowned out all other sound. "YOU HAVE TO HIT --"

The mare was tossing her body, going up and down. Legs desperately shifted. It seemed to create pounding hoofsteps, ones where despite having it right in front of her, Twilight's ears couldn't seem to identify the source of sound.

"Why the buck would we let you out of the chains?" the smaller one sneered as he forced more rats away.

And then Twilight understood.

That's why we were supposed to die last.

He only told them what the outer one did. They come in here, they start killing us, and then -- the workings go off.

They get found with our bodies and take all the blame, because the evidence is right there.

Self-disposing murderers.

It was, in a sick way, rather elegant.

"It's a trick," the smaller one smugly said. "The rats are a trick, a trick without magic, and it's not enough --"

"-- GET AWAY FROM MY SISTER!"

And the roar carried the flames into the shorter male's mane.

He screamed. He threw himself at the floor, rolling, trying to find any way of putting the fire out before it spread, but the puce hair had caught and the dampness of the floor wasn't enough to extinguish it, the little dragon was racing into the cell --

-- Twilight had just enough time to see Softtread standing in the doorway. The fear in old eyes. The panic, spreading at the speed of instinct until all thought was gone.

The servant spun, raced down the corridor, hooves pounding as fast as his heart.

NO! "SPIKE! GET OUT! YOU HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE! SPIKE, PLEASE, PLEASE LISTEN TO ME!"

"YOU'RE DONE!" the little dragon shouted: claws waved the rats away from the mare's tail, and so only hair was ignited. "I'LL BURN YOU! HURTING TWILIGHT, HURTING RARITY, YOU'RE DONE, YOU CAN BE ASH FOR ALL I CARE, I'M GOING TO MAKE YOU INTO --"

"IT'S THE SECURITAS ENCHANTMENT! THERE'S TWENTY SECONDS! SPIKE, PLEASE, GET TO THE OTHERS --" and that was where screams ran out.

"Let us go." Rarity's oddly calm voice had a way of cutting through cries of pain. "Save them. Live. Please, dearest one, live --"

Green eyes blinked at them.

"The Securitas," Spike said. "That enchantment from sixth year? Really? That's all?"

And then he calmly stepped past one writhing body, casually dodged a kick from a flailing second, and stuck his right arm into the hole.

There was a tiny ping!

When it came to a crisis situation, fire had a certain way of assuming control. It also had a tendency to rearrange previously existing plans. Most of the rats and voles had fled: without Fluttershy to calm them, there was no way to make them stay near flame, and the remaining ones were more than a little nervous about remaining close to something which produced it: the scant number was all working on Rarity's restraint. Spike was trying to control three ponies just about all by himself.

Well... two.

"He needs medical attention," the mare with the lost tail said, staring at the half-conscious stallion. "The back of his head -- he's burned..."

"He," Spike softly said, "was trying to kill Twilight." His nostrils flared as he took a half-step forward. "Were you going to send down medical attention after that?"

"Spike..." Rarity, of course. "You have every reason to be upset. But they have been beaten."

"They're beaten as long as I'm looking at them," Spike stated. "Remember, I see one flare of corona and I breathe. You move and I breathe. Stay in that corner. Twilight, is the strap almost cut?"

Twilight looked. "Yes. They've just got another strand or two to go." A closer inspection. "Actually, Rarity, if you shook your head really hard, it might just come off."

"And dislodge our assistants," she replied, repressing most of the shudder. "Not unless I must. But there is still the question of where we go from here. Even with a freed horn, I can do very little to allow the rest of us escape. And with Softtread having run... he will tell somepony about what has happened, after the fear has faded. Hopefully one who does not wish us dead. That will trigger reinforcements."

"We can get reinforcements," Twilight realized. "They have a way to get into all three cells, and only this one had the Securitas. That means keys."

"For doors," sneered the wounded larger stallion, who was still bleeding heavily from one ear. "Not chains. Why would he ever give us something to let you free?"

It was true, and it meant they had but half a solution, possibly not even for very long -- but that still felt better than nothing. "Push them across the floor towards Spike with your left forehoof. No kicking."

"Why should I?"

Spike inhaled.

"...right," the larger stallion decided. "All yours." Metal skittered. "For all the good it does you, freak."

Twilight couldn't decide if that had been directed at Spike or herself, but rather quickly decided she didn't care. "More than it did you. Spike, do you have anything that could get my restraint off?"

He shook his head. "Some gems. Scrolls and quills. I can't burn it off, Twilight: it's flush against your fur and even if I could pull it away a little..." and she heard the fear "...heat conducts. It'll move through the air and down the metal. Hot enough to melt that..." he was trembling now "...you would..."

"It's okay," she softly told him. "I understand."

And he can't melt the chains. I don't think he's ever gone that hot. Even if he could, it's the same problem: either I'm burned or with the heat radiating, we're all cooked.

Maybe... maybe all he did was save us from being killed. Maybe we can't get out.

She smiled.

It's enough.

"I'm proud of you, Spike." Even if those reinforcements arrived within the next second, that would still be true. "I don't think I've ever been more proud."

"The same," Rarity gently told him. "Thank you, Protector."

Spike didn't glance back at them: he couldn't, nor did he have to. But he did tear off his right sleeve, wipe it across the damp floor, and put it against the burnt stallion's neck.

"A proper use," Rarity stated. "Even for the strictly undeserving. I hardly mind -- oh!" For she'd just felt the last strand let go. "All right, if our visitors will just give me some space -- and there they go -- down the tail was not my ideal..." She shook her head, hard: metal clanged off the wall. "Lovely! Now, for however many seconds of relief I have to work with..." Her horn ignited: soft blue touched the lock of Twilight's restraint, delved into the hole --

-- instantly producing a shower of red sparks.

The designer winced. "Enchanted. And strongly. I'm certain I can't --"

-- which was when they heard the next set of hoofsteps.

There was barely time to react before the sound of trotting was joined by a snort of pure shock. "What?" somepony asked the air. "What in Moon's orbit is that door doing open --

It was a male voice. It was also another unicorn, and they found that out when the orange field lanced into the cell, grabbed Spike, spun him around, and shoved him face-first into the wall.

Scales absorbed impact, and almost didn't take enough of it: the little dragon slid down the stone, gems and quills scattering across the floor. He was pinned: the field was keeping him against the wall, and letting him drop to floor level just meant that much less weight to hold. Conscious, struggling, but he didn't have the strength to break free, he couldn't even turn his head...

"NOPONY MOVE!" the stallion shouted (in what felt to Twilight like a very familiar way) as the robed body galloped into the room, the corona around the exposed horn showing the heavy spiking of pure rage. "What happened here? Who are these ponies? Tell me what's been going on, right now --"

-- and the point of the first quill went into his right hip.

It was easier for Twilight to hear the cry than see the impact. At the exact moment the quill had started to move, it had become hard to see much of anything.

"WHAT?" the stallion yelled. "WHO JUST --"

-- and his attention was caught by the light.

Not even those who had so recently planned murder could look away. Not from this, for the base sight would have been rare enough on its own. Unicorns seldom publicly went to the double corona in any case, not when the risks were so great. A partial or a single: those were the sights of the everyday world.

So they looked at her, and could look nowhere else. Nowhere except at the brilliant double corona which was ablaze around Twilight's restrained horn.

The new arrival didn't look at her face. Not off to the sides, where Spike was now starting to push against a decreasing force. Nowhere except that pinkish light.

"...no," he whispered, with the bleeding hip momentarily forgotten in the face of the utterly impossible. "No, you can't..."

The next quill went into his hindquarters. It got enough of his screaming attention to make him very briefly glance back and spot the matching hue.

He screamed, and did so directly into Twilight's face. Not that he'd noticed, with his attention once again so fixated.

"YOU CAN'T! You... you're a pony!" his irrational terror bellowed. "You're just another kind of pony! Even if you can work through it, even if you can cast..."

It could be argued that there was only one thing to do, and that was why he did it. There was a hostile pony (and just in that moment, forever unknown to Twilight, he was thinking of her as a unicorn) who was attacking with their field. A pony who was working at a double corona, something which was presumably necessary just to get past the restraint. Somepony who was fully vulnerable.

So he didn't think. He resorted to his training, something which had originally been drummed into him until it operated on the thought-free level just above that of instinct. There was a hostile pony with a double corona, and that gave him a single option.

A portion of his field went forward, hit the lock, wrenched it open as the enchantment recognized a pony who was permitted to do so, reared up at the moment orange power yanked the metal up and off, allowing him to bring his hooves crashing sharply into a purple cone of something which was not quite bone.

He held that position for a moment, almost balanced against her skull. Waiting for bruises and bleeding and the sound of bones breaking themselves.

Twilight smiled at him.

"Sorry," she said. "Wrong horn."

Her corona ignited.

The chains tore themselves out of the wall, whipped around his hind legs, pulled sharply backwards and sent him crashing to the floor just before Rarity's restraint was slammed onto his horn, held in place by the same sheer force which kept his jaw pressed against stone. The next bubble went up around those who had wished to kill, began to solidify into a shield spell. A third effort countered what very little effect remained on Spike, turned him to face them and began brushing off the tuxedo's intact portions.

And only then did she let herself look directly at Rarity, whose fur had now added the visible dampness of fresh sweat. At a corona which was slowly shifting back towards a soft blue.

"You said..." Rarity breathed, her rib cage heaving from recent effort, "...to think about what Trixie might use it for. And he sounded exactly like a law enforcement officer, and I thought... misdirection..."

Twilight's field pushed at the cuffs, sundered hinges -- then gently lowered Rarity to the floor. And when they were both truly standing again, the librarian reared up just enough to drape her forelegs across the designer's shoulders, pressed her face into the purple mane. Spike walked up, hugged every leg he could reach.

They gave themselves five seconds for that, because there had to be five seconds available.

And then, with proper attention paid to the Securitas spell, they trotted into the corridor.

"Killer or guard?" Twilight asked the newest arrival.

"Guard!" the furious (and still pinned) stallion declared. "I was supposed to watch you! And I'm not the only one! There's ponies coming in for the assignment, I'm just the first --"

"Perhaps," Rarity mercilessly cut him off, "as the others were supposed to kill us, you might have started your shift somewhat earlier."

"I didn't know!" he barked. "I was told to keep you safe --"

"By Softtread?"

He blinked.

"So no," Twilight translated. "He didn't talk to you, neither of you passed the other... he went somewhere else."

Rarity nodded. "And I think we can guess at his first destination. Twilight, a moment, please..." Soft blue was permitted to pass, and she lifted the hood. "Ah. Thank you for your features, and rather more for your idiocy. And now..."

Twilight nodded, and made the next shield's dome so low as to have the top just about pinning the restraint all by itself.

"I got a pretty good sense of your strength there," she told him. "Just before you dropped. I don't think you can get out of that and untie the chains. And if you do, even getting through the Securitas, or if somepony arrives to rescue you..."

Her field slammed the door closed (and made sure the outer cylinder was taken care of), then squeezed.

"...yes," Rarity finally said, after the squeals of tortured metal had faded and it was possible to hear again. "Jammed and distorted in shape. Rather difficult for him to open now."

"I thought so."

Spike took his hands away from his ears. "And loud."

"Well, we're pretty far down right now," Twilight allowed. "So it didn't reach the base level. Besides, there's going to be more ponies on the way anyway."

"Very true," Rarity nodded. "And therefore..."

She looked down, to where a slightly stunned-looking vole was starting to make its way along the corridor.

Fluttershy, accustomed to translating animal perceptions, had some idea of what had happened during the first attack: her allies couldn't understand pony words, but the described actions had been obvious enough. The final results left her sobbing through that part of the rescue, and Twilight had the extreme pleasure of taking the blindfold off so that those tears of joy could have free passage.

Rainbow declared that she'd been this close to a plan which would have gotten them out without help. Also that she was incredibly happy to see them anyway.

Applejack simply smiled as they released her, rubbed her sore legs against each other in turn before turning to Pinkie and simply saying "Told you."

And as for the last...

The final cuff came free, and the baker was lowered to the ground. Set to stand in front of the small mare who could barely look at her. The one who had approached while dragging the weight of the world with her tail. A pony without a single word to offer, for even in the dubious light of desperate hope, it still seemed as if words could do no good.

A trembling purple left foreleg silently came up, and the hoof firmly touched Pinkie's shoulder.

"'Hybrid' is a weird word," the contacted mare said, standing still against that touch. "Did you ever think about that? Probably not much, because none of us had any reason to ever think about it before tonight, and then I think we all thought about it too much. But now that I've thought about it? It's weird."

She shivered a little, as purple eyes slowly sought her face.

"I'm scared too, Twilight," Pinkie gently admitted. "Can we... can we still be scared together?"

It was the briefest ponypile they'd ever had: just about five seconds. There didn't seem to be time for more than that. But when it came to that first chance at healing... five seconds was enough.

De Stijl

The cruelty of when.

The cruelty of now.

And then there was the somewhat lesser cruelty of knowing that he would soon be standing in his personal library for the very last time.

It was strange, just how much that aspect hurt.

Quiet's parents... they really hadn't done much with the original collection. The vast majority of that had been gathered by his ancestors. It could be argued that most of the dead branches on his family tree had truly believed in the species superiority of unicorns, but only if you didn't want to point to all the trotting egos who'd felt they could put themselves forth into the world as examples. As a youth, it had left him reading some things he really hadn't understood, and asking for parental clarification had mostly sent the discussion into the endless temporal abyss of 'When you're older.' And by the time they'd felt they were ready to tell him (while perhaps not quite believing it, at least as such applied to their lone colt), he hadn't been in the mood to listen.

Not that they'd talked to him all that much, after a certain point in all of their lives. Not that they usually remembered he was there.

Book upon book of what could, in some ways, be termed as 'unicorn history'. The fact that so many of those texts could never be brought out under Sun said a lot about what the writers considered to be proper history, not to mention an ideal future. And with a number of those books... well, get that many fanatics together in one place and eventually, some of the words would turn into nonsense as belief became faith, which then intensified into monomania: the resulting insanity generally flashed into existence around Page Four. Some of the more extreme tracts were proof of that, including that mindless ramble about how unicorns had to beware of those with no true power at all...

(There hadn't been any real details in that tract, and Quiet had generally assumed the sudden ending had been produced by the final tail-clamped drag to the asylum.)

Books hadn't been a passion for his parents, and it took the right kind of book to get Quiet's attention. Yes, there had been occasions when the doctor's research had needed some rather rare documents, theories which had to be published via private printing presses because even with Equestria's freedom of expression laws, the Princess supposedly didn't take well to anypony trying to figure out alicorn ascension in print: Quiet had done whatever he could to help there. Others, including some which had taken place while he was too young to understand what was going on, when just allowing the midwife to browse through the lower level had given him the next step of the journey.

But on the whole, while he'd added some tomes to that part of the collection, doing so from both necessity and devotion -- he'd been rather more interested in things which he might enjoy reading. The generational desires from a family of shopaholic hoarders had ultimately sent him towards the comforting scent of binding glue (at least in those times when he wasn't investing in bound notes), and so a number of mostly-new acquisitions had been placed upstairs. Brought into the light.

There were still publications in that group which concerned themselves with various aspects of unicorn history: it was hard not to have a little interest there, and he never knew when he might find something that could potentially assist with the Great Work. But for the most part, they were things he wanted to read. Things a pony could truly enjoy reading...

...stories you could tell your children.

He was in his bedroom, packing. (His spouse had not been there, and it hadn't surprised him.) Keepsakes had been left alone. He'd managed not to bother with any of the bedside books, because books possessed a considerable amount of mass and they already had to take a number on the journey, things which had to be removed from the hidden room where Doctor Gentle had started his recovery. (Most of those were the doctor's notes, and Quiet had done the binding himself. It had been surprisingly fun.) Things like the Sacred Leg Bands had no meaning for him whatsoever, and he doubted they could be sold on the road. All he'd really been concerned with was the medication.

The pills were small, and so tended to work their way into corners. Careful scavenging of everything he could locate around the nightstand provided him with a two moon supply.

It'll be enough. If it came down to a crisis, there were herbs which the doctor could use for lesser episodes: a way to stretch things out. Beyond that, prescriptions were easy to fake and even if they wound up leaving Equestria entirely -- something which seemed rather likely -- all they needed to acquire suitable medicine was an area with a significant pony population. Two moons' worth was, frankly, overkill. But they barely weighed anything, didn't take up any real room, wouldn't slow them down...

However, those who needed to run still had to be careful about just how much they took. No single chaos pearl weighed that much, but all of them were coming. Books... nothing accumulated weight faster than stacking books. They wouldn't be carrying much in the way of food: most of that had to be found along the way. (There was always grass and once you got away from Trotter's Falls, some of it might even be tasty.) She would need her own form of medicine, and he didn't know how much they had to bring...

Three ponies to haul the lot. One on the border of his senior years, and the other two in something less than the best of health. Total pulling capacity was going to be an issue.

Admittedly, she could probably haul quite a lot while in earth pony form. But that was intermittent, and he'd now seen the muscle spasms. He wouldn't (couldn't) ask her.

Well, he told himself as he put the last pill into the box, at least there's one thing I won't be carrying...

And stopped.

Stood stock-still in what would soon no longer be his bedroom. The general direction of his gaze rested upon the headboard, and very little of the metalwork was actually seen.

He'd said it, over and over again, if mostly to himself. That if put against his dream, his title could go hang. And now, on the precipice of truly dropping it into the mud of the road... he was still willing to do it. To become an ordinary pony, and that was in the future tense as the best case. He would be spending some intermediary time as a fugitive.

But when it was an hour or so away from actually talking place...

I've been keeping a group of servants in happy employment for years. They'll need new jobs. And who will take them in? If my new reputation stains them...

...well, normally, he could almost count on that problem to take care of itself. But he wouldn't be in the area any more, and distance was certainly a factor in magic. He didn't think any old memories would return after his departure, but he was certain he couldn't do anything about regional new ones from the heart of another nation.

I don't know if I left enough bits for them to get through any dark times. I don't know what's going to happen to them.

In so many ways, his part in the Great Work had never been about him. It didn't prevent a number of the consequences from being his. And he had no way to limit those to himself.

He thought about the servants who were in their last night of employment, worried about them. It was something he felt he should have thought about more and at that moment, it was also a way not to think about other things.

Quiet might go up to his library one last time, if he was the one to fetch her before departure. Or... the doctor could wind up doing it. He might have already spent those last moments among the books, without even the chance to breathe in their subtle scent one final time.

There were so many things he would be seeing for the last time. Things... and ponies. He had watched as six of them were removed from his view. Mares he would never see again.

One mare...

His horn ignited, and colorless energy which was indicated only by its sparkles fetched both paper and quill. He wrote carefully, for the words had to be precise. He also had the benefit of painful experience provided by years of forcing himself not to outright charge down Coordinator, and so they would hold.

I keep counting it as three...

Coordinator had to run, had to know that. But for some reason, Quiet couldn't make himself include the bureaucrat among their numbers. Perhaps that was simply taste.

(It turned out to be something closer to foresight.)

I didn't get to talk to her. Not after it all happened. Not after she learned so much, and still doesn't know enough.

There's... no point in going down there. Even within his inner voice, he was having trouble making the words dry. I don't think she's in the mood to listen. And writing her a letter... I can send that from anywhere, do it moons from now, as long as we're in a place we're about to leave, or I get somepony -- someone? -- else to send it. But she may not want to read that any more than she wants to hear me.

(There were hoofsteps in the distance, and that distance was shrinking quickly. Fast-moving ones. He didn't pay much attention to them, for there were always servants shifting through the castle, plus the hunt for Spike was still ongoing -- and so much of his hearing had turned inwards.)

He might try a letter anyway, in time, if only because he would hate himself all the more for not having tried. But the current words had to be written now. And so he created his final set of instructions, made them airtight and waterproof. It was something he could still do, something which had to be done. Something which felt like the last thing he could ever truly do for --

"-- Lord Presence!"

It was, perhaps, a measure of just how lost he'd been in his thoughts, busy with placing the last coda of the legal dance onto the paper and finishing it off with his signature at the exact moment the words reached him. That there was a moment when all he heard was the words. The fear, the panic, the utter desperation, the sounds of a pony whose entire world had just fallen apart -- they were a split-second behind. And so he smiled as he moved his gaze from the finished paper, began to look up at his favorite servant, and his response felt like the natural one.

"I think, Softtread," he gently said, "it's finally time to call me Quiet --"

-- which was when he saw.

The rumpled uniform. The little rips in a few places. Dirt stains. And because it was Softtread, forever immaculate while in his duties, all of that hit before he took in the heaving rib cage, the low-slung tail, the dangers of froth appearing in the coat of a senior who never should have been racing so fast for so long, not at his age --

"-- Sun and Moon!" He closed the distance between them, moving faster than he should have, and felt the first twinge. "What happened, Softtread? What's --"

He was ready to run, right then and there. Ready to be told that there were Guards at the gate, Princesses at the door, and magic about to slam into the entire castle. Ready for anything except what Softtread managed to gasp out.

"The Princess... the Bearers... there were unicorns in the Princess' cell, they were going to kill her --"

The first twinge was about to lead into pain, for it always had. Always up until that moment, when ice coated his soul.

The servant's front knees sagged. His spine threatened to collapse. "-- the dragon found me, made me take him down to them, I was going to try and lock him in, but there were three unicorns, three of the guests, and they were going to kill... Lord Presence, the Bearers..."

The back knees went.

"...they may be dead..."

And then all Quiet could hear was that inner voice. The scream.

He pushed it back.

"Spike's down there?" Trying not to hope. Preparing for the moment when he might see what failure would have created.

"He... jumped off my back, ran inside, and I... Lord Presence, I am sorry, there is no apology I can ever offer which would be sufficient, but... I saw them, I was afraid and then I -- I couldn't think, I just ran and I couldn't think..."

Quiet had never seen Softtread so shaken, so bereft of control, and...

...it's too late.

If Spike couldn't do something, it's already too late.

Or --

No. To the best of his knowledge, the guard shifts would soon be under way: somepony had gone for Chief Copper, and one of the more skilled pegasus guests had even offered to partially recharge the desaturator on the way out, allowing the overnight shift to begin their watch in the dry. So it was possible that the first of those ponies (and the first probably would have been the chief himself) had already gone down there. But... not in time, not for doing anything more than discovering seven bodies...

Maybe not seven. Maybe if we get down there fast enough... maybe they've only had time to kill Twilight and --

-- to kill...

"You look for something you can do. Then you do it. You see what happens from that, and then you do the next thing."

The pegasus might be dead too.

Which means somepony has to write those words down --

-- he focused. Somehow, he focused. He didn't know how it happened: he only knew the price -- all of the dues which would be extracted from his pained form -- had just been postponed.

"How long did it take you to find me?" For in his way, he loved the old servant, and so Softtread could just about always find him.

It got him a weak "...don't know..."

He understood that: in the panic of a fear response, time could slip, and so he nudged body and field against the aged body, helped Softtread get up. "Trot slowly, in a circle. Try to go into a cooldown. The first pony I pass, I'm sending in to help you." And then he moved for the door.

"Lord Presence?" his favorite barely managed. "...you can't go down there... there are killers..."

"The second pony I pass," Quiet grimly said, "is the first recruit."

With one exception.

He had already packed the pills into the saddlebags: those came with him. The letter, completed and now almost completely forgotten, was field-flung onto the bed. (He never saw Softtread spot it, aim that unsteady trot towards the final order from his Lord.) He stopped thinking about getting ready for departure, about anything but the next thing which had to be done.

Quiet left his bedroom, and did so for the last time.

The brown-and-white speckled unicorn was waiting, and had been using some of the time to decide just what he was waiting for.

It had taken some time to find a place he could wait in, and even more to reach it. And at that, it wasn't even a place he could stay in for very long. Coordinator had made sure to give all of his orders in full privacy, but after that... well, it had quickly become obvious that possessing some small portion of personal alibi couldn't hurt. To go home not only would have left him soaked, but after he'd gotten clear from the masses departing the castle (and past those who might still be watching from the perimeter), it would have left him alone. To have ponies with very distinct, direct memories of just where he'd been -- and that said place had been somewhere other than the cells -- was obviously a very important part of any competent plan.

So he'd wound up doing more circulation after the gathering than he had during it -- but it had left him with a dwindling number of ponies to circulate among. After a while, he'd been forced to switch things up, and an extremely temporary lowering of standards had found him assisting the servants with their cleanup: they were there, they would continue to be there for some time -- in fact, thanks to his actions, that time was on the verge of being extended -- and as nearly all of them were unicorns, they surely had enough intellect to recall his name.

Menial labor. Well, it was true that he took some pleasure in organizing, and certainly directing his lessers towards the largest messes -- the 'modified' near-monster cuisine had not gone over well, hadn't come up any better, and he had been considering ways to revoke that caterer's license -- had provided a brief distraction. But to do any of that cleanup himself... he'd avoided nearly all of it, but there was a rather frustrating key word in that statement.

It seemed as if being present at the arguable greatest moment of his life came with a small price to pay. He'd given it over, and would eventually figure out just who to extract the payback from. But...

...he'd been giving the servants direct orders. He'd been making them move under his direction, and any frustrated side glances created by his having taken charge had been mostly ignored: Coordinator had been too busy thinking about something else. Direct orders, and...

(He'd needed a moment to himself, and the birthing room had been available. In some ways, he wasn't really sure what to make of the place. Coordinator's view of marriage was that ideally, it gave you somepony close at hoof to control, who would then begin producing a number of equally-unpaid servants -- ones who would require far too much in the way of initial training, and he vaguely suspected that he would need to do some of that in order to make sure it came out properly. It had made him reluctant to date anypony other than the right one, so there hadn't been many approaches on his part, the number of vengeances created after rejection had naturally matched... and for some reason, nopony ever approached him. So his primary view of the birthing room was that it was a place where the paper trail of a life ultimately began, and he supposed it could be accorded some respect for that. However, when it came to the biology of the process...)

Of course, he'd had to plan for the results. For starters, his plan would reinforce the status quo, and there were only limited ways in which that was a positive. The uninterrupted maintenance of his own life: that had been the goal, and that would be achieved. Skimming from the funds which had been offered to the Great Work -- that would not only continue, but even Coordinator had recognized that some of those donations might be on the verge of becoming voluntary. And for those who had always possessed the falsehood of hope, somehow tricked themselves into following the lie of belief... the money would never stop coming. They had seen what they felt to be a miracle, and to see one miracle was apparently to give just about everything over in the hopes of purchasing a second. And when it came to the current definition of 'everything', 'rationality' was very much included.

(He might be able to raise the extraction rate. Some future office time was dedicated to drawing up the charts.)

So he would remain at the center of his web. But the midwife (it seemed more belittling than 'doctor,' which didn't even really apply anyway) and the so-called Lord... with all need to run removed, they would remain in Trotter's Falls. And in some ways, that was to Coordinator's benefit -- at least in the short-term. The Great Work had brought forth something, if only in the form of a new kind of taint. But still... that could potentially be refined, and if foals were to be sent on anyway, let them be sent to the buried halls. If that led to another kind of burial, it was no concern of his. He would only partake in the finished product.

But still... was it worth having them remain there indefinitely? If he could get them to move a little further away, he would have more freedom to work. Perhaps he could speak with those who now truly believed, make them see that... well, that the Great Work (he would practice saying that until it sounded sincere) was being led by a fool. That Gentle Arrival could certainly continue to do the research, run the experiments, and take the risks, but when it came to leadership...

It was a cost-benefits analysis of sorts. Having them at a distance might help him. But that would also relocate the taint which Gentle Arrival's corrupted blood (or that of his dead spouse: it hardly mattered, for one had slipped in marrying the other and so both were equally guilty) had brought into the world. Taint which had in fact been changed, rendered into the ever-shifting form of a freak.

A freak who'd never had a friend in her life.

(He remembered his time with her. He was already rewriting it so that she was not only somehow more at fault than she'd ever been, but could be convinced of it to the point where she offered the first apology.)

A freak with the raw power of a Princess.

A freak who, if a pony of intellect could keep his perfectly natural bile down, might require a rather basic approach in order to ultimately control her...

...directly.

It had been -- interesting, giving the orders in person. (He'd had to lie about not being the pony behind their blackmail, of course. He was sure he'd gotten away with it, not that it really mattered now. At any rate, he knew where all the bodies were buried and in the case of those three... well, some of the digging had been literal.) It had felt...

He had approached Twilight directly. (He still hadn't thought about why.) And what had happened... well, it hadn't exactly been the desired result, because the former Princess -- it made him smile -- had been insane. But in the end, it was all about control. It always was, because control was the most important thing. Control was its own Element, the strongest of them, and...

Obviously Coordinator wasn't waiting for the killers to come back, because that would have been the results of a lesser plan. (He knew so much about the so-called Lord's castle, had found blueprints and paperwork from centuries before, and of course it was so easy to sneak off with unused keys during a visit and make duplicates. He generally, almost automatically carried a few during visits, because you never knew where the best evidence might have been imprisoned.) There was only one place where his trio would be going next, and he imagined that their trip to the shadowlands would take place in never-fading surprise.

However...

...he'd given that trio orders. And the insanity of the undeserving alicorn (he deserved that, and now he could truly envision the day when it might be his) had kept him from initially controlling her life --

-- but there were many forms of control.

And really, when one truly thought about it, as a pony of intellect and sanity... what greater form of control was there over a life than the ability to end it?

He had given that order. Personally. But the actual murders would be committed by others --

(It had felt so good to act directly. To know that his desires would be expressed as corpses.)

-- and so he was staying in the castle.

He needed, on some level, to have an alibi for where he'd been, and so he would have to leave the birthing room soon.

He needed to plan for what would be a very lucrative future.

He needed to hear the cry when the discovery was made.

He needed to see the bodies.

(He wondered what it would feel like to personally create one.)

And then there was a cry.

It should have been another one of the great moments for his life and for a single heartbeat, it was, for all he initially heard was volume and words suggesting a direction. But then there were more words.

He thought about those words: he couldn't help it. His mind turned against him, just long enough for an emotion to get through. A concept. And one of those thoughts would come back to him later, not too far in the future, presenting itself for final review.

The last thought.

She'd given up on the book, at least for now. (There was a faint hope of taking it with them.) The pain was still increasing: all but the last vestiges of the drugs had worn off. And the change continued, with no way to stop it. Only to accelerate, and to do that now...

Approaching the oversized variant of what had been her original form. The body of the broken. The incarnation of failure.

I failed. My failure. Not his. Never his...

Was it possible for her to be fixed? She didn't know. She wasn't sure she deserved it.

But he'll learn from my failure. He'll do better the --

-- the next time.

There would be a next time. She'd always known that: she would blaze the trail, and others would follow. And she'd stumbled onto a path, one which led into thorns and spikes and razorwhips tearing at her skin from the inside, but that failure would keep others from going down it, perhaps lead to something which would work...

There's going to be children.

She'd never had siblings. (For a child who'd killed her mother, that void could be expected, and was equally deserved.) She didn't know what it was like to have foals around, any more than she was truly familiar with the company of anypony other than him. But now the broken, those who would have been sent on... they would be sent to him.

Perhaps they wouldn't be afraid of her, at least not after they'd been around her for some time. She could teach them how not to be like her. And he would educate them in still more things, continue the Great Work, learn how to change them --

-- I'm scared.

The thought seemed to have come from nowhere. The emotion certainly had. Nothing felt as if it had led into the feeling, and there seemed to be a complete lack of paths away from the sudden surge of sheer terror.

"If he ever loved you at all..."

And given any chance, some intruding thoughts simply went around her mind in an ever-shrinking spiral.

She made an effort, tried to wrench her shaken focus away from the pink one's horrible words, and found herself back at the children. Found that the words had followed.

Will he love them?

Of course he would love them. He had to love them. He had spent his life in trying to make a world where they could be fixed. Nopony ever would have done that out of anything other than love...

The pain was building, and so much of it assaulted her from within. Burning within her bones, twisting in the muscles, organs which felt as if they were collapsing in on themselves. But there was a different kind of pain added to that cacophony. The pain of being scared. She didn't understand why she felt that way, why it wouldn't leave. She had thought about children, and then she had been scared --

There was a cry then, a distant one which just barely echoed its way through the halls, with the tiniest portion making its way past the door. Nothing in her was capable of hearing it.

-- I'm scared for them.

Twilight supposed the concluding words of the short speech had been spoken before, but... not by Rarity. The individual components of the sentence, yes, but... not with this purpose, and perhaps never in the current order. In a way, they provided a tiny moment of purely internal humor, a single heartbeat in which she found some level of relief. And at the same time, they told her just how serious everything still was, how close they had come and how much more there might still be to do.

"Very well," the designer said, and then swallowed. Hard, accompanied by a single jolting head shake and a lone lash of the purple tail. "We are not particularly well-equipped with resources. Additionally, there is a chance we may find ourselves outside, and the storm was scheduled to continue for some time. We cannot move at our best speed while draped in soaked cloth, and the few gems which adorn them will find better use as fuel for Spike's fire. So, everypony..." Another hard gulp. "...drop your dresses."

The Bearers scrambled, and ornate garments found themselves flung to the hallway's stone floor. (They were just outside the cell which Applejack and Pinkie had occupied: in the event of sudden arrivals, they all wanted extra directions to move.) This was quickly joined by the joyfully-shredded remnants of a tuxedo, and Spike quickly moved in.

"Yes," Rarity declared from the middle of what was quickly threatening to become a permanent wince. "Don't worry about leaving the cradles intact, Spike. Just... tear them loose... we do not have time to be... careful -- oh, dear -- no, just rip that one free, I wasn't particularly happy with the drape anyway..."

A certain degree of style revision took place.

"So what's the plan, Twi?" Applejack asked. "I'm hoping you've got one. A lot."

She did. Unfortunately, it wasn't much of a plan. "We get out of the castle."

Pinkie thought about that. "So you're just going to teleport us back to the ravine? Rainbow said you took her there for flight training, so --"

Twilight quickly shook her head. "No."

"...Twilight," Fluttershy carefully began, "...I know you're only licensed to take three ponies with you, and that means two trips, but we have a little time right now and if something happens in a few seconds, I trust you to --"

Another fast movement. "That's not it. We're getting out of the castle, but we're doing that by going through it, for as long as we can. If I have to try an emergency evacuation -- if I can even break through the lockdown -- I can try to get us into the ravine. But there's a chance that Doctor Gentle --" she no longer felt comfortable using the honorary (and that, in itself, was now an odious word) title, but didn't want to put him on a first-name basis either, and the pronoun currently felt too generic "-- and Quiet are still in the castle. With her. If they're here, we have to try and intercept. Catch them."

Applejack's reply was a single hard nod.

Rainbow was a little more dubious. "I hate to say this --" and her face showed it "-- but... I can't fly faster than a teleport. Not even short-range, not when I don't know where the other pony is coming out. And we know the dumb --" frowned "-- stupid --" discarded that "-- that he can teleport. If he sees us coming, we're all outside, and he gets a chance to cast..."

The farmer's head came back up, and her expression echoed Rarity's ongoing wince. "Oh -- yeah. Twi, y'mentioned a spell which would let you follow...?"

Twilight miserably shook her head. "I know it exists, Applejack. I don't know how to cast it. I've never had any need for it."

"But he can't escort!" Pinkie piped up. "He couldn't when she was born, because... it might have changed everything, if he'd just been able to. And he still couldn't when he found me after I ran away, because he said so! Maybe he still hasn't learned. So that would mean he can only teleport himself..."

Spike froze in mid-sapphire-grab, looked up from his low crouch to Pinkie. "You ran away?"

And now there were three matching winces. "Later," Pinkie said. "We can talk about that stuff later. We might not have much time to talk about the things we do need to talk about, which means I should probably stop talking about talking and just talk. Twilight, if he still doesn't know how to do it, he's the only one who can get away in a hurry. Well, she could, but I don't think she knows how to follow him or take him with her, because she hasn't been doing it for too long. And maybe Quiet can't do it at all. So if it's just him..."

"She cannot," Rarity said. "Not currently, not without accelerating the change. Based on my rough estimate for the time we have been below... she has likely departed from the unicorn state, at least beyond the point where she could still cast."

"Which leaves her," Applejack groaned, "as an earth pony. Sun and Moon, we've gotta be careful there. She gets scared once, or just tries something without knowin' just what she's saying..."

They all thought about that, and then mostly managed to stop.

Twilight refocused. "So he might try to get away," she concluded, "but he still might not be able to take them along. And I'm sure Quiet can't teleport --" paused. "-- I hope. And I'll be watching for it. But if Doctor Gentle is the only one who can do it..."

"...he still might not," Fluttershy softly broke in. "I don't know if he'll leave her..."

It was possible -- but Twilight wasn't going to risk treating it as a certainty. "Even if he tries, don't forget: we have one potential resource there. But we'll still need to get a shot at using it."

They had used some seconds in briefing each other. There hadn't been much of that: there was very little need to tell Spike all the details about what had happened while the mares had been the guests of the conference. But they had counted what few resources they did possess...

"As long," Rainbow groaned, "as we can remember we're supposed to be looking for somepony."

...including the fresh knowledge which had to be passed along immediately. The nature of Quiet's talent.

"Just try to think about him every so often, Rainbow," Twilight cautioned her. "More if you see him. Don't give him a chance to slip your mind."

"But what if he can make the whole nation forget? What if everypony just forgets there was a Great Work at all, or that we were even here?" And now it was possible to hear the fast-rising panic moving up through the emotional stratosphere. "What if ponies forget us because he wants them to --"

"-- it's not that strong," Twilight desperately cut her off. "It can't be. And I'm sure he has to be fairly close to make it start working. He's not going to make the Princess forget there's a search when he's never met her." She could try to feel for the talent's operation and directly counter it, but mark magic was so subtle... "We're getting into the main castle and we're searching for him. Them. Her. He probably can't hide all of them."

I hope.

"And if we find them," Rarity said, "we attempt to...?" Tilted her head to the right, waited for Twilight to finish it.

"Capture." Two had to be jailed, and one still needed any help Twilight could give.

Cautiously, "And if she resists?"

"Whatever we can. Whatever we have to. I'll teleport her if I can. Worst-case, I'll put her in the ravine and just hope we can find her later: it'll at least get us out of her range. But with the rest of the castle..."

The words hurt. They were words she had never said before, not in that order. But they were words which had to be said, and they took a little more of her innocence away.

"...we've already had one attempt to kill us. There could be more. I don't want to kill anypony, and if there's any chance of it, we need to take Doctor Gentle and Quiet alive. But if somepony's trying to kill you, and there's no other way out -- don't waste your last chance in trying to think of one. It's the last resort, but -- if you have to do it... then..."

"...Twilight." Fluttershy, still soft, but more urgent than ever. "...we understand."

They did. Pinkie's rib cage was moving a little too quickly. Spike took a single shuddering breath. Rarity, forever the dirtiest fighter among them (because when you didn't have raw field or physical strength and didn't know workings for conventional offense and defense, you couldn't afford to fight fair), simply nodded. Applejack's eyes went hard. Rainbow, perpetually one bad move away from taking somepony out (and possibly herself) pulled air in between her teeth. And Fluttershy, who knew death better than any of them... was simply, outwardly calm.

"We find them if we can," Rarity summarized. "Fighting our way through the entire castle if we must, I presume?"

"I'm really hoping most of the guests have gone home by now," Twilight admitted.

"If we cannot locate them?" the designer continued. "If they have already departed, or escape us?"

"Then as soon as we get outside, Spike sends out every scroll we've got left," Twilight definitively stated. "We're calling for help. We can't get Canterlot, but that idea Spike told me about was right: there's a chance Baltimare could reach us. And there's more police departments along the coast than that. I want every reinforcement we can summon in."

"...what about the local police?" Fluttershy asked.

Rarity sighed. "Based on speech patterns and behavior, I believe we have already locked at least one of their representatives away. The police become rather harder to trust when they stop enforcing the law and begin imposing belief, Fluttershy. We request help from those outside Trotter's Falls. Any help we can find. Far enough away to hopefully be outside the conspiracy, close enough for a teleport or escort relay to reach us quickly."

Rainbow's left forehoof put a stomp on her words. "And Coordinator?"

"Capture," Twilight darkly said. "If that means kicking him into the ground to make him stop fighting, do it. Just remember, he's a Gifted School graduate. He has to have some workings which could hurt us. So if you see his horn ignite, backlash him into next week."

"Not a problem," Rainbow confidently declared. "I can practice on those three who tried to come after you two --"

"-- no." They weren't going anywhere -- and then Twilight's expression subtly shadowed into thought.

They'd know her too long to miss it. "Twi?" Applejack checked.

"Just... wondering what they all could have done," Twilight slowly said, "where killing us was the smallest price for keeping it quiet."

"Think about it later," Applejack firmly told her. Paused. "An' -- try not to dream. Are we ready to move?"

"I've got the last gem," Spike reported -- blinked. Looked up at Twilight. "Wait... why can't we go to the ravine now?"

Which reminded her that he was still her little brother. "Because the lockdown is still up, and we have to start searching while there's still time --"

"-- no! Take me there, I'll send a few scrolls, and we'll come right back! The reinforcements could be coming in while we're still working our way out!"

-- but that didn't mean he wasn't capable of having good ideas. "You're right! Okay, start writing: we don't want to do that outside. They should arrive as dry as possible." Oddly, transit flame didn't do anything to evaporate water during transport. They'd spent a post-water main break afternoon experimenting once... "I'll start thinking about how to get through the lockdown spell. But it's one try, and then we have to move. Baltimare first --"

-- which was when they all heard the first set of not so distant hoofsteps hit the stone.

Brother and sister exchanged glances.

It was a good idea. But they were out of time.

"-- when we all get outside," Twilight finished. "We can't split up now."

If we all get outside.

We can die. Any of us can die. All of us can die.

The slender jaw set, and her horn ignited. Applejack dropped into a pre-charge pose. Pinkie tensed. Fluttershy shifted towards a wall, all the better to brace herself. Spike swallowed a gem. Rainbow got in the air. Rarity's field gathered up a mixture of cloth and stone fragments.

So don't let it happen.

The fight began.

Memento Mori

It was strange, just how many of the sounds reached them, especially when Twilight had to try and hear them over the pounding of her own heart.

The changelings: in terms of combatants involved, that had been their biggest fight. (She couldn't really count the buffalo, not when the pies had been created in an attempt to show just how stupid a real battle would be, waging a mock war with the silliest weapon possible.) And with changelings... in terms of sapience, she still wasn't sure just how much was there. Chrysalis could think, even if her imagination seemed to be somewhat lacking. But when it came to the smaller ones... the change-created confusion attempts had been weak, their tactics poor, and outstrategizing them had mostly been a matter of having any strategy at all. Find a way to deal with their sheer numbers and victory was almost assured.

But this was going to be ponies.

It's not that far off. Individuals can think. But some of them will move as a herd. The more we can scare the ones who don't have any real experience, the better the chance that they'll start to react as a herd. We might be able to make the weakest-willed break for the exit just by showing that we can take them down. Knock a few out...

Not that it was easy to render a pony unconscious, certainly not as easy as stories liked to pretend it was. And trying to send somepony into the lesser level of shadow might end in a plummet into the dark.

But survival, in a very real way, was selfishness. Fluttershy had said something very much like that once, when Twilight had asked her about how the caretaker dealt with the needs of her carnivores. Knowing what some of those animals had done before coming to the cottage.

"...all they understand is that they want to live. They know what they have to do... to keep living. They don't know how to choose, they don't understand what choice is, and so all they can do is choose themselves. You have to think before you choose someone, somepony else over yourself. You have to know what that choice means. And... when you understand choice... you start to feel afraid of making the wrong ones." She'd paused, a much longer hesitation than usual. "...I think... that's the first thought, when something can have a real one. A rabbit doesn't think about getting caught when it steals food: it just knows the food is tasty, it wants that food, and if its pony is frustrated with it, it might even be sorry -- but it'll still steal food again, because it tastes too good. Real thinking... starts with thinking about consequences."

Twilight had already thought about them, and continued to do so as the group listened, waiting for their chance.

"What happened?" somepony gasped. "What happened to the door?" The sound of the fear arrived a few seconds ahead of the growing scent. "Did... did the dragon do this?"

"Let me out!" That from the pony with the orange field, the one trapped under Twilight's dome. (She needed to be careful about that. There were only so many shield spells she could maintain at once, so many workings she could keep going, and she was still protecting Rainbow's manuscript. If the fight became intensive, she would have to start choosing which ones to release.) "They're loose, the Bearers are loose!"

There was a strange sound then, one which just barely registered in Twilight's ears. There was relief in that gasp, along with something else.

"Chief?" somepony yelped. "They got Chief Copper --"

"-- no names!" another pony abruptly shouted.

The muscles along Twilight's ribs went tight. Law enforcement. Name plus a lock enchantment which he could automatically bypass. You called it, Rarity. We weren't really thinking about trying to get help from the local police before this and we're sure not doing it now.

"They didn't go past me!" the imprisoned officer yelled. "They may still be down here! Get more restraints, chains, ropes --"

You're not getting the chance.

She glanced back at the others, found Rainbow's wingbeats already starting to accelerate. Led the charge.

Hooves pounded against stone. Claws skittered for a moment, and then Spike was on Rarity's back. And Twilight knew the other ponies could hear them, they'd just destroyed any chance at an ambush, but she'd already picked up on the fear. She wanted to make that worse. She wanted them to know that whatever had happened to that door might be on the verge of happening to them.

The Bearers and their Protector went around the corner, Rainbow already beginning to pass over Twilight's head, going too far in front of the others, they'd never had anything even faintly resembling a battlecry and the closest equivalent was usually 'Rainbow, wait!'...

She had a split-second to survey just what they were charging down, and instantly decided there were far too many unicorns. But she'd expected that, and it told her exactly where to start.

If it's them or us, I choose us.

The opposing group (at least fourteen ponies, and she wasn't sure she hadn't overlooked a few at the back), some of whom were already feeling the fear, trying not to let it saturate their senses to the point where it took control, saw a smaller force coming at them. Six mares and a very young dragon, outnumbered by a minimum of two to one.

Horns ignited. Workings of all kinds were projected towards them, a full palette of pain --

-- Twilight's corona ignited, went to the full single and a little beyond, pinkish flares of negation moving forward as she countered every effort she could intercept. Which, for the first volley, turned out to be all of them.

The cult, no longer working with the benefit of surprise... didn't know how to react, not in the first second. They were unicorns, for the most part, because it was Trotter's Falls and so of course they were mostly unicorns. Their first thought in a fight was magic: how to use it, how to stop it from being used against them, the best way to get that crucial blow in against an opponent's lit horn. So their first assault had been with their fields, because that was how most unicorns started any fight where they had distance.

Workings which had just been shut down by a single mare.

And the moment when the herd truly realized that marked the instant when the true fear began.

"I'm on defense!" Twilight called out. "Everypony -- make them hurt!"

She had just enough time to say it before Rainbow went into the enemy front line, forehooves slamming onto the first lit horn which could be reached, pushed her hind hooves off the same pony's face. But there was very little room to fly in the corridors, she didn't have the space to turn and line up the second attack, she'd just given everypony among their enemies something to focus on --

-- which had been part of the plan. When you fought by Rainbow's side (or, given how things usually worked out, from several body lengths behind her) long enough, you started to factor in the inevitable.

A few among the enemy started to turn their attention towards the pegasus. And Rarity, who had been waiting for the misdirection to take hold, lit damp stone with the glow of soft blue.

"Thank you for the catering tonight," she stated. "However, your 'special spice' has been rejected."

Two empty, glowing feedbags flew forward, pulled themselves over pony heads. And that was simple enough to remove with a little effort, but the attempts were creating more disruption as temporarily blinded ponies lurched off-course, went into their fellows, and that was when the rats (still with some voles) came in, the squeaking wave moving just ahead of Rarity's second salvo, with little bits of cell detritus pummeling into vulnerable spots while fragments of cloth mostly aimed themselves to go over eyes or, when possible, wound up jammed into nostrils. It was pain and distraction and not knowing what was happening, it let Rainbow move back and prepare the next assault as Twilight negated two more castings --

-- watch for silver, Sun and Moon, look for silver and do anything to stop it --

-- and Applejack, who'd used the moment for her own charge, went right into the other front line. Or, given earth pony strength and a very angry mare, through.

It wasn't an attack. For those in the cult, it was a nightmare escaped into reality. The way a unicorn fought an earth pony was at a distance: as far away as you possibly could be and still clearly see the target. You didn't let them get close enough for that superior strength to matter. And now there was an earth pony among them, to ignite their horns at this range would be to beg for backlash, they would need crucial seconds to get their heads and hooves in line for a physical assault (as much as some could think about that at all, with rats starting to climb their legs), she was an exceptionally powerful specimen and she had something of a grudge.

Applejack twisted her body into a jump, cleared space with lashing tail and rotating torso, found enough room to land, plant her forehooves, and hind legs which could break young trees lashed out. A unicorn slammed into the wall, slid down, and did no more than twitch.

"Keep going!" Twilight shouted, her field tearing somepony's working apart just before a secondary effort yanked a weapon away, with the point chipping into stone -- and then spotted something. "Rainbow, on your left!"

The weather coordinator spun at the speed of instinct, saw the pegasus whose legs were frantically weaving the dampness of the underground into a cloud...

The next part was inevitable, and took much less than ten seconds.

Rarity had switched her focus to another pegasus: flight feathers were being yanked out one by one, with every scream ignored. (Twilight negated an attempt to do the same to Rainbow.) One opposing pony managed to get free from the scrum, started to cross the distance towards them with head lowered and horn angled to hurt --

-- yellow hooves moved into a four-point landing, directly in the center of his back, and the unicorn ended his charge in a long robe-shredding skid across the floor.

"...sorry," Fluttershy softly said. "I'm a little stronger than I look..." And Spike shot a precisely-aimed burst of flame past her, opened up room for Applejack's next move...

Still too many, we can't give them time to think, we have to keep them reacting, we need --

-- chaos.

It hadn't been any part of the plan. It was a sudden, wild thought, and Twilight gave it free passage to lungs and air.

"Pinkie!" she called out. "Do you see these ponies? They're guests! That means the party is still going! And it's dull down here! Why don't you liven it up?"

The baker, who had been just about to start her own charge, turned her bright pink head just enough for that blue gaze to stare at Twilight, eyes widening --

-- the charge turned into a pronk. A trio of four-legged hops, with the last sending her extra-high --

-- it happened.

She didn't just see the results. It happened in a moment when Pinkie had come through her fear of rejection, with nothing left to hide. It also took place in an instant where Twilight had accepted what her friend truly was, and perhaps that was why she finally felt it happen.

The baker landed, grinning as the curly tail came up, lashed up and over her back as head and mane lowered, and a spray of high-speed, multicolored, fully-blinding confetti went into the half of the battle which Applejack and Rainbow weren't occupying.

Sure, the librarian thought to herself as she countered another enemy effort, now doing so in a state of light daze, if you just ask 'How is an earth pony doing this?', then it doesn't make any sense. But when you start thinking about her as a sort of unicorn in an earth pony's body, who's casting through a chaos-polished scatter-lens...

Where does she get her party supplies?

Where does the hat come from?

It's all the same place. It's always been the same answer. A field of sorts, working without a horn, added to a touch of something Other.

Pinkie could conjure.

They probably don't last that long. It might take energy to maintain them, and even Pinkie's only got so much. The hat comes out when she feels it's appropriate, but it doesn't stay. She could potentially keep a few things going for a while, but the more there is in total mass, the less time each might have --

(A distant part of Twilight realized that she had the makings of the single greatest journal article submission to the Thaumaturgy Review ever seen, one which would probably never be written down because (among so many other reasons) the author would clearly be rejected as a madmare.)

-- and that was when she saw him.

It surprised her later, that she'd seen him at all. But he had come to look for her, desperately needing to find her, and so it created a moment where he could be seen. She hadn't initially overlooked him due to that horrible talent: he was just smaller than everypony else, had been towards the back of the group, and was thus nearly lost behind the increasingly-panicked mass.

She saw him, and he saw her.

She didn't smile. She imagined that a character in a story would have had an exceptionally thin specimen playing on her lips, just long enough to see -- and the sight would have then been lost in the blinding light of a corona on the excessively-heavy attack. But this was reality, and Twilight didn't have a smile in her. Not for this.

Quiet.

It was, at most, a single second where they had a line of sight to each other. A second during which Twilight, still countering every unicorn she could, was unable to cast. A moment where she saw his face, and rejected half of the mixed expression she saw there, for she would not accept his relief.

However, she was perfectly willing to work with the fear.

"They're still in the castle!" Twilight yelled. "Quiet's at the back! Rainbow, go for --"

But she'd already lost the sight line, and Rainbow was slightly busy with not getting kicked out of the air. And there were pounding hooves now, more than four of them, some of the attackers were starting to break as the fear overwhelmed their senses, they were running and the fact that reinforcements seemed to be coming down just gave them more to trample on the way out.

I can't teleport there: there's too many other ponies and even if I don't get recoiled, it'll be a second when I can't block. He's going to get away --

The slender jaw set.

-- no. He's not.

"KEEP FIGHTING!" she screamed. "WE CAN BREAK THROUGH!" And, because nopony could be Rarity's friend without picking up just a touch of theatrics, "WE CAN BREAK THEM!"

There were more ponies coming down, and they would eventually learn that some of them represented the ironic (and, admittedly, rather overdue) arrival of the remainder of their intended guards. It meant they were still outnumbered. It was all of those ponies against six mares and one dragon. Seven total sapients.

An opposing force which wasn't supposed to kill them, which couldn't rely on surprise, struggling to keep their focus within the miasma of pony fear, against seven very angry sapients.

The results, as seen from the view of the cult, were turning out to be something less than ideal.

(He should have run.)

Coordinator had heard the cry being sounded in the halls: that somepony was trying to kill the Bearers. Not had killed: was trying. It meant something had gone wrong, perhaps critically so, and it couldn't be his fault, for his plan had been perfect. Those he'd chosen to both kill and die had to have done something wrong. Ponies whom he'd spoken to directly, ponies who were meant to carry both his visage and any suspicions they'd had regarding it into the shadowlands.

The attempt had been discovered, and those who had made it might still be alive...

...they could tell the others about me --

Some of the mares could have survived.

-- they could tell them about me...

At first, he remained in the birthing room: he needed a few more seconds to think. And thoughts had come... but they didn't seem to really go anywhere. He was the sort of pony who thought in advancing steps: first you do this, then you do the next thing, and then somepony else was trapped into doing everything else for you. He had to think of what to do next, and for several seconds, seconds which united against him into a force of blocking minutes, all his thoughts did was go around in a circle. It was as if his very mind had been encased in Twilight's horrible field, with the pressure keeping everything inside.

He needed to plan. He had to find a way to come through this with his comfortable life intact, with control maintained. But he...

...he couldn't think. Not about the lesser options of escape and existence as a powerless fugitive. He needed to find a way to come out on top, and all he could think about was the chance of survivors. Ponies who would be able to talk, mares who might listen.

There were ponies going down to the cells, and they were heading there to save the Bearers. Obeying the orders of fools. And if they even partially succeeded...

The stink of fear reached him, saturated his senses without bothering to notify the spiraling mind of what had occupied it. Most of that was rising from his own skin.

When he was under stress, his field would wink out. It was among the greatest secrets of his life, one of the reasons he made sure that all of the stress was felt by others. And now, in the moment when he needed to plan more than ever, his thoughts were doing the same --

-- pounding hooves went by in the hallway, and the desperate shout blasted into his ears.

"They're breaking out! Get ponies down to the cells! The Bearers are out!"

He never truly thought about how it might have happened, not beyond deciding it had to be the fault of others. He simply took that information in, added it to the newest of churning storms and watched as something very much like lightning (or a vicious projection of field, to keep the comparison away from the feather dusters) launched forth. Because those words had been the last thing he needed, the information which finally allowed him to realize what he had to do.

Coordinator left the birthing room, and did so on the gallop.

(He should have run.)

He was moving, and doing so in what he saw as the only possible direction.

And where would the supposed Lord have put the freak?

He knew Quiet, because he believed himself to know everything about everypony. The 'most devoted' (with the quotes intended to contain the nausea), instructed to give the living taint somewhere it could pass the time, would have put her in the library. The public one, with all the books which could ever fail to take her mind off her status for so much as a single heartbeat. He knew exactly where the sin had been contained, and it meant that was where he had to go.

There were other ponies moving through the halls, of course, and some of them saw him. It didn't matter, nor did any questions they might have had as to why he was racing in opposition to the flow. He had his destination, and they had theirs. He was the only one who was moving the right way.

He had been inside that pinkish field bubble, had felt Twilight's hideous strength, a power level which should have been his (which could still be his), and he knew he couldn't counter it. He could have gone to the triple corona, dedicated everything he had until the moment of collapse to the effort, and the main question would have been whether the mare would even notice. Socially, he had known he was capable of outmaneuvering her, at least until the moment he'd realized he was up against somepony who was too insane to care about the real. Given enough time, there might have even been a way around that. But he didn't have time, and he needed power. There was a chance the Bearers might get to the upper portions of the castle, especially when they were up against ponies too stupid to simply kill them. It would potentially leave him facing down a Princess: a direct fight he couldn't hope to win.

Except that he had a plan.

He'd been told so much about her. At first because he was part of the 'Great Work,' and then because he'd been managing a portion of the search. He'd had to know some of what she was capable of, what the midwife had seen during the failed ascension attempt. And then she'd come back, she'd spoken to the parent who should have killed her at birth about what had happened in the wild zone and Coordinator, who had to arrange the conference... well, there was certain knowledge he just had to have, wasn't there?

That she had to be kept as calm as possible.
That she didn't have full control.
That things happened when she was scared.

She's a freak. But she's a freak who has the raw strength of an alicorn.

And the best counter to a Princess...

It was, as plans went, extremely simple, and perhaps that was best. He even had the single most essential part of it with him. And so that was what he thought about as he galloped towards the library, moving as fast as he could (which, for a pony who spent most of his life in an office, wasn't very fast at all). He thought about his new plan, and how it would succeed, for he would be there to see it happen. He didn't think about what had happened in the past, about how other ponies might regard their own memories, or any possibility of failure. In some ways, he simply couldn't.

He moved against the current, and it eventually brought him to where no other ponies were moving at all. To the door. (He didn't think about whether she might have been moved. She had to be there, and so she would be.) And because everything would soon be under control (or Control, the strongest Element of all), his horn ignited, dull grey field moving in two directions at once: one portion heading for the door's lever, the other darting towards his garment.

The door opened, and there was a moment when he saw exactly what he wanted to see.

The mare's head was already coming up, startled by the sounds of approaching hoofsteps and opening door: she might have even registered some of the more distant cries from the halls. That part didn't matter. She was there, she was looking up, and her mouth was just starting to open. She was likely on the verge of asking a question, something where she would be far too stupid to understand any answer, and keeping those idiot words inside was a pleasant side effect of the plan.

He knew what his opening line had to be, and had mentally practiced it on the gallop. It was enough to remove nearly all of the bile.

"I'm with the Great Work," he told her. "I'm your friend. And the Great Work needs you to drink this."

His field opened the bottle, sent it towards her mouth, tilted her head back to make the liquid rush down her throat.

It was all about power. About knowing that power would be there when you needed it. For there were three ways to increase field strength, and only two of them worked. The Amulet... rumors which he'd never been able to fully track. But field boosters -- if you could find the right ponies, those were available. And so he'd always kept one close to hoof, for the moment when another kind of power would become necessary. A drug whose effects manifested as a percentage increase on the user's original strength.

A booster he'd just given to a freak with the raw power of an alicorn.

It was a simple plan. Bring her strength up to the point where nothing could counter it. Tell her just the right things about what was happening below. That the Bearers were trying to kill her father (the pony who should have killed her), that should do the trick. Get her down to where the fight was. And then, if it came down to it, if she was somehow still reluctant... he just had to scare her.

Perhaps he would even be lucky enough to have the so-called Lord and midwife present at the battle. He might wind up wiping out the current leadership of the Great Work in one uncontrolled shot. And yes, it was possible for whatever happened to remove some of his resources, too (although not him, as he would be safely behind her), but it would leave him in charge of the rest and the freak, with nopony to turn to...

She swallowed. It was an automatic reaction: liquid was being poured down her throat, and it was swallow or choke. And with that, he'd won. He had seen exactly what he'd needed to see.

And in what should have been that moment of triumph, he finally saw what was.

Drops of excess liquid staining into a deep purple coat. Shocked blue eyes. No horn.

He'd just given a unicorn field booster drug to an earth pony.

She harshly coughed, the final open expression of a rib cage spasm. Spat the bottle out, and his field just barely remained intact around it, kept the remaining contents from spilling. Stared at him.

"You," the broken voice choked out. "I. Know you. You. Called me. A clod..."

The freak began to move, powerful leg muscles pushing her body off the plush bench. Getting ready to approach him. A huge mare, a near-match for the Lunar Princess in size, with the base (useless) strength of an earth pony (the least of ponies) magnified by sheer mass...

He blamed the midwife. He blamed the failure which had created the cycle of change. He blamed everything except the tunnel vision which had not allowed him to see anything other than his own dream. And he fought against the rising fear, fought to keep control and for one of the very few times in his life, the last time, he actually won. The bottle dipped, swayed -- but it did not drop out of the bubble. His field remained intact. And he did the only thing he could do, the last option he had left.

But even in the face of possible death, he had his standards. And so at the moment before he downed the remaining contents, he wiped the bottleneck against his jacket.

It was just about instantaneous: it was designed to be. Fire moved down his throat, blazed into his nerves, replaced blood with lightning. Power flowed through him. A level of strength he'd never known, something which made him feel as if he could do anything, that the staggering mare was nothing more than a strictly temporary annoyance, and he barely noticed as the side effect started to hit him. Every field booster had a visible side effect: weaker versions were known to change the whites of the eyes to black. All things considered, he could trade the loss of his mane and tail hair for his life, and so the first strands to fall away (a process which would only accelerate) were unimportant.

...she was staggering. It wasn't just the pain, the agony she deserved (and he saw a muscle spasm beneath her skin). She looked... dizzy.

"What..." She took a step forward, listed heavily to the right, nearly went down. "What did you..."

Both foreknees bent, collapsed. Her head went down as her throat contorted. And then the vomiting began.

He watched it for a few seconds, basking in her pain. Considered that he really should have expected such: he'd known that nopony could use a field booster meant for another race, and that meant an adverse reaction made sense. Perhaps there was even a chance for it to be fatal, and he would be the one to remove taint from the world. But at the moment, that taint couldn't come after him. It couldn't even stand up, and hooves slipped repeatedly as it made the attempt. Some of that was pain, and a little more was from stepping in the spreading liquid. Very expensive liquid, and he normally would have focused on the sheer waste before finding some way to take the price out of her hide -- but in this case, the chance of her death was sufficient compensation.

He nearly laughed, watching her struggle. He did smile.

"I don't need you," he stated, as thaums rushed through him. (His back legs felt a little odd. He supposed they just weren't used to supporting so much strength.) "I don't need anypony! With this in me, I can take her on myself!"

(His heartbeat seemed uneven. Then again, it had never been asked to pump sheer magic before.)

"This," he told her, because he had once been asked to educate a clod and even the stupidest could potentially benefit from a final lesson, "is power. This is control."

(There was a pounding in his ears. It was oddly difficult to isolate the source.)

"This is the only thing that matters --"

-- and sparkling silver glow slammed into place around his body, flung him to the side, sent him crashing into a table with enough force to crack one of the legs, along with three of his ribs.

"-- what did he do?" Gentle Arrival demanded as he raced into the room, heading directly for the taint. "Tell me what he did! You're sick, he made you sick --"

"-- the... bottle..." the taint choked out, just managing to tilt her head in the relevant direction. The silver field seized it.

Coordinator stared. Looked at the blatant theft, the taking of what was his. And he tried to get up, but his legs seemed to be working rather oddly. They weren't moving as he was telling them to. They need to be punished, but that was something which could wait for later. Right now, he had power, the midwife was in his sights, his field went directly for the older stallion's throat --

-- and a simple flare of silver took the grey apart.

Gentle Arrival brought the bottle up to his nostrils. Sniffed. Looked at Coordinator, using a little more time to do so, witnessed tail hairs falling away. And the warm orange eyes turned cold.

"A fifty-percent mix, isn't it?" he decided. "I don't have personal experience with these, but I've heard about some of the side effects, and I can't imagine you using anything less than the maximum strength available -- with very little concern as to the quality. The most potent ones are supposed to be the hardest to get right. But this would have to be your first use, yes? And of course, you would be the kind of pony who would feel that the worst of anything is something which only happens to others..."

A slow head shake.

"Fifty extra percent of your original strength," the older stallion observed. "If I was more of a mathematician, I'm sure this would provide the answer to a fascinating question. Exactly what is one hundred and fifty percent of zero?" Turned to the freak, trotted up to her, dropped down and nuzzled against the liquid-stained face.

"A field booster..." she just barely managed. "He gave. Me a...?"

He nodded. "You vomited. That's the most important thing. So you should just feel sick for a while." And sighed. "But I can't give you any painkillers now, because I don't know how they'll interact with any portion which actually managed to get into your body."

"I. Understand..."

The midwife straightened. Looked at Coordinator, who had magic in his veins (something which now seemed to be evaporating the blood) and power in his soul (which was carving out a hollow) and still couldn't get past the most basic of counters.

"Do you know where the extra strength comes from, when you take a booster?" the older stallion quietly asked. "It's cannibalized from the rest of the body. And when the drug wears off, or even before that, if you're not particularly strong... you drop. The higher the boost, the longer the fall. And I could ask why you gave my daughter that drug. I have many questions, and very little time."

A portion of Coordinator's mane drifted across his left eye, fell to the floor.

"But I suspect," the midwife softly continued, "that you only have the latter. Because there is chaos in the halls, and somepony thought to tell me about it. A messenger sent by my most devoted. So I came to where I had to be, because I heard what was happening. That while they were under my protection, knowing what I had said would happen..."

He trotted closer. Knelt down, maintaining the clamp of silver field around Coordinator's jaw.

"I have a little time, I think," he decided. "The chaos remains below, and I know where the passages are, when the Bearers do not. I know there's an entrance close by. And I hear no hoofsteps or wingbeats approaching. So, while we both still have time... there are things I'd like you to think about, because there are ponies who say it's never too late to learn. You should learn, at the last."

The living taint, just visible past mauve fur, was struggling to her hooves again.

"I know you choose more for blackmail than caring," the older stallion stated. "I imagine that you have files ready to be mailed out if you don't actively stop their sending at least once per moon, correct? Then I see this as a rather convenient way of cleansing the ranks. We will lose some resources... but those who remain will be eager to recruit. They will give of their own free will, until the Great Work is complete, for they have witnessed miracle, and when others hear... they will want to give."

Dark purple fur rippled: a combination of pain, transformation, and shudder.

"I also imagine," Gentle Arrival went on, "that we will be seeing rather more of what remains. As I've known you were skimming for some time. In those moons when only a few donations arrive, and I know the ponies who are giving, it's easy to learn where the total falls short. And knowing that you were the cause, I just chose to see those bits as having been -- put aside for an emergency."

He leaned a little closer.

"I can't work out what your story for the Bearers' deaths was supposed to be," he said. "I'm vaguely interested, if not enough to let you speak. But I'm sure you consider it perfect enough to repeat for your contacts in the press." A brief pause. "It makes so much sense, seeing you with the drug. Thinking about how you confronted the Princess directly, gave her a pony to face down instead of an intangible force which couldn't be fought. It's always been about power for you, hasn't it? The feel of it. You wanted the rush of conquering a Princess, and so you went to her, believing you would win. And when you lost... you decided that if you couldn't have your toy, you would break it, just like an angry colt. You decided to kill her, and them, and now I find you having given a field booster drug to my daughter..."

One last head shake, and the older stallion straightened.

"Follow me," he told the freak. "As best you can."

"The -- Bearers?"

(There was a flare of anger, on hearing concern in her voice. It faded quickly, and he wondered why. He was still angry, he knew that, but... there didn't seem to be enough strength to maintain an open fire.)

"Are, from all indications, alive," the midwife stated. "As several of those who fled from the conflict have gaspingly attested. The entire group is intact, and so Harmony goes on. But eventually, that Harmony may wind up coming for us. So it is just about time to go."

"...the -- supplies..."

A small smile, followed by a tiny head shake. "Ultimately, there are only two things which cannot be replaced. I came from packing the less important to fetch the most. We should have enough time to finish the secondary process, especially with your helping me."

"...and -- Coordinator?"

(Of course she remembered his name. He was important.)

Cold eyes glanced at the brown-and-white speckled fur. The bald spots on the head.

"What about him?"

The freak's words emerged as a plea. "He's dying. I don't know. What he. Was trying to do. But he's -- dying..."

"I chose to risk," the midwife told her, "only those who volunteered for it. That only you, I, and Quiet would run. In confronting the Princess directly, he made the decision to risk himself. He saw the chance as his: it failed. And there is also the chance that he can come through the drug. Perhaps he can find the strength within himself. But I have... certain doubts. And should he fail again... then let him perceive the consequences the same way: as his. I told everypony what would happen if the Bearers were hurt while under my protection. He was in the room, as you were."

"But you could... if there's anything --"

"-- he," the older stallion stated, "did this to himself. I have no responsibility towards him."

"We --"

"Stop." Another statement. An observation of what was going to happen.

Her mouth closed.

Gentle Arrival looked directly at Coordinator, as the ice in those eyes began to spread into the younger stallion's failing limbs.

"You," he stated, "are no longer necessary." And trotted away, the limping gait very nearly steady.

The freak looked at Coordinator. Glanced towards the parent she never should have had. A little liquid fell from her jaw, a bit more from her eyes. And then she followed.

He lay there, with the pain from his ribs starting to fade (because his nerves were no longer capable of carrying it). And he attempted to seize control, control over his body. It was his. It had to obey him. It had no choice. He would force it to stay alive. He just had to make a single leg move in the way he wanted, and then the rest would come. He needed to consider how to do that.

"will reconsider their final choice among the grasses of the shadowlands"

No. Life is control. Control is power. I have power. The shadowlands...

(There were ponies who had chosen to escape his control through going to the shadowlands. Ponies who would be waiting for him within the grass.)

I can go to Murdocks. Speak to him directly, after I'm given enough. I can tell the Corps everything about the midwife, then make it worse. Make myself into the hero, have the Diarchy hunting the clod with intent to kill...

He had control. He would always have control. Closing his eyes (they were open, fully open and he didn't realize it, he just couldn't see any more) only allowed him to focus on everything else. Control was the most important Element --

-- a Bearer dies and Harmony breaks.

It didn't matter. Harmony wasn't important.

(He just had to move one leg.)

(He just had to find one leg.)

When control breaks...

(He should have run.)

Cartes-de-visite

"He will finish The Great Work, and when he does, you'll be the first to -- apologize!"

He never had.

Of course, it could be argued that there had been no need to. The Great Work remained incomplete, something which was her fault. But he'd come to her for the second time, a pony she'd made a memory of simply because she'd made a memory for all of them (and in that case, creating one for somepony she didn't want to remember), he'd given her a field booster which couldn't work on her (stomach still churning, dizziness yet to fully fade), and... from what had just been said...

He looked back at her as she stumbled out of the library. There was concern in his eyes: there often was, and she knew he was worried about how she might still react to the remnants of the potion in her system, a concoction no broken pony was ever supposed to take. But there was something else there as well. The warmth of the orange had been subdued by a lingering chill.

She had to voice at least part of it. She had to know.

"He tried. To kill. The Bearers?"

A soft sigh as he began to move again, nodding for her to follow. (The door was starting to close behind her, doing so more slowly than she would have wished. There was more than enough of a gap to let sound through. A rasping of sorts. Air turning into something serrated as it just barely moved into lungs which could no longer fully process it.) "I have no absolute proof, of course. But there was an attempt made -- one which somehow gave them a chance at escape. If anypony here tonight would have directed that failed murder, it would have been him. I suspect we will know more once somepony confronts those whom the Princess trapped in her former cell: I was rather quickly told that Chief Copper will --" and there was a faint smile "-- not be available for the remainder of the night. And that he had company. But when the answer comes to us, it will likely be in the form of a letter. And we will need to be in a place where we can safely receive it."

He's dying.

I can hear him dying.

He tried to kill them. But he's dying...

She had been told to stop, and so her words on that particular subject had ceased. But she couldn't seem to make her thoughts do the same. Her mind just kept moving in spirals. Carried along by the storm.

"You said. We need -- two things? Which can't be. Replaced." She had a single, rather natural guess. "You were packing..."

"The pearls," he confirmed. "So that is where we are heading. Sadly, there is no direct passage." Another little sigh. "The winding trails of this castle... There will be some time in the corridors, but that should allow us to spot a servant and have them relay a message to Quiet. Let him know where we will be." With a touch of open worry, "Presuming they can locate him, especially should the Bearers reach the upper levels. That would give him some reason for concern."

"I don't. Understand..."

"He has a certain way of escaping notice," he told her. "Among other things. However, he should also be looking for us, and he knows where I am mostly likely to go." Approaching a wall. "Now. We know from the Princess, through Quiet, that your necklace was found: the flow of the river brought it to the lake."

She'd been that close. Within a few dozen body lengths of her most constant companion.

"And when it comes to the fastening piece, another could be acquired," he continued. "But there are still twelve pearls within their cradles, and those are harder to replace. We could try to collect them -- but without some idea of where they might have been hidden..."

"Twelve?" A natural question (along with a worried one), and also a distraction from the rasping. Something which was becoming deeper. Slower.

He nodded -- then glanced back at her. Smiled, as his horn ignited. Opened the jacket he'd worn to the party, and silver brought the familiar centerpiece to sight.

"She's safe," he softly told her. "She's... still safe. If we could recover no others... then she is safe."

She wanted to smile. She couldn't seem to. The pain was still building, and her ears were half-rotated backwards. Listening to sounds she didn't want to hear. Outer noises, while words continued to whirl within.

"I tried --" and stopped, for it had just slipped out, things were more than bad enough already, every last bit of that was her fault and to have repeated her failure only made things worse for him...

But he'd been looking at her when she said it. He knew.

"When we are away from here," he stated, "when we are safe -- you will try again."

She nodded.

He trotted up to a wall. Poked at it, there and there. A portion swung open, revealing a narrow passageway. Almost too narrow. She would need to be so careful moving down it...

"I didn't get to ask you," he casually said (the tone of so many conversations, talks she'd had with him over the years when he was the only pony she could talk to at all) as he moved into the barely-lit darkness, flickering devices providing so little to see by. "Are you looking forward to meeting your new siblings?"

She pulled back. Instinctively, unstoppably: perhaps half a hoofstep, keratin skittering on stone.

He'd been looking down the passage. But the sound made him turn again.

"What's wrong?"

How much had been on her face? What had been on her face?

"I... don't have. Control. I don't want. To hurt..."

It was the truth. But it hadn't been all of it. She had almost always told him the truth, and the previous exceptions had been based in memory. Not telling him about things she knew would hurt him. Things she had done anyway, until the last had broken all.

Slowly, he nodded. "Understandable. But we have the trip in which to master discipline." His own ears perked, rotated. "The chaos still seems to be some distance away. But risking a search of the Bearers' rooms..." Visible thought, followed by a slow sigh. "I can ask the servants to do that as well. We need the bulk of the pearls. If we must abandon twelve until they can be sent to us, then that is part of doing the needful. We can make that sacrifice."

"This is about all those ponies"

It's about the children.

(It had always been about the children.)

There's going to be children.

(It was about sacrifice.)

He's dying...

Her father trotted into the passage. She followed him, trying to fight the spasms which wracked the muscles in her foreleg.

And at the moment before the stone closed behind them, placing her in something very close to that most familiar state, all the sound stopped.

Ponies fled. Ponies arrived. Sometimes the ponies who were fleeing just about trampled those who were coming in, and the still-increasing scent of fear had made a few head for the exit before they reached the actual fray. Twilight got occasional glimpses of that through the chaos of battle, could see that they were all holding their own -- but they hadn't broken through. Some of Applejack's charges had come close to doing so, would have seen her on the other side if she'd just gone a little further -- but they had to escape together. To become fully separated was to create the chance to be picked off one by one.

The others might not have been thinking about that and Rainbow, who'd just managed to ram one of the combatants into a wall, was taking a few seconds to deal with something else entirely.

"Where's my hat? It came off when the net hit me, and I know somepony's got it! Somepony knows where it is!"

The impacted unicorn merely groaned.

"I know it was you! Own up!"

Soft blue shot past Twilight, carrying a hundred little stones at a dozen targets, none of whom could dodge all of it. They couldn't even counter, not with Twilight still on defense, and it seemed as if some of the newer arrivals weren't even trying: unicorns were attempting physical combat first, something she'd hardly ever seen. It had left Applejack dodging far too many attempts at horn spearings, some of which had come so close, and part of the newest pebble hailstorm went around the farmer before pelting into the eyes of the latest failure.

"An' that, Pinkie," Applejack crowed just before kicking another unicorn, "is why y'don't get into a pillow fight with Rarity!"

The baker giggled, then launched another kick: one where vision-blocking streamers were left behind on the impacted pony's face. Pinkie quickly turned, got into position to aim at another target --

-- only to find that somepony had already lined up on her. A pony who, in the face of what had to be some kind of magic, had just done the only thing they could think of.

"OW!" Blue eyes fiercely glared up, instantly focused on the pony whose hoof had just sharply landed on her forehead. "Rude!"

She reared up, dislodged the pegasus who had just completely failed to inflict any level of backlash, and then went straight for the wings.

...oh, Twilight distantly thought. Right. No horn, no automatic counter, but a really sore head...

But there were still more ponies arriving. Too many ponies.

We can't keep this up forever...

Which was when a familiar sound cut through the clamor of battle, recognized through repetition and the strangeness of hearing it here: claws scritching over paper.

She couldn't afford to fully glance back: she had to keep watching for coronas, for silver. All she got was a partial view at the absolute edge of her peripheral vision: Spike reaching into the shoulder sling he'd made from a remnant of Fluttershy's dress, the place where most of their limited resources were being stored. She could just barely see the weight at the back of the loop, the scroll emerging, a hint of a broken wax seal slipping back into the sling...

Wax?

"Pinkie!" Spike shouted into the fray. "Jump back!"

The baker, who'd been doing some rather direct damage to the other front line without managing to completely break it, didn't ask questions. She simply sprung backwards in a single huge pronk.

Spike raised the scroll up to his mouth, exhaled -- and a burst of flame exploded in the middle of Pinkie's just-vacated space. A miniature fireball, one which was just about all light with almost no heat -- but that aspect was something the opposition didn't think about. They simply saw fire appear from nowhere: no visible jet they could try to dodge, but flame which had just been teleported.

Three of them broke, right then and there. Turned, raced for the exit, and one of them did partially trample a freshly-arriving reinforcement on her way out. Rainbow was the only pony in the area who spotted the fallen scroll, risking a glance down from her position in the air. It was something which nearly got her kicked, and only a Rarity-boosted rat distracted the attacker enough to let Rainbow escape harm.

She didn't notice. "Radical, Spike!" she shouted. "More of that! You nearly shook the robes off that last one --"

The pegasus blinked. Just once. And then she yelled.

"Rarity! Go for the robes! Let's see who we're fighting! And Twilight, remember that camera spell you've been working on? Great time to try it out!"

Instinctively, I haven't been working on --

-- oh.

Rarity's eyes went wide. Soft blue lanced, split, targeted fabric --

-- and as a certain stallion had once predicted, those who desired secrets turned out to be the most concerned about whether their own would be exposed. Cockroaches were known to run from light, and Rarity's corona had just turned one on.

Certain portions of the cult were willing to fight. To take the risks involved in combat. But few of them wished to be recognized. They would fight in the security of anonymity, identified only by eye, wing, horn, and corona colors: things which could so easily be found in others among the population -- but to have their faces captured by sight and a camera-simulating spell which didn't actually exist...

Rainbow's words reached them, and the scent of fear swelled, peaked, became something Twilight had to consciously fight against, battling to retain her own focus. She could hear Fluttershy's little gasp as the caretaker struggled, saw Applejack's jaw go tight --

-- and then she saw the other line break.

Two of those ponies managed to fight it off. Everypony else, for those who could still move at all, turned. Ran, hooves mindlessly pounding across stone, wings beating at the damp air without conscious direction, their owners doing everything they could to escape the one threat they could not face, trying to get out...

A pair of ponies had resisted. And when they realized their wills had held, that they had retained sapience in the face of fear -- they also realized that there were only two of them left. A split-second after that, they realized Applejack was less than a body length away.

At which point sapience, along with most of their consciousness, went on holiday.

Twilight stared. At a corridor littering with fallen robed ponies, all of whom were still breathing (although judging by the shifts in the fabric, some were doing so rather erratically). At Applejack and Pinkie, both of whom had significant sweat in their coats. At Rainbow, hovering above it all, looking -- vaguely disappointed.

"Tartarus chain it," the pegasus muttered, mostly to herself, with all of the words just barely audible. "If I'd thought of that ten minutes ago... we just lost ten minutes..." A very brief pause. "Was that ten minutes? I lose track when we're fighting --"

Twilight just grinned.

"Rainbow?"

Distractedly, "What?"

"That was radical!"

The weather coordinator stared at her. Favored the librarian with the single, slightly exasperated head shake which informed the conscious portion of the audience that Twilight had chosen the wrong word again.

Oh, come on! I looked it up in the dictionary and everything! But the grin still needed an extra second to fade, lasting right up until the next concern came in. "Anypony hurt?" She hadn't seen any major injuries take place: the three who'd spent the most time in the front lines had some bruising, but it was the sort of pain which had to be saved for later. Still, if she'd missed something...

"Just sore," Applejack called back, and the others quickly checked in with no worse than similar reports. "And Ah'm thinking it's time we got out of here!"

"...I don't have many rats and voles left," Fluttershy told them. "All the hooves... some of them ran, there's some hurt tails, and the ones who are still here don't know me that well. A lot of them are going to have trouble just going to where the ponies usually are..."

Twilight nodded. "Tell them thank you, and the ones who don't want to come don't have to. Come on, everypony. I remember roughly where we came in, and I think I got a glimpse of that one when he was trying to find the right spot on the wall."

Maybe they still had time. A chance to find out which direction they had to chase in, at least: she didn't doubt that Quiet had relayed news of the attempting escape to Doctor Gentle, and that meant she would be fleeing with them. However, for the trio to still be in the castle...

Time slipped away during combat. It slowed down, sped up, became impossible to fully track. Every second could be your last one, and so those which didn't focus simply blurred. She didn't know how long the fight had taken. But if nopony in the group could escort, if all of those in the cult who could have potentially assisted with that (assuming there had been any at all) had already left...

Too many variables, with no definitions fixed. The only way to find out was to act.

"Remember what Spike said! We're looking for servants!" Twilight called out as she started to race down the passage, vaulting a fallen cultist along the way. "Anypony who might know the castle, all the exits! Somepony who could know how they would get out!"

"They might just use the front door!" Spike called to her as Rarity caught up, with the little dragon still on her back. "It's Quiet's castle! He can just trot outside!"

"Then that'll make it easier," Twilight grimly stated. "I know where the front door is." But once they were outside, there were so many more directions in which to move, and only two of them could reliably fly, try to locate and focus the pursuit from above. Doing so in the storm.

...if Quiet can't just make them impossible to find...

We have to try.

"Stay on guard, everypony," Twilight told them as they approached what she felt to be the right section of stone -- then had to pause, abashed, as Spike redirected her two body lengths to the left: he, not having been dragged, had gotten a somewhat clearer image of where the exit was -- if not the outer location of whatever triggered it. "That group fled. But there could still be some ponies on their way down. We could wind up in fights all over the castle. Spike, start writing that scroll for Baltimare: we'll need extra help to deal with the search radius. It might take a lot of ponies to cover the area --"

All those ponies at the burnout. All the ones who came to look for him. To rescue their first friend. Just some of the ones who heard the news in time, were old enough to travel on their own and close enough to reach Trotter's Falls. A fraction of those he's brought to Sun. Maybe a really small fraction.

How many of them were hybrids?

Doctor Gentle would know: he claimed to remember them all and for that, Twilight didn't doubt him. But he was likely the only one who knew. And if he escaped...

It's not just telling them: it's identifying them. How can anypony --

"Twi?"

"-- thinking about the search," Twilight made herself say, for it was the truth. "And some other things. Start pressing your hooves against the walls. Carefully. Traps wouldn't surprise me. I'll watch for magic: everypony listens for gears. If you hear anything strange, just get down the corridor --"

-- which was when six pairs of ears (and one set of spiny protrusions) perked.

"...I think," Fluttershy whispered, "there's something in the wall. The one on the other side. Something moving..."

They turned, bodies already dropping into combat-ready positions. Waited, until a section of stone on the other side of the corridor swung outwards.

The two who emerged could have been described as being in full servants' uniforms -- if the observer was inclined to be somewhat forgiving of their rumpled state, something which applied to both clothing and ponies. Each had ancient dirt clinging to portions of their form, and neither cared. They were both young, and rather attractive. One was softly speaking as they emerged, the other was gently giggling, and neither was actually looking forward. They initially only paid attention to each other, just as they had for all of their time hidden away in a place where nothing which had happened could have ever reached them.

Mare and stallion smiled, giggled, and finally turned to face forward, with the matching objects held in each corona swaying with their movement. Saw six very free, still irritated (or worse) Bearers, along with a Protector who had a clear line of fire.

The stallion swallowed.

"Er," the servant said, mostly for lack of nearly any other options, and the green corona offered up the encased bucket. "Toiletries?"

They're alive.

Most of what Quiet had been feeling about that discovery remained relief, and the continuing emotion wasn't good for his health. He wasn't completely focused on the immediate environment, with too much of his attention looking inwards. It meant that some of his dodges were a little on the slow side, as ponies who were fleeing from the lower levels (or just racing around the castle, looking for something they could do, anypony who could tell them what to do) nearly went through him. Just about none of them had noticed his presence, and more than a few were so panicked as to not be registering much of anything else.

He also wasn't moving all that quickly, certainly nowhere near as fast as he might have wished. He wasn't meant for extended sprints, and had already decided to save some of his strength for later: it seemed as if that might be needed. Additionally, it had turned out that adventuring ponies bled, where pages didn't. Not that the pages had failed to mention blood as a possibility, but when it was yours...

It was minor. But it still hurt.

They're alive.

They were also trying to move. He'd been in the secondary library when the designer had said that Twilight was saving up to take the six-pony version of the escort test, a fee which could require years to accumulate. It was possible for Twilight to have already discovered the lockdown -- but a Gifted School graduate on her level would know that the working didn't prevent teleportation within the castle. And yet they were still below.

So she can't take all of them with her in a single trip, and she won't leave them. They'll emerge as a group. And they're going to emerge. He was almost completely certain of that. There had been one strike, one ambush -- and now there was a group of mostly-inexperienced combatants up against six very alert Bearers (including one alicorn) and what he was guessing to be a very angry dragon. A dragon he was rather grateful towards, with full awareness that the emotion didn't serve as a shield against flame.

Even the police are going to have trouble. They don't have anypony on Twilight's level, and if she just keeps countering...

It might be possible to get a working through: Twilight had arguably been lucky in blocking the entire first volley. But... he'd heard a new kind of cry moving through the corridors, something where he hadn't been able to reach the speaking parties in time to intercept. An alert relayed from those who'd been below to the ones who were going down to keep trying.

There was a newborn legend running loose in the castle, and it was beyond his ability to stop.

Find them. Just find them. We have to get out of the castle before they're out, and if we don't leave together for the initial stages, we won't even have the chance to agree on a meeting place if we have to split up. We have to run together...

Searching for the doctor and his daughter, in the place he knew better than anypony. He knew where Gentle Arrival would initially have to go, once the news reached him: to the library, fetching that which was most precious to him. But enough time had passed for a servant to find the midwife, an extra sufficiency for getting to that area. There had seemed to be very little point in going directly there. And even knowing the most likely next destination for that pair, it had occurred to him that there was somepony else who had to be found and he had no idea where the bureaucrat had wound up, much less if anypony else had tried to look...

So he'd been pausing, here and there. Checking rooms. Trying to find somepony who'd retained enough of themselves to help him look and there were some of those, but there was so much fear in the castle, sinking into the minds of so many ponies who didn't know how to deal with it...

They're alive.

Not everypony was currently seeing that as a good thing.

Around a corner, down a hall. Check the birthing room: nothing. (It would not have surprised him to find an expectant mother there, one with no concept of what had been happening. Those who were in labor were generally concerned about that.) Next hallway. Open the passage, look inside --

-- and a mauve snout, greying around the muzzle, nearly went into him as shocked, thankful orange eyes sought his face.

"Moon smiles on us," Doctor Gentle declared. "I was hoping you'd find us before we reached our destination. We've been trying to stay out of the corridors as much as possible, but that means the most winding route, and..."

A quick glance backwards, to where a dark purple earth pony, face contorted in pain, was forcing herself forward. Both flanks scraped against stone, and more of the clumsy dress tore away.

"...she is not meant for the more narrow passages," the older stallion softly finished. "Something which, even knowing that at least two of the ascended are larger than they were before their change, I had not considered. It has slowed us down. So if you happen to know of something which would be more comfortable --"

-- which was when he saw the little wound.

Quickly, "-- what happened?"

"Rat bite. Or something which sort of looked like a rat. It's nothing -- "

-- which was when the midwife's mouth opened.

It wasn't a full-scale jaw drop. It was nowhere near a facehoof: he'd never seen Doctor Gentle facehoof, and could barely manage to picture the older stallion performing the act. It was simply a minor parting of upper jaw from lower and somehow, it was almost horrifying.

"...Fluttershy," Doctor Gentle whispered. "Sun and Moon, Fluttershy --"

Urgently, "-- we didn't know, Doctor." Admittedly, to have rats in the lower levels of an old castle was a fairly safe assumption, but nopony had made it. Nopony had been among the cells, not for longer than it took to load in furniture. "And we don't have time to regret it."

The older stallion's mouth closed. He nodded, just once, and Quiet looked past him, to where she was still trying to wriggle her way out. Gave what assistance he could, lightly pressing his field against her skin, hated every half-choked moan of pain his efforts produced -- but it helped.

"That's three," Quiet declared as she emerged into the corridor. What's that stain around her mouth? "Now we just have to find Coordinator --"

The next words emerged as a statement.

"-- he's dead."

The younger stallion briefly stared at the older.

I've thought about it. There were times, leaving his office, trying to get the sickness of the place off my tongue, when I had fantasies about it...

"How? I thought he might have sent the killers down. Maybe even gone with them, if only to watch." And gloat. It was so easy to picture him gloating. "But I didn't think the Bearers would try to kill --"

"His ending," the doctor calmly stated, "was of his own making. And other than in the Princess' rejection of his offer, the Bearers played no part. Beyond that, we do not have time to discuss the details. Which way to the widest passage?"

He's dead.

I've dreamed about his death. Every pony he's ever blackmailed lining up for a kicking party. Crushed under his own files. Finally noticing his lack of heart and just falling over.

But even with a single pony as his first, best suspect for what had been attempted, at least as far as Coordinator having started everything -- dreams had been all there were. He'd had fantasies. Now he was having a thought.

"And I promise you that anypony who tries to do so while the Bearers are under my protection will reconsider their final choice among the grasses of the shadowlands."

I told Twilight that Coodinator could try something else before the end of the night. At first, I thought calling for her death -- their deaths -- was it. A petty pony who never stopped finding new ways of being petty...

...past tense.

How did he...?

Her head was down. Her eyes covered by a light film of moisture. Ribs spasmed.

I could try the hoof tap. There and there. Maybe it would --

"We need," the older stallion evenly continued, "to move, Quiet. You know every passage. We have to reach the chaos pearls, then exit the castle by the most direct route possible from that room. We can only risk so much time in the corridors, so coming back up is not an option. Where do we go?"

He forced himself to think. "There's a route. But we'll have to stay in the hallways for a while to reach the entrance. And if we leave the storage room through its only path to the outside... we're going to wind up in the storm for a few hundred body lengths." (She trembled, shook.) "I know the exit is still good: the connection isn't." It had been centuries since the original routes had been established, and the majority of those tunnels were only meant to lead out: escape for oneself only. Enough time for some passages to be forgotten, unless somepony took the time to once again find them all. And some of the least-maintained ones, those which moved through dirt instead of stone, had simply collapsed.

"Neither of us had a reason to clear it," Doctor Gentle calmly said. "And in her current form, she cannot. We will risk the storm. Lead on, Quiet. We will gather whoever we can in protection along the way."

Instead, he looked at her.

"Can you risk a change?" (He didn't recognize his tones. He would not have, for he'd never really had the chance to use them.) "Become a unicorn, and give us the direct path? It's all right if you can't --"

"-- she cannot," her father answered. (She trembled again.) "To the passage, Quiet." And another statement. "Now."

There were several ways in which the toiletry specialists could have been described as innocent, although after their time together in the hidden passages, it was possible that there were now somewhat fewer. It didn't take long to discover that they were fairly new hires, ones who were not only just starting to learn about the castle's secrets, but had used the first they'd been told about for something other than its intended purpose. On Rarity's advice, Twilight left them in one of the cells which mostly held imprisoned furniture, and tried not to think about what would probably be done with the bed.

The group was working its way up the poorly-lit passage, working mostly by corona shine. Twilight was in the lead, checking for traps. Rainbow had been caught taking several long looks at the slanting floor.

"...almost out," Fluttershy softly assured her. (There were two voles riding in the coral mane, perhaps curious to see a little more of the world.) "...you're doing very well."

Open disbelief, most of which was being used to push back the fear. "This seriously doesn't bother you?"

"...no." A pause. "...well... the pit part does. I don't want to drop any more than you do. But the cottage has a basement, Rainbow. It's just -- an extra place to put things. I don't mind being underground, or in tight spaces... I never have..."

When you know what's going on...

Pinkie picking up on the resonance from her shockwave spell: not something which had come from simply being in the most direct line of fire, but a possible degree of feel for unicorn magic. Fluttershy, dealing with so many fears -- but earth pony essence wouldn't allow claustrophobia to be one of them.

What are the others like? What can they do?

If he escaped...

"We're clear so far," Twilight whispered back. "They shut everything down on the way in. Nothing was reactivated after they passed it."

"They were," Rarity softly stated, with just a hint of smugness, "somewhat distracted."

Twilight tried not to think about that, either. (They'd already passed the section where the dust had been considerably more disturbed.) "It's leveling out up ahead, and I think I see what I have to press for the exit. Just remember, everypony: as soon as we get out, the fight can start again. And we can't split up." It would be easier to search the castle that way, but an isolated pony was a pony who could quickly be facing a crowd.

She wanted to invoke the Princesses. Call on the sisters for help, one last time. But she knew they couldn't hear her.

"I thought -- it was just another name for Moon."

Rainbow, when we were making camp in the wild zone.

We're wanderers right now, aren't we?

'Moon watch over us, for we know not where we are. Moon guide us, for we know not where we travel. Moon protect us, for we know not who we will meet. Moon keep us under your wings under blessed night until waking day, when Sun will stand her watch. Moon watch over us -- and know we love...'

We didn't know where we were, or where we were going. We didn't know who we would meet...

Maybe Moon watches. But it doesn't answer.

She took a deep breath. Listened. There was definitely movement outside, but the stone made it hard to isolate. Ponies moving, but not exactly where they were.

"I'm opening the exit," she softly told them, glancing back at the line. "And there's ponies out there somewhere. So follow me out fast." They nodded, and her hoof pressed what turned out to be the right place.

Stone moved, and Twilight scrambled, her hooves nearly skidding as she went back into the fuller lighting of the castle's devices, her ears almost instantly hit by a burst of thunder from outside.

She blinked twice, adjusting to the new lumen level, and then saw the two shocked unicorns staring at her from the intersecting hallway, about ten body lengths ahead.

Her horn ignited. The dark blue's automatically did the same --

"-- no!" the red one shouted, the desperate tones somehow familiar. "She blocks magic! She blocks everything! Just run!"

-- and he was gone. The mare desperately glanced after him, returned her now-frantic gaze to Twilight, saw the others emerging into the main castle...

"Well," Applejack decided as she briefly raised her right foreleg, dipped her head to shade sensitive eyes as best she could, just barely able to watch the second retreat until her vision adjusted, "that makes things a little easier. Where are we tryin' first?"

...I can't block everything. I got lucky on the first volley, and then they were sending out less and less...

"We start from here and work our way down," Twilight decided. "None of them are pegasi --" or at least, none of them should be pegasi at this exact second, not unless she tried another accelerated change "-- so they have to leave from close to ground level." One had an injured leg, another was physically weak: in both cases, even a jump from a second-story window might be too much. "We try to find passageways. We question ponies, and we do it on the run if we have to."

There were words echoing in the hallways now. Twilight couldn't make out all of them, but managed to distinguish 'Bearers' in the grouping. Probably the newest of alerts.

"Gotcha," the farmer confirmed. "An' if we get outside?"

"I don't know," Twilight admitted as the group started to move, Rainbow's wings flaring to take advantage of the wider space. "They could gallop anywhere. We could lose them --"

They went around the corner, following Twilight's lead: she'd chosen to go left. It found them facing a group of four. And a heartbeat later, it was a group of two.

"They're out!" one of the remaining mares screamed. "Protect the triad!"

And then it was zero.

"Protect the --" Pinkie tried, and Twilight could tell it wasn't a question of looking for comprehension. Pinkie knew what the final word had meant. She just didn't want to believe it any more than Twilight did.

"It's what that one's decided to call her!" Twilight confirmed, trying to accelerate again. "Maybe they're still in the castle!"

Please, please, please...

Prayer without focus. Invocation without names.

Please, after everything that's happened, everything we learned, everything we've been through, everything she went through -- please, let us be lucky, please...

She charged. They all charged. She spotted a pegasus, and her field encased the fleeing stallion in a bubble. Something was shouted at him, he didn't give her the answer they needed, and she pushed him into a guest bedroom and just kept right on going. Applejack pinned one of the few who was still in robes, yelled words directly at the covered snout. Fluttershy's request for information, at least in terms of decibels, was considerably more gentle: the sudden pin from above had a little more force behind it. Rainbow was looking for the lead conspirators, and also for her hat. Pinkie's tail twitched just in time for her to alert them to the one pegasus who was trying a move from overhead: Spike's flame jet made him veer into a wall.

They were moving. They were fighting. They were winning. And if they were too late, none of it would matter.

Please, for her if nothing else, for everything he did to her, just give us one more chance to reach her --

Did anything hear, ever? In all the centuries of ponies calling out from the core of their souls, had ever there been so much as a single answer?

Yes.

Applejack doesn't just sing to the earth. She listens. If you're listening, then something is communicating. There's something to speak with.

Just about every earth pony can have that answer, every day of their lives.

And, just a little more bitterly, Too bad we're indoors.

There were more screams up ahead, and now they were starting to form a chorus as others, those ponies whose will had been too strong to initially break, took up the call. "Protect the triad!" It was becoming a trend. Worse, it was turning into a title.

Will they invoke her now?

We call on Celestia for illumination. Luna for protection. Cadance for love.

They call on her for...

And then they all heard the newest cry.

"Protect the doctor!"

Seven pairs of eyes went wide.

He's here!

"That way!" Twilight yelled. "Come on!" And they went down the hallway, around a corner, through an arch and past the library and Pinkie knocked over a piece of furniture because now there were a few exceptionally bold ponies chasing them and everything helped, they followed the calls and there was one last turn and then --

-- it was a glimpse. Nothing more, and it was still enough to send spikes surging through her corona. She could just barely see Gentle Arrival, the pony whom she could barely think of as being one. It was easier to pick her out, as tall as she was, being hurried along behind him. Her head was low, eyes mostly regarding the floor, and she never saw Twilight. Quiet was likely the one doing the hurrying, but Twilight couldn't see him at all.

It wasn't his talent. There was just too much in the way.

They'd tracked the three down: luck and listening. They hadn't been the only ones.

There had been ponies who had run from the fight, others who might have even fled the castle. Some guests had simply gone home. But for those who had remained -- some had decided to make their last stand here. To place their bodies between Bearers and the ones who had to be stopped.

The world narrowed. Became the width of a single corridor, where the only color which mattered was sparkleless silver. She had to see it. She had to stop it.

But he didn't attack. He had ponies to do that for him.

Coronas ignited: even after taking him out of it, the total was far less than it could have been. Enough that she could manage to stop it.

Twelve, about twelve this time, twelve and then three

More unicorns attacking physically. Pegasi trying to control what little air space was available. And behind them, a stallion and a mare, moving away. Getting away.

They were fighting again. They were all fighting, and there was more desperation to it than ever. At one point, she heard a rib crack: Applejack had neither time nor inclination to try for something less injurious. Wind blasts tore down the corridor. Part of Twilight was desperately wishing for a party cannon, and she wanted Pinkie to have one which shot around corners. But she couldn't go after the escaping ponies, not directly. She had to keep countering, she had to protect her friends, she had to watch for that one lance of silver which could squeeze a heart until it broke. She was within a few body lengths, the distance was increasing, and she couldn't reach...

They fought. They fought harder than they ever had in their lives, until there were ponies in the cult who couldn't fight them any more. Some ran, others flew. A number kept going until they were dropped. Twilight guarded, and her friends and sibling fought until there was nopony left to fight at all. Until they won.

Until they lost.

They broke through the living barricade. They left it moaning and twitching in their wake. And when they could finally follow, found the short dead-end hallway at the other end of the turn...

An oversized closet on the left. A music conservatory on the right. And nopony at all.

"NO!" It had been a scream. Twilight felt entitled to a scream. "We're still in the castle! The lockdown's still up!" She could feel it when she tried, like a toothache at the very back of her jaw, one which throbbed whenever her tongue touched it. "There has to be a passage! Look everywhere! Tear the closet apart! Move that cabinet! I don't care what you do to the piano -- !"

"-- Twilight?"

She hadn't expected Rainbow's voice to be that calm. The absolute confidence was normal: the post-battle steadiness in the face of having just lost their quarry was rather unexpected.

It was the calm which made them all look up, to where Rainbow was hovering. See the oddly small smile, one which was bordering on a smirk.

"You said they'd have to leave from close to ground level, right?" she asked. "Or maybe even go out underground, if somepony dug out more than cells. So any escape passage has to head down."

"Rainbow, we have to search --"

"And it's damp down there tonight. Damp, when it's nearly autumn, during a heavy storm..."

Her right forehoof gestured outwards, at the same moment her expression turned into a full-fledged grin.

"That part of the wall," Rainbow announced, "is about twenty percent cooler."

Contrast

Even knowing where the entrance was, it took some time to get into the passage: Rainbow told them that the heat impression from hooves tended to be minor, faded quickly and was hard to spot unless it was made against a truly chill surface -- and if that happened, the negation would happen all the faster. (Twilight briefly remembered the war of hues, and still could not bring back what those colors had been.) It left them crowded around the edges of the door, tapping and pressing everything they could -- and with that many ponies involved, they mostly got in each other's way.

Several bumps against bruised bodies later, it had occurred to Applejack that the trigger for a door didn't always have to be on the same wall as the door: relocating it was another way to slow down pursuit. And in the end, it was just about directly behind them.

The passage itself had clearly been maintained. There was no dust present on floor or walls, and the lighting devices were fully charged. They could see exactly where they were going: down. They even had a little extra room in which to move, as this travelway was wider than any of the others had been -- and became increasingly so as they worked their way through. Heading past what Twilight felt had to be ground level. Dropping into the earth.

She wanted to gallop, to push forward as fast as she could. She didn't.

"Hurry..." Which came from behind, at floor level: the passage still wasn't wide enough to accommodate a full wingspan.

"There could still be traps, Rainbow."

A blast of frustration. "They're getting away!"

"I know." It took far too much for Twilight to keep the words mostly even, prevent the bulk of her fears from taking over every syllable. "But we know there's traps, and they'll be trying to slow us down." Or worse. Had Doctor Gentle become desperate enough for worse? "I have to search."

"Search faster," Rainbow muttered, and picked up her own pace. All that did was momentarily put her snout into Pinkie's tail.

Another set of hooves hesitated, then stopped moving entirely. It didn't stop the rest of the procession: Rarity was at the back of the line, serving as rear guard -- but it took a moment before the others noticed.

"Rarity?" Applejack checked. "Y'got a really funny expression right now. Are you okay?"

The designer's right forehoof came up, lightly rubbed at her forehead, near the base of the horn. "I'm getting..." Pressed against fur and flesh, as if trying to keep something from escaping. "...chaos pearls. There are chaos pearls ahead of us. Several of them. And -- and there is another. And another..."

They had just enough time to stare at her.

"Very well," Rarity irritably declared, "Yes, I am clearly abandoning 'shiftstone,' but regardless of how I feel about the stallion from whom I learned the most recent term, I still feel it is the more elegant one. There are chaos pearls at the end of this passage, and their number is increasing. As if they were suddenly appearing in the world. But if it takes time for the world to form that protective shell, that cannot be happening --"

"-- unless they were coming out of concealment," Twilight quickly said. "Being taken away from a working which had been preventing detection." Doctor Gentle had directly admitted to the existence of that spell during the conference -- but such spells were generally cast on the thing which was concealing the object, not the item itself.

He must have had one on his birthing garment. But it didn't stop the smell. An odor only one of us could detect. Spike could barely stand to be near him when we were all moving Shining...

And now the hidden pearls were being moved. Taken away from a spell which would take more time to recast than the stallion had, assuming he'd originally performed the working at all.

Rarity's nod was automatic. "There are --" Concentrated. "-- a lot. And counting."

"...he can't leave them," Fluttershy breathed. "It's too hard to find replacements. He has to take them along, because they're the only way he knows to make changes..."

"And that means," Rarity declared, a little satisfaction drifting across the surface of the accent, "that for as long as they remain within some form of range, I can follow them." A glance down the line at Twilight. "Your range is greater than mine --"

She quickly shook her head. "I still can't detect them, Rarity." And there was also time for a smile. "There's something to be said for being the original."

"Quite," Rarity decided -- then sighed. "Although the increased area would have helped. I'll simply do the best I can. Forward, then." Lowered her hoof, winced. "And another. How many does he have...?"

The line shifted forward, and Rainbow's left forehoof came down on a completely innocuous bit of stone.

A portion of the wall retreated into itself, shot sideways to reveal darkness, there was a high-pitched metallic squeak added to the smell of rust as Twilight's corona flared, a field bubble moving directly for Rainbow, trying to lift her, get her out of the way --

-- the weight wasn't anywhere near being an issue. The speed was. She only had a split-second in which to act and strictly speaking, she didn't completely succeed. The upper edge of the sprung trap hit Rainbow's rapidly-ascending hooves, producing a yelp above and beyond that which the jerking lift had triggered.

And then they all watched as the ancient, half-decayed net slowly slid down the opposing wall.

"So they're keepin' up the lights," a shaken Applejack finally said, "but some of the defenses haven't been touched for a while. Doesn't meant the next one won't do what it was supposed to."

Rainbow, caught within a hover she couldn't control, was oddly silent.

"He's been reactivating them as they pass," Twilight confirmed. "That's what I was afraid of. And the next one might be worse. A decaying spell can do things which a fresh one wouldn't. They might just be trying to stop us, but -- something which was originally supposed to stun..." A working which had lasted long past the death of the original caster, intermittently and poorly maintained, might not emerge as the intended effect. "I hate going this slowly as much as you do, Rainbow." There was a little part of a pony mind which always wanted to gallop: Twilight had truly heard hers for the first time during the Running, and had told it to just maintain the endurance pace. "But I'd rather lose him than one of you."

The pegasus quietly nodded, and Twilight cautiously began to set her down --

-- stopped, with Rainbow's hooves about twice their own height off the floor.

"Um," she awkwardly started. "I'm... self-levitation really isn't my thing. And even if I could fly for more than a few seconds, there isn't enough room in here to try it."

They waited.

"But... if there's more triggers in the floor..."

Twilight winced.

"Sorry about this."

Her corona brightened, and embarrassment happened.

"Hurry as best you can, Twilight," Rarity told her, speaking a little more loudly to get past any possible distortion from the field's border. "There are still more of the stones now. And eventually, they will begin to move."

She set them down again after getting the door open, and part of that was from shock.

"...Sun and Moon..."

She didn't have time to count all of the wire cradles on the far stone wall: she just knew there were more than a hundred of them, and every last one had been woven from platinum. It was something else he'd told them during the conference: that it was being used to pull in the thaums which had maintained the concealment spells.

But platinum required great care. A pony working with the metal was lucky to get one mistake, and anything which wasn't perfection could so easily qualify as a mistake...

He wasn't there. His daughter was absent. (She had a brief moment of paranoia regarding Quiet.) The chaos pearls were gone. But they had also been moved in a hurry, enough so that the fields and mouths, she would have been working with her mouth hadn't been as careful as they could have been. None of the wire was broken: Twilight would have gone up the passage at full gallop with everypony in glowing tow rather than risk having them around that. But far too many of the cradles had new bends, distortions which never would have been in the original plans. The thaums continued to flow through the metal, but she couldn't be sure how long that state would maintain.

"Don't touch the wire," she softly told them. "At all. We can't risk a break, and even a sharp angle could be bad. Just find the way out --"

"-- they went that way," Applejack quickly said. (Rarity's confirming nod was an exceptionally strong specimen.) "Look down, Twi."

She did, and saw two thin tracks of old dirt, moving across the floor, stopping at a blank section of wall.

"There's a tunnel on the other side of that," Applejack told them. "An' there's ponies moving down it. We ain't that far back. We just need to get through." More quickly, "And don't just push the wall in, because past the stone, it's earth. That tunnel's old, and it hasn't been kept up. Sure wasn't reinforced with much. Earth ponies didn't dig that, and Diamond Dogs would have made it safe. I can try to steady it while we're in there, and I'll listen for anything bad starting. But it ain't a place we want to have a fight."

Towing a cart... It would make them easier to spot from the air. "Can you tell where the tunnel goes?"

The farmer's ears rotated. Listening. "It ain't that long. More or less forward for a while, an' then it starts slanting up. It's going for the surface." Winced, as if fighting off a headache. "And there's too many little impacts up there, too much rain coming down. It's blurring things. I'd have to get a lot closer before I could say if there's anything near the exit. But -- ain't no traps in the tunnel, nothing a pony planted in the dirt. Might have been once, but if there was, it fell out a long time ago. We just have to keep the whole thing from coming down on us."

"Judging by the movement speed," Rarity observed, "they're aware they are at risk. But... she is currently an earth pony: we saw her. If a collapse begins..."

"She'd shout," Applejack said, now trotting forward, her path following the cart tracks. "Shout when she doesn't know how to do anything else, shout when she might not know what she's saying. We can't fight in there, and we can't scare her."

She shuddered, and she wasn't the only one.

"Come on, everypony," Applejack concluded. "Only one way to go now. We can't scare her --" a little more softly "-- but maybe there's still a chance to save her."

Her head was down. She heard us: I'm sure of that. But she never looked at us.

And he...

It had only been a moment, when she'd been able to see him. She felt he'd been aware of their presence: there had been a shift to the right eye, enough to get some degree of view. But there hadn't been acknowledgement. He'd just kept moving on the other side of the living barrier. That limping trot of confidence.

"The lockdown's in here," she told them, moving forward to help check the wall. "I'll check every so often to see where it runs out." That sort of spell was meant to flow along a surface: it wouldn't surprise her if some of it had gotten into the tunnel -- but it needed something to flow along, and an anchor point to flow from. It wouldn't be on the surface. "Spike, keep working on scrolls."

"I don't have many left," he reluctantly admitted. "I used two to clear that last space, just before their line broke. Those got trampled."

She winced, and was glad to have been facing away from him at the time. "Conserve what we've got left, if you can. But if it's a choice between getting hit or losing a scroll, forfeit the scroll."

"That's a weird stone in that part of the wall," Pinkie observed from her new position near the left forward edge. "It's a little more recessed than the others. Like -- somepony pressed it down, and it didn't spring all the way back out?"

"Yes," Rarity breathed. "Carefully, Pinkie. Everypony be ready to move..."

Soft blue and pinkish light, with a sort of muddy violet at the intersection: all they had to work with within the damp tunnel, the only thing they could see by. Moving as fast as they dared, hooves sinking partially into the half-mud of the rough floor. Some of the moisture had seeped to this level, and they could hear muffled bursts of thunder from above. Sometimes they were followed by little hoofwidth pieces of the earthen ceiling falling into their fur, and it said something about their situation that Rarity made no comment about having suddenly become rather more dirty than she'd intended.

Then again, the chance to wash off was just ahead.

"Slanting up," Rarity softly said: they had no way of knowing how far their words would carry. "They're almost out, I think." Stumbled a little as her left forehoof hit half-buried stone, adjusted her pace. "Quickly now..."

It was nothing like the Diamond Dog tunnels. There, sound had echoed, made everything that much harder to track. There had been light: phosphorescent moss, some lightly-glowing rocks which might have only been known to Diamond Dogs, or that could have potentially been created by some small aspect of their magic. All kinds of colors along the walls: mostly muted ones, but colors. Decorative touches. Here and there, the runes which made up their written language: something Twilight hadn't recognized for several trips.

Approach the fringe of Ponyville's settled zone and you would find tunnels. What rested beneath this part of Trotter's Falls felt very much like a tube-shaped coffin.

"Something just shifted," Applejack whispered. "Might have been the exit. And -- there's something up there. I think we're coming out close to the playground, but there's still so much rain..."

Forward. The conspirators had to know they were being followed. Had to be thinking about what they could do to stop it. But there had been no attempt to collapse the tunnel on them. No last stand within the earth.

"Maybe that's puddles," Applejack softly projected as the floor began to slant up, the tunnel widening enough to allow a little more comfort in those directions, even as the ceiling came closer. "I think there's puddles. A lot of them. Raining too hard for the soil to absorb it all, especially since the sports areas compacted the ground. Plus some big stuff: that's the playground equipment..." Brow furrowed now, as if fighting off a headache. "It's getting clearer, but with all the water..."

There was a panel in front of them: stone, and a simple, very long, heavily-reinforced hinge.

"Doesn't weigh much," Applejack decided. "Not if somepony his -- his --"

Twilight's skin began to pale beneath the fur.

"-- Quiet's size could move it," the farmer finished. "But maybe that was her shifting the thing. Twi?"

Who nodded. "Be careful," she told them. "If they were going to try ambushing us again, this might be the best place for it." Knock them back into the tunnel, then try for a collapse. "Here we go --"

Her horn ignited. Light shoved against stone, they charged back to the surface and the rain hit her, went into her eyes and made her blink, soaked into fur at the exact moment the lockdown's feel finally went away, thunder roared from what felt like far too close a distance, the wind turned every drop of water into its own little missile and her tail was already drooping, her bangs were slumping into her eyelashes and when she could see again, there were at least thirty ponies in front of her.

Oh.

She could barely make out any real details. Clouds had rendered Moon into nothing more than a minor grey patch against a dark vapor ceiling: the only light she had to work with was that from her own horn. At the current intensity, when she was at least ten body lengths away from the new front line, she was mostly looking at shadows. It was enough to tell that there were ponies there, and that most of them didn't have robes: she'd become more than familiar with that particular outline. A few did -- but it was nowhere near the majority. The rest were obscuring themselves with jackets and dresses, scarves and -- a true sign of desperation, if any of those outlines represented unicorns -- hats. Whatever they'd been able to find in time, with all of it pressed against their bodies by soaked-in water weight.

Waiting for them, within the storm.

She had just enough time to think.

The ones who held out the longest needed something to focus on. We might have been dealing with increasing levels of devotion, all the way out. Eventually, it got down to the fanatics. The ones who would stay no matter what, who would follow one more order and go to guard the place where Doctor Gentle knew he would have to come out.

And the weakest ones, those who ran first... at least one of them ran into town.

She didn't think they were looking at newly-arrived members of the cult, for those who lived close enough to help would have been at the conference. These were likely townsponies.

The Doctor's estate burns and they go to help.

Somepony says the Doctor is being pursued and even if somepony tells them it's by us, they still go to help.

He's on the other side of this line...

And now opposing horns were starting to ignite. Still not as many as might have done so -- but a significant quantity, a total which instantly worked out to be too many.

Her friends were charging out behind her. (She heard Rainbow's wings surge to their full span, picked up on the stronger flapping necessary to stay aloft in the storm.) They emerged, and saw.

We're getting tired. Some of us are hurt. They were waiting.

The playground equipment was close by. Uprooting some of it, using it as a weapon... it would take her off defense. It would let workings through. It also had a good chance to kill whoever she hit with it.

I don't know if we can --

-- and in the face of so many coronas, the darkness of the storm lit by what was moments away from turning into pain, a friend made her decision, got out from under her surprised rider before charging two abrupt body lengths past Twilight, coming to a stop where everypony could see her. To focus on her and only her.

"Do you know who I am?" that mare grandiosely demanded, sheer strength of drama soaking into the world.

It froze them, if only for a moment. It froze everypony, with the sheer level of near-hysterical query forcing all of the combatants to temporarily serve as nothing more than her audience.

"I," Rarity declared, "am the world's worst weatherpony!"

Her horn ignited, the corona going double in an instant, and so many opposing fields lit to counter her -- but nopony had been expecting the bolt to project straight up, soft blue lightning stroking from ground to sky. A single flash of power, everything Rarity had been willing to risk, just about everything which could still be given at all following the earlier battles, and then her field winked out.

There was a moment when nopony did anything more than stare at her, with no idea of what had just happened. And then the rain stopped falling, doing so as wind shifted, began to swirl as the clouds twisted, the lower edges distorting into something which, if given enough time, would eventually assume a checkerboard pattern.

The rain had stopped.

Or, seen from another viewpoint, it had simply paused to gather reinforcements.

Sheets of water plummeted from the sky, pounded earth and metal and ponies with enough force to almost hurt. Lightning struck somewhere near the lake: another bolt came close to the castle. The wind speed doubled, randomly changed direction, twisted the direction of liquid impacts. It was almost impossible to see, to think, to do anything, coronas started to wink out as several unicorns instinctively quelled their power, with many suddenly wondering if it was possible for rain to hit hard enough to create backlash --

"-- now!" Rarity screamed, even as all four knees began to collapse. "Go right through them!"

They heard her. They charged, and Twilight gathered her friend into a field bubble, protecting her, carrying her along. They went directly into the cult's last true defense, with nopony caring very much about any injury they were inflicting along the way.

Hooves kicked out in all directions. Lightning struck over and over, and the closest bolt came within forty body lengths of the battle. Thunder nearly deafened Twilight, stopped her from hearing one attacker, a pony she only saw just in time to dodge the blow which had been aimed at her horn, a horn which had to remain lit until Rarity could recover. Applejack spotted the problem, turned away from nearly caving in a rib cage to reach Twilight's right flank, began to move around her, kicking out at anypony within reach --

-- the mare's appearance had been mostly concealed. But even through the storm, through thunder and lightning and combat, her voice couldn't be missed, and it was no less hated for being familiar.

"CLOD!" the coffee-seller screamed, her head down, horn angled to stab as she began her charge. "YOUR HOOVES TOUCHING OUR SETTLED ZONE, DEFILING OUR SOIL -- !"

Plant. Spin. Kick.

The horn was unbreakable, refused to transmit the force of impact to its owner. The skull around the base couldn't say the same.

"Ah think," Applejack panted as the unicorn hit the ground, already looking for her next target, "the only pony doin' that right now can just keep doing it."

Some fought. But the lightning was too close, the thunder too loud, the world wasn't safe, and for every pony they dropped, three were racing away, trying to find shelter, any form of shelter, a need which sent some of them into the open tunnel: Twilight slammed the entrance shut.

And then it was a few fallen ponies, sheets of rain, howling wind, and Pinkie quickly moving to make sure that those who had been knocked down had their heads turned away from the water which coated the world.

Rarity, still within the field bubble, raised her head.

"Still... still not very good with the thundery ones," she smiled. "Set me down, Twilight: I am still capable of trotting, and I would rather not try to detect through your signature. For now, the last sensory impression I gained --" a foreleg gestured "-- was that way."

It hadn't been the triple corona this time, and the burst had merely been a single sharp one. It meant Rarity was in fact capable of trotting, and could even manage a run. She even had enough strength left to hold up her end of the argument.

"I can't stop this!" Rainbow shouted over the howling wind. "It's still spreading, and I'm just one pegasus!" In the familiar tones of ultimate offense, "I can't even fly in this, not for very long!" A brilliant flash of hot yellow-white briefly lit the night, and a tree which was twenty body lengths to their right turned into splinters and quickly-quenched flame. "What did you do, Rarity?"

"We needed a distraction! I provided it!"

"It's not safe out here! Not for anypony! We can't stay exposed in this! Twilight had to put those other ones in the tunnel before she dropped the slides on the exit!" Followed by something so rare for Rainbow: vocal desperation. "If you just knew what you did --"

The abruptly-increased level of volume was only partially meant to get through the thunder. "-- I have no idea what I did! I just did it! Now I'm trying to deal with it!"

"You cast when you didn't know what you were doing? You could have gone full parasprite on --"

"Was there a part of 'world's worst weatherpony' which you didn't understand? Let me think, Rainbow: I need to concentrate on the pearls! We can barely see in this and if I do not retain focus, we will lose them! We're getting closer, I know we are! They can't force themselves against this wind any more than we can --"

-- Twilight's field went up, caught and deflected the broken branch --

"-- and without help --"

Help.

We're outside the lockdown.

"SPIKE!" Twilight called out, turning to face him: Pinkie had taken his weight. "Did you send --"

-- and his right claw was just barely visible as he raised it, with only the lightning rendering sagging scraps of falling paper visible.

"...it's the rain." (He was young, he was still so young and he hadn't sounded this young in years...) "Everything just -- fell apart. I -- I can't..."

They did not stop: they could not. But the pursuit formed a tight cluster, centering itself closer to weeping eyes.

"There's nothing left?"

"I..." He swallowed, forced back fear. "I managed to get one away, before it could be ruined. To a safe place. But I hadn't written on it. It's... it's Cadance, Twilight, she sent her answer while I was running, and... I had to make sure it was safe. That if anything happened to us --" and now the words had to be jolted loose by more than the motion of the gallop "-- nopony could ever read it. We couldn't be captured with it. Doctor Gentle can't ever see it --"

Blinking at him helped to clear away water, and more arrived right behind it. "She answered? Why didn't you tell --"

"-- there was too much happening! And it wouldn't have done any good, Twilight, it --" on the verge of hyperventilation now, little streams running between heaving scales "-- it would have made things worse! It can't help her! It can't help anypony! Please, when it's over, I'll tell you, but not now, not until we're all safe!"

Claws clutched, took in handfuls of the curly mane while scattering scraps into the mass. Desperately latching onto the buoy which would save him from drowning. And there was a moment when she wanted to know, had to know --

-- but she trusted her brother. And she couldn't hurt him any more.

"When we get home," she softly told him, and a light touch of field wiped his closed eyelids. "Because we'll get home."

Had she just lied?

There was a way to make it happen, of course. It was called giving up. Heading for safety, allowing father and daughter and most devoted to escape.

He's crying.

I always feel so helpless when he cries...

"Spike?"

He sniffed.

"We have to catch them," the little knight said. "Keep going."

And they ran. Pushing against the wind. Hoping they had a little more strength than two of the ones they were chasing, for that group would be limited to the speed of its slowest member. That there was a chance physical weakness and dragging hind leg would allow them to close the gap.

The storm slows us. But it also slows them. The same factor working against both sides, so that makes it even. We just have to --

-- the sky lit up: a near-horizontal stroke this time. It let them see, and it let them be seen.

The cart was perhaps thirty body lengths away, and she had been hitched to it. Pushing herself forward with earth pony strength, pace limited not by wind, but agony. For them, the liquid pelting against them almost hit hard enough to hurt. For her...

Twilight had seen a picture once: a slingshot, a basic minotaur distance weapon. A small stone, launched with enough force, had the potential to kill. A hundred thousand projectiles of water, beating against a body already so wracked by pain, merely made the suffering pony wish for death.

I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I --

But in the flash, she also saw him. Limping at her side. And there might have been a third form there, but she was focused on him, she had to get the first spell off, she had to surround him, counter anything he might try, but he'd been looking behind him when the lightning had crashed through the checkerboard sky, he'd seen them, and his eyes went wide and in that single moment of light, she thought she saw his mouth open. Not speaking: simply framing a silent word.

'No...'

And then it all went wrong.

Her horn was igniting and he was moving towards her. She was lining up on her target, slowing down to be certain of her angle, and he was going towards his daughter's left flank. She was factoring for rain and he pushed at the earth pony, making the pain so much worse, getting her attention and she turned and she saw them and the one pony she trusted in all the world screamed for the first time, screamed words of desperation, screamed in what he might have seen as his final attempt to save his Great Work, went to the last resort while believing the chance to be nothing more than futile. Demanding, even while knowing there could be no possible results. Acting from the heart of the lie.

"DO SOMETHING! DO SOMETHING, YOU --"

The rest was lost in the thunder. And between contact and pain, sighting and light and noise, she was very visibly scared.

NononononoNO!

Twilight had slowed. It meant Applejack passed her.

It meant she saw the moment when Applejack fell.

The orange body stumbled, pitched forward, dropped, ears flattening against the skull, forelegs coming up to futilely press against the sides of her head, the muscular form skidding forward for two body lengths on the thin sheet of water as her voice cried out in accentless agony. It almost completely drowned out what was happening on Twilight's right, the tiny gasp which just barely found a place in her terrified mind as the ground between the groups heaved and there was something like the last dying gasp of an echo, the faintest note ever played surrendering the final vibration to unimaginable distance and

the grass was at least three Celests high. Thickened giant weeds bent and bowed in the wind. A wall of green life, at least five dozen body lengths from end to end and who knew how thick, blocked the way. However, for the very little it might have been worth, it was exactly the wrong time of year and part of the continent to get dandelions.

"...oh," Twilight said, and barely heard her own words from the twin depths of storm and stun. "She grew plants at us..."

Doctor Gentle stared at the wind-twisted, swaying plants, roughly six body lengths away.

"Oh," he finally said, the syllable emerging from somewhere in the midst of verbal daze. "Yes. I suppose that would be within the realm of theory..."

And there was something he almost thought of then. But he did not, for it would have invalidated everything.

"Mah head," Applejack softly groaned as she tried to lift her dripping body away from the ground. "Oh, my head... she's so loud and we were right on top of --"

A bright pink hoof gently touched Applejack's right shoulder.

She forced herself to turn, looked up, saw tears streaming from blue eyes.

"I..." Sobbing now, crying harder than Twilight had ever seen Pinkie cry. Sobbing and laughing, all at the same time. "I heard her..."

Slowly, Applejack forced herself to her hooves. Briefly pressed her body against Pinkie's, and let the tears merge with the rain.

"This won't give us much time," Doctor Gentle quickly decided. "They'll come around it soon enough. We have to reach the entrance: get out of their sight." They had to find the entrance. He'd been sure of where it was, but then the storm had --

-- she was swaying.

Of course. That was magical exertion if anything was. (He did not think of it a second time.) "Are you all right?"

"You said... you -- said..."

Had he said something? He had told her to act, he was sure of that, and... well, she had acted, so his words had been the right ones. "Can you move?"

"...yes."

Good. "How did they even find us? I only told ponies to give us our chance once we emerged." They could have traveled with the group -- but it would have been too easy to spot. "Not where we meant to go. They had nopony to question, no way to track --"

"I don't know, Doctor," Quiet urgently said. "But we have to move. This isn't going to hold for long, and we're having enough trouble with you hurt and pulling the cart through mud --"

The interruption took the form of a whisper, and so was nearly lost in the storm.

"-- the cart."

Orange eyes focused on the old wood. The ruts which would usually be left by the wheels: with the rain at its current force, those had been worn away within seconds. But the contents...

"...the unicorn. The concealment spell was anchored to the cradles. The unicorn is tracking the pearls..."

They stared at each other, and then silver ignited.

"Everything I can carry," Doctor Gentle, his field stuffing ever-changing gems into his jacket. "And no more. We don't have a choice." More softly, "A trick. We have come so far and we are being beaten by a simple trick cast by the most average unicorn I have ever seen, a hidden talent which exists for no reason other than to oppose us..."

The flow of silver energy paused. His corona briefly flickered.

"We have no choice," he stated. "None. Quiet -- my most devoted -- I have a final favor to ask of you. It seems... the most dangerous pony is not whom I had believed it to be. I will stop her. But that leaves --"

His daughter was looking at him. It was an expression he could barely make out, even with the glow of his horn to provide light -- but it struck him as being a rather odd one. There was a considerable amount of fear in it, and there was also something else. An aspect he couldn't identify.

"You won't," she choked out, as the rain tried to drive her into the dirt. "You said. You wouldn't. Let somepony --"

"I will not," he assured her. "I will simply do the needful. Quiet?"

The younger stallion regarded him, through darkness and a blue-white flash of lightning, with the second odd expression in less than a minute. And then those grey features locked in resolve.

"I'll try to buy you some time."

(There was rustling coming from the giant plants, and they never heard it, with so much lost in the storm.)

His small right forehoof came up. Doctor Gentle pressed his larger left forehoof against it.

"Catch up," he told his most devoted. "If you can. If you cannot..." Orange eyes briefly closed. "...it has been my honor --"

-- and seven bodies broke free from the plants. Six mares and a dragon, in full charge --

The disaster took, at most, fifteen heartbeats to create, and every last one echoed in Twilight's inner hearing.

His horn was already lit, he was turning, Twilight saw that light, focused on it, on the only plan they had, just barely heard wings flare out as Rainbow fought against wind and world to take to the air again, and the sight of a pegasus attempting to fly in this level of storm couldn't be missed, especially when that mare was managing to succeed.

They had chanced the expenditure of seconds on thought and in that, they had risked everything. But they were right there --

-- two of them were right there. She was, and he was, and Quiet --

-- it didn't matter. The plan was already in motion. Rainbow had managed to take flight, but she wouldn't be able to stay in the air for long. The execution of the plan partially relied on speed, had a little hope placed in shock, and a whole lot was built around Spike's aim.

His arm went into the cloth sling, took out the heaviest object, threw, with the arc going off-line --

-- Rainbow darted right, pressed and pinned it between her forehooves. Powerful wings beat at the air, moving her forward, and the older stallion's corona was swelling, increasing its light --

-- the sparkles vanished.

No.

It had been a statement.

Twilight's horn was already lit, and her own power started to surge forward. Getting between him and Rainbow, he would be targeting the pony who was openly moving, he had to --

-- which meant she was looking in the wrong place.

Silver lanced. Headed directly for Rarity.

She understood what was happening. He'd worked out how he was being followed. He was taking out their tracker. He was targeting her friend, and she'd lost her chance to counter. All she could do was deflect, and her field projection wrenched away from the original line, whipped into the new path, knocked the bolt of what she could only see as death off-course --

-- and Rainbow was already coming down, doing so faster than Twilight had imagined she could. Shouting, something about Let's see how this looks on you! as her forelegs swept forward and slammed howlite, spinel and iron onto the older stallion's forehead --

-- but the power had already been released. Power which no longer had a mind directing it. And she'd deflected that power.

It hit the cart.

Uncontrolled magic, something which was meant to go inside objects, soaked into the shifting gems. Gave energy free passage.

Something erupted from the cart. Something which was not light or dark, neither heat nor cold. It could not be described as solid or ephemeral. It was everything at once and so in many ways, it was nothing. It was too much. It was everywhere, and it wished to become everything.

Air was earth. Night was sea. Thought was pain and all emotions were fear. They had faced so much, they had held against their own instincts throughout the night, but this was something different. This was the purest of insanity, without even sapience to give it direction. It was something which made their blood scream, in those brief moments when it felt as if they had blood again. Only one had any experience with it, and that which had been won from dream was not enough to resist the breakdown of reality.

The chaos storm surged, swelled, and they broke.

It could be seen as a tiny amount of power. It dissipated quickly, as much as it truly could. (Where the cart had rested, there were cracks in the earth. Within a year, there would be ice and lava and vacuum, all in the same patch of lost land.) But they didn't think about that. For the most part, they couldn't think at all. They were running, all of them were running, most did so in different directions, father and daughter somehow managed to flee together as she broke free of the cart, but the Bearers had broken and Twilight was running and running and she was nothing more than something which only knew how to run and there was no barricade there was no safety there was no defense she had to run

and somepony followed her.

I...

Perhaps that was always the first thought, when thinking could take place at all. Sapience might mean the recognition of consequences, but it also meant acknowledging there was somepony there to recognize anything.

...where...

That might have been the universal followup.

The storm beat against her. Wind pushed through moisture-clumped fur. Waves of rain pounded against her snout. Somewhere to her left, another tree died.

She was too close to the treeline. You couldn't be near trees during a lightning storm. She was sure of that. But for orienting, trying to search -- she couldn't see all that far through the storm. She couldn't find the castle. They weren't close enough to the actual town for anything there to be visible. She wasn't sure where the lake was. The world was nothing more than the storm, and part of her welcomed that because now wind was air and rain was water and sanity had a chance to return.

...I have to find them. I have to find my friends...

(And maybe that was the typical third. If you were that lucky.)

She told her left foreleg to move. It responded. Progress.

Vocal chords were next. "SPIKE! RARITY! PINKIE! APPLEJACK! FLUTTERSHY! RAINBOW!"

No answer.

"...please..."

The storm howled.

"I'll find you. I'll..."

A step forward. Then another step --

-- and the impact hit her right shoulder, almost hard enough to bruise.

She yelped, jumped back, manage to steady herself on the landing, looked wildly around to see what had hit her --but she couldn't spot anything. No ponies, animals or monsters visible to have delivered what had felt almost like pure kinetic force. Energy without an origin point. She couldn't see what had done it, hadn't felt anything --

-- and when the storm spoke, she couldn't hear where the words were coming from.

There were words: her ears took in speech, recognized it as such, processed it normally. But there was no direction to it. Her ears rotated in every direction, failed to find a source.

The storm spoke to her, and did so in Quiet's voice.

"Please. Twilight, please listen to me..."

To her very great surprise, her first instinct was to laugh, and so she learned that instinct itself could be madness.

"Rarity figured you out."

It was as if the very wind had been surprised.

With open respect, "She's more than Doctor Gentle thought she was."

She began to move. Shifting left. Looking for something she couldn't see. "And that's why he tried to kill her."

"He was trying to knock her out. She's how you followed us. Put her down for a few hours --"

"-- how does he know?" Furious challenge. "Has he attacked so many ponies that he knows just how long to squeeze? Compress the heart this long to drop a pony, two more seconds to kill?" Stepped forward --

-- another impact, this time against her left flank.

"I don't want to hurt you," Quiet said. "I want to talk."

"We already talked." Shifting right this time. "Actually, I think you mostly listened. You do that a lot, right? You go around listening: I guess that's why you're so good at it. Only this time, somepony actually knew you were doing it." This laugh was bitter. "Projecting the resonance of dismissal: I worked that part out. I'm right, aren't I? I could look at you, but my mind rejects the sight. I can hear you, because you want me to -- but I can't tell where the words are coming from, because you're making some part of me decide that aspect isn't important. And I can't feel your magic, so I can't counter it. How much strength are you using, Quiet? How many thaums are you burning? How long can you keep this up?"

Softly, "Long enough. I can pull myself out of every sense you have, Twilight. Once, when I was still figuring out what my limits were... I touched somepony, and they knew they'd been touched -- but not what had done it. It was a pretty big jump. I could lower my head and charge right into you." Wryly, "Not that it would do much. I'd probably just knock myself out. But I can hide, Twilight. I spent a lot of time hiding when I was a colt, and when my mark came..."

Another lightning strike, somewhere behind her. She tried using the thunder as her distraction to move, got pushed back again.

"I could study you for weeks."

Not without humor, "I believe it. Twilight, please listen --"

"-- his most devoted!" she furiously broke in, wind sweeping her soaked bangs across her forehead. "You know everything, don't you? What he's done, who he did it to, why, and you stay at his side, as his most devoted! You'll do anything for him, anything for a mad stallion --" the words were speeding up, getting louder "-- because you're just as bad as he is, you're worse because he has his excuse, he has his wife and all you could possibly have is hate, hatred of anypony being born different, fear that you might not be pure --"

The soft sentence just barely reached her through the storm in all of its forms: outer and inner. It felt as if they'd just barely been spoken, and they arrived in her ears as broken.

"-- I had a sister."

The final word held the last remnants of an ancient sob.

Twilight stopped moving.

"Celestia's hooves, it feels so strange to say that," Quiet slowly told her, unseen and unfound. "I haven't said those words for years. I had a sister. My parents were... trying again, because I wasn't what they'd wanted. And I was so happy, Twilight. Somepony to talk to, somepony to teach and play with and protect. I told myself I'd always be there for whoever came, and I got up that night, I found where my mother had just finished labor, I got into the room without being seen because they were all arguing about something, my mother and father and the midwife who'd attended with Doctor Gentle out of town. But I didn't care about that. I found the basket, I looked inside, and I had a sister. Her fur was the color of a dove, and her eyes were grey like the sky becomes when Sun is getting close to the horizon. She was beautiful, Twilight, and I was going to spend my life being there for her, because there was somepony to be there for. I looked in that basket and I loved her, from the first second I saw her. The only seconds I ever had -- because I asked, out loud, where her horn was."

She couldn't move.

"My father got me out of the room," the pained voice told her. "Blocked my door. I was trapped in my bedroom for hours. And when I was let out... they lied to me, over and over. Said there had been nopony at all, nopony alive. That I'd had a dream, I was believing in a dream. And I just knew she'd been there. I went to so many ponies, I cried and I begged and then... Softtread told me everything. Because he loves me, he loves me still. More than they ever did. Loved me enough to tell me the truth, and -- who I should seek out."

"They..." The word had been choked. "They -- ki --"

"-- I don't know! I don't even know that much, Twilight! You heard the words tonight: I was there when Doctor Gentle said them. Sending on. Two words with two meanings. And one of them is... somepony takes the foal elsewhere. An earth pony is left at an orphanage, or a doorstep, or near a police station in another settled zone. They grow up there, they don't know who their birth parents are, they'll never know. I... wanted that to be what happened. But -- the other option..."

The sudden sob came from everywhere and nowhere.

"...is to send them on to the shadowlands. Softtread didn't know what my parents did. I've never found anypony who knows. I had a sister, Twilight, for less than a minute, and because she was born an earth pony, she might have lived for all of an hour. I can't have children --"

And then she had somepony to take it out on.

"-- because you'll have to send them on --"

"-- this isn't about me!" the storm howled.

Two more lightning strikes, and the thunder took its time about fading.

"Bella knows," Quiet shot at her. "We've never been together, we never will be. She wouldn't accept an earth pony foal, any more than she accepts me. I'm the contract her parents made, one she can't get out of, and she's happy just to spend my money without worrying about even bothering to order around servants who could raise a foal for her. I don't care if my children are earth ponies, or pegasi, or unicorns. I just want them to be okay. Healthy. Loved. And..."

A gust of wind swallowed.

"...it's not about me. It's always been about them. About the children. I can only control how I feel." And now the storm was pleading. "There's always going to be hatred, Twilight, there's always going to be bigots and ponies too short-sighted to see the end of their own snouts. We can't control that, ever. But if we could find a way to control what our children would be, if we could make it so that no birth could ever be dreaded, no foal hated, no sending on..."

Stop.

Stop sounding like it makes sense.

The rain fell all the harder. The world weeping, thunder as bursts of rage.

"You're crazy --"

"-- it's the only way --"

"-- you know what he's done --"

"-- he's saving lives --"

"-- you know what he is --"

"-- a racist, in many ways. A bigot in others." Quiet softly finished. "Yes. It doesn't matter. If you pull somepony out of a river solely because they owe you money, that pony still lives. He founded the Great Work, and look what it's done, Twilight. What she can do --"

"-- she can spend her life drugged or screaming!" she shouted. "For however long she lives! She could overdose, she could change with the wrong drug in her body, she could kill herself! She's suicidal, Quiet, did you spot that? She wants to die!"

It silenced him for a moment, if not the storm.

"I'll tell him," Quiet finally said. "He'll take care of her. He always --"

"-- and now he wants more foals to experiment on? What happens if it goes wrong again? What if it's worse?"

The answer came too quickly. "He's trying! And if it's one foal now, compared to every foal to come --"

"-- then volunteer your sister."

The shove hit just below her throat.

Instantly, "I didn't mean --"

The force of the hiss cut through water and air, left her hoping it had somehow wounded flesh. "-- horse apples."

She moved. He shoved: her left foreleg this time, and she kicked in that direction. No sense of impact.

"I need you to understand," Quiet told her, and there was no physical pain in his words. "I need you to -- look forward. Please, Twilight. All of those children, all of the corpses. That has to end, you know it does. I just need you to -- listen. Truly listen..."

I can't find him.

If I had her wave attack, I could just sweep the area. But I don't. All I can do is fire bursts in random directions. I might get him eventually, or I might just tire myself out.

I could run. But if I did... he could charge me. If I can't see him...

"Please, listen..."

He can pull himself out of every sense I have --

And she thought.

She thought about the dying gasps of a faint note.

buried deep

She closed her eyes, shut out water and sight and storm. It was a safe action. It might confuse him, but as long as she didn't try to go anywhere, he wouldn't do anything.

"...Twilight?"

And then she listened.

Sent her hearing inwards. Deep and down.

...I am truth, and truth is painful. Truth can be all the things ponies never wanted to hear or think about, the facts we never wanted to exist at all. But I am truth, and so I must face down every bit of that. I have to be honest, and the hardest thing in the world is to be honest with myself. I do the best I can every day, because lies can be easy and truth is slow, painful work. I take to my labors because that's part of who I am, and the hardest work of all is figuring out how to exist with those truths. But I have that strength. I'm so much stronger than anypony believes, strong in the only way which truly matters. In that, I carry the strength of the world.

I am the earth, and the earth is capable of change. Sometimes those shifts are slow, sometimes they're abrupt, and they are never anything less than powerful. I feel the plates shifting inside and I fear who I might become, as changes move away from the foundations built over centuries. But change must take place, and sometimes that means the earth breaks for a while. I bleed as lava, my wounds solidify as stone. I am stronger than before, and I move on.

I am part of the world on a level few will ever understand. I listen, for there is something which loves me enough to speak. All I can do is return that love, and I offer up the gift of my singing, in the hopes that the song is a pleasing one. And when my labors are done, I will return. The loan will be repaid. The contract completed. I go to my rest, carried by music, and accept it as the reward for a job completed.

(there was a distant sound now, one she was just starting to isolate, and it came from beneath her and around her and everywhere)

I am honesty because to be such is a burden, and somepony has to carry it.

I am steadfast because betrayal is the final expression of a lie, and I will always return to those who love me. The ones I love in return. The family of my heart.

I am always and forever on my own ground.

I am Applejack...

♪ where is he? ♪

She asked her question, and the world answered.

rain

every drop is an impact against the skin of the world. It blurs the world. It tries to drown the surface, but you can always go deeper. There are roots, drawing their life from that which freely offers it. Stones waiting to reach Sun, and others content to rest in the dark, where they can learn how to sing

and there are caves, there are caves so close by, little drips to listen to instead of pounding rain, for stone is born from water and dies from water and so water has always been part of this. Water carves channels of music into the world, and we listen, it's so easy to listen deep when the rain pounds against our skin but

what you need is on the surface

and so we listen

for he cannot escape a sense he never knew to exist

four points of pressure, not too heavy

right
over
there

He was on her left. About eight body lengths away.

We danced, just once.

I watched you. I matched you. I was looking slightly down most of the time, because you're shorter than I am and that's so rare for a stallion...

Is this a dance?

(How much power was he using?)

I think I care about you a little, even now.

(How was it being channeled?)

But I can't love you.

(What would happen if she hit...)

And I won't match you any more.

She darted left. The unseen field ignited, tried to shove her --

-- and the burst of power slammed into his horn and head and thin body, broke contact with the soil at the moment her inner hearing fell away, unable to retain the aspect and attack as a unicorn would. She could no longer feel where he was. She simply heard the direction from which the scream had come.

She risked a full minute to the search, a minute during which her broken heart couldn't bring the song back.

A minute where she couldn't find his body.

Exhibition

The storm was no longer speaking to her. It was screaming, words created from rain and wind blasting against her ears, lightning creating italics while thunder added punctuation. The voice of the earth was gone (and she couldn't remember what it had truly sounded like), replaced by the rage of the world -- a fury which mostly failed to get past the groove which her own internally-repeated speech seemed to be carving into her mind. The same thoughts, over and over, and she couldn't stop. She even began to recognize the words.

He had a sister.

Another lightning strike, somewhere to her right.

He loved her from the moment he saw her.

The thunder rippled across her sodden fur, failed to shift her attention away from the self-loathing.

He was going to be her best friend forever...

The storm told her she was a killer, and there was nothing left in Twilight which could disagree. To believe she'd killed, to have that thought going around and around, no way to stop it, the groove getting deeper, carving out a path of absolute belief --

-- is this what it's like for her? What does it feel like to have this in your head starting almost from the moment you understood what words were at all? To believe that you killed, you killed someone who cared about you without ever meaning to, without having any control over what happened, that you're a murderer and you have to do something to make it right, but you can't ever bring back...

At most, Twilight had been living with that thought for a minute. But it was enough to extrapolate, project that pain across a lifetime. She knew what living with that belief would be like.

It would be torture.

The storm screamed at her, and did so by name.

"Twilight!"

The world knew what she was. She had told them that they might have to kill, she had recognized the potential reality, but now it had happened and Twilight had been the one to --

"TWI!"

The lightning briefly illuminated the world, pushed just enough past streaming rainwater and tears to let her see the orange body which was racing towards her -- but now all four legs were quickly decelerating, and the left hind one stumbled somewhat as the farmer came to a stop. An injury from one of the fights, or a rock in the grass. They were all hurting. Twilight had her own share of agonies, and so many were her fault --

-- Applejack.

I'm not alone.

But they'll know what I did.

They'll leave.

They'll finally understand how dangerous I --

(And even with so much fresh pain to boost its rising, the weight of desperate experience held the thought down.)

"...you found me," the little mare half-gasped, disbelief saturating the words. "How did you...?"

Another streak across the sky provided enough light to see Applejack's expression -- but not to fully work out what it was. There was some pain in it: Applejack had spent the most time within the enemy front lines, had been on the receiving end of kicks and horn pokes. Twilight recognized a surge of relief. But there was something else...

"'course Ah found you," Applejack quietly said. "Twi, what happened? Tell me quick: we may not have much time."

"It..."

She could lie. But lies always fell apart in the end.

"...it was Quiet," Twilight made herself say, and the next words nearly finished her. "He managed to follow me, he was trying to stop me, his talent -- I couldn't find him and when I did, when I hit him, Applejack, I can't find his body, I think I killed --"

"-- y'hit a pony whose talent is not having ponies know where he is," Applejack cut her off, "and you're wondering why y'can't find him?"

Twilight blinked. Most of a small lake fell away.

"I --"

"-- maybe he's hurt an' limped off," Applejack broke in again. "Maybe y'knocked him out, but his magic's still going. Maybe we don't have time t' worry 'bout it, time t' care. Ah know he could still be a problem. But we've got other ones, an' they're still movin'. Ah found you, Twi, an' now we've gotta find everypony else --"

Very little of the words sunk in. She simply looked at the hatless presence. The mare who was so much larger than she was, so much stronger in so many ways...

She almost lunged forward, pressed streaming eyes against fur which could absorb nothing more. For water, the saturation limit had been reached. But this was pain, and so her friend took as much of the burden as she could.

A powerful foreleg came up, gently rubbed against the slim body.

"Easy, Twi," Applejack softly said. "Easy. Just keep going for a little while longer. We'll catch them soon or we won't. Either way, when it's done, then we'll all rest. It's a big job -- but maybe it's almost over. Because we harvest the Acres one tree at a time. It doesn't matter how many there are: one tree at a time, with enough ponies on the job -- that'll add up to the whole thing. Right now, there's still two ponies to deal with, and one of them has to be saved. So can you give me one more tree? And then one more after that, an' one more, until the whole thing's done?"

She shivered, as little rivers ran through her fur. Managed a tiny nod.

"Okay," her friend told her. "We'll keep an ear out for Quiet, as best we can. But right now, we've gotta find everypony else. So what Ah want you t' do is get your horn lit. Make your field move like lightning, send flashes into the sky. Maybe there's a lot of fireworks goin' off right now, but nopony's gonna miss your color. And they'll close in."

There was a major problem built into the tactic, and Twilight managed to voice it. "It'll tell the conspiracy where we are. If any of them are still in the storm and looking for us..."

"Maybe we finally ran out," Applejack proposed. "And if we didn't, Ah'm up for cracking a few more skulls. It's the fastest way, Twi, especially with all the rain coming down. Help them come to us."

A new level of fear was beginning to shove its way in. "And if anypony ran into some of them, got hurt or --"

"-- this is how we start t' find out," Applejack steadily replied. "Are y'up to it?"

"...yes."

She needed a little casting room, and so she backed away. Looked up, ignited her corona, sent burst after burst of fieldlight into the chaotic sky. But every so often, she would pause to listen, to look around. Trying to spot a friend on the approach, or an enemy in full charge.

But the first few attempts had her find nothing more than Applejack, quietly watching. Guarding.

And every time, that mixed, unreadable expression was the same.

He never considered that the gesture might have been familiar to her. The unconscious raising of a foreleg, the awkward angling towards the chest. In her case, it would have been to adjust the necklace's position. For him -- he was reaching somewhat higher. Trying to touch a place very close to his throat. Attempting to bring a hoof against metal, simply from the completely natural, utterly futile instinct to get it off.

The pegasus, with the restraint pressed between her forehooves, swooping in...

All she'd needed to do was get it over the horn, and her aim had been precise. The enchantments, detecting something more than bone, had taken care of the rest: straps had moved of their own accord, and the lock had automatically snapped shut.

He'd thought... it wouldn't be a problem.

(Although it had taken some time for thinking to return. He believed himself to have more experience with chaos than all but two other living ponies, had certainly spent the most modern time within its terrain -- but none of that had prepared him for an actual chaos storm. Star Swirl's notes had failed to capture the experience, and he didn't blame the caster for that. He wasn't sure the necessary words existed.)

He could project his field into an object -- after the initial appearance of his corona. Star Swirl, capable of working through a hat (and more), had pushed his power through solid matter during field ignition. It made sense for the effects to be related, and so he'd felt that with a little work, he could get through the restraint. But...

There was silver, here and there: sparks of light flying everywhere, like the initial projections of a filly who was coming into her magic for the first time. But there was no focus. He couldn't fully surround any object. He couldn't lift, pull, manipulate at all. A portion of his energy was in fact working its way past the restraint's barrier: it just wasn't enough to do anything. And so he was trying to reach the restraint, just like --

-- he stopped.

This can be fixed.

There were currently three potential methods of removal. He could potentially work out how to fully defeat the barrier created by iron, spinel and howlite -- and even then, he would need to find some way of defeating the locking enchantment: it was attuned to those unicorns who worked for the settled zone's police department, and nopony had ever thought to create an exception for him. The second option was to find one of those ponies, but that would mean diverting towards the town: more time spent in the area, a better chance to be caught. And lastly -- patience. Wait enough time for her to assume the unicorn state, and then she could simply pull the entire thing apart.

Admittedly, she potentially had enough physical strength in her current form to at least do some serious damage to the restraint. But that would mean kicks aimed at his head and while the horn didn't transmit impact, the skull around the base would be happy to conduct any force which went into the metal. The amount of power required could easily fracture bone, and -- he was already hurt. Injured again, because he'd seen the pegasus coming in, started to drop his field -- and hadn't been fast enough. At least, not completely.

It took a single corona to use the Exception on a mother and foal, and that was simply the benefit of experience: he'd done that more than anything else, and so had worked out the most efficient method for accomplishing the feat. Anything else currently required a double. And the sharp impact of a restraint's inner cone against a horn...

He'd seen the danger, instinctively began to release his effort -- but the pegasus was among the swiftest of her generation. He'd just barely managed to dim his corona somewhat when she'd hit him, and so the resulting backlash had been somewhere on the border between the first and second stages. He was having some trouble breathing. His vision had been blurred by more than rain. When he'd raced away from that which the Princess had unleashed (not his magic, the Princess: he hadn't been the one to deflect the effort and so the storm hadn't been his fault), he had done so on instinct, moving as fast as he could with no regard for any hurt at all, extant or new -- and so he hadn't discovered the cracked rib until after he'd finally stopped.

His right hind leg had already been injured. But it had also been slowly healing -- and then the desperate flight had stressed it. Rationality had returned, movement had ended, and now he had to force himself to move. Every step was an effort. He might not be able to keep going for all that long, not on hoof.

There was also a headache, for the pegasus hadn't exactly been gentle. This was presenting him with some additional difficulties.

The stallion who had been with thousands of mares as they birthed, who had seen the sheer agony his daughter was in -- forced himself to lower his foreleg, and wondered how he was supposed to think normally while in so much pain. Most of the potions and drugs had been in the cart...

On hoof.

If she was a unicorn... if she could teleport and escort me through the between...

But she was still an earth pony, would be for hours. Her options were currently limited to trotting, and the pegasus form had no training in carrying another across long distances. Even then, maintaining the necessary pressure against a wet body...

Her heritage had not been restored, and so she retained the most distinctive feature of her broken magic.

And then he realized she was looking at him.

"What. Is...?"

She had raced away at his side. Even acting on a fear nopony had known for generations, from the heart of instinct, she had remained with him. She knew her place.

"That sentence," he pointed out (with a pause for the thunder), "requires an ending."

"What is. Useless? You said..."

He didn't remember saying anything. "You're hearing the storm." A small sigh. "It's a wonder either of us can hear anything right now." And that could so easily work against them, especially if the Bearers managed to regroup and renew their tracking. He was restrained, and he doubted the vegetation trick (a rather useless stunt, if one thought about it) would do so much as stall them if seen for a second time. "We have to find --"

"-- Quiet."

He looked up at her. (Up. She had always been a little on the tall side. Even as a newborn, she'd been -- well, not huge, really. Just a little over the typical earth pony foal in size and mass, and by the time he'd learned that, he'd already been prepared to dismiss it.) Wondered exactly what had gotten into her. She didn't interrupt him. She listened. She knew to let him speak. To let him think. "He offered to buy us time. I accepted. You are what's important. He'll catch up if he can. If he cannot -- then a sacrifice had to be made. He chose to be that sacrifice." A soft sigh, one filled with more than one kind of pain. "I will -- honor that decision." His most devoted... "We cannot go back for him, and we can't try to help him. There's only one thing we have to find right now --"

"-- sacrifices."

The word had some odd undertones to it. There was pain, of course: the last dose had fully worn off by now, and he wasn't sure if the failed booster potion had done any extra damage. But somewhere beneath that, there was something which almost seemed to approach a question.

Or a -- statement.

"Our patrons put themselves into combat for you tonight," he tersely said. "Quiet did the same. Respect what they gave of themselves. Sacrifices have always been part of the Great Work. Decades of sacrifices --"

"-- foals."

He didn't know why she'd said that. He didn't understand why she kept interrupting.

"Foals," she slowly said, "are --"

"I. Am. Speaking."

She stopped talking.

"There is one thing we have to look for," he stated, and tried to force his blurred vision to focus through the storm. It didn't seem to be happening. The rain continued to pound against the land, lightning was going off in all directions --

-- that was the Princess' field hue.

She's signalling the others. They'll be coming...

"LOOK!" Instinct directed him to use a burst of silver for indicating direction: frustration had him jabbing a foreleg in the general direction of the few escaping sparks, and she reared back from both. "That was a signal flare! They're going to be regrouping, and that means they may get into the unicorn's range! If there's a single flaw in my garment's anti-detection spell...!" That unicorn. An average specimen chosen to bear Generosity when the previous Bearer had been Princess Luna and given that, the current occupant seemed to be something of a step down. "We need to find one thing: an entrance into the tunnel network! We need to --"

Where can we go?

They'd lost nearly all of their supplies...

"-- go home," he finished, just a little more softly. "Collect what little is there, as quickly as we can, and then use the tunnels to reach the furthest possible exit." It would put them close to the settled zone's fringe, and from there, they could vanish. "It will also give us some time out of this storm." He had no idea what had happened there. The schedule had dictated severe weather, but this... "But in this storm, simply finding an entrance..." Even with clear vision, trying to make out the subtle signs which indicated a nearby doorway through sheets of rain...

Her only response was "The tunnel."

Why wasn't she thinking? "Yes. The tunnel. We need to find --"

Dark purple twitched. Rotated.

"This. Way," she said, and turned towards the left. Began to slowly, painfully trot.

He stared at her.

"How can you know? The most time you've spent in them was tonight! Unless you --" no, she wouldn't leave her quarters, she wouldn't disobey like that --

Although in one interpretation, she already had.

She glanced back at him. Glancing down.

"I know," she painfully declared. "I..." Stopped. "...see? Hear? I..."

(He had trained himself to think in different ways, to perceive what others could (or would) not... but still, he did not consider it. He could not.)

No, he had to be fair. He had told her how to recognize some of the entrance blazes, just in case she wound up outside after having to flee from discovery and needed to get back in again. There was a chance she'd spotted something while they'd been running. And even if she hadn't, the search had to start somewhere. As long as they weren't heading towards those flares of corona light...

"Then show me," he told her. She nodded, moved forward. Slowly, so that he could keep up.

"If. He ever..."

Thunder took the rest.

"What did you say?"

"...nothing."

Rainbow, as the last to arrive, had wound up with plenty of time to prepare her excuse.

Naturally, she'd prioritized. The first thing she said upon coming into view was "Thank Moon you're all okay!" But after that, "I was trying to find everypony, but with the storm still going like this --" a pause to glare at Rarity "-- it's not exactly easy! And I still can't fly in this! You try staying on course, on hoof, when you're used to working from --" spotted Fluttershy "-- oh. Yeah. So what are we --"

A grinning Applejack, who'd been trotting up throughout the speech, leaned in and nuzzled her.

"Ugh!" A cyan foreleg desperately came up, swiped away moisture and in doing so, made room for plenty more. "You're all wet!"

"Yeah, an' so are you," Applejack stated. "Either way, y'had it coming. Everypony ready to move?"

"...I think so," Fluttershy softly said. (She'd been the second to arrive.) "I just..." She shivered. "The voles... I felt them jump off, and I think they're okay. But they won't come back. I don't think... I can get anyone to come with us, not after that. The animals... between the rain and what happened to the cart, they won't come out..."

Pinkie (the fourth to find them, and the only one who'd been in a fight on the way in: she'd encountered two cultists who'd fled from the playground battle, had been working their way back, and made the mistake of deciding they could take on one pony) slowly nodded. "It was too scary," she plainly said -- then paused. "And sort of -- pretty?" Then, before the others could even begin to stare, "But it was pretty like lava after a volcano erupts. You know that between heat and fumes, there's too many ways to die, and without the right workings, you shouldn't even be close enough to look..."

"I wish it had been lava," a trembling Spike said. (He'd always had trouble with cold, the rain was a chill one, and he couldn't afford to waste any flame in playing it across his own scales.) "I don't want to see that again. Ever."

"Nor do I," Rarity quietly agreed. "There was already a part of me which automatically recoils when colors clash. When the very world clashes against itself..."

Rainbow trotted up to Spike. "Stick with me for a while. I'll try to shift some heat towards you." (He gratefully smiled.) "What's our next move?"

They're alive. They're all alive --

-- Quiet...

...no. She would obsess over it: she knew that. Her thoughts might return to the groove again and again. She was capable of recognizing the process while being unable to permanently stop it: a familiar kind of pain.

But right now...

"We try to find them again," she told them. "However we can. If it's even still possible --"

-- and Applejack's right foreleg stomped for attention against the saturated ground, sending the splash in all directions.

"She just used her magic."

Everypony blinked at her. Then they did it again, mostly because it temporarily cleared the water away.

"Not that many other voices around here," the farmer told them. "Ah've been trying to hear her -- well, ain't like I have to strain much, not with her. I was more worried about her nearly deafening me all over again. But she didn't shout this time. Just asked a question."

"What kind of question?" Twilight quickly asked. "If it was asking for something visible --"

Applejack quickly shook her head. "She was looking for a tunnel entrance. Easy question, easy answer."

"Tunnel," Rainbow half-groaned. "Oh, come on..."

"...which means," Fluttershy more steadily said, "there was a tunnel to find. You said there were caves..."

That produced a nod. "Yeah. That network Ah picked up on while I was getting the feel for her echo. Part of it's around here. I'm guessing the locals used it as the base for some of the underground stuff. Don't have to dig as much when the hollow's already there."

"But she didn't open a hole?" Twilight checked.

"Looking for a trapdoor," Applejack clarified. "Same as we came out of the castle by. They're going back down, Twi. She asked her question, she got her answer -- an' she doesn't know anypony else can listen in." A slightly mercenary smile played about her lips. "She knows where to go underground now -- an' so do Ah."

"We've got one more chance," Twilight softly exhaled. "Applejack, you're in the lead. Get us down there."

She would hurt later. The internal wound might never heal.

But right now, she didn't have time.

The first thing they found was the remains of her dress, half-submerged within an exceptionally deep puddle.

"The same reason we shed ours, I suspect," Rarity decided as the group quickly moved past it. "Freedom of movement." A small sigh. "So along with everything else in the poor mare's life, she had to deal with the insult of making her public debut in that. How much further, Applejack?"

"Not much," the farmer replied. "Ah'm getting a better sense for them now that they're starting to move out of the rain -- and yeah, it's a plural. Two bodies. Moving slow."

"He's got that limp," Twilight considered, "and I don't think his corona completely winked out before Rainbow got the restraint on. He probably got an extra backlash from that. So he can't run, and she's keeping pace with him..."

Applejack nods. "That's how I figure it."

"Could you collapse the tunnel in front of them?" Rainbow quickly asked. "Keep them from going anywhere?"

"Hard t' do small-scale," Applejack replied. "I could try -- but most of it is pretty solid rock, Rainbow. Wouldn't be easy to start with. And even if I managed, there's aim. We're trying not to hurt her. Besides, I do too much and she might hear me. All she's got to do is say 'no' on instinct. And once she says that, she might start saying a lot of other things."

The pegasus groaned. "It just can't be the easy way." (Her wings shifted again: Spike's shivering continued to slow.) "Fine. So once we're in a tight space again --"

"-- it ain't," Applejack reassured her. "Not exactly the castle's great hall, but there's some room to work with."

Firmly, "Good."

They kept moving. Watching. Listening...

"...if we'd just been able to get in!"

The group only froze for a split-second. Mutually regarded the nearest trees, considered the chance of lightning strikes as a unit, and still stepped back into the shadows.

"It wasn't a bad idea," an unfamiliar stallion voice decided, with the tone suggesting that agreement was being made for at least the tenth time. "Can we just go back to town now?"

"I thought we were heading back to town!" There weren't many mares who could essentially mutter a yell, but this one managed the trick. "Swung around to try and intercept some of the guests while they were leaving, but no, nopony wants to talk! And it's bad enough that we were out there all night in what was scheduled as the worst storm of the season after the bucking servant blocked us, but then this happened, and we got lost... I'm going to be filing stories. Lots of stories. And at least one of them is going to be about the incompetence of the local weather team."

"What about those two ponies in full-body robes who galloped past us? Any ideas there?"

The mare snickered. "Well, we could say it was just some performance art held at the party. Or maybe they were toys. An offering given to a Princess who doesn't know what to do with them..." Followed by, with the frustration dropping back in, "It should have worked. It might have been the best idea for sneaking into something anypony's ever had, and it didn't work..."

The pair came into view.

"Still a great idea," the stallion told her, possibly for the eleventh time.

"Great ideas work." She snorted. "Something's going on with the Princess and that castle. Why else would she be staying so long?"

"Maybe," the stallion proposed, "she's pregnant."

The mare stopped moving.

"Gallop with that," she urgently said. "Right now."

"Well, that doctor is living there now, right?" the stallion continued. "The one the locals say is so special. And what's more special than an alicorn giving birth?"

The green and brown unicorn mare stared at her partner.

"Page One," she happily declared. "That is Page One for the next eleven and a half moons..."

And they continued on their way, merrily working out the false details of the rumor while completely unaware of the seven sapients who were less than thirty body lengths away.

Rarity was the first to risk speech.

"So now we know where the reporters were all night."

The others nodded.

"Also that they don't seem to be particularly lucky."

Again.

Rarity took a deep breath.

"That," she concluded, "is the single worst fake pregnancy belly I have ever seen. And I am comparing it to a nearly-full educational career of having to attend plays at my boarding school. Ones where I was not permitted to be in the costume department." A tiny shrug. "One wonders if the birdseed leakage began before they were turned away..."

It started as a fairly normal cave, albeit one which had seen most of the stalagmites cleared away. There was enough room for three ponies to trot side-by-side -- or one pegasus who was taking the first possible opportunity to spread her wings, shaking out the moisture as quietly as possible.

Twilight had taken the lead again: the passage had no lighting devices, and so they were once again relying on corona glow. Rarity and Applejack had wound up next to each other: one tracking hoofsteps, the other straining to pick up on the chaos pearls again. So far, the farmer was the only one having any luck.

"They've got a lead," she whispered. "But we could close the gap. The problem is figuring out what t' do when we reach them."

"I'm not going to trust the restraint," Twilight softly replied. "Not with him. If the Exception lets him get past it..." But they'd had to try. "We keep watching for his field. No matter what."

"And her?" Spike asked.

She sighed. "I wish I knew, Spike. I keep thinking there has to be something we can do. Say. But we'll be confronting her underground..." Perhaps the single worst place to confront an easily-scared earth pony who had an extremely loud vocabulary. "I want it to be peaceful. But maybe it can't be."

"Try to teleport with her, if it looks like it's going bad," Applejack suggested. "Get next to her, take her with you. Put her on the surface."

"But that leaves all of you with him. If I'm not countering -- Applejack, I've never tried to take more than three with me. I don't know if I can get all of us out at the same time. And if I take him, it's leaving you alone with her, even for a few seconds, and -- all she'll know is that I just made her father vanish. I don't think she's going to take it well."

"...there's no easy answer, Twilight." The near-whisper was Fluttershy's natural mode of communication. "I don't know if there can be a plan."

"We talk to her," Pinkie firmly (if quietly) said. "As much as we can."

"But will she listen?" Twilight asked. "Just about everything she's ever heard is from him..."

Nopony had an answer, and so they moved on.

There wasn't all that much in the way of fieldlight: they had to worry about a reflection bouncing ahead, and so partial coronas were the most anypony was willing to risk -- especially since there was a chance that those ahead of them were moving in the dark. It was still enough to let them watch the little displays as corona hues moved through the water which occasionally dripped down from the stalactites, or that played off the moisture on the walls. There was an odd beauty to it, even with the somewhat muddy hues which resulted near the middle of the herd.

But there were also dripping noises. Tiny impacts, when all of their senses were straining forward, when they'd already been hit by the chaos storm and so every nerve was waiting for the next attack. It was hard not to jump when moisture impacted fur, or if a tiny pebble was accidentally kicked into a hock.

We're all still alive. For now.

She wanted to pace. She wanted to scream. But she didn't have time...

"No traps so far," Twilight whispered. (She was searching for magic: Applejack was checking for potential rockfalls.) "At least there's that. But it doesn't mean there won't be any --"

"-- keep looking," Applejack tightly said. "The walls ahead just went smooth."

Twilight saw what she meant: the natural, uneven, potentially injurious patterns of the underground corridor were being replaced by something more friendly to fur and flesh. (The ceiling remained fairly natural.)

Somepony worked on this section. Which means somepony may have put workings in this section.

"Got it," Twilight softly replied. Extended her senses again. Still nothing. "But we're okay so far."

She took another hoofstep forward.

There were only four ponies in the world who could have set off the newest type of resonance bomb, and the youngest went right into it.

Everything should be new. Everything is the same.

{There is pain. There is pain. There is pain.}

She doesn't really understand words yet. She knows about sound. She makes a sound when she's upset. When she's hungry. When it seems as if she's been alone for a very long time, and part of her recognizes that there is a sound she can make which is supposed to bring somepony else. A sort of magic, the only kind she can work -- and so much of the time, nothing happens. She cries and nopony comes. She cries and she cries and something in her knows that somepony is supposed to come -- but it usually doesn't happen. So she cries more, because it's the only thing she knows how to do.

She doesn't know about names, and so she doesn't understand that nopony has given her one.

She sees colors and couldn't tell you what any of them are, for the first bit of speech is many moons away. But she loves colors. At this age, it would usually be the brighter, the better, but she'll take anything she can get. The dominant hue in her life starts with grey, runs through grey-black, and sometimes takes a dip into the browns. That's what's available in her room, the place she spends nearly all of her time. There are rare excursions to other sections, but -- they never leave the overall area. To that extent, the view never changes, and the walls are always the same.

{Why does it hurt?}

But sometimes she cries, and a snout appears. (She doesn't know what that is yet. She's somewhat aware that she has one. She's attempted the first explorations of her own body, but they're hampered by the sack of cloth which starts at her waist and surrounds her hind legs and tail. She can't really walk in that, and it makes other kinds of investigation difficult.) The snout is very large. Everything is huge. The world dwarfs her and she takes it as natural, for she knows nothing else. The air is always still and the temperature doesn't change very much. The light is even and steady, except when it's dark. There are those her age (she will never see anypony her age) who wouldn't like the dark, but there's some subtle shades there.

There's also a weight around her neck, all the time. That has lots of colors.

Still, she likes the color of the snout best. The snout belong to him. (She recognizes that there is a him, and that he is important.) She likes that he brings her food. That he cleans her. Washes her. Checks on her when she cries (but perhaps not often enough, and so she won't cry for very long). She likes his eyes. She likes the sounds he makes, because it means somepony is making sounds for her. She strains to listen, and it won't be very long before she starts to understand what a few of them mean.

{Why is her skin on fire?}

Sometimes silver picks her up. (Silver is interesting. It tingles.) It brings her almost all the way to him. And he looks at her, and he makes sounds.

I love you
I love you, and so you will love me too
In spite of what you did, I love you
You killed your mother and I love you still
You are broken...

They must be important sounds, because he makes them all the time.

She has to pay attention.

"-- Twilight!" As close to a scream as a whisper could ever manage: something else which Fluttershy was naturally good at. "Twilight, look at me, focus --"

She reeled, or tried to: the pink and orange forms were holding her up, one from each side. "What...?"

"Good," Fluttershy exhaled. "You're talking. Where are we?"

"...underground," Twilight eventually managed. "In the tunnel, following them."

A small nod. "What happened?"

She did her best to focus. Fought her way through the memory of pain.

"I was... I think I was her. As a foal. We couldn't have been more than a few moons old..."

The caretaker was staring at her. It was lower-case, but it had plenty of company.

"You froze," Fluttershy said. "Then you started twitching, and Rarity had to clamp her field around your mouth to keep you from screaming. You were like that for about a minute, Twilight: we were trying to figure out if there was some way we could help you, we were going to evacuate you if things got any worse. You didn't even respond when Spike tried a light pinch. You were gone. And now you're saying you were her?"

Twilight shakily nodded.

"It was -- it was like a resonance bomb," she told them, looking at the faces crowded around her. "But instead of an emotion, I got a memory. One which was tainted by pain. Because when a caster works a spell under high emotion, you can get some sense of what that emotion was, and she was in pain when she brought back that memory. So I got that, and... she was a foal. Somehow, she remembered something from when she was an infant. And it stuck here."

"But that's magic!" Pinkie protested, unwilling to risk moving her body away just yet. "You said so in the orchard, and how they were made! You were checking for magic! Why didn't you find it?"

"I don't know," Twilight replied. "I should have. But... it was just a memory, everypony. We'll just watch out for the next one."

"There could be more than just memories," Applejack darkly pointed out. "And if you can't find them..."

A slow nod. "I know. But all we can do is be careful. We can't stop --"

"-- we can if it's your life," and the interruption had come from Fluttershy. "You were hurting, Twilight: anypony could see it. And maybe we can deal with the pain, but if it gets worse than that --"

They trusted Pinkie for emotional issues. Applejack took the lead in practical problems. Medical risks meant Fluttershy was in charge.

"A little more," Twilight requested. "I'll just look more carefully." But she'd thought she was searching on a level which would allow her to pick up on passive workings... "And that's a weird choice for a trap."

"False sense of security," Rainbow's limited reading experience told them. "There's probably something really big up ahead."

"You're sure you're okay?" Spike worriedly checked.

"It was just pain," Twilight told them. "The -- memory of pain --" and truly saw where farmer and baker were standing. "-- wait. Did you move me?"

"...a little," Fluttershy admitted. "Just enough to stabilize you."

"Let me look at where I stepped."

It was still a request, and so it took a moment for the others to comply. But eventually, she had a view.

"Applejack should have gotten some of it," she quickly decided. "If it was anything approaching a standard size and charge, there would have been enough for at least two ponies, and she would have walked right through it. So maybe it's underpowered. And it could be completely discharged now: I'm not picking up on anything."

"...you didn't before it went off, either," Fluttershy reminded her. "We can keep going, Twilight. For a while. But now that we know something's here..."

She nodded. "I'll be more careful." Began to trot down the tunnel.

She made it through five hoofsteps.

On the best days, he tells her about her mother.

Those days don't come often. It's a subject he's reluctant to approach, and it feels like it's too easy for him to figure out when he's being led. (She is six. She's not very good at leading. She never will be.) If he senses that, he sort of -- closes up. And then it's back to the lessons, and the lessons just keep coming. There are times when it feels as if all she does is study and normally, since she's a filly, all she really knows of fillies is herself and all she does is study, then studying would be normal. Except that...

...she's not normal.

She's broken.

She's broken and her daddy just wants to make her better.

But she still wants to know about her mother. It feels like it's very important to know about one's mother, especially because there seems to be some obligation to learn about the pony she -- killed.

(She hurts when she thinks about that. She hurts a lot of the time. She studies so it'll stop hurting.)

There aren't many days where her daddy will talk about the time before. But they happen. When he's in a good mood, if there was a book which was just found, when he's just come back from somewhere with a new stone for her necklace... it's possible. And on those days (or nights: she's not always sure, because with no natural light, her sleep schedule isn't quite in sync with a Sun and Moon she's never seen, and of course he's up at all hours for his very important job), he tells her about dances and parties. About a first date which he still feels never should have worked out. On one great day, he tells her about the wedding and of course she wants details about the guests and the food and the dress, because there was a dress and so it had colors which went with those of her mother, which means he has to tell her about what her mother's colors were.

She almost begs for the finest details. The curve of the tail, the way her eyes would twinkle. She has never seen her mother. She never will, because she killed her. But she wants to have some kind of image. Something in her head, so she'll know just who her mother was.

It's a lot to ask, and after he talks to her... the best days are followed by quiet ones. Sometimes after he talks, he won't say much of anything for a week. A week in which all she can do is study. But she's starting to get some idea of who her mother truly was. She's had the name of her victim for a long time. Maybe someday she'll have a face.

The best days are worth the silence.

And then there's the greatest day.

(The greatest day, which led to the worst day, winding the trail across the path of years.)

It's not her birthday. (She doesn't know that birthdays are something to be celebrated. Her birthday is one where her daddy always goes silent, and that never changes.) It's an anniversary. The day her daddy and mommy first met, only lots of years later. (When you're six, single digits are a lot.) And her daddy is a little silly. He smells funny, especially around his mouth. His field is carrying a bottle, and she's not allowed to have anything from it. This seems unfair.

"Did I ever tell you," he says, quite spontaneously, with no prompting at all, "what your mother did for a living?"

He hasn't. The topic has come up, but he's never answered her. He's volunteering this.

{Her bones are breaking themselves.}

"No," she says. And she can't pray to the Princess, because the Princess is a pony. (A very special pony. She's going to be a pony like that someday, if she's good.) Sun and Moon -- they're names and pictures in books. So she just hopes.

"Well," he conspiratorially (and drunkenly, although it'll be years before she figures that out) says, "she --" and stops.

Her heart begins to fall.

"Actually," he says, "why don't I just show you?"

And he signals for her to follow, and they go into the study and he taps part of the wall, it sort of slides aside and they go through a hallway, a new hallway, she's never been into a new hallway and every part of her is shaking with excitement, they're going somewhere new for the first time ever and then he opens a door and gestures a foreleg. He wants her to go ahead of him.

She does, and she steps into magic.

There are colors. So many colors. There are racks filled with colors. There are surfaces upon which colors have been applied, and when the colors unite, they become places. Like the ones she sees in her books, only so much brighter, so much more alive. And there are ponies, and there are things which are not ponies, and Sun, is that Sun? She thought it would be brighter than that. And a lot bigger. But it's in the corner of that one place, and maybe there isn't much glow, but there's a moment where it's almost as if she can feel that warmth. The warmth she's been told can only touch her when the Great Work is complete.

{Her bones are breaking themselves.}

"She traveled a lot, before she came to Trotter's Falls," her daddy softly tells her (and she hears his voice starting to choke up, like it usually does when he talks about her mommy for a while). "She wanted to remember everywhere she'd been. All the ponies in her life. It was natural for her..."

She can almost hear the tear forming. She can't look back to see it. She has to see this.

"These," her daddy says, "are your mother's memories."

He lets her stay in the room for what ultimately turns out to be twenty minutes. Then he takes her back out.

The next day, he sends her into her bedroom, closes the door behind her and tells her not to emerge until he calls for her. Shortly after that, strange sounds come from the study.

The wall never opens again. He never talks about what's on the other side. To even try and bring it up leads to silences. Absences. Weeks when it's just her, and it's usually days, it's very often days because he travels a lot in trying to make her better and she learned how to take care of herself very early. At six, she cooks, cleans, does her own laundry for bedding, and now has learned that the best way to do it all by herself for most of a moon is to talk about what's beyond that wall. The treasures hidden inside the stone.

{Her bones are breaking themselves.}
{She deserves it.}

But there's more than one wall.

She was lying on the smoothed-out floor, and so got to learn it wasn't completely smooth. It had been some time since the last maintenance sweep, and so something which might be a stalagmite in four or five hundred years was poking into her side.

"I scouted ahead while Fluttershy tended to you," was the first thing Rarity said. "Nothing happened. I risked standing directly over where you'd been when you fell. The same result. I am starting to believe this is attuned to you. Attacking you. We already know that Doctor Gentle can create a resonance bomb. We could be looking at her trick, Twilight. You were in more pain this time, and if it keeps getting worse --"

"-- she didn't do this on purpose."

Water dripped. Some of it came down from the ceiling. A little more fell from Rainbow's wings.

"How do you know?" Applejack challenged. "How can you --"

"-- because of the pain. I felt... I felt like my ribs were breaking, Applejack. Over and over. Fast. When you're casting, and your emotions are strong... it leaks in. It can even change the way things come out. It's the same for you, isn't it?"

The farmer slowly nodded.

"I think... she did this by accident," Twilight slowly said. "When she changed for the first time." It was a wild theory -- but it was one which felt as if it had arisen from the heart of her mark. "Something went wrong, and maybe she was remembering everything which she thought had made it go wrong. But she was remembering it while she was changing. I think she must have been changing fast. Faster than we even saw on the stage. Over and over. She was hurting, she was thinking about what had made it hurt, and... it just went outwards. She created a new kind of resonance bomb, without meaning to. But... she made it while she was changing. The pain leaked in -- and maybe the other forms did too, in one way. Maybe..."

It felt right.
It felt like a horror.

"...maybe I'm the only pony here who can trigger them. Because I'm a little of everything, and so is she. Maybe you have to be an alicorn to set them off..."

She began struggling to her hooves: Spike quickly moved in to help her up.

"They're hurting you," her little brother insisted. "We saw that! You can't keep --"

"-- it's a memory, Spike, it's a memory of her pain. But I think it's also what she thought went wrong. Maybe if there's more of them --"

"-- we might not be able to stop you from screaming every time! You could kick out, or hit your head, or --"

"-- you're right." She looked past him, to Rarity. "Keep your field around my jaw."

The designer blinked. "...Twilight?"

"So I don't scream when I set the next one off. If there is a next one."

"...the memory of pain," Fluttershy softly said, "if you're reliving it, is pain." Starkly, "Twilight, if this gets bad enough, it could kill you."

"It hasn't killed her."

"You ain't her," Applejack pointed out.

"We need this," Twilight insisted. "If it's what went wrong, we have to know -- !"

"An' where were you just now?" the farmer broke in. "Where did you think you were?"

"Underground -- no, not here. The lower level which Doctor Gentle mentioned during the presentation, the one below his estate. He took her to Primatura's old workspace. Where she was born, only he didn't tell her that. Applejack, this could be crucial. She can't tell us what happened: he won't let her. But if I keep going -- if the right things are here..."

She steeled herself. Straightened her spine. Pulled herself to her full height, which still left her looking at least slightly up at all of those with fur.

"I'm going to find the next one. Rarity, field clamp. Please."

Nothing happened.

"You're being stubborn," Applejack said.

Twilight nodded.

"Y'told me once that I was the one who taught you to be that stubborn."

Again.

Applejack sighed.

"Y'know what friendship and leadership are like?" she asked the most local part of the world. "It's like having a bunch of extra siblings who don't listen to you either. Fluttershy, can she take another one?"

"...at the current level," the caretaker cautiously said, "yes. But we don't know how much worse this could get."

"We'll find out. Rarity, clamp her."

"You cannot be serious," the designer declared. "Or rather, you should not be --"

"-- only way through is forward. Every one of these things stalls us. But we don't know how big they are or how to avoid them. We can't even find them. So we've gotta go through. We can't leave Twi behind unless it looks like one could kill her. So we monitor her, close as we can. An' we hope there's something worth learning at the end."

A long pause, too long with all the time they'd already lost -- and then soft blue glow wrapped around Twilight's jaw.

They moved on. Spike was now at Twilight's side.

"Nine times," he quietly reminded her. "I had to bring you to the nurse after you drained yourself into exhaustion. Nine times. And that was just at school."

She was almost glad she couldn't answer.

"I'm supposed to stop you when you're about to do something stupid. That's my job."

'Almost' fled the tunnel.

"But I can hardly ever stop you," he quietly finished. "You won't let me..."

He stayed with her, moving in silence. Waiting.

She wasn't sure where the quilt had originally come from.

Well -- she knew about stores. Craftsponies. There were talents for sewing, certainly, and maybe there were even quilt specialists, although that felt like a really narrow focus for a mark. But when she'd originally mentioned that the walls had been growing very cold at night (it was an exceptionally chill winter, at least from what her father had told her, and he had yet to find a pegasus who could be brought down to lend their magic to the standing, apparently fading techniques), he'd just gone up and, a short time later, come back down with the quilt. So it was possible that he'd teleported to town, made a quick purchase, and then come back, but... it had been a very short absence. That suggested the quilt had in the main house all along.

It was also a very large quilt. Large enough for two adult ponies to curl under it.

Maybe... maybe her mother had used that quilt.

(She is nine. She has been tapping walls for three years.)

It quickly becomes her favorite. It's warm and colorful and she can play all sorts of games with it, which mostly means she goes all the way under and then pretends it's somewhere else. History books and atlases give her an endless selection of somewhere elses to be in, although she's not completely sure what the parts outside the pictures are supposed to look like. Still, she has fantasies. Most of them involve talking to strangers, which means anyone else in the world. Others just have her outside. It means she's dreaming about the day when the Great Work will be complete, which is an admirable thing to do because it encourages her to work towards that goal and so playtime is necessary. Maybe it's even needful.

She's almost certain her mother picked out this quilt. The colors are just that good.

She cuddles up with it. She snuggles it on the cold nights when her father doesn't come to see her. She plays under it and with it and then one day it tears.

It's just a rip along the stitch line. It could be fixed. But the stuffing is coming out. And she hates that. She hates that she tore it. (It was normal wear for an old piece.) She feels like she broke something precious. Like she killed something.

Again.

She doesn't want to feel that way. Not about the quilt.

There's stuffing coming out. She... doesn't know what to do about that. She doesn't have sewing materials. But the stuffing shouldn't escape. So she tries to get it back inside the quilt, only she can't. It doesn't taste good in her mouth. She can't nose it or push it with her hooves without scattering it everywhere, breaking it up into smaller pieces in the process. If she gets any close to the quilt, then her attempts to put it back only widen the tear. She's making things worse. All she ever does is --

-- her father could have fixed it with a thought. He would have looked at the stuffing and it all would have gone back inside.

But she can't...

...it's been years since she's cried like this. She keeps waiting for him to come down, find her curled up and sobbing upon the remains of what she loved. But he doesn't. She's alone. She's almost always alone. It means nopony can see how broken she is, and that's a good thing. It means nopony hears her cry and sees her shame.

She's broken.

She's broken and she breaks things and she ruins whatever's beautiful and
he loves her
he shouldn't
she killed her mother and
he loves her anyway

"A bad day," Twilight finally told them, once she'd come back to herself. "Just -- a bad day."

She's getting stronger.

This isn't a good thing. The broken are the strong ones. (Princesses are allowed to be strong, but she's not a Princess yet.) Her increasing strength means she isn't getting any better, and so it's a mark of shame. (The only mark she has. What is she doing wrong...?) But it does make certain things easier. For example, she can now shove some of the furniture around, which allows her to, with feather duster in mouth, clean places she could never reach before. This also happens to provide fresh portions of the same old walls to look at. It might not mean much to anypony else, but for her, it's a change.

A lot of things are changing. Her father has been very quiet, too much so. When he does speak, many of his words concern those he's delivered. The ones he used the pearls on. Some of them don't seem to be doing well, although he really doesn't provide much in the way of details. But she knows it's related to the Great Work, and so it worries her. If he's concerned, then so is she. She just doesn't know how to fix it. How to fix anything at all.

She can't make things better, and so she's cleaning. The furniture can be moved now, so she moves it --

-- there's a crack in the wall behind the bookcase. A rectangular one. Larger than her father's body. About the size of a -- hallway. And it's very thin, hard to spot -- but when all you have to look at are stone walls, it becomes easier to pick up on the little things.

She stares at it.

Her father hasn't been home for days.

She taps...

It takes six minutes, and then she touches the right place.

{Her skull splits. Something rises from the crack. Sinks back down.}

She can barely breathe. She feels as if she must be breaking a rule. But leaving is what's wrong, one of the many wrong things she might do. She doesn't seem to be doing that. The stone is familiar, so she's in the same place: that's right, isn't it? It's just --

-- and then the other door opens, and she steps into a room she has only seen once before, only from a new angle, and the colors rush forth to meet her.

Her mother's memories. They're all there, while her father is not.

She has all the time in the world.

Hours. Easily hours, looking at them all -- well, some. She finds memories stacked under memories, behind memories, cabinets full of memories which weren't quite ready for open display yet. There are also blank memories -- actually, they must be the things you make memories on: she doubts her mother had any days that boring. There's a lot of those blanks. Enough to make memories for years and years.

Things she made memories on, and -- the colors she made memories with. (They're still liquid. Still fresh. She doesn't know about the little enchantments which make that so.) This is her mother's workplace. It's sacred. It's as close to her mother as she's ever been

(excepting the day when she killed her)

and so she stays as long as she dares. She nearly sleeps there. But her father could come back and -- she remembers the great day. She knows that being in here hurt him. Finding her in this room, even if it's still part of her place, might hurt him all the more.

She can't tell him.

She -- has a secret. She's never had one of those before. But she doesn't want to hurt him. She does enough of that every day of her life, simply through being broken. So she won't tell him. She just puts the bookcase back.

He returns two days later. He's smiling.

"I have news," he tells her. "Good news. The best we've had in some time."

She gets up from her low-set study table. Trots over to him, automatically adjusts the necklace (seven stones now), waits. And he tells her about a filly, one somewhat younger than she. He doesn't really go into details like names (he seldom uses them in front of her, perhaps because she might become envious) or appearance. He's more focused on what happened.

A filly has created miracle.

"We have proof," he tells her attentive ears, which are strained in amazement with the rest of her. "Finally, we have proof. And so I think --" still smiling "-- it's time for the next stage."

"And what's that?" Almost wriggling inside her skin. Because her father was right, and she doesn't have to be broken forever.

"You're studying as best you can," he says. "But studying isn't always enough. And I can't teach you everything. I've told you about some of the ponies I've met, the ones who are trying to help. And I know you've been struggling a little with budget balancing. Would you like to meet somepony who can tell you more about it?"

...there is going to be another pony.
She's going to meet another pony.

She presses herself against him. He nuzzles her. And they talk about plans, some of those she might see, some he could try to recruit...

Hours. He hasn't been this happy in years, and so they talk for hours. And when that topic wraps up, he has one more.

"The necklace is not to be removed until the Great Work is complete."

She eagerly nods. She would nod to anything just now, even the near-oldest of lessons.

"The chaos pearls hold the essence of those who may yet help you."

Again.

With orange eyes twinkling, "But I've never told you whose essence is in the oldest pearl, have I?"

He hasn't. Just that it was the most special pearl of all --

-- he tells her.

And now she's touching the necklace more than ever. Touching the center...

...it's been twelve days. He brings her a dress. They review etiquette for most of the morning.

Then he introduces her to their guest.

It's a good day. It's one of the best she's ever had. There are strange looks and expressions which she eventually realizes represent pity, but there's another pony. And not only that, there's actually been a pony there all along. With her for years and years...

(But I killed...)

She is perfectly polite with their guest. She thanks him profusely for having come to see her. And then he's gone, and she will never see him again.

(She thinks she recognizes his exact eye color at the conference. But without the fur, she can't be fully certain.)

She wants to always remember what he looked like, because he came to see her and nopony had ever come to see her. He's special.

She knows how to get into a room full of perfectly preserved memories, a place which retains all the supplies required for their creation. What she doesn't know is how to make one. But how hard could it be? And besides, if it was wrong...

Her father shouldn't know. It'll hurt him. But... the chaos pearl was with her. It never did anything while she was in the room, either time. It simply changed, as it always has. Maybe that means it doesn't think she did something bad. Or that it's still waiting for her to do something right, the best thing, but since nothing bad happened...

So she waits until she feels she has privacy (and her studies are up to date, because that's important). She goes back in.

And now she has two secrets.

"...he said 'I'll be taking her back.' Her." The pain was receding, and Twilight still felt sick. "This isn't just about transformation. It started that way, but when he learned more about essence..."

"If I vomit right now," Rarity far-too-calmly said, "do you think they would hear me?"

"...maybe?"

"Pity."

It isn't easy.

She has nothing she can study, not through her most standard method, as there are no books about memory-making on the shelves. (She has no way of knowing that they were present before she was born. They were removed, and they will never be returned.) Asking for an expert to visit would require that she explain why. She wants to make a memory and for a long time, it feels like all she's making is a mess.

But she practices. She improvises. Lacking all formal training, with nothing except her mother's examples to go by, she invents.

It isn't easy. It also isn't something she can attempt regularly. Her father does come to see her, after all: she has to pick hours when he won't be there, and there's one early close call when she hears hoofsteps which just barely echo through the stone ceiling and realizes she has to get out: she just barely makes it in time. And then there's the fact that memory materials can, if she's not careful, stain her fur. Her mother would have just thought about where they had to go, but she's broken and so she has to work by mouth: one slip...

(There's an old stain on the floor, just about in the exact center of the workplace. She often stands over it while she's practicing or, more realistically, failing.)

It requires time, learning how to stay clean. Before that, she winds up taking a lot of showers. Her father notices, and just says something about her age.

She gets so much wrong. She wipes it clean, gets back to the blank state, starts over.

Eventually, she's getting less wrong.

Then an eye starts to look almost right.

More ponies come. She does everything she can to fix their images in her head, all the better to try and render that ultimate memory properly.

There seems to be a pattern developing. She's using all the time she can spare (and is it too much? Is she taking hours away from the Great Work? What if she's ruining)

{The base of her tail feels as if it will snap in half. It settles for thirds.}

and she's definitely improving. But at the same time -- she's been studying magic for years, workings and techniques she can't use. Now it seems as if she's inadvertently cast something, and she calls it Summon Father. Because when she figures out what she's been doing wrong, when she takes a leap forward, gets better -- then all too often, there will be hoofsteps. She's still learning about memory creation, but she has mastered getting out in a hurry. She's just lucky that he doesn't really teleport into her rooms: his safe zone is directly over the workplace, and so she can know when he arrives.

She improves, and he appears. It happens over and over. And when he appears, he has something for her to study. A new topic to discuss. An old one to review. He keeps distracting her.

But she keeps going back. She feels... good, when she's in that room. Better than she thought she would. She is surrounded by her mother's memories, and it is as close as she can truly be to the mare she killed until the day the Great Work is complete. She is doing what her mother did, and doesn't that honor the lost in some way?

She practices. She experiments. And there is a day when she looks at the newest of memories and calls it her own.

Then she does it again.

The process can make her father appear, sometimes from rather far away. After a while, she figures out how to use that. She speaks with him about the new topic. She waits until he seems relaxed. And if she's lucky, it'll be a good time to ask him about her mother.

Everything about her.

Everything.

"...you didn't hear your heartbeat just now! I did! You can't take much more of this!"

"I have to! The last one was Coordinator, Fluttershy: he insulted her, she went after him... we're getting close. I think it's one more. One more and we might be there!"

"You don't know!" The caretaker hadn't raised her voice: she had simply changed the tone into the sound which made it very clear that the patient had no idea what she was doing or worse, didn't care. "You could just teleport ahead, avoid some of them --"

"-- I could appear right in the middle of one. The spacing isn't regular. They may be columns going into the air --"

"-- and it's taking you longer to recover. If they weren't moving so slowly..." Carefully, "Twilight, the next one could have everything. And then you take another step and there's forty more beyond that. We don't know."

"I've gotten this far." She staggered to her hooves, spit out the blood from where she'd bit her tongue. "I can get through one more. She goes through this every second, Fluttershy, goes through worse. You heard Applejack. The only way through is forward."

And before they could stop her, she moved.

She just barely felt Spike's claws clutching for her tail. And then that, and everything else, went away.

She's failed.

She spends every day feeling like she's failed. It -- should have happened by now. She's an adult. She's studied so much, and one of the topics was marks. She's aware of the record for the greatest age at manifest. She's getting close to passing it.

What did she do wrong?

...maybe...

...she should stop. She has to stop. She keeps telling herself that: she has to stop. And yet she keeps going back, especially since...

It's almost finished. When she finishes this one -- then she'll stop. This is the most important one. All of the others -- she completes them, and then she puts them behind other memories. Sometimes under memories. Every so often, when she's in the room, she'll take them out for review. She likes remembering those who came to see her, even when it was only once each.

She hides them again when she's done. He's never gone back into the room: she isn't sure he knows how. But if he ever did -- well, he can't know how many memories were there to begin with, right? Maybe if he looks around too much, he'll just decide he missed a few...

(Naturally, there is a memory of him. It is not hers.)

...she's lying to herself. She knows that. But it's a lie she just keeps telling. And -- she has to finish this one. She has to do it for him...

She'll tell him, after she's finished. She'll apologize. (As if any apology could ever make up for years of deceit.) But she'll have something for him. A gift, something special, something he would have never gained on his own.

She's been making memories of her visitors for years now. (The process seldom goes uninterrupted.) But creating those memories -- that has become easy. This one has been harder. She is trying to create a memory of something she's never seen. And she has to get every detail right, or it won't be a memory at all.

It's the hardest thing she's ever done. She keeps starting over. For the first time, the supplies are starting to run low. Once they're gone, she'll have to stop. She won't have a choice...

This is the last.

Begin again. Find a mistake. Begin again. They have a talk, she adjusts something, winds up starting over...

Sometimes she touches the center chaos pearl while she's working. It provides no guidance, but it also doesn't tell her she's made a mistake. She finds enough of those on her own.

She's been up for most of the night, correcting the last errors. Sun-raising is probably close, and she once again wonders what that looks like.

...and then it's done.

She stares at it.

Everything she was told is in that memory. Everything.

It's beautiful.

It... may be the reason the Great Work hasn't succeeded. It could be why she remains broken...

...or that could just be her. Maybe she's always been beyond fixing. She may have wasted his life from the very first day. (From the moment of murder.) But there could still be a chance for her to finish, especially as he recently came to her with news. Incredible news, something nopony except him might have believed possible.

There had been two. Then one had Returned. ('Been recovered,' he'd told her at the time. He has his theories there and shortly after the Lunar Princess appeared, he received what he called the most important letter of his life. More would follow.) And now -- somepony has ascended.

There is a new alicorn. One of the Bearers. Not only have the Elements been found, but they still fully work. It may give them another option.

So it's possible that she's failed. Or it could just be taking a long time, with one more thing still to learn. Perhaps the last crucial fact will come from a freshly-created Princess? Could she soon be welcoming royalty to her halls?

There's special etiquette for that. She should review it. But for now, there is a new memory, and it's beautiful. She just hopes it's right --

-- there are hoofsteps above her. (She was expecting that.) She slips out, waits.

"This day," her father tells her as he approaches, "has provided an opportunity to review a certain category of material. There's been something of a political event outside Equestria. We've talked about griffon leadership and the dominance chain, but now we should refocus our attention on overturns. After all, a Princess may be asked to conduct diplomacy..."

He seems to be talking faster than usual. The grey in his muzzle (there's so much grey now) gathers and sheds highlights as the mobile speech shifts through the light.

"We can do that," she agrees. "But -- can we do one other thing first? Please?"

He's looking at the necklace now. The center jewel. The start of the back piece. Returns his gaze to her face.

"You seem to be rather intent on that other thing," he notes. "Surprisingly so. And what is more important than preparing to be a Princess?"

She feels as if she's shrinking slightly.

"It's..." Why does it seem as if words are fleeing from her tongue? "...a gift."

His head tilts a little to the right. "A gift."

"For you," she says. "I made it. It's... taken a long time. I just -- want to give it to you. And talk about it. And -- then you might be angry." She's certain he'll be angry. That he'll tell her she extended her own breaking. "But -- it's yours. I had to make it."

Still looking at her.

"...please...?"

"Something you made for me," he finally says. "A gift so important that making it was worth time away from your studies." He's looking at the necklace again. "Well, I certainly admit to curiosity. May I see it?"

She turns. Moves away from him a little, gestures a foreleg. After a moment, he follows. She's not sure he's ever done that before.

"If you're mad," she softly requests, pleads, "just... don't tell me until after you see it. Please."

(He's not really looking at her. She has no way of knowing that all of his attention is focused on the necklace.)

"And there's nothing else you'd rather do." It's not quite a question. It seldom is, coming from him.

"It's for you. It -- wasn't when I started. But then I thought... it was something I had to do. Something I could give you." It doesn't feel like she has the right words. "Something I could -- give back?"

(It's not what he truly wants. She knows that, and -- that it won't be enough. But it's all she can give.)

"Then show me."

She braces herself. Moves to the bookcase, puts her left shoulder into it. A steady, careful push is followed by a tap.

The little inhalation which comes from behind her fills her tiny world.

"...oh," her father breathes. "I had forgotten..."

She risks a glance back. He isn't smiling. Just -- staring.

"I thought," he softly continues, "I had closed them all. But this one... it was never used, not from the other end. And so I forgot about the exit. Or in this case, the entrance. You were cleaning?" She nods. "Have you ever been back there before?"

He doesn't remember?

This is why memory creation is crucial. If he could forget that -- well, he did have the bottle, but still.

"When I was six," she carefully tries. "With you. It was -- the anniversary of your first date."

A slow nod. "Yes. I think I recall that. And now you found another way in." The tone is calm, more so than she'd expected it to be -- but there's something about the way some of his fur is resting against the grain. Like it's been vibrated into a new position. The tremor of excitement. "Is that the gift? To see this again? Because I shut it away for a reason --"

"Just -- come and see," she pleads and, for the first time in her life, slips into the passage while in full view.

He follows, and does so rather quickly. He's almost forcing himself to keep up: she's younger, somewhat larger, can move faster than he, and she once again feels like this is all about to go wrong and so she has to finish it in order for the criticism and explanation of just how she did everything wrong to begin.

It's in the center. She's placed it on a display stand and draped a cloth over it. She'll need to nip the edge of that and pull it away, as a broken pony would. There's no other choice.

"It took time," she tells him, if only because otherwise he'll wind up saying it. "I know I could have studied more during those hours, and I'm -- I'm sorry, but I -- I hope you like it. I hope it helps. I just..."

She's repeating herself. She's that desperate.

"...wanted to give you something..."

She steps towards the cloth.

Part of her is dreading this. Terrified of what will happen when it comes off. But -- this is everything he told her. Everything. It's all the hours she's spent in this room. It's toil and dedication and something which felt very much like love. It's time away from the Great Work, time he must consider wasted...

...but it's the best thing she's ever done.

It's the best of her.

She did everything she could and she feels like she did it right.

She's -- proud.

(There is something shifting within her. Something -- rising.)

"This is for you," she tells her father. "Because I love you."

Her neck arcs forward. She's almost there...

He says one word.

"Now."

His horn ignites. Silver without sparkles surrounds her, coats the necklace. And before she can vocally react, ask what he's doing, what she's done, it goes into the pearls, and does so at the exact moment when something rises to meet it from within.

The instant before her teeth can reach the cloth -- that is when her body drops to the floor, covers the old stain. She has very little choice in the matter, for it feels as if all four legs have just fractured themselves.

Within her torso, several ribs separate, create space through tearing muscles. And then there are wings beating at the air, and then those bones break as feathers vanish and there is a pounding at the interior of her skull, a pushing and something erupts and subsides and her teeth crack and the world around her seems to scream and pinions spike at her skin from the inside and it's happening over and over, faster and faster and she tries to scream she needs to scream but her jaw is locked as muscles spasm, as joints along her flanks appear and vanish and come back over and over and over and --

-- he's saying something, and the words are -- calm. But it's more than that. He sounds happy.

"This is your ascension."

It is a statement. It's also wrong. It isn't ascension. It's agony.

It feels like something is going inside her. (The chaos pearls are flashing through their changes, faster and faster.) It feels like there's so much that there isn't room for her any more. Things go in, push wings and horn out and then back in again. A heartbeat there, another gone, and it's the worst pain of her life right up until she lives through it to the next heartbeat and that takes over the role.

She tries to focus, tries to think about anything which isn't the pain. Is it supposed to be like this? Nothing he told her about Star Swirl's notes had said there would be pain. And she thinks about her memories, tries to see them in her mind and that seems to help a little, but then her spine twists and her head goes up as the horn comes back and goes away and he's shouting now, he's shouting and she's never heard so much joy in his voice. So much hope.

"Can you feel her? Can you feel her?"

She can't. All she can feel is the pain, and that agony radiates into the world. Colors are changing before her eyes. There are new colors, hues she's never seen before, they flash in and out of her vision, they hurt and so she tries to push them away --

-- something goes past her and over him, moving through the air.

Then she smells smoke.

It just barely gets through the sensory assault. The air around her is freezing. A blank memory, one leaning against the wall, something she'd never gotten around to using -- it's on fire. And her father is just starting to notice, perhaps because he's less than two body lengths away from the flame.

The fire is beginning to spread. She tries to stand up. To reach him. But her legs won't work. She tries to get her head up and the weight of the intermittent horn holds it down.

He's near the exit. He might be able to get out. But the fire... her mother's memories are in this room, memories are fragile and when the fire reaches them --

they're going to burn, they're all going to burn

-- she has to save him. She has to save them.

She shoves.

Something erupts from her, something initially gold, something which sweeps across the room, and it moves in four waves. The first reaches her father, surrounds him, picks him up and flings him through the passage, sending him to safety. (She doesn't see where he lands, or how. She doesn't know that his right hind leg was caught against a table, or that the resulting injury will produce a limp which lasts for days.) The second is protection for him, an unseen bubble which will move with him for a time, because the third sweeps all the heat out of the room, not so much snuffing the fire as potentially relocating it -- but the pain makes her effort imperfect, the heat seems to move into the walls and it needs to go further, she needs to keep it away from the memories, she needs to protect them beyond all else and the next wave comes as her body flickers between states of torture, magic meshing and combining into a golden construct whose visible portion solidifies into a dome, the intermittently invisible pushing the majority of the heat up into the rooms she has never seen.

The dome also closes the door. Simple pressure.

The memories are safe. He's safe. But the pain isn't stopping. It builds and builds, it endlessly escalates, rises until it seems as if it must enter a state of vacuum where her very life is snuffed out, and then it goes still higher. She can barely think. She can't move. She can't even scream. All she knows is that she failed, this wouldn't have happened if she didn't fail, she's trying to figure out why she failed, her agonized thoughts rush along the path of her life and there's a new light in the room, a blaze of power coming from her hips and that hurts more than everything else, the world burns her, the world hates her...

I failed.

{We failed.}

I deserve this.

{We deserve this.}

I can't be here. I should never have come here. I can't be here. I --

{-- have to get out --}

The pearls flash. Her flanks blaze. There's one more burst of gold --

-- and she's gone.

(Above her, outside the realm of memory, the fire begins again, spreads quickly, begins to destroy everything which Sun can directly touch. In an outer room, an injured stallion tries to get up, stays as long as he can risk, eventually smells a few wisps of smoke moving down through hidden vents and then drags himself along. He winds up going through the heat's border, only half-aware of what's happening, and the invisible protection keeps the fire away -- but not the soot. It still gets him into the exit passage.)

{In the tunnel, a small tortured mare, surrounded by friends and family, opens tear-streaming eyes and weeps for all which was lost.}

Gallery

She wouldn't have expected a cave system to be clean. (Rarity might still be longing for it: Twilight was aware that several scrub-up whine-bordering suggestions had been made to the Diamond Dogs, who had apparently ignored all of them.) The portion they were moving through -- ponies had worked on that and since it was Trotter's Falls, that meant the alterations had been made by unicorns. Evening out the floor, here and there: brute field strength might have broken off some of the stalagmites. Laying material over the walls. But it was still underground: surrounded by soil, a passage through the earth. It hadn't been visited often, or maintained all that well. And that meant dirt. Initially, there had been some mud along their route, left behind by the hooves of father and daughter --

-- the illness rose, threatened to bring back everything she'd eaten at the party and for the moon before it --

-- but that had faded quickly. More often, it was just the dirt of the tunnel itself, or a little patch which had probably come down from the ceiling. (There had been one small puddle of relatively fresh vomit, one which had unnatural hues within: they'd scented it before spotting it, and so had managed to avoid contact.) And her friends had stayed close to her, moved as quickly as they could when the newest intrusion of memory started to inflict its burden of pain, there had been times when the last thing she'd felt before her identity had momentarily slipped away was scale-covered palms pushing against her flank -- but still, there had been times when she'd dropped. Fallen to the dirty ground, sodden fur and mane taking the chance to absorb soil.

She didn't have Rarity's rupophobia. (She'd told herself that a few times since coming to Ponyville, and perhaps more often than was strictly necessary.) But uncleanliness was a sort of disorder, and so being dirty would usually grate at her, make her rearrange the majority of the internal checklists until the first entry on just about everything read Bath. But this time, her fur was matted with cave dirt, and it didn't even register as a secondary concern. Because there was another level of filth, one she'd relived through the eyes of another, and that meant the true foulness was inside.

Think like Rainbow. Think like Applejack.

The mission hadn't been the only times for that, of course: there had been the hydra for the former, and -- well, for somepony who'd been as socially limited as Twilight in her first Ponyville moons, there had been very little concept of how to deal with the new world she'd been kicked into. Nothing she knew how to do on instinct, and the lessons only came at the very end. But... there had been role models. The situation involves animals? What would Fluttershy do? Picture Rarity acting to strike verbally while never openly leaving the heart of etiquette, or Pinkie finding the one glint of humor in darkness which would turn looming fears back into protective shadow. Act as she believed they would, think as she considered they might... that was where so many of the lessons came from. The directions which had steered her life.

She had learned to think (or at least pretend she could) as her friends would. Sometimes subconsciously, at others with acknowledgement, occasionally with deliberate intent. But it had been a slow, painstaking road to follow: one where she'd stumbled so many times along the way, a path she was still learning how to navigate and so many times, it felt as if she did little more than steer herself to the edge of a cliff. Because she didn't always get it right. Because she was still learning. Because it was possible that nopony could ever truly think as another would. That all she could do was consult the image she'd built up in her mind, and -- that portrait wasn't the pony. In the end, it was possible that all she'd ever done was pretend.

But in the tunnel...

Twilight hadn't been thinking like her. She'd been thinking as her. Living through those moments, seeing them in the exact same way

(and there had been so many of those moments, not all in chronological order, she'd tried to keep count and then the pain had just)

because while under the effect, Twilight had been her.

She's not a bad pony.

Pinkie had seen it. Applejack had eventually agreed. In time, they'd all come to at least consider it as a possibility. There had been some lurking doubts, fears born of concern for why the Great Work even existed, worries about motivation added to the terror of power uncontrolled

(she pushed it back again)

and there was so much to be afraid of there -- but they'd still kept it in mind: that she might not be a bad pony. And now Twilight knew. She knew her, because she'd been her.

"I killed. My mother. And he loved me anyway."

How long had it been, from her attack against Quiet to when Applejack had found her? A few minutes at most: Twilight was almost sure of that. (Not completely, for in the depths of internal agony, time had become as fluid as the rain.) Just a few minutes of believing herself to be a killer. Of wondering if there was anything which could be done to take it back, some way to make her soul clean again.

In the endless, tortured moments of reliving the memories of another, Twilight had been her. She had existed with that belief as the first thing she'd ever been taught. That she was broken, a living sin whose arrival in the world had been heralded through murder. Something she'd had absolute faith in, stretched across a lifetime...

He told her she was a bad pony. He told her she was a killer. He told us...

What would I do to make up for that? To make it right?

Anything.

The worst agonies were something other than physical.

Scales softly rubbed at her fur. She glanced down.

"What are you thinking about?" her little brother quietly asked. He'd been staying close, looking for signs that she was dropping into another memory. There hadn't been one for some time, and he still hadn't left her side.

Her first instinct was to protect him, and so she went with "The shield I put over Rainbow's manuscript. I lost the feel for it. I know I put enough power in there to last for a while, but I won't know if anything's happening to it. Maybe that's range, or all the -- disruptions, or --"

"-- Twilight." Because he'd grown up at her side. Because he... saw more than she often gave him credit for.

She sighed. "I was thinking about him. All the things he told her. Everything she went through because of it. How it was never love, not the sort of love it should have been, and..." Her eyes briefly closed. "You remember the play, Spike. We all do. And now I don't believe in it any more. Because in that play, Zephyra Hurricane is a character. Who isn't a Bearer, who didn't know the Princess or Luna, just a flapping stock parody taking up airspace over the stage. So maybe there was never a cave, or ponies huddled in the dark, trying to find one last source of warmth before they froze. Or something happened which got distorted into the play, and the only ponies who know the truth never tell it..."

"Zephyra Hurricane. Pegasus. Honesty."

The Princess wasn't Honesty.

"She was real, though," Spike assured her. "You've even seen her mark, up there in the Barding. You heard what he said. It's the constellation of the Commander, it has to be. Star Swirl's mark is the Magician. We know what their marks were."

She didn't want to think about Star Swirl any more.

"I know she was real," Twilight softly replied. "And you're right: I know what her mark was. But I don't know anything about her as a pony. I don't know if that cave was real, or the ice, or the windigos. I just wonder if the windigos are out there, and... if they are, then I don't know why they don't just freeze us. Because it doesn't feel like we've gone anywhere at all."

The little palm pressed slightly harder.

"You're trotting with a unicorn, an earth pony, a pegasus, two hybrids, and a dragon," Spike pointed out. "I think we're doing a little better than we were."

And for the last time that night, she found a smile. But...

For a time within the caves, Twilight's thoughts had been forced into new patterns. Her patterns. And to think and feel as another would -- that could be described as empathy.

They moved through darkness, and empathy was horror.

The memory nodes had run out some time ago. The deactivated resonance bombs took their place.

It was easy to analyze this time, as Doctor Gentle had possessed no concerns about anypony reading his signature: not from the frequent recastings he'd made in order to keep them charged, much less the temporary shutdown he'd recently performed. The latter didn't feel like a minutes-old casting (which didn't mean Twilight was going to start trusting in the restraint, even when adding in the lack of reactivation to slow pursuit): a few hours was more likely. It probably meant at least part of the approach to the conference had been made from underground.

"Can you tell what kind of emotion it is?" Pinkie whispered. (Twilight had still been telling them to step around all of the bombs, just in case.) "You look even more upset than you did. And you were way past upset before. I don't know if there's a word beyond upset which even works now..."

She could. When a spell was cast over and over again, for decades... some of the resonance was right on the surface.

"Shame," Twilight softly replied. "We've had shame, homesickness, self-loathing... this is the emergency passage, Pinkie: I know that now. The way she was supposed to get out if everything went wrong. He showed it to her once: he didn't exactly have a choice." And in doing so, he'd shown Twilight. "And I think he must have been afraid that she'd decide to just use it, because he set up all of these resonance bombs to make sure that if it wasn't a true emergency, something where her own fears would just send her galloping forward no matter what -- she'd turn back. That's why he learned that working. Because he was trying to keep control --"

-- stopped. Physically and vocally. ('Mentally' just kept on going.)

"Still can't pick up on 'em," Applejack carefully projected. "I'm hoping they're inside. On a worked floor, something where there's no chance of finding the pressure. Just know I'm listening -- Twi?" For she'd just noticed the cutoff, and multiple ponies were now coming to a stutter-stop halt.

"He's... all about control, isn't he?" Twilight quietly told them. "He controls things nopony else ever has. Whether foals are born healthy, or if they're born at all. Whether they live or die. Two things happened which he couldn't control, and he's spent all the time since trying to get control back. Obsessively, compulsively --"

"-- you," Rarity firmly stated, "are not him."

Twilight's head turned so quickly as to leave her unaware of the movement until after it had happened. "...what?"

"You have your moments of requiring control," Rarity gently told her. "As I have mine for jealousy, and -- we all have our flaws: let us leave it at that. But you do what you can to moderate them, or give them a safe outlet where nopony else will be hurt. Such as, shall we say -- " and this with a smile "-- frequent reshelvings? It is as we discussed in our cell, Twilight: we recognize, identify, openly discuss -- and so avoid the worst of it. You are not him, and you will not become him." A brief pause. "But if you can use that aspect which you feel is echoed in yourself -- if you can try to predict him through it -- do so."

Fluttershy took a hesitant half-step forward, soaked tail dragging through the dirt. "...you lost control of your life when you came to Ponyville," she softly said. "...what did you do?"

I was confused.

Displaced.

Terrified.

My life was broken and I...

She knew what she had done.

...I'm not him.

She nodded to her friends, looked forward again. "I think I'm starting to recognize this section," she told them, forcing herself forward. Because the memory of being shown even the tiny fraction of corridor which existed outside had been such an important day --

-- her hind left knee almost buckled, she forced the leg to straighten, told it the pain was truly nothing more than memory now --

-- as to warrant its own node. "Which means we're getting close to the door. Everypony, be as quiet as possible. If they're in there..."

...then we still don't have a plan.

Maybe there can't be one.

If they surprised her -- if they scared her...

Pinkie trotted forward, gently rubbed her flank against Twilight's filthy fur. "We'll talk," her friend said. "Maybe we can all find those words."

"And if the out-loud words don't work," Applejack followed up, "Ah've got one more fight in me. She can shout, Twi -- but maybe I can find something interesting to say."

"I've got some flame left," Spike stated. "Maybe it's enough to do something."

"We use what we have," Rarity added. "What we can think of. Whatever there is, we use it."

"I know I got the restraint on him," Rainbow huffed -- paused. "But I'll watch for the silver, just in case. Promise."

"...we're still here, Twilight," Fluttershy quietly finished. "We're all still here..."

And they moved forward.

"That's the door," Twilight whispered. Dull grey discolored by dual fieldlight, rough stone from this side, silent and waiting to be used. Closed, as it had almost always been closed. As it might have remained closed forever, if not for -- everything.

She never tried to get out. Not once, not even when he'd been away for days and she wanted to see Sun more than anything.

Because she was loyal.
Because she hadn't earned it.
Because she loved him.

"It doesn't need a field to open: it couldn't." That hadn't just been for her: a unicorn fleeing through a true emergency passage had to account for the possibility of being countered along the way. "But there's an alarm spell which goes off if it's opened by a stranger from this side." Her corona intensified, lanced forward. "Or there was an alarm spell. Softly, everypony, as softly as you can..."

She had never been there.

I've never been anywhere else.

It should have been completely unfamiliar.

I looked at the same walls day after day after --

-- greys and browns. Sometimes there would be grey-black, just for variety. There was some furniture, but the majority of it had gone unused -- at least when it came to its original purpose. There was very little need for extra benches when the typical occupancy of the area was one, and so most of them had been turned into extra bookshelves.

It wasn't like Quiet's library -- either library -- at least, not in this section. Twilight knew (remembered) that there were books about spells and techniques closer to the bedroom --

my bedroom
her bedroom

-- and that sometimes material had been circulated in and out, likely borrowed from the castle at need. The visitors' benches in this section mostly concerned diplomacy, along with one section on bureaucracy which looked as if it had only been dusted when all of the other options for cleaning ran out.

It was fairly easy to see that part: there were lighting devices along the walls, along with a few mounted into the ceiling. But she'd been bracing herself for the onslaught of normal illumination after so much time in the caves, had warned the others to do the same, and they'd opened the door onto -- twilight, or at least the appropriate light level. Something which also might have been suited to the first stages of dawn. It felt as if dawn might have been more appropriate. They'd been going for hours...

Keeping them running at a lower thaum use rate? Stretching out the charge.

It made everything seem dull, muted the hues of her own fur more than the dirt had already managed. She glanced back, and found everypony shifted towards grey.

There were no decorations on the walls. No little sculptures on the shelves, or knick-knacks brought back by a parent who'd spent so much time traveling --

-- no. He brought her back one thing. Over and over. Those were the colors he brought to her life. Something which never stopped changing.

She slid her hooves along the floor: to lift and plant felt as if it would make too much noise, and knew the others were doing the same. (Spike was on Pinkie's back, to keep claws from scritching on stone.) Listened, rotated her ears, straining --

he might come back any minute, I always have to listen or he'll find me --

-- they aren't my memories. It's just a working. I have to remember that it was just a spell.

I have to remember that it wasn't me.

-- somepony was speaking. She couldn't make out the exact words. Just that the stallion's tones were low, frustrated, and -- in pain.

Up ahead and to the right. She knew the way. (She had never known any other way.) There was a natural bend to that hallway: it had to go around a rather large space, and that was something which would keep them out of sight.

Her tail shifted, signaled the others. Slowly, they moved forward. Passed dull stone under scant light, in a place which Sun had never touched. Not even the memory of Sun, for there were no pictures on the walls.

"-- and we can find more food in the wild zone," were the first distinguishable words. "If all else should fail, there is always grass -- what is that?"

"A. Quilt..."

"Leave it."

"You said. It could be. Weeks. Outside. If it's cold --"

"Leave it."

They all heard fabric drop to the floor.

"Medicine," the stallion tersely said. "We can make fire with magic. A pegasus can light a twig. A unicorn can spin one until friction provides heat. We can stay warm. But there are only so many herbs we could hope to find. Prioritize for medicine, especially as we may need to use it should pursuit come." More of a mutter now. "If Coordinator hadn't tried to dose you... if we could use something now to speed our initial escape..."

Coordinator? Twilight knew he'd been behind the attempt to kill the Bearers, but -- he'd done something to her as well?

We haven't seen him since the end of the conference. I thought he would almost have to go with them, because I'd recognized his voice. But he sent those ponies. And if he found out that failed...

Why hadn't he run?

"Maybe he'd even let me watch. I've never gotten to see a pony take that kind of righteous vengeance before upon taint -- I imagine it would be a treat. Especially after what you did..."

She didn't want that memory. When it came to Coordinator, she had enough of her own.

"It may be weeks," the stallion admitted. "And they may be active ones. So as you cannot take anything at this time, we will need to reserve the medicine for when attacks come."

"...attacks?" she asked, and Twilight heard (felt) her tremble.

"The Princess will alert Canterlot!" he snapped -- and then stopped. Labored breathing echoed through the stone halls.

The backlash. He's hurt.

Good.

"There will be ponies looking for us. The police in every settled zone may be mobilized, with Solar and Lunar Guards added to their forces. If they happen to find us, then we will do whatever is necessary to remain free. We will do the needful. A single dose of medicine, and -- well, I very much doubt they are truly prepared for what they will be facing. And as none of the ponies I named happen to be Bearers..."

He's talking about --

"You're. Talking -- about -- killing them."

"Should it become necessary," the stallion calmly stated, "yes."

"Killing. Ponies --"

"-- yes," he snapped again. "I believe you have some previous experience?"

A sharp inhale, partially cut off by spasm and sob.

"We will move towards a border," he mercilessly continued. "The griffons have a native pony population: it will be easier to scavenge in those lands. Eventually, we will reach the most distant of your patrons. From there, new halls will be granted. We will continue the Great Work: to correct your error, to save the broken. We will work with the foals who are sent to us, and perhaps one of them will succeed where you did not --"

"-- foals."

It had been an exceptionally soft word, especially given all of the razor-edged agony it had been asked to contain.

Not much further...

"Yes. At least three within the first year, I think, given the typical birth rate for the broken. Five to seven would be better. We will require greater numbers for the repetition, as results must now be compared within a group --"

The little gasp had been Pinkie's: she knew that, and that just enough had been choked back.

Stark. Plain. Almost toneless, but for the constant spikes of pain. "-- they could die."

"We will do our best to avoid that," the stallion told her. "When you are done with the food, go into the bathroom, open that cabinet and remove the bottles. Carefully. You are working by mouth, and mandible dexterity has limits --"

"-- but. If they. Don't. If they're. Like. Me. Or -- worse --"

The words were like hooves beating against Twilight's skull, pounding on bone so that another's memories could widen the cracks. "Who else would make your mistake?"

She moved her tail again: left to right, feeling some of the dried dirt flick away. The others began to move.

"But you will be fixed," the stallion said. "They will be fixed. All of this, everything, can still be made right --"

We call out to her and he has a few seconds to prepare. We just come into view and we could scare her. Every move is wrong. Everything we talked about on the way in might not work. Every tactic can fail.

There was no good time to try. There would never be a best time.

Which meant all that remained was now.

She shifted her tail one last time, heard wings flare to their full span and flap, hooves beginning to push off stone --

"But not by you," Twilight stated as she raced into view, Rainbow passing overhead, the burst of flight sending her to the left, the idea was to surround, distribute their forces to cut down on the chance of a single effort reaching them all, Fluttershy was going right, Pinkie following, they were going to create a circle and keep moving but there was still a chance for her to destroy them and everything else, all it took was one moment of fear and a desperate song shouted to the world around them --

-- she saw, with the colors lightly distorted by her own corona's light. Saw her, standing close to an open saddlebag, one she'd apparently been loading. Saw her head jerk up, a tear falling away from purple eyes as the soaked, lightly blue-streaked mane just barely shifted with the movement --

-- blue.

In her earth pony aspect, tail and mane were tan. There was blue there now, just a few strands. And her flanks were distorted, pushed outwards, as if something was trying to emerge.

She saw them, and so many emotions went through her pain-twisted features. One of them was fear. And this time, Twilight saw her trying to pull it back, to take it back, but she had already reacted --

-- and somewhere in a place beyond normal hearing, Twilight felt the last remnants of a distorted note fade into the absorbing soil.

Both groups had been slowed: one by injury, the other in dealing with the memory nodes. Time had passed, enough for her to be phasing out of the earth pony state, with the silver almost at the bottom of the green loop, perhaps moments away from moving to the white. And when the silver was at its peak on any loop, she was truly a pony of that race -- but for the first time, they'd caught her in a place between aspects. A state in which she wasn't enough of any one thing to truly access the magic, and so all that happened was that the room shivered slightly, as if somepony had just knocked over a particularly heavy piece of furniture.

She was helpless.

He, even with the restraint on his forehead, with Twilight able to see the bruising of impact coming up under the fur, was not.

He turned away from the bookcase (he was standing next to the bookcase, the bookcase she knew so well) towards the words, saw her, and she saw silver fly from the base of the restraint, flying everywhere, and it didn't initially occur to her that it was power without focus or direction, power which couldn't do anything. All she saw was what she had feared, that he could and was casting something past that barrier, and so she reacted on instinct, her corona surging, still on defense, intercepting the energy before it could touch any of her friends, the others were recoiling from the display and that gave Twilight a precious split-second of extra time to work with, more distance that silver had to cover, but it meant none of them were focusing on him and he'd tried, she knew he'd tried to attack them, that the display hadn't been meant as a mere distraction. But distraction was all he'd accomplished, and he used that. A wild glance around, seeing that even dodging, trying to get away from his field, they were still moving into a partial circle, trying to surround, and so he turned towards the bookcase, kicking off from the floor with a force that had no regard for what would happen on the other end, using every bit of physical strength he had --

-- the bookcase fell over. It nearly hit his daughter: he didn't notice, wouldn't even glance at her, simply screamed from the pain of the impact against his shoulder and left foreleg, brought the right forehoof up to tap at the wall and it swung inwards, he yelled something and moved into the passage --

-- she looked at them. There was a single heartbeat when she looked at them.

But then she followed.

Twilight kept her corona going, tried to reach out, surround the fleeing form -- but that was when more silver fountained towards them and she was moving, she was countering while calling to everypony to move, because that passage only went to one place and he had just trapped himself, trapped both of them, she knew that because she'd been there and --

-- she was the first into the hidden way. (It wasn't the longest of trots. It was easy to slip in and out, and once you learned to do it quickly...) She just barely saw him, beyond the larger body of his daughter. Saw how the other door had been opened, and the glow of gold which blocked the way.

She saw his head dip down. His teeth nipping at his garment, pulling it away from his body until something fell out. Something roughly rectangular, where the color phased from red to blue before it hit the ground.

She saw his hoof pushing on the chaos pearl, pressing it against the gold, and she had just time to recognize the insanity of it before most of the scattered silver hit it.

It wasn't the same kind of eruption: it couldn't be, not with a single pearl. But he'd risked everything on releasing the energy of change: that sheer random chance would make the result into something he needed instead of simply altering his form into that of a corpse. And in that madness, he found exactly what he'd desired.

The gold flickered. Shimmered. Receded, the lower portion of the dome shifting inwards by about a body length. And for a single moment, one in which her friends had yet to reach her and she was still trying to block anything heading towards them, winked out.

It didn't completely vanish. There was a hole, just large enough for a pony to go through. He went through it. Shouted (it felt so strange, hearing him shout) and she went in after him, gasped in pain as her shoulders and hips scraped against the sides, stumbled and fell as she went through, Twilight was rushing forward and then the shield closed in front of her snout.

She wanted to scream. Send waves of rage beating against the world, loathing the luck which had let him get just a little bit farther ahead. But she didn't, because she knew where they were.

Twilight trotted forward, found that the shield hadn't quite sprung back into the full dome. It was -- indented, leaving enough room for her to stand, and for everypony else to come in behind her, lined up along its surface. Above them, the energy contacted the stone, maintained the seal -- but they had an alcove.

Gold in front of them, just translucent enough to give them some idea of the room's contents (while horribly distorting the details) while watching its occupants. Gold above them -- but to go further up than that...

She was examining the shield, one which felt like nothing she'd ever felt before. Off, that was expected -- but there was more than that. It was as if there was something intangible about the solid construct, something she could almost sense but it kept slipping away from her: she could press it between her hooves and it would simply pass through.

And beyond that, something Other...

That was the gold. But the fire had burned away the flooring of the lost estate because the heat would have been most concentrated directly above this, and so the dome was the truest roof they had. Above that, color distorted by the closer spell, was what might have once been a pinkish field, one much lighter than her own hue, and the first time she'd seen that shield, it had been flickering a bit at the peak and edges. Substandard. Now it was doing much more than merely flickering. It was coming apart. Repeated impacts could weaken any shield, and with this one...

It was the storm. The sheer force of the rain, beating against a shield which Shining might still be laughing at, had been more than the fading construct could bear. There was nothing more than an uneven lattice now, irregular and riddled with holes and dying. The storm had pounded through, and so rain impacted against the golden dome, pooled where the curve began to slant away from the wall. Had been doing so for hours.

It was threatening to cover the peak. It distorted the tiny portion of Moon's light which had reached past the storm, made the flashes of lightning ripple and waver. It was like being underwater.

It was like drowning.

There were a few lighting devices inside the dome, ones which glowed with a stronger intensity than anything in her rooms. But for the most part, the illumination came from the shield. Nothing more.

He looked at her, from the interior of the dome. (She was just getting up, struggling to stand on hooves which felt as if they would split.) Twilight looked at him, on the other side of the barrier. Distorted by gold, and so much else.

This ends now.

She heard the others catching up, instantly chose Rainbow and Applejack to go with her, plus Spike for something truly unexpected. Looked back, registered exactly where they were, moved to be as close as possible to all three, and her corona flared.

She took them between. A short-range teleport, into the dome --

-- reappeared exactly where they'd been, with a small crackle of quavering gold light and the faint scent of rust.

No...

Her corona flared again, went double, with her field blasting against the shield. Nothing happened.

And Doctor Gentle, whose eyes had gone wide with fear when he'd recognized the initial working -- chuckled.

"You've studied magic, Princess," he reminded her. And his voice was somewhat distorted by the shield -- but it was also calm again, measured, making simple statements for the benefit of the audience. Lecturing. "She told me something about your previous encounters. Under normal circumstances, the two of you are just about a match for strength, yes? At least when she's in her best state."

(She was about a body length away from him. Next to something where wooden tripod legs just barely peeked out from the lower edge of a drapecloth. Looking around at everything, eyes wide with shock and fear. Trembling.)

"But this," he went on, "was created during a very special moment. The instant when a pony is stronger in their magic than they may ever be again. During the arrival of her mark, during the True Surge. It was... something to see. It's a pity you didn't witness it --"

Twilight felt her lips twist into a snarl.

I did see it. I felt it. The twisting you made from what should have been the best moment of her life, the grotesquerie --

-- but he just kept talking. "-- but you can see the results. This is beyond you, isn't it? I don't think you can break this." Thoughtfully, "I admit, I'm curious to know what you accomplished when your own mark came --"

She remembered. And then she pushed it back.

"-- shut up."

He shook his head, slowly. She noticed the way he seemed to be having trouble focusing on her. The labored breathing.

"Not quite the courtly etiquette which a Princess should display," he calmly said. "We spent moons in review. Even with all your time in the palace, it would seem you spent, at most, five minutes."

Rainbow's words came from a degree of altitude: she was hovering slightly above the floor, mostly because there was room to hover in. "You're done," she snarled. "You are so finished, they're going to need a whole new dictionary just to write down the definition of how done you are --"

"-- am I?" he calmly asked. "How so? Because from this side, it appears that in her desire to protect this place as thoroughly as possible, she created a lockdown effect. The Princess can't teleport in, and none of you can physically break through."

"You can't get out," Twilight half-hissed. "This was the only working door. You blocked all the others, permanently. I don't think you can undo that from the inside. You also don't have a lot of pearls left, if you've got any. And even if you tried the same thing again and got lucky twice, we've got the numbers. We can cover every exit."

He was staring at her.

"How could you possibly know about blocked exits?" A quick, angry glance at her. "Did she -- "

"-- let's call it a mapping spell," Twilight broke in. "You'll believe that before anything else. You're trapped."

She was shaking faster now. Her gaze moved to Twilight. To Pinkie, and then Fluttershy. The drapecloth. Back to him.

"I," Gentle Arrival said, "simply have to be patient. You can't break this shield, Princess, or the lockdown: if you believed you could, you would still be trying. Instead, you stopped. And that means all we require is a few hours. Long enough for her to become a unicorn. And then we depart. She can teleport, as can I. We find each other after emerging from between, or head to the same place. Who knows? Perhaps she can even escort me. We have yet to test..."

He was smiling.

"You can't get help from Trotter's Falls," he told them. "Your closest aid is gallops away, with no means of contacting them. You can't get through. All you can do -- is watch. So, as we have some time --" his volume dropped "-- why do you hate foals so much as to see them go through their lives broken?"

She keeps looking at the draping. He won't.

Sun and Moon, where she's standing...

Rarity had also seen it, and so she stepped forward, shaking her head to clear the sodden manefall away from her face.

"It may interest you to know," she said, "that we were told to find the beginning. I am considering telling you who said that -- but as you noted, we seem to have some time. So for now, Gentle Arrival, let me ask you something --"

"-- if I had wished to hear from a weakling," the stallion steadily interjected, "I would have let Coordinator --"

"-- when does something truly begin? Because to me, there is a choice of options, a rather extensive one. Was it when you met Primatura?"

Orange eyes narrowed. Ones which were slowly phasing towards deepest purple widened.

"You have no right to speak of --"

"-- or perhaps the night of conception. The first date: that would seem to be an option. Or, as false beliefs are passed down across the generations, the moment a parent whispered hate into your ears." And with rising volume, cutting him off before he could ever speak, "We have not found the beginning, because a single touchstone may not exist. We have merely found one of them. But now we will use it -- to reach the end."

"You can come with us." Pinkie, because those words had to be Pinkie's. "You know that. Because he doesn't love you, does he? I don't think he ever did. Maybe there was a moment before he saw you didn't have a horn. Moons while he was waiting for you --"

"-- Pinkie." And now the stallion's voice was choked. "Pinkie, you don't understand --"

"-- but he's never loved you. Not..." And now the baker was beginning to tremble. "...for yourself. There was always something else, wasn't there? Something he didn't say, something I think you heard him not saying every day --"

The next word came across as an order. "-- Pinkamena."

A bright pink forehoof kicked the shield, and Twilight just barely noticed the tiny flicker. "-- you don't love her! Nopony would ever do this to somepony they loved! You love a ghost, and ghosts aren't real! You love something you want, not somepony you have! You had a gift, one last gift and then it was two, but you rejected her, you never gave her a chance to be herself -- "

"-- I. Failed."

It was the sound of pain. It was the voice of agony. It also meant she was talking.

"He failed!" Twilight shouted. "He found out things nopony had known for centuries, and all that let him do was ignore everything real! To ignore you, to do everything he could to block you off from who you are!" Her corona was surging, the borders beginning to spike from rage. "And he spent years trying, and he failed! You found yourself anyway! The real --"

Silver surged at the base of the restraint, and it stopped her.

"You don't understand, Princess," the stallion furiously stated. "I shared my pain with you, the pain for all who must suffer the broken, and still you do not --"

"-- how much pain were Quiet's parents in?" It was an oddly soft question. "When they killed his sister, I mean -- oh, sorry: sent her on. Did they regret her death? Or were they just satisfied, because they were taking righteous vengeance upon taint?"

She was shaking all the faster now. Trembling as her muscles visibly spasmed, vibrating as if her entire body might come apart.

The stallion was silent for a few seconds.

"So you spoke with him."

Twilight nodded.

"And still," he softly continued, "knowing what the emergence of a broken foal cost him -- still, you oppose me. I do not know what happened to that foal, Princess. I inquired on his behalf, at least among the staff. Disposal of the matter was given to a servant, and that one left her post shortly before I learned of the incident. And to speak directly to his parents -- no. That would breach all etiquette. Foals are sent on, and foals will continue to be sent on, until the day the broken can be fixed -- "

"...you're sick," and now Fluttershy was weeping. "Doctor Gentle, you're sick. I think -- you've been sick for a long time. Please, let us help..."

"You," he stated, "are one of mine."

Fluttershy hesitated. Nodded.

And in a burst of anger, "Then why don't you act like it? Talk to them! Make them believe! You owe me your life, Fluttershy! She owes me her life, she owes me a debt for Primatura's death and she has spent her lifetime trying to pay it! Why can't you give me five minutes, just five minutes of reason --"

There might have been more, but that was when Fluttershy, softly sobbing, turned away. Those outside the shield moved to face their friend.

"I could search the rooms for spell notation scrolls," Spike whispered. "Try to send for help. But I don't think she'd have any. Not even for practice, not as an earth pony, because she couldn't have practiced the feel. He probably would have just given her paper. And without the right ink..."

Applejack's voice was even softer. "Can't tunnel up from underneath. They're on rock, Twi: enough that I don't think I can break it. And the base is worked stone. It doesn't always answer the same way, if it answers at all."

"And we can't go far enough to get help," Twilight finished. "Rainbow can't move fast enough in this storm, not to reach anypony we know might try to help. I don't have a relay system of safe arrival points..."

A standoff, and a temporary one. Time would pass. She would pass through the pegasus state. Then the horn would appear: first as a protrusion under the skin, then -- did it emerge in blood? Did the skin break around it, and the announcement of their approaching escape would be made in a new gout of liquid, leaving behind --

-- Twilight turned to face the shield. The stallion waiting patiently within.

She kept looking at the drapecloth. Over and over, with eyes flickering to so much else as her flanks bulged, with the first outline of a wingtip starting to make itself known.

"You think I can't break this," Twilight told him.

He smiled.

I don't think I can...

"Let's find out."

Her corona surged. Went through the partial and single stages before they could truly be registered, was at the double within heartbeats, and she kept pushing, moving towards committing everything she had, everything she would ever have, every last part of her --

-- he took a step back. He couldn't help it. But it just gave him a slightly more distant vantage point to watch as her field pounded against gold, tried to find any weakness, attempted to counter, and nothing was happening, she was pushing harder and harder, all four knees were starting to feel weak and she was attacking a solid which would not give and something intangible which she couldn't touch, something she could almost feel, she knew it was there by the way it insisted on not yielding to her --

-- she made this. While she was changing, over and over. Made it to protect everything. To keep out the fire.

She shifted heat.

This isn't one shield.

"Rainbow!" It was a shout. "Whatever a pegasus does to counter something, unweave, whatever the word is, I need you to do it now!"

The weather coordinator moved. Did so without thinking, on instinct, shifted the hover until it was right on top of the shield, legs and wings frantically shifting as Twilight's corona intensified, became blinding white at the base, went into the full triple...

I am one moment of sharp contact away from death.

It was an oddly calm thought. She had just committed every tenth-bit of power she personally possessed until success or collapse, and collapse was the kinder option. And it still might not be enough --

-- but hers wasn't the only power available.

"Rarity! Please! Everything you can give me!"

And soft blue erupted, forced itself against the shield, and Twilight could just see the look of concentration on Rarity's face, the utter focus, and the stallion within was pulling back all the more because now the shield was starting to ripple, the gold shifting in waves, but it was holding, it was still holding --

-- created while she was changing --

There was only one thing to say now.

"Applejack! Hit it!"

It was, in a way, a lie of omission.

The orange body spun, kicked, and powerful hooves repeatedly pounded the shield. But Twilight almost felt as if she'd just heard a distant note, and knew her friend had understood, was searching for a debate, an argument, a countersong which would undo whatever portion of earth pony magic had gone into the shield's creation. And it was having an effect, the rippling was getting faster than ever, but it still wasn't enough --

-- the pearls.

That's what let the essence change her. Part of that power is still in her.

The shield had responded to the pearl. And then it had flickered --

-- part of that power is in us.

"Pinkie! Fluttershy! Do it!"

And now they were kicking, flapping, staring, bringing everything they had to bear against it, the ripples were still speeding up, they were drowning but they were fighting for air from below, they would not stop fighting and the stallion was still pulling back, Twilight saw the fear in his eyes at the same time she felt her front knees threatening to buckle...

Hours. Hours of fighting, of pain and confusion and having their world torn apart. She was giving everything she had to give. She just didn't seem to have that much left. None of them did. And what remained was almost enough, it felt as if they were on the border, that something had to give and it just might be all six of them --

-- it's not six. It was never six.

It's seven.

"Spike! It's a heat shield! Give it the test of its life!"

He moved quickly, got to the absolute edge of the alcove, pursed his lips and sent a narrow jet into the gold. Kept it up, maintained the flow, Twilight was starting to feel the temperature rise as sweat rose from her skin, as froth started to appear on all of them, they were reaching their limits and

the gold directly in front of Fluttershy was becoming -- pale. (She could barely see it, between the coronas, the fire, the battle to keep the white away from her eyes.) The hue at the edge of Spike's flame was intensifying. The shield was diverting power to the area which the effect sensed as being the most at risk. It meant pulling thaums away from other portions, and Fluttershy's section faded, thinned --

-- there was a tiny hole. Just large enough to put a pupil up against.

It was a start.

"Keep going!" Twilight shouted, and immediately regretted it. She didn't have enough strength left for a shout. "We're doing it -- !"

They would get through. There was a moment when she knew it.

So did he.

He turned, fear transmuting into rage as he spun to face her, injured hind leg dragging, silver sparking from the base of the restraint.

"Change! Change into a unicorn, now! Get this off me, then take us out of here!"

Her eyes were frantic. Her hooves skidded against stone as her legs shifted, pain and fear combining to form something of a dance. "I... I can't, I -- it's two -- I can't --"

He reared back, and nearly collapsed: the injured leg would not take his weight in that pose, not for long. But all he seemed to care about was roaring directly into her face.

"NOW!"

And she tried.

She tried, because she loved him.

The bulges under the skin became more prominent, fur seemed to thin, blue thickened within her mane and

she collapsed.

Collapsed, screaming in pain, on top of the stain which had never been fully removed from the floor. Writhing, spasming, kicking out in all directions, screaming and screaming and screaming and

he didn't care.

Perhaps it was only the second time he'd said the words (at least in front of her), and the first as a unit. Vocalized something which had always lurked somewhere in what should have been his heart. Because in a small way, Twilight knew him, and so she understood why it happened, the exact reaction. There were ways in which he and Coordinator were very much alike. It expressed itself in different ways -- but in the end, it was very much about control. In Twilight's case, she had been sent into Ponyville, her life had changed, and ultimately, she'd just -- gone along for the ride.

But here, control had broken. And so had the pony.

"You! Useless! CLOD!"

The kicking began.

Twilight just barely heard Pinkie's scream over her cries, tried to push, tried to keep going, but she couldn't divert any portion of her strength through the hole when doing so might mean it would close, even redirecting Rarity's power might destroy the effort and Spike's knees had just hit the floor and he was trying, but he barely had any flame left, they were reaching their limits and the stallion was kicking her over and over and she just took it with eyes squeezed shut, she didn't resist him and the screaming went on and on, the final expression of the agony which had always been there, rendered into physical form by chaos and essence and something which had never been love. Screamed as silver surged at the base of the restraint, seemed to coalesce, silver without sparkles moving towards her in fits and starts. Screamed as if she was about to die, and screamed as if that death was all she could ever wish for.

There was nothing Twilight could do to stop it. There was nothing any of them could do. They'd used everything --

-- everything except the very last thing. That which Twilight hadn't truly thought about for days, because it meant thinking about him. The only thing...

"Fluttershy!"

Who understood.

A tiny blue bubble appeared at the nape of the caretaker's neck. Detached, floated forward.

And then it all went wrong.

Twilight had expected it to contact the shield. To make the barrier between them go away, give them free passage to stop the beating. Instead, it passed through the tiny hole, seeming to drift through the air like the most fragile soap film, moving towards --

-- no.

She'd thought Fluttershy would have understood what she'd meant. But that wasn't what was happening. They were all nearly out of strength, they had failed to truly break the shield on their own, there was a mare who was in pain, who would always be in pain, who might survive the beating and still go with him and spend a lifetime in agony beyond cure and

Fluttershy would leave no poor thing to suffer.

Unnoticed by the stallion, tracked only by the terrified gazes of six others, the bubble touched her.

It stops.

Everything stops.

It's all she could have asked for. Everything she could wish for, the last desperate plea to arise from the depths of her failure. An ending.

But... there's something left. Something which is aware of that ending.

Is this the shadowlands?

She opens her eyes (for it seems as if she has them to open) and...

...there are memories. Memories cover walls made of shade. They are memories of ponies she's never seen. They move. They shift about within the borders. They turn to look at her, and their regard is an oddly peaceful one. It is the attention of shadow, and it brings nothing more than a strange sort of feeling, something which could almost be comfort...

And then she hears hooves.

She turns, and white forelegs (not quite the proper hue, white seen through shadow) have hooked themselves over the edge of a memory. Unseen hind legs kick, and a body tumbles out, falls to something which isn't so much a floor as the concept of one.

The mare struggles for a moment, as she approaches a pony who does not know of the Great Work, but the mare is the only other pony in this strange place and she looks --

-- she gets up.

They look at each other. And the mare's eyes slowly close as those shaded white forelegs stumble forward while she can't move, for there is nothing in her still capable of movement. There is only fear, and self-loathing, and the knowledge that even at the end of all things, she will be confronted with her sin.

The mare reaches her. Opens dark purple eyes, purple shading towards black, looking up. And then the mare is looking down at her (and it feels like a natural thing). Speaks words of pain and sorrow.

"What has he done to you?"

And with phantom tears flowing from eyes of shadow, she offers a nuzzle.

The nuzzle meant for family.

The bubble vanished.

She was still there.

He hadn't noticed, not any of it. He didn't see the confusion on the other side of the shield, didn't spot Rainbow's abrupt landing or an exhausted Rarity starting to collapse, much less the sealing of the tiny hole. He just kicked her again, and her eyes opened and her legs moved and then there was a pegasus on the floor.

She twisted her body away from the next kick, flared out her wings, used a single hard flap to get herself up and before the stallion could react, could even begin to understand what was happening, those wings flapped again, doing so at the exact moment Fluttershy spoke. Words he would never hear, the only words which mattered.

"...I took her pain away..."

And nearly all of the air inside the dome blasted into him.

The force took him off his hooves, sent him into the shield, right flank making hard contact, and he fell to the floor in front of Applejack, tried to look up, focused everything he had left on whatever had attacked him, silver streamed and the unicorn's field blazed gold and took his effort apart, surrounded the restraint as she raced up to him, gold sundering metal until she yanked it off to expose a blazing double corona and in the moment before he realized he'd been freed, the earth pony's hoof crashed into his horn.

Sparkleless silver went backwards. Went into him. And there was one last scream.

She looked at his fallen form for a few seconds. Looking down, as they all were, with Applejack trying to prop Rarity up and Pinkie giving Spike something to cling to, while Twilight's corona flickered, dropped, and finally winked out. Looked down at him, as her tears silently pattered into graying fur, watching his ribs as they slowly shifted.

After a few seconds, she looked up. Her features tightened with concentration, and Applejack winced at a too-loud sound which could only be heard by the soul. It was followed by the pegasus flapping her wings, and then the unicorn took most of the shield apart. Leaving just enough to protect everything within from the storm.

Slowly, they crossed what had been the barrier. Approached, with Fluttershy as the first to reach her.

"...you're breathing too hard. It's an effort, isn't it? To change that fast. You have to rest..."

The unicorn shook her head. Colors shifted, and then the earth pony was back.

"I..." Stopped. Closed her eyes, just for a second. Looked down again once they'd opened, and then glanced backwards. Gestured with her left forehoof, then began to steadily move towards the stain. Towards what had been placed next to it, and they followed.

Her neck arced. Teeth nipped at the cloth, and it fell away.

"I -- just..." Her eyes closed again, and she took a slow breath. "At first, I just wanted to imagine her. Because I thought I took her away from him, so I -- asked him what she'd looked like. Every detail, for years and years, so I could picture her in my head. But then I thought -- I could give him a memory. His memory."

They all looked at the masterwork which was the painting, and the beautiful unicorn mare who smiled at them from within. A smile which felt as if it radiated something very much like love. A radiance to spend a lifetime basking in.

"But it isn't her," she softly finished. "It's just how he thinks of her, added to how I wanted her to look. I... know that now. It's close, I came close... but this isn't her." More tears fell. "I'll -- have to make a new..."

Shaking again, and the trembling stopped as Pinkie pressed against her.

"How many of these did you make?" Rarity breathed. "Some are from your mother, I know, but you had to practice..."

"There's one for every pony who came to teach me," the earth pony told them. "They're -- hidden. Behind hers, and under them..." A foreleg gestured.

Twilight had just enough strength to levitate a few things out of the way, and no more.

Pinkie's attention focused. "I know that pony! He was at the party! And -- Spike, do you think you could move the next one? If you can still -- thanks. Sorry -- okay, I don't know that one. But she was hanging out near the bar! And -- no, just sit down, Spike, it's been a long night..."

Rainbow was now inspecting the fallen stallion. "Um -- I kind of hate to break in here --" and for once, there was an actual note of regret "-- but what do we do with him? He's gonna wake up eventually, and now we know the restraint won't work."

"I don't know," Twilight replied, forcing herself to move in that direction. (She could barely move. Each leg seemed to weigh twenty bales. Her tail added another forty and given that, she didn't want to think about how Fluttershy was feeling.) "I don't know what we do now..."

The paw softly touched her shoulder.

"As the mission is over," the draconequus said as the first hints of dawnlight touched the dome, while gasps sounded and the earth pony froze at the sight of an entity she'd only seen in pictures, "we leave."

The talons snapped against each other, and they were in the palace.

Symposium

Within the between, memory becomes a shield. A way to block out the nothingness which stretches out to infinity in every direction. The protection of sanity, and so when the talons snapped, recollections began to gather.

But there were too many memories, added to an endless instant when she wasn't sure whose they were --

-- the first sensation was that of marble beneath her hooves. Twilight knew what it felt like to stand on marble: you couldn't spend so much time in the palace and not become intimately familiar with that kind of surface. She even knew it was Solar marble before spotting any of the gold flecks, simply from the sheer level of inherent recognition.

The next thing to register was the flashes of hornless corona light (multiple hues, caster after caster maintaining the working across centuries) going off around them, accompanied by the high-pitched noise which represented the sonic portion of the alarm, because the palace itself existed in a state of permanent lockdown. Allowing the teleport-capable citizens of Equestria to just enter whenever they liked wasn't good for anypony's security, and so the enchantment ran at all times, allowing exceptions for staff and royalty and a student who still wasn't sure she could cross the distance from tree to palace, but was still allowed to try out the working when she was in the city. They had been teleported in through the lockdown, and a spell which hadn't been able to stop the draconequus was still capable of letting everypony know that something was wrong. There would be Guards arriving in the Hall Of Legends, and they might appear within seconds --

-- Applejack had dropped to all four knees, visibly fighting back nausea and on the verge of losing. Pinkie was swaying back and forth. And she, teleported while in earth pony form, was starting to buckle --

I tried to bring Applejack through the shield with me, I forgot, I'm sorry

-- Discord's expression was a rather curious one. It was easy to see, with his warped body curving and dipping down to her level and just as easy to read, the exaggerated features easily conveying whatever he was feeling (or pretending to feel). He looked as if he had just remembered a minor piece of trivia, something he'd always been aware of and dismissed as unimportant. A tiny datum which suddenly meant everything.

"Oh," the draconequus softly said. "Yes." Talons snapped, and the earth pony steadied. (Off to the left, Applejack was slowly getting back to her hooves.) "I --" and the odd, somehow awkward pause was long enough for two more alarms to blare into their ears "-- apolo --

Which was when the first silver-armored Guards rushed into the Hall: three on hoof, two in the air, entering as a force prepared to attack --

-- they saw Twilight, and began to slow. One spotted friends and sibling, and her corona started to drop. But another had focused on what was, to him, the single most important detail.

"Doctor Gentle?" one of the pegasi gasped. "What happened to him? How did he get hurt?"

everywhere, they're everywhere

Still, they had realized there was a chance for the intruders to be the Bearers, and so they were no longer fully committed to the attack. (There was also a chance of changelings, and so they hadn't completely dismissed the option either.) But then they all noticed Discord, and that reaction was exactly as might have been expected.

Then two of them saw her. Realized there was an unfamiliar earth pony in the Hall and as so many would when spotting and assessing a stranger, found their gazes automatically going to her mark.

They recoiled, with one nearly veering into a wall. And that dimming corona surged, preparing to attack --

-- talons snapped.

Technically, nothing happened. The Hall stayed exactly as it had been, with the exception of a certain focus of attention. Because when those talons snapped, they immediately became the most important thing in the world.

"NO," Discord calmly declared, and his words resounded throughout the palace, with every piece of marble serving as a perfect sounding board. "Anypony who attempts to harm her will answer to me --" and his expression changed again, became thoughtful as those talons crooked slightly, rubbed at the underside of his chin. "-- become the answer for me? Yes, that seems more appropriate. Anypony who attempts to harm her will become the answer for me. And the question in play is 'Without my causing direct harm in any way, exactly how interesting could a pony's life become?'" More thoughtful rubbing. "Actually, that seems like the sort of question which could provide hours of amusement, although not necessarily for the party who was living through the answer. So if anypony still cares to try, I'm certain I can think of --"

Every Guard had now completely stopped moving. One was refusing to blink, just in case eyelids turned out to be offensive.

"-- as you like," Discord shrugged, and returned his attention to her.

"They will not hurt you," the draconequus softly said, crouching down before her, looking directly into wide eyes. "I know you are afraid, and I won't try to tell you that you shouldn't be. I know --" another one of those strange pauses "-- you're probably afraid of me. But I didn't mean to hurt you, when I brought you here. And I am... sorry. But you are under their protection --" a glance at the Bearers "-- and, if you will accept it, mine. It is not a combination which a sane pony would attempt to breach. And for some strange reason, the palace has an insistence on hiring sane ponies." A tiny snort. "Which is boring --"

-- stopped.

"-- I won't ask you to trust me," he diverted himself. "You'll decide that for yourself. But will you trust in them? To protect you, and see that nopony hurts you?"

She just barely nodded. Her gaze moved up and down, taking in the twisted form.

"-- thank... you," Discord finally said, and straightened up again, as much as he ever did. Moved slightly to the left. "So. Consider me to be leaving. For a little while. Or at least making it seem as if I had decided to step away from the boring part. Of course, if anypony here attempts to make things interesting --" and that with a red-tinged focus on the next three Guards to arrive "-- then things will no longer be boring. Until then..."

The talons began to come up -- then paused. He looked at her again.

"She's hungry," he told them. "And trying to hide it. But she needs food. A lot of it. Get it for her. Now."

He vanished, and she stared at the place where he had been in shock. Slowly rotated her head until she was looking at the multi-hued half-cape which was now draping her hips.

His absence seemed to provide the opportunity to speak, and Twilight finally seized it.

"We need the Princesses!" she gasped. "We have to speak with them immediately --"

"-- you can't," one of the stunned Guards interrupted, followed by having her hooves nearly scramble backwards, trying to get away from Twilight's frantic stare. "They're both in Trottingham. There was an incident yesterday. They both had to go --"

Because while everything had been happening in Trotter's Falls, the rest of the continent had felt free to go about its business, including whatever category of disaster had manifested in the other settled zone.

"-- and they weren't scheduled to get back for hours. We can try to contact them, but even then, they may need time. You can tell us what's going on. Who she is, and -- look, you're hurt, you're all hurt, we need to take care of you --"

The first pegasus to speak had other priorities. "-- we need medics to take care of him!" the young stallion cut in. "Doctor Gentle is hurt! He's unconscious, he's bleeding from his mouth, he's my first friend -- !"

It made Twilight glance backwards, just for a moment, enough to see that the greying muzzle was absorbing a trickle of red. It didn't surprise her: for a Stage Two backlash to produce bleeding was a potential result, although the amount of it seemed to indicate an oddly minor injury. But the false doctor's breathing was ragged and as hooves unconsciously launched miniature kicks at air and marble, his eyes twitched behind closed lids.

"-- we need to call in the Royal Physicians!" that Guard continued. "We have to help him! We have to wake him --"

"-- don't let him wake up!"

It had nearly been a scream. It had also emerged as something very close to an order.

The Guards (fifteen now, and all Lunar: the teleport west had put them under Moon again, nowhere close to shift change) were staring at her.

"Bring in the physicians," Twilight rushed. "But they have to keep him under. Sedated, or whatever else they can do. They can't let him wake up. And we need a restraint for him. Except that restraints don't --"

Which was when she realized she didn't have time to panic. There were things which had to be done, and they needed to be accomplished in a certain order. Working down the checklist.

The sisters aren't here. (It would be hours before she fully realized she hadn't internally applied 'Princesses'.) We need to start everything immediately. We need --

Twilight took a breath. Briefly closed her eyes, for there seemed to be a single second available for doing that. Tried to think practically. And when she spoke again, her voice felt as if it was not entirely her own.

"-- I need," she carefully said, forcing the words to be steady, "the pony whom the Princess trusts more than anypony in the world. If that pony exists, then I need them in the palace, as quickly as you can get them here. I'm going to brief that pony as best I can, they'll pass things along, and while we're waiting on their arrival, I need an escort-capable teleporter team of Guards assembled. As many as you can get in a hurry, even if that means waking up a few Solars. Ponies with arrival points in Trotter's Falls. They're bringing ponies to the castle, as many as you can muster, and they need to find a way of detaining every pony they see. They need to be on the lookout for certain ponies in particular. They're going to find four ponies in a cell, and they have to restrain them before removal and transport, because three of them need to be arrested for attempted murder. And those Guards will need a way to unjam the door, and they can't ask the police for help, because the police are part of it --"

"-- on whose authority?"

The words had come from the most senior-looking of the Guards, a face Twilight had repeatedly spotted across the years. They had mostly been solid and authoritative, because that was how Guards were supposed to sound. But there had also been something less steady lurking in the undertones. Something uncertain.

Twilight took another breath, and thought about a wedding.

"We are the Bearers," she stated. "There is a crisis in Equestria. If you feel we don't have authority during a crisis, then also feel free to give me your name an' trot out of the Hall t' wherever you feel like goin'. But I will need your name first, so the Princesses know who to fire. They aren't here. We are. And the fact that you spent years watching me trot around the palace as a filly does not give you the right to dismiss me now. So move."

There was a moment when nothing happened, when it was a herd of Guards staring at them, at the way Applejack was trotting towards Twilight's side while openly glaring at them all, at Rainbow's rapidly-growing fury, Rarity maintaining dignity in the midst of exhaustion and fur-staining mud, Spike's nostrils flaring with frustration, and Pinkie shifting position in concert with Fluttershy, getting closer to her.

But then they moved.

It wasn't that large of a room. It was rather plain: a single desk, some paper atop it to go with inkwells and quills. It was also surrounded by more enchantments than Twilight had felt in a single place for moons, workings designed to prevent eavesdropping and observation. It was, according to the Guards, the most secure site available, and it was there that the group, nearly pressed together in the small space, injured and filthy and trying not to collapse from exhaustion, waited.

Food had been brought in. She had already gone through most of a fruit basket, frantically chewing and swallowing as if any pause might see papayas removed from the world forever. The others simply let her eat, took just enough to keep themselves going. They felt too tired to eat. Too weary to do anything except the last thing which had to be done.

They'd requested wake-up juice, and found that it seemed to be having very little effect.

Twilight had watched members of the Lunar staff as they'd prepared for emergency departure. A pair of middle-aged unicorn stallions (one white, rather slim, and with a mane which seemed to weigh as much as the rest of him: the other brown, surprisingly fit, and with his mane completely shaved away) had been brought in, and the Royal Physicians had received the first, extremely partial briefing before carefully removing the backlashed pony from the Hall. But after that, it had been waiting --

The door opened. A white unicorn stallion trotted in, one who was somewhat taller than average and who looked as if he wanted to smile at Rarity's little gasp, but simply didn't have the time. Moved around them as politely as possible, settled down on the other side of the desk and focused on the group through his monocle.

"Tell me," Fancypants said.

And they told him what they could.

It wasn't everything. (Later, Twilight would try to tell herself that it couldn't have been.) This was supposedly the pony who was trusted above all others, and she didn't have time to wonder why. But she also wasn't sure of what he knew, and... she was very aware of Applejack's presence in the room. She was bowed down under the weight of filth and exhaustion and promise.

Some things had to be said immediately. Others could be rather direct, and Twilight was hardly doing all of the talking. There were parts of the story where it was more appropriate for Rarity to take over, or for Applejack to have the verbal helm for a while. Pinkie managed to keep her sections at a comprehensible rate of speech. Spike got a few words in, while Fluttershy mostly huddled near a corner and only offered what she perceived as the essentials. (As always, it took an effort to prevent Rainbow from taking over everything.) But there were times when she had to speak, and she wasn't all that good at it because she was also tired, emotionally spent, and gallops beyond anything she'd ever known. However, there were also times when Twilight could effectively speak for her, along with one horribly awkward moment near the very beginning of that, where she had to explain why.

They told him of the Great Work, of stone rooms and robed ponies and belief. Twilight even managed to speak of essence, and a soft-voiced, nearly-spent Pinkie wound up being the one to explain hybrids. But when it came to the parts which had centered around earth pony magic -- all Twilight could do was ask Spike to keep his eyes open a little longer, and the siblings left the room just long enough for him to write those parts down on borrowed paper and seal the results. There was no way to send them into the aether: he had pushed his flame too far, too hard, and even with gems, he would need sleep to recover. The scrolls could only be set aside, to be opened by nopony other than the Princesses.

(There were times when she started to say something on the topic, and Pinkie would nudge her. There would be a shocked glance down, and then she would stop.)

For what they could say, he listened to all of it. His ears were always rotated forward: his attention never shifted off them as his field took notes. The sight of her mane gradually changing hue as the briefing went on, the slow emergence of the wings -- it didn't even draw a blink. But there were moments when he had to briefly leave the room, passing along another need to the Guards. And near the end of it, just before the door closed behind him, a single deep sob darted through the final gap.

But then he came back in, and steadily listened to the rest.

Finally, with Sun beginning to reach them again, it ended. The Royal Physicians came back, took some time looking them over. A number of little wounds were cleaned and dressed. She was asked to stay with the doctors for a while, telling them whatever she knew about her condition, and so the arriving Solar shift took the rest of the group through the halls, towards the guest quarters.

There was one final fight before sunrise, and it came when the staff tried to separate them.

In the end, they didn't use the bed: it wasn't large enough. It was a ponypile on the floor, with all of them too tired to wash or eat or do anything other than collapse against each other. Six bodies covered by mud and fur, plus one more coated in dirt and scales, gathered as a tight bundle of desperate life atop the sheets which had been unceremoniously flung onto marble.

After an hour, the door slowly opened. She stood within the frame, gazing at the sleeping group with open uncertainty. One forehoof stretched out, as if considering crossing the gap. Pulled back again as the large body began to turn away.

But that was when Pinkie's tail twitched in a very special pattern, and blue eyes opened.

It wasn't much of an argument, lasting for but a few seconds while producing very little volume, and it ended with a lightly-trembling form, not knowing how such things were supposed to go, being guided in.

She curled up. Tried to reconcile the feeling of warmth against her fur. Of presence, and the uniqueness of it combined with the events of the night kept her awake for a while. But eventually, she closed her eyes.

They slept. And within the nightscape, dark wings covered them in protective shadow.

Sun had been lowered. Moon had been raised. That was the normal part and as she'd carefully washed herself, Twilight finally wondered just how normal that was.

The instructions had been there when they'd awoken, placed on a scroll which had been waiting just inside the door. Eat. Clean yourselves. And when you are ready, the Guards will take you to the Hall Of Legends.

They had... followed instructions. The palace kitchens had been willing to prepare anything they desired. She had never bathed in a group before, was understandably shy about receiving help. But there was very little conversation, for there was a deeper weariness in them, something which a day of rest had not fully abolished. Even after sleeping, Twilight felt as if she had almost no energy, and saw the same lingering exhaustion etched into every face.

There was some talk. A few jokes. Rarity attempted to adjust the half-cape several times, mourned the lack of materials for making a proper emergency dress. She went to a window, watched Moon as it came up (and did so with company), because the other opportunities had taken place while she'd been in the wild zone and it was her first chance for an unobstructed view.

"It's pretty," she softly said. "I didn't know it was so pretty. It's different, seeing it this way. All of her memories --" hesitated, for she had only learned the proper term hours ago -- "paintings with Moon showed what..." Another pause. "...he called them 'the scars'. And now the scars are gone."

"Did he ever say why?" Twilight carefully inquired. "I never heard anypony describe them that way..."

She shook her head. "He said that... it was easier to find Star Swirl's notes than anything on the last fight. The one which began abeyance. He didn't want to tell me his theories until he had enough to say more. But that's what he always said. That Moon was covered in scars."

And before Twilight could say anything else, the Guard spoke up from behind them.

"Are you ready?"

I'll never be ready.

Twilight looked up at her. Glanced around at the group.

"For the very little it might be worth," Rarity said, "yes." The others agreed in stages, with Pinkie snagging one last cupcake on the way out.

They had gone to their sleeping quarters from the medical inspection, and so were heading to the Hall by a new route. This one took them past some of the palace's oldest art (mostly tucked into little marble alcoves), and she kept getting distracted. She would drop behind them, stare at a sculpture for a little too long, have her head wrench to the right so she could track the path of a fresco instead of looking at what was ahead of her --

"-- ow!"

Twilight didn't teleport in place upon hearing the exclamation: she simply turned so fast that it felt as if she had.

The pegasus -- well, almost pegasus: the half-cape was covering the mark, but the fullness of the wings told Twilight that the silver was getting close to the top of the loop -- was awkwardly rubbing her right forehoof against her left shoulder.

"It's nothing," she quickly said. "It isn't that. I just didn't see it." Nodded towards the recently-impacted plinth. "I'm okay."

Twilight shakily nodded, watched her begin to trot again. Shifted position within the group, until the coral mane was close enough for an urgent whisper to target yellow ears.

"You said you took her pain away!"

Fluttershy's head shifted, swung the obscuring manefall to the other side. This allowed the single blue-green eye to regard Twilight with a side stare (still lower-case), and the caretaker took a slow, steadying breath.

"...yes," she finally replied. "It was... the definition, Twilight. I took away the pain of her changing." Hesitated. "And... maybe something else? Because I was thinking about how much changing hurt her. But after what you told us about the memories, I was also sort of thinking about why she... might have felt that she deserved to hurt. That she'd been -- hurting for a long time. So maybe some of that got in there, or maybe it didn't, because it was sort of supposed to be one thing. But it was Discord who did it in the end. Not me. And maybe he thought counting to one was boring, so he did -- one and a half. But for taking all pain away, forever... that's one of the worst things you could ever do to anypony. If you can't feel pain, then you don't know when you're hurt. And if you don't know you're hurt, how are you supposed to ever get better?"

The stare, in concert with the soft voice, had now taken on a note of offense.

"I'm not stupid, Twilight," Fluttershy quietly declared, and trotted a little faster.

It took a moment for Twilight to catch up.

Hastily, "I don't think you're stupid."

The pegasus briefly smiled. "...I know."

"It's just that -- with pain..."

"...it's horrible," Fluttershy softly finished. "It -- doesn't always do what it's supposed to, because you're supposed to find a way to stop hurting, and sometimes all you can do is think about how much it hurts. But it's still necessary. Pain is there so you can learn to avoid it, and deal with it, and... let go of it."

They both glanced back at the near-pegasus, who had been distracted by a singularly ugly kinetic griffon sculpture.

"I could wish there wasn't any pain," Fluttershy whispered. "I want that sometimes, for everypony and everyone. But it would still leave things which hurt. So then you wish for that, and it turns out some of the hurt was needed, so you wish for something else, and... maybe it's better, only having one wish. If it's the right one." A shy blink. "I hope I picked the right one."

"I know you did." And in that moment, it was the truth.

Another brief smile, and then they hurried to catch up.

It was one of the rock crystal windows for which Twilight had no context. It was the only window which featured a yak, and Twilight had never met any yaks. She'd been told that not meeting any over the course of a lifetime was generally the best-case scenario. But this yak was fighting -- something, and leading a charge of ponies to do so. There had to be a story in that, one worthy of the Hall, and she didn't know what it was.

She didn't feel as if she knew much of anything.

They waited, looking at the way images shimmered under newly-risen Moon. (She had turned her attention to one of the panels which featured Discord, perhaps comparing it to recent experience.) And finally, silver shoes sounded against marble.

"Princess Celestia will arrive shortly," Luna announced as she approached. "She is reviewing one final document --" and stopped upon seeing what had just taken place. "-- yes, that is very nearly a precise Royal Greeting Stance. It is obvious that you were made to practice it for hours, possibly with the degree of foreleg bend being measured by protractor. And I will not fault you for the positioning of wings which you have very little experience with. On the whole, I pronounce your effort as expert."

"...thank you?" she just barely managed.

"You are welcome," Luna replied. "Now straighten yourself, and never do that again."

The pegasus practically flew upright, and only a last-second steadying of wings kept it from being literal.

"As I had been saying," Luna continued, "there is a document under review. A final one, to go with the six others which had also been declared as final. So she will be joining us shortly, and we will not formally begin until she arrives. The other party in this discussion --"

The alicorn hesitated. Looked at the tall pegasus, whose forelegs had begun to trot in place.

"-- you do not have to be here," Luna softly told her. "There is no requirement to remain in this Hall, not while he is present. If you wish to leave, no fault will be perceived."

"I think..." The pegasus swallowed. "I think I have to stay."

Luna silently nodded. Dark eyes closed, opened again.

"You're bringing him in?" And the sheer lack of caring about the outburst could only belong to one pony.

"Yes, Rainbow Dash," Luna said, and the chill of that patience threatened to coat rock crystal in ice. "His presence is necessary."

"But we tried restraining him, and it didn't --"

There were very few actions which were capable of temporarily shutting Rainbow up, and Luna raising her left forehoof turned out to be one of them.

"Wait," the alicorn said. "I hear an approach. Multiple hoofsteps. It will be easier to explain after you have seen him. But know that we are safe."

Twilight listened, strained her ears -- and several heartbeats later, she heard it. Hoofsteps, yes, quite a few of them, and -- something else. Something almost rhythmic, a soft, distant ticking to go with a secondary, half-muffled note, something that was keeping up with the beat. It was very nearly musical...

It took about a minute, and then seven ponies entered the room: four Guards, two doctors, and -- him.

There was a restraint on his horn, and her corona nearly surged as she saw it, ready to stop a spray of sparkleless silver, she felt the others beginning to move --

-- and then she saw the little keypeg on the right side.

It rotated five degrees to the right. They heard the tick, and then they heard the tap.

"What is that?" She'd never seen a style like it for a restraint. It looked ancient...

The physicians were flanking him. The white one shifted position just enough to check an iris, and then a light blue field offered up a vial. The contents were quickly swallowed.

"I wish for everypony to understand that we are safe," Luna quietly said. "And judging by the state of your corona --" Twilight forced it to wink out "-- I might have provided the details somewhat earlier. The restraint incorporates two unique measures. Note how large it is, much more so than most. This is to allow the inclusion of clockwork. Something which still functions with the keypeg damaged: that is simply present to show that the inner gears are running smoothly. He cannot break it by hitting the peg against a wall, or anything else. It was designed to be as difficult to destroy as possible."

This was a demand. "So how does it work?" Because you could seldom shut Rainbow up for long.

"Within the restraint," Luna continued, "there is a hammer. One which raps itself against the horn at random intervals -- or if the enchantments detect a corona. To attempt casting is to trigger backlash."

He wasn't moving well. The limp was more pronounced than ever, and his breaths were visibly irregular.

"If one attempts to target the hammer itself," the younger of the siblings coldly said, "a panel slides back. This exposes a portion of the restraint's middle layer. Which is made from raw, untreated platinum. And should the wearer continue their casting, then they will quickly find themselves in a state of wishing for mere backlash. As the last wish they will ever have."

A few more unsteady steps forward, with the Guards not so much pushing as bracing.

"Those aspects have been explained to him," Luna finished. "In detail. To consider the most basic of magic is to inflict injury: attempting escape will have him destroy himself. There are other factors in play with that restraint, but -- those are the two which apply to this meeting. It has other ways of stopping him, and he was also informed of that -- but not what they were. This has discouraged him from attempting to make a final discovery. And so we are safe."

"He's hurt," Pinkie softly observed. "I didn't think he was that hurt. It didn't look that bad..."

And once again, Luna hesitated. Looked at Pinkie, then Fluttershy, and finally the steadiness which had been visibly forced into the stance of the stallion's daughter.

"The backlash was... unique," she eventually told them. "The doctors had never seen anything like it. It was magic meant to go within and so when it contacted him, it did exactly that. They require more tests, for they are physicians and so more tests are always required. But --" another look at her, and the way those knees were beginning to tremble "-- they believe there has been a degree of organ damage. They have already determined that his heart has been weakened, and there may be other factors. It is something which medicine, magic, and surgery may not be able to fix."

She didn't say anything. She simply trembled, and continued to watch. She wasn't the only one.

"My offer," Luna quietly said, "applies to others as well. Ms. Pie -- Ms. Phylia -- you, as well as she, may leave at any time."

"...I have to stay," Fluttershy whispered. "I have to..." And Pinkie chose to simply nod.

"Very well," Luna told them. And the approaching group stopped.

He wasn't looking at them, not Bearers or daughter. His head was raised, and orange irises were steady. The expression was almost -- proud. But he wasn't looking at them. Only at Luna.

She stared back. And they waited.

Singularly heavy hooffalls sounded behind them. A pattern Twilight knew by heart, something which could only be produced by one pony --

-- she was a normal pony --

-- in Equestria.

Twilight didn't turn. Didn't look back as the Princess approached. She just listened to the sounds until they stopped, somewhere off to her right, and felt the subtle heat drifting across her back.

She risked a glance. The Princess' stance was steady. But the purple eyes were narrowed, and the borders of mane and tail had ceased to shift.

He was looking at her now. Almost staring.

The Solar alicorn, however, was focused on the Guards.

"Leave."

They did the expected thing.

"Princess," the oldest said, "we know he's restrained, but for the sake of safety, for everypony in the Hall --"

"-- there are three alicorns present," the Princess cut them off. "Along with five additional Bearers, one dragon, and --" it was the first time they saw the Princess look at her "-- somepony he is completely unable to stop. This is a private discussion. And so I am ordering you to leave."

The white stallion stepped forward.

"He's stable," that doctor said. "For now. We had to use some potions on him, and -- they're not the sort of potions we can use too often. His mind is clear and he can stay on his hooves, but that's not going to last. After this, it'll be back on the more conventional medicines, because he won't be able to take another dose of what we gave him for a week."

The brown one nodded. "You've got two hours, Princesses, at the most. And then we need him back, because having us monitoring him is the only way you're getting another session after this. There was blood in his urine last night, and that means I need to check his kidneys. For starters."

"Two hours," the white stallion repeated. "That's it."

"We understand," Luna steadily replied, and the Princess nodded. "Thank you, Doctors Bear."

They turned, began to leave with the Guards. The brown stallion glanced back.

"We'll do what we can," he told their patient. "As soon as you're back."

"Thank you," that stallion sincerely said. "From one --" and he smiled "-- 'doctor' to another."

The brown's spine tightened.

His mane had been shaved: a common fashion among surgeons. His tail had not, and so they saw it lash before he looked away.

"Never call yourself that again," the physician told the heated air.

Their patient stared after them for a moment. Shrugged, returned his attention to the Princess.

Doors closed. And they were alone in the room, with the stallion about twenty body lengths away.

"Princess Celestia," he politely greeted at the first moment of privacy, with the thud of the closure enhanced by a tick and tap. "This is hardly the way I wished our first meeting to take place, but -- I am honored to be in your presence at last." A wry half-smile twisted the left side of his face. "I understand that you had emergency business on the night when the Equestrian Magic Society granted my degree, and after that -- for various reasons, we simply kept missing each other." And a chuckle. "For my part, I believe I've sufficiently proven that any attempt to visit you will trigger a birth." His gaze shifted. "And to see Princess Luna... that is the honor which few in my lifetime had ever believed possible, and virtually none in the generations before. Even given the circumstances, it is a pleasure and a privilege to finally behold you." More softly, "To gaze upon miracle."

Luna was silent. The Princess' eyes narrowed a little more.

He attempted to enter a Royal Greeting Stance, and only got halfway down before his right foreleg spasmed.

"There are many things I have been longing to ask you both," he managed as he forced himself upright. "And to have it be both... a dream. Perhaps we can discuss a few of them. I would love to learn more of the other Bearers, to hear about them instead of reading fragmentary notes. To learn from those who carry them as something more than memory..."

This time, Luna's left forehoof put a crack in the marble.

He ignored it. "But first, we will discuss the terms of my release."

"Your release," the Princess said. They were remarkably steady words, if slightly loud.

"Yes," he smiled, and continued his statement. Telling them what things would be, for he had decided that he knew, and so he could never be wrong. "You've kept the secrets so long, Princess. Things which certainly can't be allowed to emerge during sworn testimony. We all know you can't afford to put me on trial --"

They barely saw her move. There was very little time in which to do so.

She didn't teleport. There was a pounding of hooves against marble, legs moving faster than anypony could run, crossing the distance before anypony could react, before he could do more than pull back by the width of a single tail strand, and her head went down and the horn came up.

He flew. Flew without wings, without field, launched into flash-heated air for six body lengths. Tumbled across the marble, crying out in pain, and came to a stop to find the Princess already standing over him. Head lowered and foreknees bent, all the better to place that horn near his throat.

She hadn't speared him. She had hooked him, using her horn as a lever against the rib cage, going in under the left shoulder. But the point had scraped against his skin, and so there was blood being absorbed by the porous marble.

Twilight hadn't moved. Hadn't tried to stop it. There had been no opportunity, no chance, it would have meant stopping the Princess and --

-- she'd been frozen. Nopony had been able to move at all.

Princess Celestia had just attacked. And so the world was broken.

"Or I could," the Princess softly said, "just do the needful."

Nopony could move. Not Twilight, not friends, not sibling or daughter. And Luna just -- watched.

"That got into the briefing," she quietly continued, as the stallion trembled at hornpoint. "Perhaps because you'd said it so often. And it wasn't exactly original. I imagine that you liked the way it sounded in your head, the first time you read it, and so you took it for yourself. So..."

It wasn't the yellow of sunlight dancing around her horn now. It was solar flares, curls and jets of something very close to flame.

"...you wanted to talk about the others." It was nearly a whisper, and yet it projected out to the entire Hall. "I think I'll indulge you. We're going to talk about Zephyra." A thin smile. "And it is a pleasure to talk about her with you. To speak of her to somepony who knows her from more than that odious play. You know that she was Honesty, don't you? Our Honesty. But Honesty... meant something different, back then. It was the ability to see through the lies, to perceive what had to be done. And then, no matter how hard it was... to do it. That's why she came with us. It's what made her Honesty. It's why that Element chose her."

All he could do was shake.

"Because Honesty is the most brutal Element," the Princess whispered. "Zephyra would have seen you as being too dangerous to live, because that's the truth. And then she would have killed you. Without hesitation, without regrets, without even satisfaction. Doing the needful."

All they could do was helplessly stare.

"Would you like to know about Zephyra, Gentle Arrival?" And now her voice was just barely her own. "Would you like to meet her?"

"...you... you can't..." He'd just barely gotten the words out. "You can't just kill me..."

"I just had a bomb strapped to your head," that strange voice said. "You'd be amazed by what I'm capable of."

A slow head shake. Her hornpoint shifted against his carotid.

"We both learned so much from Zephyra..." the white alicorn breathed -- and raised her head. Just a little, enough to move horn away from throat. Not enough so that it couldn't go right back, and possibly through.

"Including," the Princess softly finished, "when not to be her. If the occasion called for it. But right now, I'd like you to think of me as -- still mulling it over. So you're going to answer two questions."

He didn't move. Her right forehoof came up, and the huge shadow hovered over his skull.

"How many ponies is she?"

He blinked. Stared. And somehow, upon hearing a question related to his studies, his tones returned to that of the lecturer.

"I was uncertain as to how many would be required," he admitted. "So the quantity was increased. However, I was extremely careful in selecting the essence which she would receive." With pride, "If I began to name those who donated their --"

"-- donation is voluntary," she cut him off. "You stole from the dead. And you will name them, in time. There were thirteen deathstones on that Tartarus-freed necklace. Did they all contain essence?"

This isn't right. It isn't the Princess, it isn't how she acts...

He shook his head. "Five were simply present for extra power. A chaos pearl which also holds essence has a somewhat lesser charge."

A tiny nod. "Nine," she said. "Counting her, you tried it with nine. You spoke of miracle? It's a miracle she's still alive."

(She was trembling now. Making herself watch.)

"Was it balanced?" the Princess asked.

"Yes. Including her, three of each." A brief frown. "Do you know of a spell which removes essence? There was one grave, a noted caster whom I had wished to --"

"-- so at least there's that," she softly interrupted. "We'll talk about where you found the notes later."

Her field flowed towards him, and he was surrounded by flares and sunspots. Started to lift --

-- winked out.

"All things considered," the Princess said, "you can get up on your own." She straightened, lowered her hoof, pulled herself up to that singular full height. Stared down.

"You've all been waiting for an update," she said, initially speaking to the group without facing them. "And before I start, know that we have both read the whole of your briefing. Everything Fancypants recorded, and -- what was privately passed along. Princess Luna has heard this already, but I asked her to wait for me before any of it was said. So..."

Her mane was completely steady. She breathed. She blinked. Nothing else about her moved.

"You dispatched palace forces to Trotter's Falls," the Princess said. "For intercepting the majority of the -- guests -- they arrived too late. However, that didn't apply to all of them. Some had been injured in the fight, and were being treated: those were detained. Four were, of course, trapped, and three of those will be charged with attempted murder. We also found a corpse."

The gasps emerged as something very much like a chorus, with one exception: a single pegasus simply closed her eyes.

"We didn't -- !"
"Ah -- Ah didn't think I kicked anypony that hard --"
"...we... we had to try and..."

"-- stop," the Princess softly said, and they did. "The corpse in question has been identified as that of one Clear Coordinator --" both Twilight and Rainbow reared back "-- and the cause of demise was already determined: death by field booster. Nopony here forced it down his throat."

"I... saw it happen," the pegasus quietly told them. "There was so much last night... I forgot to say it to -- Fancypants? -- and then I only remembered when it was the doctors, so I told them..."

And now the tone was gentle. "And they told us, along with the fact that he tried to dose you. My guess is that he thought he would find you as a unicorn, and he -- didn't see you. Not as you were, not until it was too late." With less volume, still staring at the stallion, "A condition which seems to be all too common."

The huge rib cage swelled, released the breath.

"Your paintings," the Princess continued, "are being taken to safety. I'm told your style is distinct enough that we can separate your efforts from that of your mother --" the stallion's jaw visibly tightened "-- and so we can try to match every image to a pony --"

"-- paintings," the stallion interrupted.

"Yes," the Princess said. "I thought you would notice the plural. She made one for everypony who visited her, did you know that? I imagine that to her, it was a special occasion. Anything new. Anypony new. She... created a record for some portion of your conspiracy, over the course of years --"

"-- she had no right! She subverted the entire Great Work --"

-- and a silencing forehoof was over his skull again.

"The briefing," she steadily said, "was, in many ways, a rather complete one. Fluttershy remembered something you said during the presentation. That your wife's pregnancy meant you would be receiving your destiny. And you were right, did you know that? You were right -- and you were wrong. Because of what you did."

She was still looking down at him. But the focus of that gaze had shifted.

"Because," she softly finished, "of what you are."

Moved to his mark.

"It's not a unique one," she told them. "I've seen it a few times over the centuries. But it's hardly common. A pony with this mark has a rather interesting talent. The focus of their magic -- the intent of their destiny -- is to be a parent."

His breathing was ragged.

"Imagine how lucky the children of such a pony would be," the Princess steadily continued. "How blessed."

Blood sluggishly flowed across the floor.

"I've seen this mark before," she went on. "And when such a pony feels their child is in danger... they can do incredible things. You knew your foal was dying in the womb, and look at what you accomplished. You saved her. An act of impossible magic, triggered by the deepest of love. I would be proud of you, Gentle Arrival. I would hold you up as a hero to all of Equestria, if it wasn't for every single thing which happened next. Because it takes a very rare pony to go against their own mark, doesn't it? It's... damaging, in a way. As much as following one's talent too closely can destroy a life, so can ignoring it. Or in your case -- subverting. The mental effects are -- less than desirable. You found something stronger than your mark, and you forced yourself off the path of your destiny. Because you lost the love of your life and at first, you had simply decided that her final gift to you wasn't enough..."

The hoof dropped a little.

"...but then you found out there might be some way of getting her back. It's been about that for a while, hasn't it?"

She's not like this!

"Star Swirl -- Star Swirl said..." He was struggling to breathe now. "...and then you said --"

"Star said a lot of things. Researchers are still trying to figure out half of them." A slow head shake. "I understand you consider yourself to be a student of his work. I wonder if you feel honored, wearing his restraint. It took a while to find where we'd stored the thing -- but it was never kicked away. We always knew that one day, we might have to deal with another pony who could ignore some amount of differentiation. We were prepared. Because there was a chance that it would be --"

Stopped. Closed her eyes, just for a second, as that hoof went back to the floor.

"-- no," she softly finished. "You don't get that. So... back to Trotter's Falls we go. The paintings will be used as evidence. Admittedly, we'll have a hard time attaching charges to some of those ponies. 'Visiting with intent to tutor' -- that won't go over well, and they'll undoubtedly claim not to have known about the other aspects. But even without extra evidence, it'll tell us who we have to watch. The ones who fought are easier: a minimum of assault. And as for you --"

"-- I," the draconequus declared, his body assembling itself from glints of rock crystal light and cast-off shadows, eight body lengths in front of Princess and stallion, "would like to make a few suggestions. Or perhaps even provide a verdict. Based on my having a prior claim."

The Princess looked up. So did the stallion, and his eyes went wide with terror, his lips moving without producing sound. It was just possible to read the shape of the word.

'No...'

"You --" she began, and got no further.

The mismatched shoulders were tight, curled in towards the warped torso. Uneven legs didn't seem to be firmly planted, and perhaps that had created the tremble in the tail. Nothing seemed to account for the half-closed eyes.

"-- yes," he said. "Me." Began to step forward. "Hello, Doctor Gentle -- may I call you that? I realize the doctorate is honorary and the name is a lie, but it still seems appropriate to address you on a personal level, personally. Because we know each other so well, don't we? Admittedly, I'm still learning about you, while you came to know me..." The talons clenched, bit into the palm. "...intimately."

'No...'

"Discord --" the Princess tried.

"-- they say you have the largest family in Equestria, Doctor," the draconequus mercilessly continued, slowly advancing. "They say those ponies are -- his. An interesting use of possessive pronoun, that. And it leads to a question. How many of them are MINE?!?"

(At the far left of the group, somepony was starting to move.)

"You came to me, again and again, while I was helpless," and he was getting larger -- no, he was becoming less distinct. It was as if the borders of his form were spreading out, starting to blur. "You took from me, again and again. You stole. You violated. I could count the times you brought me to the edge of death, because I remember every last one of them. When I escaped... I simply had other initial priorities, Doctor -- or really, shouldn't I just call you Gentle? Because we are so close. But I didn't have time to look for you, not immediately. I had to make sure my freedom would last. So despite our relationship, I had to postpone certain joys. Searching for my tormentor would have to wait. And upon my release... well, there were still other things I could tend to. And really, why were you worth a violation of my parole? It's not as if you were the only pony to play with chaos -- although if you wish to add an accomplishment to your rather lengthy résumé, you were the first to do so through violation --"

It was now just possible to make out where legs were supposed to be. Masses reaching forward substituted for arms. A pair of red glows indicated where the angry gaze began, and the furious voice filled the world.

"-- but then I felt you. The little changes, the creation of the hybrids... small enough to overlook. But what you did to her -- that couldn't be missed. I tracked it. I learned what you did. And the more I thought about it... why, the more I just kept thinking about it. What you did to me. What you did to her."

It was as if form was simply a choice, one which had been discarded. And tails dropped to the floor, legs trembled as their owners fought the urge to run, even the Princess was pulling back...

The warped body (comedic in some ways, as if trying to trap others into a false sense of security) was almost completely gone. Soon there would be nothing more than a chaos storm, one which could think. Something which had already chosen a target.

"Everything you did to her, across her lifetime. You thought I couldn't understand that?" And a bitter laugh, the kind of mirth which came when the joke had been on him. "Neither did I! But here we are, Doctor! I'm as surprised as you! I would never hurt her! But you... here we are, here you are, after everything you did to me, to her, here we are and --"

"...please..."

The storm looked down.

She was standing right in front of it. Almost within it. Trembling. Shaking. Terrified. Filled with nothing more than fear. And in the face of that terror, still finding a way to move forward.

"...please -- don't..." Fluttershy whispered, and the tears began to form as the one visible eye squeezed shut.

There was a flash, and then a paw gently rubbed at the coral mane.

"How many of them are mine, Doctor?" the draconequus quietly said. "I do wonder that, I really do. I already know of three." Talons carefully scritched yellow ears. "You tied me to this land. To children..."

He looked up. To where the rest of them were standing. He looked at her.

The uneven legs took a step back.

"I yield my claim," Discord said. "Give him pony justice. And make sure you give him enough of it."

He stepped further back, merged into the wall, and a two-dimensional representation began to explore (and rearrange) the art.

The Princess managed a breath and after a few seconds, the rest of them did the same.

And then she blinked.

"Things... change," she said, and Twilight couldn't tell who she was speaking to. "Things change..."

But then she was looking at the stallion again, who was still shaking within a tiny puddle of blood (now mixed with another fluid) upon the floor.

"As I was saying," the Princess resumed, "I don't have to put you on trial. There are certainly other options, and one of them recently recused itself from the proceedings. But me... I can be a rather pragmatic sort of mare. I know Star wrote that down: he certainly complained about it enough times, along with how it seemed to not apply at all the wrong ones. I don't have to put you on trial..."

She shook her head, and the most distant tip of her mane began to flow.

"...but I will." And before anypony could speak, "It's just not going to be a public one. You'll have a judge, a jury of those too good to be your peers, and you'll get a lawyer if you ask politely, although I wouldn't be surprised if you represented yourself. But in the name of national security, I have the right to swear everypony involved to secrecy. To enforce it. You'll get your trial, Gentle Arrival, and your chance to convince everypony you were in the right. To make another presentation, one which explains why you thought it was right to place a snitcher upon a foal. That's going to be the first charge. Rest assured that it won't be the last. You'll get the full list delivered to your cell, so you can properly determine how you're going to lie about all of it. And -- I have to mention this, even knowing that you'll never truly hear it -- don't you realize what happened with her?"

The answer was almost instant. "She failed."

"No," the Princess said. "She was her mother's daughter..."

There was no comprehension in his face. There wasn't even denial. He simply dropped into the silence of impotent rage.

She silently regarded him for a time, as if memorizing the habits for some fresh breed of monster. Stepped back, and looked down at Fluttershy.

"Thank you," the Princess told the caretaker. "For... more than just that. And there's going to be more than mere thanks, in time. But for now -- back to your friends. Please."

Fluttershy managed a small nod, returned to the group.

"Princess?" Every head turned towards the sound, with even the stallion managing to look in that direction.

"Yes, Rarity?" was the calm reply.

"There is... another pony. We made something of an effort to mention him. Did you find --"

"-- no," the Princess said. "We're still searching. We did locate his spouse, who claims she stomped out of the castle because she simply couldn't stand to be at that joke of a party any longer. Based on where we found her, I can safely say that she chose to deal with it through seeking a rather specific sort of comfort, and she was still pressed between that pony's forelegs when the Guards knocked on the bedroom door. It does provide something of an alibi while supporting her claim of not having attended the conference: I'm still not sure she knew nothing about the conspiracy. But I don't think she's going to like some of the side effects. I've reviewed the prenuptial contract and due to her actions, the House of Deluge can now be considered as extinct. She no longer has any claim to it. Not that she would even have many servants left --"

"-- don't hurt Softtread," Spike softly said. "He... wasn't a bad pony. He just..." and words nearly ran out. "...he just wasn't born in the right place..."

The Princess' head dipped. "We'll see, Spike."

Which was when Luna stepped forward.

"The House," she declared, "does not need to remain extinct. We simply need to determine the fate of its youngest daughter. We both read the briefing, and so we know where to begin. We shall find that servant, and when we do -- I am hoping that the --" she spat the words "-- sending on was conduced by what the House would have seen as precisely the wrong pony. To quit shortly after the deed -- it could indicate a mare who wished to flee from her crime. Or -- this is a chance only, but one we must explore -- it could indicate that she kept the filly. Find her, and we may find the House's last heir. Should she wish to accept the role, then when she comes of age, we can place her in the castle, with the title transferred --"

And somehow, that was what got the stallion speaking once again.

"You -- you'd put that into the House? You would give an earth pony the Lordship over Trotter's Falls -- !"

There might have been more, but that was when Luna teleported, appearing a single hoofwidth away from his face.

"I would do that," she hissed, "and so much more. I would place earth ponies everywhere, including giving them dominion over law enforcement. I imagine that once enough of them arrive, they should have the numerical advantage necessary to take the mayoralty. I can do many things, Gentle Arrival, and the alternative from my not doing them is that as a settled zone, Trotter's Falls would cease to exist. The rot has been exposed, and it offers two choices: cure, or shattering. But I have yet to make a decision, so please consider every word you speak to have potential for influence. Simply know that if we should locate the heir and she agrees to be placed into your viper's nest, a number of snakes will have been removed prior to her arrival. She will also be given Guards, defensive magic, and a comprehensive list of where to kick anypony who annoys her. And I will set aside a number of blank pardons for the kickings. Do you understand?"

He made a mistake. He looked at the elder.

"Princess..."

"-- we are equal in the Diarchy," the Solar alicorn said. "I don't interfere in my sister's dominion, and integration belongs to the Night Court. By your will, Princess Luna."

The younger tightly nodded.

"Hope that she is alive," Luna told him. "Hope that she is willing to deal with that foulness. Because if she is not... then in the event that you somehow convince your jury, there may be nowhere left to return." And walked away, rejoining the group.

Silence in the Hall, but for the clockwork tapping of Star Swirl's restraint.

"I... I wasn't meant to be..." the stallion finally said. "I thought I was, when my mark arrived after foalsitting for a week. But I'd misinterpreted --"

"-- keep telling yourself that," the Princess told him. "We'll add it to the list of things you've told yourself."

Open desperation now. "-- my work... I have patients scheduled, foals who will die without me. You have to let me work..."

"Do I?" the Princess softly asked. "I could. Some of the 'pearls' survived --"

"-- and can," Discord said, stepping into full dimensionality from where he'd just flipped the yak over, "be recharged. Although I would greatly appreciate if somepony asked."

She looked at him.

"You're volunteering." The words had been toneless.

More than a little snide, leaning against the wall with mismatched arms folded. "Are you asking?"

Staring at him now.

"The issue," she finally said, "isn't just the charging. The parents would have to be informed. Told exactly what has to happen in order to potentially save their foal. We --" And for a moment, her eyes squeezed shut. "-- can't keep the hybrids a secret for much longer. It's a wonder that it got this far. Ponies explaining strange magic by instinctively connecting it to the talent -- even that has limits. Eventually, Equestria is going to know, and it's better if the palace tells them. We can inform the parents, have them keep it secret until we find a way to inform the population. But even then --" looking at the stallion again "-- every time we take that restraint off him, there's a chance for ponies to die. I've been briefed on what he can do, and I can't trust him not to use the opportunity to attempt escape. It's possible to keep somepony stronger on standby, ready to counter -- but something can still go wrong."

"The foals," was the stallion's only protest.

"Do more ponies die if I keep you restrained?" was the first part of her response, followed by a slow "Or is the number higher if I take that chance? It's a question I'll be asking myself, Gentle Arrival, and the answer won't be coming today."

Her eyes closed again, and there was a second when Twilight wondered if the Princess had just seen herself swimming in a sea of dead foals.

"And the hybrids," the Princess said. "You know who they are, Gentle Arrival --"

"-- yes," and he'd found the nerve to cut her off. "And you don't. So it seems I do have something to negotiate with, because with the burning of my estate, the full list only exists in my memory. Which, I assure you, is comprehensive. So given that you have no other way to identify them --"

"-- me."

And the word had come from her.

The Princess turned. They all did.

"Stop it," the stallion ordered. "You will stop talking now --"

"It's... me," she carefully said. "My mark... disturbs ponies. Except for them." Two head tilts: one towards Fluttershy, the second indicating Pinkie. "They think it's beautiful. And they're both hybrids. So maybe that's how you can tell. Anypony who can see my mark for the first time without being scared -- that could be a hybrid. And he talked to me about so many of them. I don't know very many names, but I have some locations. Talents. And with anypony where you have doubts -- I can help. You don't have to negotiate with him, Princess. You can just use me. And..." The wings vibrated. "...I am volunteering."

The alicorn just looked at her for a while.

"We are the children of chaos," she said. "We need to find each other. Help each other."

But the Princess only seemed to have heard the first part.

The reaction only lasted for a second -- but Twilight was looking directly at the elder, and so saw her ears go back, flattening against her skull. The semi-tangible tail lashing.

"For my part," Luna told them all, "I choose to accept your offer. Sister?"

And now the elder was quiet.

"We need to find them," she finally said. "Before the population does. Because when this gets out... and it will get out... there may be attacks, or worse. Some ponies... don't react well, when the walls come down. But --" this to her "-- you... it's not safe for you out there either. You don't have control, and the way your magic was created -- what it is -- I don't even know who could teach --"

"Me."

Every set of eyes instantly focused on Discord.

"Well, who else?" he petulantly declared. "Really, Celestia, can you name a single entity more qualified? I can train her. In the event of something happening, I can stop her. As previously established, she is under my protection --"

"-- why would she be under your protection? Why do you care --"

"-- and so she can be my student." His talon idly spun the yak again. "It's only fair, you know. You have one."

The Princess fell silent, and so Luna was the one to speak.

"Under supervision," the younger said.

He rolled his eyes: the right one made it all the way to the end of the Hall before coming back. "Oh, of course. Under supervision..."

The elder took a step forward. Then another, turning her body as she did so. Angling herself to face the fallen Prince.

"She has to accept."

He looked at her.

"It's your choice," he softly stated. "You don't have to. You can do anything you want. You're free --"

"-- but I'm not safe," she finished. "I... need to learn. If you can teach me..."

A simple "I can."

She nodded.

And with what would not be his final scream for their time in the Hall, "NO! You are my daughter! I forbid --"

The reply came as a chorus. "-- you can't tell her to do anything any more." And then both parties involved in the song looked at each other.

The Princess blinked. Discord tossed off a shrug, which landed in a corner. She giggled.

"So it's settled," Discord declared, summoning his shoulders back. "I'll train her. We'll set up a schedule." Frowned. "No, that's boring. We'll... actually, this is going to take some work. And work is -- well, it may be boring. I suppose we'll find out. So there will have to be certain --" and his face contorted with something close to pain "-- why do I have to keep saying this? Rules... oh, yes, that reminds me. We were doing this the pony way, and there were certain -- well, you could call them losses. Those should be replaced. Admittedly, I'm sure somepony would have bothered to fetch them eventually, but in the interests of saving time --"

Light bloomed, and then there was a stack of horribly-mouthwritten papers in front of Rainbow.

"-- that's one. As for the other --"

Applejack reared back, tossed her head hard to the right, and the hat flew into a wall.

The draconequus stared at her, and the strange features were briefly writ large with confusion.

"-- interesting reaction," was all he said. "But have it your way. Now, when it comes to compensation --"

"Why did you do this?"

The words could have been Twilight's, for the question had been carving its groove for days. But they had come from the Princess.

He shrugged again.

"Quite a bit of chaos all this caused, isn't it?" he smugly told her.

He's lying.

I know he's lying.

...this isn't her, this isn't the Princess, she's never been like this! It was another wall, one of her oldest ones, and it too was crumbling...

"Well, we'll arrange the details shortly," he told them. "In the meantime, I'm certain somepony would like the illusion of privacy for a coda..."

Discord snapped his talons. Vanished.

The light faded, and the Princess' eyes were still shut against it. Looking at something within.

"...Princess?"

Softly, "Yes, Fluttershy?"

"...Pinkie and I... we woke up a little early, and... she wants to tell the Cakes. And my parents... we sort of need to. I know you might... want to keep things secret for a while, but -- they love us, and they have to --"

"-- do whatever you have to," the Princess quietly replied. "I understand there are at least two others in Ponyville. And when you find a way to tell them... please let me know. Because we have to tell a lot of ponies. We have to find so many..."

"I still possess the list," the stallion said, now struggling back to his hooves. "We can discuss --"

Her eyes opened. She turned, looked directly at him, and that regard broke his words apart.

"-- what makes you think you're necessary?"

And with that, she began to trot away.

"Sister?"

"I'm leaving," she told them. "I'll be in the Solar wing. Send the Bearers home. Send him back to the doctors. Let them keep him from dying, if they can find a reason to be interested in that cause. We'll talk more later, Princess Luna -- and we'll be speaking with you as well." (That to her.) Without glancing back, "There's going to be a lot to talk about."

She headed for the doors, trotting quickly, faster than anypony ever trotted --

-- she's not like this! She can't be!

"Very well," Luna said. "I will escort him to their office --"

"-- wait."

She stepped forward.

"I... need to tell him something first," the pegasus said. "Please."

Luna had a certain way with silence. With her, it was something which had weight.

"As you wish."

The pegasus, her forelegs shaking again, feathers trembling, stepped forward --

-- something happened, and did so twice. The earth pony completed the journey.

He was standing again. Watched her approach with open fury, added to the slow return of what might be permanent pain.

"There is nothing I wish to hear from a traitor --"

In the end, it would be the only vengeance she would ever take.

"-- you heard the Princess, when she talked about the Commander. It was confirmation, wasn't it? And there's more than just that. I know now, because it happened to me. Star Swirl was right."

It wasn't magic, for age spells were nearly impossible and, when they worked, just as temporary as what happened to him. He heard her words, and his spine straightened. The pain vanished. Ears perked, went forward as eyes turned bright. If not for the greying of his muzzle, all the years would have dropped away.

"...he was right? It -- happened to you? It happened?"

She nodded. "But it was more than just feeling her. I spoke to her."

"You -- you talked," he just barely breathed.

Another nod. "About you."

Desperate, eyes alight with the love which had never been hers. "What did Primatura say?"

And the earth pony turned away.

"What did she say?" her father demanded.

Began to trot, with her head dipped, eyes closed and tears beginning to well.

"You have to tell me! Tell me now! I need to know what she --"

He continued to issue his orders, even as Luna approached. He ranted as Twilight made her decision, gave chase, running after the Princess, desperate to find a single point of stability. He screamed at her in a constant flow of demands and statements right up until the instant he was teleported away, trying to find something he could say which would make her respond.

But he couldn't call for her by name.

Mentor

She was always there.

On one level, Twilight knew that there had been a period of her life which had come before the Solar alicorn had found her, which had happened just after she'd

I don't want to remember

and she acknowledged those years spent in fillyhood. But on another level, it felt as if the Princess had been there all along. Was always there. Look into the equation which defined the world, a near-infinity of variables which resisted being defined at all costs, and the Princess was the constant. Search back across the centuries and at any moment in time, you would find a gentle smile. That comforting voice, the warmth...

she was always warm

The mission had overturned just about everything. Beliefs had been shattered, with definitions changed and new entries forcing their way into every checklist. The mission was over and things were still breaking. Because the Princess was... always there. Not for every moment in Twilight's life, certainly not during so many of the worst (and there had been a few when she had dreaded hearing that voice, knowing she'd gotten everything wrong and the words which would tell her so were but seconds away). But she could always be sought. In a crisis, Twilight could try to reach the palace (and when that ongoing crisis was loneliness, she had never made the attempt, because to seek out the Princess for such a small thing felt as if she would have been abusing the honor of the student-teacher relationship). A constant, the constant and even when the Nightmare had appeared, even after seeing the alicorn hit by Chrysalis' attack... even then, the disruption had felt temporary.

The Princess had been in the Hall. But it hadn't been the gentle voice, the comforting presence creating the inner faith that everything would be all right. The Princess had attacked, and a voice which was not quite her own had casually spoken of murder.

It's not her.

She doesn't act like this.

We finish the mission. We come back, and everything's okay. She tells us the world is stable again, because that's what her being there means. She makes the world stable. Without her, there would be no world at all...

She would find the Princess, and definitions would stabilize. Spinning variables, whirling thoughts, the desperation, the terror -- it would all stop. That was what the Princess did. It was what the Princess was for. But Twilight was racing through the hallways of the palace, pausing just long enough at open doorways to frantically glance into rooms, searching, and the Princess wasn't there. She was chasing a pony who might be able to run faster than anything in the world, and the palace was huge.

Twilight had never been in every part of the Solar wing. Part of that had come from avoiding boredom: she'd never felt any need to visit the areas where the daily bureaucracies of government were processed. Other sections required permission: somepony had to bring her into the armory, and there were document collections where Twilight was only permitted to remain while under constant supervision, just in case she decided to take most of it home. A few places were expressly forbidden: storerooms of confiscated devices which nopony was supposed to touch. And the Royal Bedroom was a place of sacred privacy: she had stood outside its door, waited for her teacher -- but she'd never gone inside.

She was vaguely aware that there were levels beneath the palace: she'd seen ponies coming up from them, and had somehow never inquired as to just what was down there. She was sure there were rooms she didn't know about, entire towers which she'd never explored. And then there was the Lunar wing, which had only been reopened after the Return. During Twilight's student years, it had been walled off, and draperies had blocked every window. Half of the palace was simply shut down, and -- she'd never asked why. There were stories: lingering magic from some tremendous fight, something which couldn't be countered. It was unsafe to enter. It was impossible to tear down, lest whatever curse lingered there escape into Canterlot. And so it was simply closed off, locked away, with the lost half fully visible from the outside while nopony ever asked why...

Coordinator's dead.

That thought occasionally rose from the groove. She didn't know what to do with it. She wasn't sorry, she couldn't mourn, and she didn't know if she was supposed to hate herself for it.

She galloped past a midnight-shaded pegasus and the startled Lunar guard tried calling out to her, something about having narrowed down where the caravan currently was: she ignored the mare and just kept going. She was starting to open doors, she was wondering what she would do when she encountered the first security spell, she just kept galloping and the sweat was starting to build in her coat as endless marble passed beneath her pounding hooves, art and sculpture blurring, but the gallop was all she had. She couldn't find the focus required to fly, and she knew the Princess hadn't teleported: her own feel would have informed her of that exit. All she knew was that the Princess was somewhere in the Solar wing, and she was starting to realize just how little of it she'd actually been within. But the Princess had said she would be there --

-- the Princess wasn't Honesty.

(She had been a normal pony.)

And wasn't that how so many still saw her? In the deep past, the Elements had existed and Discord had been beaten with them: therefore, somepony needed to have wielded the set. One pony, and if that pony had managed to use every Element, then it followed that the Princess embodied every last one of the virtues. You looked at the Princess and you saw Honesty. Except that she had never borne that element, and the mare who'd worn that necklace had been a killer. It meant the Princess could lie.

So she didn't have to stay in the Solar wing. She didn't have to stay in the palace. She could have stepped out onto a balcony and flown away. She could be anywhere in Canterlot and I

She was running. The narrow rib cage was heaving. Part of her was wondering if her hooves were making too much noise: it was almost impossible to move silently on marble, not while at full gallop, and she just barely remembered that the forced creation of position-betraying sounds had originally been meant as a defense against invaders. Her teacher could hear her and move. Calling out might produce the same result.

I can't find her, I need to find her, I need to hear her and not whatever that was, whoever that was, it wasn't her

She needed the Princess. She needed her as much as she'd ever needed anypony in her entire life. She needed to be told that everything would be okay. And the Princess wasn't there.

She wasn't Magic, and Magic betrayed them. She wasn't Honesty, and Honesty would commit murder.

Who was she?

The Princess could lie -- but she'd been speaking to Luna. The one pony in all the world who had to be capable of finding her in a hurry, because crises generally weren't something which arrived by previously-arranged schedule. That had to mean she was still somewhere in the Solar wing. But there were portions which Twilight had never entered, couldn't enter, and the sweat was flowing through her coat and her wings just felt like they were constantly jostling against her sides and her thoughts kept going around and around, carving the groove until it felt as if it would reach bone and then she saw the strange light coming through the gap at the edge of the slightly-open door.

She stopped. (It took a few seconds, and she initially wound up going past the thing.) Slowly, as silently as she could, approached the ajar portal. Tried to pull up the map of the palace in her head, hoping, trying to remember where she was --

There's more to the palace than rooms, towers, and halls.

She knew where the door went. But the light... she'd never seen anything like it. Not Moon's light, or anything made by a field or device. She didn't know what had created it. The space on the other side knew but one kind of light, knew it at every hour under Sun...

We're under Moon.

She had never been there under Moon. She couldn't think of anypony who might have stood within that space after Sun's lowering. Perhaps only one pony ever had, year after year. And for the place which stood counter to it in the Lunar wing, the only way for there to have been that much light would be if it was occupied.

Please be there.

It wasn't a prayer, for there was nothing to hear. It was simply hope, and hope itself was pain.

Twilight's corona ignited, just long enough for her field to tug at the door. (More of the strange light streamed into the hall, discolored the marble while dulling the gold.) Forced herself to step outside into the Solar Courtyard.

Officially, no matter how many such spaces had been designed into the overall plan, the place had but two Courtyards. They had originally been meant to host various kinds of festivals: the column-bordered space was meant to be filled with tables and benches, tents and booths, music and those who would dance to its beat. But that had been the intent during the years when Canterlot's population was so very much smaller, when it was possible to get just about everypony in the city into one Courtyard. The centuries had created a certain degree of overflow, and so most of the celebrations had eventually moved out into the city itself.

But the Courtyards still saw use. They could host a fairly large gathering. Ancient spells ensured that the acoustics were always excellent. And when the Princesses needed to speak directly with the press, reporters from all publications would gather within those spaces. They would take notes, and a few of them would even write about what had actually been said. Those of Murdocks would listen, because how could you distort the words if you didn't know what they had originally been? And they would do all of it under open sky, beneath a sight which might not exist anywhere else in the world. For the Courtyards had their own workings, things which had been enhanced through centuries of attunement to the same ponies, and those were the spells which created illumination.

In the Lunar Courtyard... no matter where Moon was along its path or where it might be in its cycle, the orb would be seen as coming in over the eastern ridge, full and bright with every crater perfectly visible. At least, that was how it existed at night. There were times when Luna needed to address the assembled corps during the day, and those occasions found the reporters staring at her through lenses of enchanted quartz which seemed to swirl with smoke. Eclipses were an artifact of the sisters' generation, a side effect from Discord's control. The randomness of those movements would sometimes place Sun and Moon in the sky at the same time -- or bring one in front of the other. It was something nopony else alive had ever seen until the siblings combined their efforts to return the phenomenon as a gift to Luna for the second anniversary of the Return, and another had been created on the following year. (Twilight tended to spend the occasion torn between the need for astronomical and magical studies, and had finally asked Pinkie to read off numbers on the former.) It was a celebration of renewed unity, and the only way to see a true one was to be in exactly the right place when the most powerful coronas in Equestria began to ignite. But for any press conference in the Lunar Courtyard which somehow needed to take place during the day... that was when the illusionary version would hold sway.

By contrast, the Solar Courtyard operated under dawnlight. Regardless of the true hour, Sun would always just be rising, the sky filled with the myriad hues which only existed at the first touch of the cycle's rebirth. For all the time Twilight had known her, it was like that whenever the Princess was in the Courtyard -- but that had only been during the day. Press conferences held at night used the Great Hall, supposedly in order to get everypony out again all the faster. She had never seen the Courtyard active at night, hadn't even known it could be...

It was.

The illusion did not have Sun coming in over the eastern ridge. Sun was directly overhead, hanging far above the exact center of the space, and Sun wasn't right. All of its light had been tilted towards grey, something which seemed to simultaneously illuminate and dim. Sun just -- stayed there, without moving, and it never shifted by a single degree for all of their time in the Courtyard.

It was slightly cold, and Twilight didn't understand that. She'd looked at the weather schedule: the night was supposed to be a warm one. But there was a faint chill in the air, washing through the grey, pushing down on the scattered benches which hadn't quite been cleared away from the last conference. And it was more than that, for the workings in the Courtyard had been present for so long as to have their own resonance. During the day, it was renewal. But at night...

Twilight shivered, tried to force the regret away, found another emotion waiting beneath it, couldn't quite figure out what it was. Pushed herself forward, towards where the white mare stood beneath the greyed orb, silently staring into the darkness which existed beyond the illusion.

In time, she would go through every astronomy text and dictionary she could find in the Canterlot Archives, delving further back into dusty centuries with every passing shelf, and it would only be in the very oldest of them that she would finally find the words midnight Sun. But then and there, it was the Princess, something she had never seen before, and cold. Cold, when the Princess was always warm.

She'd noticed that early in her tutelage. The radiance. Never enough to be uncomfortable, and it never seemed to appear during the hottest part of the year. But to trot by the Princess' side on a chill autumn day, taken away from the isolation and mounting slow torture of the Gifted School to spend time with her teacher...

With Luna, when the younger was happy, there would often be a pleasant coolness: the first touch of wonder-chilled air after escaping from summer heat. (If that particular alicorn was angry, frost would creep across glass and eventually, it would be impossible to take a step without slipping on ice.) For the Princess... it was warm. A younger Twilight had trotted next to her, moving towards a period of respite, comforted by spring in the heart of fall.

The Princess was warm. Always.

This isn't...

Her mane wasn't flowing. The semi-tangible tail was completely still, and the light had sent both of them towards grey. As if Discord had inverted her. Perhaps that had been the intent all along, to have her standing under false Sun and silently staring out into endless night. It was impossible to see any other part of the city from here, and Ponyville was too far away. No lights from other buildings, and there didn't seem to be any stars.

She was so tall. The largest pony known to exist. To be near her as a filly had been for Twilight to instinctively understand that she was in the presence of something greater than herself and even as she'd aged, that feeling had remained. The sensation of being near something stronger. More powerful, more knowledgeable, something protective. Even as a young adult, she still felt like a child when she was near the Princess, and size was part of that. Like she was an infant being sheltered by her mother.

Twilight was fully aware of that vast size as she approached: it was impossible to ignore it. But for the first time, she also felt the weight. The sheer mass which was being shifted on every slow breath. The relentless pull of gravity against the body, and the way the white head had surrendered a degree of dip to the struggle.

The Princess didn't move as Twilight came up behind her. Just stared out into the dark, eyes half-closed. Breathing. Existing. And Twilight reached within herself, tried to find words, for it seemed that she had to be the one who spoke first. There would be a sentence which would prove everything which had taken place in the Hall was an aberration, or part of some brilliant long-term plan. A single utterance that made everything all right again. She needed that sentence to exist, and so she desperately tried to figure out what it was.

But before Twilight could reach her, face her, with the little mare still seven body lengths behind -- the Princess spoke first.

"We called them chaos children."

The words had been steady, even. The white back curved under the pain.

And Twilight couldn't move.

"The barricade points..." The huge torso expanded from the breath, contracted again. "The majority of them were occupied by one race. All unicorns, all earth ponies, and there was no real way to reach the pegasi. Not that we wanted to see them, because a pegasus sighting usually meant a raid. But... one race, so much of the time. Some of the largest barricades would have a broader population, but even then, mixed families were hardly ever seen. Almost impossible. We told ourselves that we were struggling to survive when we were mostly just waiting to die. Or go insane. So many lost that fight at the end, and death was kinder. And there had to be so many children, because ponies died every day and the only way there would be anypony at all was if just about every mare gave of themselves, every moon of their lives, almost as soon as they were able. If you couldn't contribute anything else to the barricade, you could be pregnant."

Stark words, and all the more for being so soft. Matter-of-fact. Reading statistics from a chart. This is how it is. This is how it was.

"We'd lost so much," the Princess quietly continued. (She hadn't looked at Twilight and on that night, under midnight Sun, she never would.) "All most of us were was a need to survive and the fear that we wouldn't. Nopony knew what it had truly been like before he came. We'd forgotten ourselves. We'd forgotten how our own blood worked. And so sometimes, in a barricade that was all one race -- there would be a child born of another. A chaos child, because there was no other explanation. And some barricades would let those children stay. They wouldn't be trusted, because how could you ever trust something created by him? But they remained with the barricade, because those ponies were trying to appease him. Hoping that keeping one of his would make things easier. It never did. And the rest... would see such a foal -- and give it back to the storm. Sending on."

She needed to speak. She needed words more than she had ever needed anything, she needed to find something which would make it stop, which would turn the huge white mare into the Princess again, and nothing came.

Another breath. The purple eyes closed a little more.

The attack had broken the world. The next soft words ground the fragments beneath giant hooves.

"Do you remember that? I've -- been afraid to ask what you remember..."

No.
No.
No.

"That's where it started," the Princess quietly continued. "We tried to stop it. The word was spread about what was really happening, once we understood that at all. But some ponies... they just kept going. Even when it was a crime, when it was murder. So we -- tried to rechannel it. Present another option. It's why even now, anypony can leave a foal at a hospital or police station, and there would never be a single question asked. We thought it was better to have orphans than corpses. But... it never completely died out, did it? We sinned from fear, then we sinned from hate, and now... now they're here. The true children of chaos."

The huge head slowly shook. The giant body shivered in the cold.

"He said... as a group, we could be symbols," the white mare told the trembling form behind her. "Of what could happen when we all worked together. But then Luna and I changed. And then we were symbols, or that's what we were supposed to be. Trotting images of unity. Every race could see us as one of their own, because we were every race. That was the dream..."

The laugh was that of the Princess. But there was no joy in it, and so it was horror.

"The reality was that most ponies saw freaks. Something which had to be stopped. And a number knew we'd changed, because we had been to some barricade points before, and then returned to them after. They saw how strong we were. Barely any understanding of how to make it all work, hardly anything approaching control -- but strong. And when strength was seen as the most important thing... when strength kept you alive..."

Please, please don't laugh again...

She did. A sharp, bitter bark.

"That's when it started." Her head dipped a little more, and a cold breeze blew across both their backs. "Even during the Unification, when we were trying to bring all the old barricades together, it was happening. We had followers by then, because we'd won. Ponies following whoever was at the front of the herd. But still, there were those who understood that we'd changed. That change was possible. And they tried. So many tried, even when they saw that when something did happen, the lucky ones were those who died quickly. They wanted the power. They didn't understand the price, and the ones who figured that part out -- didn't see it as a price at all. As long as ponies knew that we had changed, that it was possible to change, even with the only means we knew of lost... they would try. For the sake of power. Because it was us, and they would decide it needed to be them. So the world had to forget. But even then, even when so many ponies knew... they never did what Gentle Arrival did. They never broke the last walls. Because we brought them all together, as best we could. We almost forced ponies to live together -- well, Luna did." The white ears briefly twitched. "Her dominion, after all. And in time, living together, coming to know each other a little better... it was easier. It took a while, though. There were fights, and worse. Attack after attack. But even then, a unicorn was a unicorn."

Her eyes completely closed, as Twilight trembled and shook. Opened again, just a little. Enough to see shadows.

"And now... now, there can be a horn, and there can be a corona, and then there's something in the blood. What will their children be? Does this stop here, with normal foals born from their unions? Or will it lurk in the blood, surfacing every so often? A race created from the combination of races, appearing at random. Either of those results, and Equestria goes on much like before, even if it takes centuries to stop the attacks, and fearful, hateful ponies sending on if their infant seems the least bit different. But if hybrids only produce hybrids... and their children have children, across the centuries... what are we, in a thousand years? Is there a true pegasus left? A single pony on the continent who can perform the techniques of weather control? A few clouds broken, one storm moderated. And what is everypony else? What would our magic be? A thousand years, and who are we?"

Which was when Twilight found her voice, and desperation pulled out the words.

"We'll be okay. Whatever we are, we'll be all right. New magic isn't bad magic. We'll find a way --"

"-- and there's another aspect to that, a current one," the Princess harshly cut in. "Gentle Arrival wants to work. Every time I say no produces at least one dead foal. Every time I say yes not only creates the chance for a live hostage, it accelerates the process. One more hybrid into the population. And the ones who already exist... it's not their fault. To imprison them for sins which were never theirs -- to prevent them from having children... you know Zephyra would have been the one to bring that up. She would have led the discussion, and she would have kept it going until we understood every implication of the decision. But she wouldn't have done it. She could be so brutal -- but there was more to her than that. We all saw it, Luna more than anypony. Brutal -- but not genocidal. You know who would have had the argument for life, and he would have won. But you..."

She snorted.

"'New magic isn't bad magic.' You would say that."

"Princess --"

It was something less than a whisper. The words were barely audible, nearly absorbed by chill air, and Twilight would spend so much of the next moons wishing she'd never heard them at all.

"-- I hated you."

No. No. No. No.

"I hated you more than I had ever hated anypony," the Princess softly told her. "Because I'd realized how much of it was you. How far back it truly went. Who was responsible. I didn't piece that part together until just before the end -- but I did work it out. So many wanted the power -- but with you, it was jealousy. It should have been you. That's what you told yourself, over and over, until you decided to make it be you. That spell, Luna's mark, all of the switching... that was less than a night, because everything started to fall apart as soon as the time came to lower Moon. But then you just kept right on going..."

She was holding the resonance of regret back, if just barely through her increasing confusion and horror. But that other factor...

Bitter again, "You took your time about an ending. You were determined to be the last, or whatever was pretending to be you wanted that. And it thought it was you, so maybe that was part of it. They told me it was almost over, and then you just hung on. Still waiting for an opportunity. It gave me time. Time to be angry. And I started thinking about everything you'd taught us. Including some of what you said not to do. Never to send a spell directly from theory to horn -- well, I couldn't test it, could I?"

Another laugh, and Twilight's ears flattened against her skull. Failed to hold back the thoughts within.

"Luna found out what I was considering." The pause was mercilessly brief. "She wanted to know how I'd thought of such an abomination. She still calls it that. And I told her -- that it was you. I wanted to believe it, that we get some of our creativity from you. Or that I tapped into everything which had been there when we changed, everything which would have hated what you became. Not that it really understood, or could remember. But my friend... I think he would have hated what you were at the end. Maybe it was all of our hate that made me think of it. So I got away from her, when it was almost over. I went to you --"

Stopped. Took another breath. All four knees bent, straightened again.

"You're quiet," the Princess observed. "You're usually not this quiet."

The next thought was the second most terrifying one of her life.

I don't know who you're talking to.

"I..."

The Princess sighed. Waited.

I know you're old, the oldest pony in the world. But you've always been in the now. You've always been here with me.
There for me.
You have to be the Princess.
You have to be you.

It was a question she hadn't meant to ask. It was also something she'd dearly wanted to say since before the mission had begun, it was something for the now, and it wasn't anything close to the nightmare which had been woven under greyed Sun. It let the words slip out.

"Why didn't you teach me anything about being an alicorn? Why did you just send me back?"

Another, softer sigh, with mane and tail now starting to show hints of murky brown.

"Are they still alive?"

"...what?"

"Are they still alive?" The repetition seemed to be meant as an answer. "Can you look upon their true faces every day? Trot at their sides? Feel them next to you?"

She didn't understand.
She didn't want to understand.

"...yes."

"And I'm supposed to take you away from that," the Princess harshly stated. "Steal what time you have with them, in exchange for classes. They're alive. Share that with them."

A blaze of gold and agony shot across her mind's raging storm.

"...Pinkie nearly died."

The white head dipped lower.

"Yes," the Princess softly said. "Our laughter died first..."

And then shot up.

She was staring directly at that greyed Sun now, looking into its light without pain. Not at Twilight, never Twilight during that horrible meeting, but her neck muscles were tight and there was vibration along every raised tendon. As if she was forcing herself not to turn. And all the while, that second resonance continued to strengthen.

"I figured it out in the end," she harshly declared. "It took your lifetime, but I realized what had happened. That's part of why I went to you. But do you know something? To this day, I don't know why. There was hate, and that was part of it. But in the end, when I cast the spell for the first time, the only time..."

The browning tail lashed, hit her own left flank with a solid thud.

"You were the last, and I hated what you'd become -- but there was something else there once. Somepony who came with us, the last pony to join, the one who made it all work. Somepony who believed in the last chance. Somepony who was my friend. The pony who found a way for us to say goodbye to our mother, long after she had already died. So in the end, I didn't know if I was trying to punish you. Or if I was trying to save you. I still don't."

No.
No.
No.
No.
No.

Shaking. Every part of the little body shaking, she couldn't stop, her thoughts were crashing into each other like waves going into an iceberg which was rising from below...

"And I didn't even know if it worked." A little shrug, followed by that bitter, Tartarus-freed laugh. "All I could do was look for you. There were so many times when I was almost convinced I'd found you. There were commonalities, or at least I told myself there were. The greatest caster of that generation, somepony in love with magic, with its possibilities: that was a good place to start. But it never reached the end. All I could do was keep looking, and wonder if I'd fooled myself. Just told myself that something had happened at all. Because I'd never cast it before, and I've never cast that abomination since -- but I told myself that of all the ponies in the world, you deserved it. And there's even two ways to mean that! But I looked, and -- I really thought it was you this time. Everything that happened on that first day -- it almost had to be you. Everything felt like it was right. The few prophecies I'd been able to assemble, with that talent so rare and the spells almost completely unreliable... every sign, with the stars getting close to their alignment, the last hope for the last chance turned out to be you and you were..."

A slow breath.

"...closed off. Isolated. Dismissive of contact and fearing it at the same time. The last hope, somepony who almost made me give up all hope, and..." More softly, with the muscle tension beginning to ease and a smile slowly working its way across the white muzzle, "...you did it. You freed her. And I thought it had to be you, maybe it would work this time because the Elements were active, you had friends around you, and you were so much like us. Not knowing anything real about the world outside your little barricade of books and fear, sheltering yourself from the chaos until you got kicked out and had to take your lessons from everypony around you..."

The right forehoof came up. Went down again, and the Courtyard shook. Benches jumped. Columns vibrated.

"Because I told you," the Princess whispered. "In the last minutes of your life. I looked into the red of that thing's eyes, and tried to speak to the pony who'd been trapped at its core. I told you, just before you escaped to the shadowlands, and it felt like I'd reached you because it had no reason to scream -- that if you wanted the power so badly, you could just keep trying over and over again until you got it right."

Her body shook. Her mind felt as if it was trying to tear itself apart. And the only word she could use shattered.

"P-p-prin -- Celestia --"

The oldest mare in the world, body bent under the weight of the centuries, looking at false Sun as her window to what no longer existed, said five words.

And then it was the most terrifying thought, the one which told her that she'd known what was going on all along, that she'd been aware of exactly who Celestia had been speaking with, it combined with the words and the suffocating resonance of self-loathing and told her what she was and it sent her racing out of the Courtyard and through the marble halls until she collapsed into an alcove and wept, wept until no more tears could come, and a friendly Guard found her, treated her as if she was his youngest daughter, brought her to the others, left so that they could surround her and comfort her and try to fix what whatever was so horribly wrong.

But they couldn't. She couldn't even bring herself to tell them, and so let them believe in a lie of omission. Thinking that it was nothing more than the stress of the mission finding one last outlet, for nothing would ever fix it. She simply let them comfort her as best they could, pretended she felt better, got into the air carriage for the trip to the tree and home and a stability which might never exist again.

The words pursued her. They chased each other in an endless loop. She isolated herself on the first day back, claimed to be straightening up the library. But the work wasn't enough. Nothing could provide true distraction. And whenever her concentration lapsed, that was when Celestia's words came back and shattered her life again.

The words which meant she didn't have a life of her own.
The words which said she wasn't supposed to be alive at all.

"Leave me alone, Star Swirl."

Dada

"And I've watched you from that very first day..."

But Celestia had never said what she'd been watching for.

It made so much sense now. Why had the Solar alicorn been near the school at all on the entrance exam day? At the very least, she'd probably intended to look over the test results. It was possible that she'd meant to supervise the applicants, but had been delayed: there were a thousand responsibilities which could have stalled her. But she'd been on the way all along, possibly using the same path she'd taken hundreds of times before. And every time, she would have been searching for the most talented caster. Perhaps that was the true reason the Gifted School even existed: an excuse to get all of those potential candidates into Canterlot, where it would be that much easier for Celestia to keep an eye on them.

An entrance exam day like any other, only with time running out. With the alignment of stars only a few years away. Running out of chances. Getting down to the last hope. And then Twilight had

no

and Celestia, believing those events indicated that the true search might have made a discovery, had taken her on as a student.

"To see what you might do."

How many students did she have before me? Was there one in every generation? Did she have one for a few years, but then a better candidate would come along and she'd just switch? How many times did she...

It was not uncommon for the Bearers to spend the first day after a mission apart. Their lives had been put on hold, and what passed for the normal part of their existence had to be taken up again. In Rarity's case, this could mean a day spent in taking inventory, seeing what her substitute had managed to sell (assuming she hadn't chosen to just bill the palace for a typical sales period), trying to figure out if anything had been stolen, and repairing the damage which could be produced by customers who were just a little too casual about not putting things back properly. Similarly, Applejack often felt the need to inspect the Acres, despite the fact (or perhaps due to it) that she had siblings who'd been watching things for her. By contrast, Rainbow usually caught up on naps, while Pinkie would use the bakery's first shift for reconnecting to Ponyville itself, learning about what had happened while they had all been away. And Fluttershy would need hours to determine the current state of the cottage, along with reviewing anything which had been recorded for new charges and patients. The end of a mission always meant things to do, and so they tended to give each other some space and privacy.

In Twilight's case... on the many occasions when missions had seen Spike left behind, he'd been in charge of the library, and his efforts were very nearly up to her standards: it frequently took a mere three hours of straightening before she was satisfied. Should his presence be required, a government-assigned substitute would take the helm, and that required at least five hours of work before the damage could be repaired. For this particular mission, whoever had been running the desk had apparently decided the best way to access a card catalog was through removal of the back panel, along with having very little idea of how the checkout stamp worked. She hadn't lost many books: those who'd simply been looking for something Twilight had signed out wouldn't have been content to steal somepony else's autograph. But for what remained in the library, the shelving arrangement could best be described as 'anywhere', and one of the periodicals racks had somehow wound up with her telescope shoved through it.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been a cause for multiple scrolls sent off to the office which assigned the temporaries, with a special request to Spike that he make those arrivals loud. Today, it was work. It was an excuse to close the library, because it was clearly in no fit state for patron occupancy. She could reshelve, she could straighten, she could reorganize, she could do it all while the world was kept outside the door, and so she almost relished the nightmare which her domain had become, even while discovering that three encyclopedia volumes had somehow found their way under her mattress and she was now expected to sleep atop the entry on phosphorescent moss.

The tree was her fortress. Her barricade point against the chaos of the world.

There were several problems with this approach.

The first came from her own thoughts, starting with their insistence on reminding her that prior to the moment Celestia had spoken, Twilight had already known what a barricade point was.

I had a dream of something I never could have known. A dream of a place I'd never been. Of Star Swirl's barricade, after Discord broke it. That was him just before he joined them. The last pony to join. The barricade was broken, so he went with them because he didn't have any other choice. And the only way to have known that, to have been there in dream...

The biography nearly slipped out of her field, scraped its edge against the shelf. She silently added it to the massive stack of tomes awaiting delivery to Mrs. Bradel's for repair.

...was to have been there in life.

His life.

For Twilight, the dream was proof. All of the dreams, every last time she'd consulted the old caster in her nightscape. The stress of the mission, the stress of her post-change life, all the caustic pain blending into something which could erode walls. Something had leaked.

She had seen him. He had spoken to her.

She had been him.

I'm not supposed to be alive.

The second load of magazines dropped out of her corona, just as readily as the first. Twilight silently gathered them up again.

She distantly realized that she now had a very real emotional reference point for how Pinkie and Fluttershy must have felt while watching the presentation, because it was something the three of them shared. They only existed because somepony

what makes you the least bit different --

-- had created a working: something born from anger and refusal to accept what was. And with her friends, the ultimate results of Doctor Gentle's spell had been bright, better than the intent ever should have wrought, and far more than the caster deserved. But with Twilight...

I'm not supposed to exist.

She quietly recovered the New Arrival cards. It took a while: the sudden dispersal of her field had sent them flying all over the library's interior.

Star Swirl lived. He died. It was supposed to end there. He goes to the shadowlands, and... I wouldn't have been born. So many ponies never would existed because it was the same pony, over and over again...

Celestia's spell had done exactly what the alicorn had furiously desired. Twilight's dream had been the proof. Her life.

I was always so fascinated by him, from the first moment I learned he'd existed.
I wanted to follow in his hoofsteps.
Complete his castings.
Finish his Great Work.

"Twilight?"

"...I'll pick it up, Spike."

"Maybe you're getting Rhynorn's." She could hear the concern in her brother's voice, along with the fact that he didn't believe in the excuse he'd just tried to gift her. "You should lie down for a while --"

"-- it's not field scattering, and I don't have any muscle aches." The unicorn disease meant four to seven days of flu-like symptoms, combined with a total inability to focus magic on a target, subdividing a corona's power onto whatever the uncontrollable sparks randomly hit. Twilight's one and only bout with the illness had rearranged the library. "I'm just -- distracted."

"Distracted," he repeated.

"Yes."

"This is worse than distracted," he blatantly called her out. "Something's wrong --"

"-- just let me clean things up, Spike. Please."

But it wasn't enough. No amount of work ever could be. She cleaned, reshelved, organized, fixed things here and there. And no matter what she tried, all of the thoughts just kept going around and around. Carving the pit ever-deeper as new implications occasionally fountained from the darkness.

She was thinking. Obsessively. Compulsively. She couldn't stop.

I was somepony else.
Somepony horrible.
He should be dead.
I shouldn't exist.
Please let me --

The second problem was Spike.

Her friends had their own lives, and so did her sibling. They had their jobs, as did he. The current issue was that his was keeping an eye on her. Spot when she wasn't doing well, offer comfort, reassurance, call for help if he wasn't enough to fix it. He watched her, because he wanted to, on some levels had to -- and on the deepest one, she needed that scrutiny. To know somepony was always looking out for her, even if so much of what she did in response to his attention seemed to be focused on making his task impossible.

He knew her, better than anypony in the world. He knew something was wrong. And she didn't want to tell him, didn't ever want to tell anypony among friends and family that she wasn't supposed to exist. There was a way to conceal that pain, drive it down until all of the torture had been isolated within her soul

his soul

and could never show on the outside. She could go through her spell-inflicted life smiling and laughing while never letting anypony see. There was a way to do that and she just needed some privacy in order to figure out what it was. Time away from the others. A chance to escape from herself.

But she had a little brother. And she'd tried to get him outside. Told him that it had been days, his friends would have been missing him and with autumn getting so close, he would be running out of days where he could play outside in comfort. It was okay if he just -- left for a while. Also, there was shopping he could do. Pick up some food for both of them. And hadn't Featherweight been wanting to show him that special spot along that one creek, the one with the harmless natural whirlpool where all it did was send you around and around until you finally staggered back to shore, dizzy and giggling and just feeling young...

There were days when he would have done all of it, slumped back into the tree, just barely reaching his basket before falling asleep. But he knew her, and so he knew something was wrong. He stayed close. He made frequent attempts to start conversations, steered them in various directions in a desperate effort to find the cause. And he would have gone out to find her friends, but everypony had their own lives and since he didn't seem to feel she was at a crisis point yet

I've learned to hide that much.
I could send a scroll about hiding things. Keeping this concealed is a lesson. Except that Celestia is a master at keeping everything hidden and I'm just her student and
I don't want to be her student
I don't want to send her lessons
I don't want to be

he was just spending their first day back in staying close. Trying to talk about the mission, in case something which had taken place was still on her mind. Bringing up all the things which he might have believed that she didn't want to think about, because he had no way to know about the real problem.

I can't tell him.
I can't tell them.
I can't breathe...

A scaly palm pressed against her ribs. There and there.

"...Spike?"

"You were --" and then a moment as he visibly searched for the word: his vocabulary was advanced for his age, but it wasn't all-inclusive. "-- hyperventilating."

"I inhaled some dust from those last books." She wasn't Honesty, any more than Celestia had been. She could lie. "Maybe you should step outside for an hour. If I start shaking them out, it's going to get really hard to breathe in here --"

He was staring up at her, with those green eyes and their vertically-slit pupils. To look into his eyes this way was to remember that his inclusion within the category of 'anypony' was strictly a honorific. By the strictest terms of the dictionary, he was an 'anyone' and to far too many, 'it.'

Someone laid his egg.
How did Celestia get it? Did the mother just abandon it? Did she die? Was the egg stolen? Why was it at the school? Who just takes a thinking being and makes their arrival under Sun into a challenge...

"I'm staying," her little brother steadily said. "There's a lot of work."

And she couldn't make him leave.

Technically, the third problem wasn't Spike's fault, for it was a poor pony who blamed the messenger.

It started in midafternoon. Long enough for a certain party to have gone through a few drafts and work out exactly which lies she wanted to tell.

"Twilight!"

She didn't have to ask: she'd scented the flame before seeing it, heard the scroll smack into his palm, and she only turned in order to get her horn that much closer to the sending. Checking for an underlayer, something which turned out not to be there.

"I can't open it," Spike quickly declared. "See the seal?" He held the scroll up for inspection, and her memory automatically pulled up the spell. Yes, this one was meant for her to read, mostly likely in private. It was possible for another to get past the wax, but neutralizing the security spell would take some work, and a failed attempt had a good chance to destroy the contents. With Twilight, the working would simply register her signature and neutralize the adhesive. "Most of what it says on the outside is that it's for you. And the Princess wrote a note for me, just to say it's not a new mission." Which made him smile, just a little. "I don't want another mission for at least a week. So if you want to take it --"

She did, because the scroll would automatically alert Celestia as to both her receipt and opening. Her corona ignited, with her field projecting forward to collect the scroll --

-- the sound could have been described in a few ways. Strictly speaking, it was something of a FWOOMPH!, only one which had decided to have all of the letters collapse in towards the center. It was also decidedly final.

"-- when you get a minute, Spike," Twilight calmly stated as she looked away from his startled expression, "take a note. That working really isn't meant to be used on paper." Her corona winked out, and the imploded remnants dropped to the floor.

"Twilight --"

"-- I'm busy."

Which, she later realized, was when he knew it wasn't just the mission. The moment he realized that the final party he could have asked for help was the last one she wanted to see.

"We have to stop," Spike insisted, hands almost automatically going to his hips. "We need to talk, right now --"

"-- first day back. We're cleaning. Everypony's getting their lives back together. It's not a mission, and that means our lives are what's important." Steadfastly, marveling at just how well she seemed to be suppressing it all, "She can wait."

I'm not supposed to be alive.

She began to trot away. There were more things to organize.

"Twilight --"

Suppression was something of a short-term thing.

"-- go outside."

"NO." Which came with just a hint of roar.

She shrugged. "Fine." And trotted away.

The working which had been placed on the scroll informed Celestia when Twilight received and opened it. The spell was also perfectly capable of letting the caster know about destruction. So after forty minutes had passed with Twilight rearranging atlases and Spike finding no map which told him where any conversation could go...

Almost valiantly, "She sent another one."

"I know." The odor from her sibling's breath was rather distinctive.

"It's sealed again."

She nodded.

Almost desperate now, "Twilight, it has to be important --"

She had a path to the fountain memorized from anywhere in Ponyville. As it turned out, the only tricky part was remembering to open the window first.

"We've got some replacement glass in basement storage," Twilight calmly stated. "Could you get that for me?"

"...maybe I should go buy some," he finally tried. "I think we were getting low --"

He's going to get the others.

"-- no. Basement."

By an hour before Sun-lowering, there was a scroll coming in every two minutes, and their disposal was actually turning into something of a creative exercise. Much to Twilight's surprise, she had begun to run low on options. Scrolls had been crushed, torn up, soaked into scraps, pinned under the heaviest furniture available, stomped on by hoof because a purely physical option had some dark pleasure attached, and she'd used most of the offensive spells she knew, at least for those which could be safely cast indoors. She was starting to wonder if it was worth stepping outside, just in the name of increasing the available variety. Additionally, there was a chance that she might be able to temporarily assume the mindset required for flight and while dropping a scroll from a great height didn't seem all that satisfying, she had yet to attempt anything involving lightning...

"Twilight --"

She shredded it.

"-- please, this has to stop --"

She completely missed the pain in his voice, fetched acid from the lab.

"-- please --"

And then he choked.

It was that horrible sound which got her attention. There were so many things Twilight feared, and one of the oldest terrors centered around her brother's health. There were hardly any books available on dragon medicine: every childhood illness had been a mystery, a time of fear as she scrambled to find anything which might work, prayed unto the Princess for all the good that did that he would recover, and so the sound of Spike choking, breath stopped in his throat -- that got through. It struck her as a lightning bolt moving through the inner storm, shocked her into momentary focus, made her see him --

-- just before the scrolls sprayed from his mouth.

It looked like a fountain of paper. There couldn't have been more than fifteen of them, and it felt like a flood because he was choking, barely able to breathe at all, too much coming through at once, too much and he was on his knees and his eyes were tearing up and she galloped up to him, her field broke the nearest scroll's seal even as a secondary bubble fetched ink and quill, she put her words on top of the ones she refused to read and held it in front of her suffering sibling.

"Please, Spike!" She was begging. She could hear it in her voice, she was begging and it wasn't even really begging him, there was one party who could release him from this and for the first time in her life, she saw herself in front of that pony with her own horn blazing and looking for a place to attack. "If you've got anything left, if it won't hurt you any more, send it to her! It'll make this stop!"

His watering eyes desperately stared down, failed to make out anything beyond her frantic scrawl.

YOU'RE HURTING HIM! STOP IT!

One tiny wisp of flame dropped from his lower lip. The scroll vanished.

She dropped down on top of paper, pressed herself against his shaking body. Waited. Five minutes passed, and then ten. Nothing more came.

Finally, he had recovered enough to speak.

"Twi... Twilight..."

"I'll get you some gems," she softly said. "And then you're going to bed."

"...you're fighting... you're fighting with her -- you've never --"

"-- and you're not sneaking out," she gently told him. "Don't send anything off, either. Not to her, not to our friends. You're strained. You need to rest. Because if you try anything now, there's no school nurse. Gems, and then bed."

He protested, as best he could. He wanted to fix things, because he loved her. But he was small, and tired, and desperately needed to rest. He fought her for about half of the trip to his basket, and was asleep before scales touched cushions.

It gave her privacy. A chance to clean up, to destroy all of the remaining scrolls with a single shot. The opportunity to think about the same things over and over and over again.

There was one last thing to take care of, before she went to bed, and she considered it taken care of as soon as she put up the little flag on the tree's Outgoing mailbox, with the overnight express stamp already attached and ready for the Moon-lit transport. Given the distance involved, the letter would be at the palace within hours. The staff would see the sending address, relay it... all things considered, Celestia would probably be reading the contents before Sun was raised. It wouldn't take long, especially since Twilight had been perfectly happy to go with her first draft. Words which seemed to say it all.

Never write me again.

The fourth problem is standing within her nightscape, and it will not leave.

"You must speak with her, Twilight Sparkle. I am asking you as a frie --"

"-- she didn't tell me anything real, not for years. She can wait." Around them, the library shakes. Books filled with words which the dreamer can never decipher fly off shelves, scatter their pages everywhere, and she does not care. "She's good at that. I'll scout the sky, I'll find some stars, I'll figure out what their future alignment is going to be, and then you tell her that when the group looks like that, I'll be ready to talk to her. And just so you know, I'm aiming for a thousand years --"

"-- Twilight Sparkle."

"NO!" A crashing sound from outside, as one of the largest branches falls off. Beneath her hooves, the wood is beginning to rot. "She has no right to talk! Not after that! Not ever! And you knew, Luna! She told me you knew about the spell, the abomination! Did you know who she thought I --"

The lightning strikes two body lengths away from her forehooves, and the thunder steals her words.

"I know what the spell was meant to do," the dark alicorn quietly states. "I know that she felt it had brought you to her. We had many discussions regarding it over the last three years, Twilight Sparkle. About who you were, and who you were not --"

"-- why do you always use my full name? Is it because you weren't Honesty either? Because you can lie about who I am?"

The periodicals racks come apart. Newspapers turn to acid, burn through everything true.

The large eyes briefly close.

"You heard me once," the younger of the siblings says. "Heard me when no others did. And then you saw my pain when no others could --"

"-- on that Nightmare Night."

"Yes."

The next words blast her desk apart. "What was it like, Luna? To see me disguised as myself?"

The alicorn is completely still. Fragments of wood and rage phase through her.

"It hurt," she finally replies. "It... hurt. In appearance, the two of you have little in common. There was a degree of purple in his fur, although it went more towards the grey. There were times when he became too thin. After the battle, it was the same fault you possess: study to the point where food becomes unimportant -- "

Don't tell me that, don't tell me how much I'm like him, like a monster --

"-- and while the war still raged --" a little more softly "-- because he often had trouble accepting his portion of the rations. There were times when we could not gather enough food for all to be satisfied, and it seemed better for all to be somewhat hungry than for four to be content and three to starve --"

"-- seven," she interrupts.

The alicorn quietly nods.

This laugh is bitter. "Six and a protector. Is that all it takes to make one of you admit it? Let's keep going, Luna! Which Element did your sister bear? Because I really want to know! I want to know that more than anything, because when we start to die off, we can take that Element and give it to a new Bearer! I've already got the perfect pony in mind, and since your group had at least one stallion, I don't think you'll mind seeing Doctor Gentle take a necklace --"

"-- I am being patient with you," the alicorn softly says, "because I understand something of what you are experiencing --"

"-- since they're exactly alike! Forbidden magic! Trying to call back the dead! Tell me, Luna, since somepony is finally willing to tell me something real! Which virtue explains what she did?"

Which is when the ceiling cracks.

The alicorn looks up at the sound. Stomps her left forehoof, and everything stops.

Torn pages are frozen in flight. Fragments of wood ignore gravity. The dreamer cannot move.

"The Element," the dark alicorn quietly states, "which meant she never stopped trying to bring me back. The one which had her face the pain of raising and lowering Moon every night and morning, for the sake of the world. It hurts her, did you know that? She has told me that it is much like shoving a spear of ice into her own heart. I raise Sun, and my soul burns. To a degree, we can manipulate each other's domains -- but it is agony to do so. A torture she faced twice per cycle for a thousand years, when it would have been so very easy to stop. To bring her horn to the triple corona, and swing it against a wall. Fly as high as she could before locking her wings. And for the last... there is a question which brings a final answer. For every race, a unique method of suicide. For us, options, and she refused them for a thousand years, because she still embodies that Element. She lowered Moon for me at the party, so that the resonance of my doing so would not disrupt the festivities. I have seen her in need of true rest and taken Sun for a time. We hurt for one another, for we love each other. Does that tell you her Element? Does it give you the clue you require to determine mine?"

She tries to speak. Her jaw will not open.

"She delved deep in the Hall," the alicorn continues. "And did so while in pain. Stress and fear, added to the terror of what might come. To delve so deep, when one's mind is not at peace -- there can be side effects. She was already shaken, and then she did that. What spoke to you in the Courtyard was my sister -- combined with the aspect of another. Because she was shaken, tormented, desiring some level of release from her pain -- and so one might call what she did an act of brutal honesty. The act of confession. You felt the resonance, did you not? It was worse before my Return, it had been easing... and then it surged anew. Think about that resonance, its exact nature. Every time she thought about what she had done. That is the difference between my sister and Gentle Arrival. She hurts. She hurts so much that last night, in the depths of her agony, she confessed. And perhaps she did so because in part, she believed she had not been through enough pain..."

The papers begin to vibrate. A splash of ink, nothing more than a dark streak in the petrified air, sheds a single drop.

"I cannot hold you here for much longer," that intruder tells her. "So I will remind you of one final thing, to bring with you under Sun. I asked you for a promise, one you freely gave. Will you keep it?"

"I --" She can speak again. She simply has no idea of what to say. "-- I don't know what you mean. And it doesn't change what she --"

Dark eyes squeeze shut and somehow, it is enough to silence her.

"We will speak again," the alicorn says. "Every night if need be. Until this is resolved."

"I can find a spell to block you out." She's not entirely sure she believes that.

"Yes," the alicorn patiently replies. "I have seen such workings in the nightscape before. I tend to regard them as requests for privacy. Closed doors, and so I generally do not disturb such dreamers. But in a crisis, I feel free to -- knock. Until next you sleep, Twilight Sparkle." She turns, begins to trot away --

-- stops.

"And regarding my original and ongoing use of your full name, along with other linguistic factors -- if you truly wish for me to briefly speak in a manner with which you might be more familiar --" the dark alicorn evenly declares, with the steadiness of her words fully ignoring the supernova of effort which has just gone off in her mane, "-- then I do understand what you're going through, Twilight. I know what that feels like better than you might ever imagine. And I'm willing to do whatever it takes to fix this." A single deep breath, and the star-filled tail lashes. "But when it comes to how you're treating Tia, you have every right to be angry -- but I'd really appreciate it if you'd take a breath, try to see things from her side, and get your head out of your ass."

The dreamer's legs are working again, and thus the hind ones feel free to collapse.

"I believe that adequately summarizes my position on these matters," the alicorn concludes. "Good day to you."

In some ways, the second day back was much like the first. There were a distinct absence of scrolls, there was an equal inability to stop her own mind from turning against her, and there was just as much work to do, because to stop working would mean opening the library. An open library meant having to deal with other ponies. And there was also the problem of Spike, who was now all too willing to pretend he wanted to go play with his friends, when he really wanted to go speak with hers. To let him out was to have a myriad of hoof shades pounding on the door, and she didn't want to speak with anypony because it felt as if eventually, the wrong words would just tumble out and then they would all

it's been coming for a long time
It should have happened years ago
They're better off without

and just because it was inevitable didn't mean she was ready for it.

The second day was much like the first one, except for all the ponies who came by wondering why the tree had been closed for so long, and all the excuses Spike kept making, and the pile of books she couldn't even have sent out for repairs because it would mean opening the door. And she thought she heard a friend outside (Pinkie, perhaps: the indistinct words were rather quick) and she couldn't go to them, and she didn't want to fetch the mail, and she found herself disrupting shelving and putting cards out of order just so there would be more to do. And all the time, she thought about dreams and pain, breathing and moving and living under a Sun which she had no right to see.

The second day was much like the first, except for all the ways in which it was worse.

She was in her bed, on top of the sheets. There didn't seem to be much point in getting under them. She'd tossed off the blankets on the previous night.

I'm hungry.
I barely ate anything today.
Good.

She couldn't fall asleep. She'd found the spell which was supposed to shield dreams, she'd looked it over carefully, and then she'd realized it wasn't going to do much of anything. To sleep would mean Luna, and Luna would mean...

Every night.

Maybe there could be a new spell, something which would truly hold. After all, creating a fresh working to solve a problem was exactly what Star Swirl would have done --

-- a shuffling sound. Claws on wood. Spike was up. Probably using the bathroom, or getting a drink. Which, if it was the latter, meant more movement later.

Maybe it'll wake me up.
Maybe I'll just stay asleep.
Maybe I could sleep forev --

-- the mattress shifted, pushed down on one end by handling claws. This was followed by the soft sound of springs compressing.

Scales gently pressed against her back.

"I'm scared."

It had been a rather plain sort of statement.

"You're not doing a good job of hiding it, Twilight." The words were half-whisper, half-sob, and the little dragon hugged her all the tighter. "I saw you dumping out that part of the catalog. I know you're stalling. And I'm scared. So if I have to, I'll burn my way out to find help. I'll do whatever I have to, because I remember too much about what happens when I don't. You're scaring me, Twilight, and... I hate being scared like this. I hate watching you hurt and feeling like there's nothing I can do. That hurts me. It hurts my stomach, it hurts my heart. It hurts..."

She couldn't move.

And then he said "I love you." A little gulp of air. "I don't... I don't think I say that enough. Because you're my sister, and -- sometimes I imagine what it would be like, to be with dragons. To have them for parents and siblings. But it would mean losing you, and -- I can't. I love Mom and Dad. I love you, and that's why this always hurts. Because when you love somepony, you want to help them. And I usually feel like I can't do anything. I can yell, or I can breathe fire. It... usually doesn't work. And I can think -- but it doesn't help right now. Not when I don't know what's hurting you. I just feel helpless, all the time, because I want to make everything better and I can't. And I wouldn't feel like that if I didn't love you, so -- love hurts too."

The storm in her mind did not abate. It simply tossed up a single word on currents of torment. "Spike..."

Soft. Pained. Sounding so very young. "Did I do something?"

Her heart broke.

"No."

He kept hugging her.

"How can I help you?"

"I..." Her eyes closed, and she felt the moisture begin to run down her face, soaking into the fur. "...I don't know if you can. If anypony can. There's just so much that's wrong..."

"Nopony." A series of short, sharp breaths, as if trying to keep his own sobs back. "Not me, not anypony at all?"

Nopony. Nopony in the world. Nopony who ever lived. Nopony and --

The storm sent out another streak of lightning, and the afterimage burned itself into her mind's eye.

-- that's insane.

The world was insane. Her life was insane, and she wasn't even supposed to have one.

"Nopony," she softly said.

It can't do anything but hurt. And the next sentence felt like a true one. It also can't make things any worse.

"But..." Twilight told him, "that doesn't mean no one..."

They stayed like that for a while.

"I love you too. I don't say it enough, Spike. I'm not good at saying it. So when I don't -- know I mean it. Even when I'm like this, even when things are bad. Please. Just -- hear me saying it, when I can't."

His face pressed against her mane. "I do."

Eventually, they fell asleep.

"I will tell him to expect you." With a not-exactly-faint note of disbelief, "And that nopony should interfere."

"Thank you."

"Which does not mean I consider our own matter to be settled. We are not done."

"I know, Luna. I just -- I don't know if I need this. Or if it'll help. I just feel like it's necessary. So please -- give me tonight to just sleep."

A long pause, looking at each other across the broken floor.

"May I calm your dreams?"

"Will it help me tomorrow?"

"I hope for it to help you tonight. Tomorrow will be -- chaos."

There was no good way to prepare. It could be argued that there was no true way to prepare at all: any checklist meant to deal with him might as well be composed with disappearing ink, just to save time. Twilight thought of a few questions, prepared to have none of them answered, and then packed a lunch. But there was something she'd been postponing and, seeing no way it could make things any worse, just before she left for the train, Twilight finally asked Spike to bring it to her.

It took him a few minutes to come up from the basement. His handling claws were behind his back when he emerged, and she could just see one end of the scroll sticking out on the right.

"It's..." He took a slow breath. "It's bad, Twilight. I was waiting for you to ask me, because I didn't want to show you this until you were ready. And I don't know if anypony could ever be ready. But... I couldn't risk Doctor Gentle seeing it. Ever. And after you read it, I think we have to either put it behind every security spell you know or destroy it."

"It's that bad," she softly said.

He silently nodded.

"Show me."

He brought the scroll forward, placed it on the desk between them, and unfurled the paper.

Cadance's fieldwriting was just barely recognizable. Jagged letters slashed their way across the surface, carved dark truth into the world. Fourteen words which told Twilight nothing even as they answered everything. Words that nopony like Gentle Arrival could ever be allowed to see.

they died
they all died
they chose me to live and they all died

Canterlot had been partially built into the side of a mountain (and Twilight was now wondering just how much earth ponies had been involved in that). But it wasn't the only level space available on the slope. It was possible to go around the curve of stone, find little plateaus and ledges which weren't being used for much of anything. There were even a few small valleys. But the majority of visitors never considered that, much less bothered to explore. She suspected the same was true for the bulk of the capital's natives. Ponies looked at the city, and forgot about everything around it.

It didn't take long to get away from the capital, especially given the hour of her arrival: there just weren't that many ponies on the street to stop her and in Canterlot, there tended to be a certain deference in the presence of horn and wings. She got out of the shopping district, went out of her way to avoid the palace, passed schools and Archive buildings. Paused, just for a second, in front of her old tower, then went around the dent in the soil at the base.

Further out. One last house tucked against a valley, one which seemed to host a surprising amount of birdsong. More trotting, following a trail around the curve of the mountain. Old stone. She wondered what it had witnessed, watching the city rise. If it had anything to say.

A little more climbing. She moved past a view-blocking ridge. And then the weary-looking Lunar guard intercepted her.

"Bulkhead," the unicorn stallion gruffly introduced himself: at least three decades older than she was, with his armor giving him the approximate build of a harbor-shielding wall. "You're sure about this, Princess? Last chance to --"

She felt something within herself rise when he addressed her, forced it to sink back down.

"I'm sure."

"All right," he said in that special Guard tone which made it clear he believed it wasn't. "Go that way. I won't follow. There's going to be Guards around the far border of the area, but I'm going off-shift." A yawn, followed by a shrug which somehow managed to display exhaustion and anger in equal measure. "And because you're conferencing and she's apparently doing something special today, Princess Luna told us to leave all of you alone. Total privacy. Every Guard out of sight and hearing. I don't like that, Princess. Not one tenth-bit."

"If he decided to do something," Twilight quietly countered, "what would a full squad of Guards do?"

He visibly thought about that.

"Die," he finally admitted. "But maybe we could get a witness away in time to sound the warning. Good luck, Princess."

And Twilight made the last approach on her own.

She heard him before she saw him.

"Now, here's how this is going to work! This is a versatility exercise! You will start at the far end of the valley! And then there will be -- obstacles? Challenges? Actually, let's just call them surprises. There will be surprises. And every time you encounter a surprise, you will deal with it. The goal is to reach me at the other end. Doesn't that sound like fun?"

"Er," she rather uncertainly tried. "Just -- reach you?"

Jovially, "Of course! But because we are doing this the pony way, there is going to be a rule. After each surprise, you change! Just to the next form in line, and you deal with the next surprise using that form. One change for each surprise. Also, you may not leave the valley. Including through going high enough to top the ridge. Because why would you ever want to leave when we're having fun?"

Twilight was just starting to see the setup: an inverted V of a trench carved into the landscape, about two hundred body lengths from end to end and perhaps a fifth of that across. There was a dirt path leading down, with a little freshly-constructed hut next to the entrance. Doors indicated food storage, restroom areas and, in the touch she felt indicated the creator, the confetti showers.

"Just trot down at your leisure --" and somehow, alerted by senses she knew nothing of or just acting by sheer random chance, that was when he looked up. "-- well! Right on time! Exceedingly, predictably, and boringly -- no, you just keep going that way, don't even check the ridge. We'll save our guest's -- yes, we have one! -- identity for a special treat. Assuming it qualifies as one. You'll see her when you reach the other end and turn around. Please don't consider her presence as a reason not to finish."

She forced herself to look down again, a few seconds before her search would have spotted Twilight. "Okay..."

"Oh, and one more thing. Once you begin, you are doing everything on the move. Don't stop galloping. Or what-have-you. Off you go!"

Twilight carefully made her way down the last section of trail, initially watching the earth pony as she trotted towards the starting line. But that wasn't the party she was approaching, and she finally looked at him.

Discord's talons crooked inwards, gesturing her in. Twilight forced her legs to keep working, crossed the last bit of distance.

"Yes, yes," the draconequus declared. "Here you are. And here I am. Something which was requested, and I am certain we are looking at an absolute minimum of ten fascinating reasons for that, especially as I often feel that for some strange reason, you still don't like me." He shrugged. "I chalk that up --" the chalk appeared, made a few lines in the air "-- to your horrible taste in friends. With one -- two? -- two notable exceptions. Possibly more, depending on just who else you might consider to be some manner of friend."

I have to try. "Discord --"

He leaned in, put a talon against her lips, silencing her. Two seconds later, it returned to his hand.

"-- not just yet. Let her get this in first. We were up rather early today: it's best to do a few things under Moon, and she hasn't quite learned to sleep when the sky advises her to do so. Especially as she's still not quite used to the whole 'sky' thing. So we may take a break after this, and then you and I can have our little talk." Discord straightened again, at least as much as he ever did. "In fact, if she does what I am rather sadly expecting her to, a break will be mandatory."

"What are you expecting her to --"

This time, his tail pressed itself against her mouth. "Silence from the audience, please!"

She reached the far end, turned and even from that distance, Twilight saw her eyes widen.

"Yes," Discord called down the length of the valley. "Look who it is! I'm sure you'll be looking. Very carefully. Which means you need to get closer. Are you ready?" The earth pony just managed a nod. "Then in ten, nine, six, what were you expecting, zero! GO!"

She jumped a little, started to run. His talons began to snap, and none of the beats produced were in tune with any of the others.

A pit opened in front of her, too wide to jump. A stone bridge slammed up from underneath, and she began to gallop across it.

"Boring!" Discord called out. "Predictable! And yes, I am being redundant!" Another snap --

-- the bridge cracked, dropped away, she began to fall --

-- and the pegasus soared out of the pit. Started flying towards them, rapidly accelerating, already about six Celests up and still climbing.

"Next surprise!" Discord shouted -- and at the same time, a softer version of his voice spoke directly into Twilight's left ear. "This is where it gets interesting..."

The ground heaved, and a spray of rocks and dirt launched itself at the pegasus.

She did exactly what she'd been told to do. She changed, and her horn ignited. Gold lanced out, blocked most of the barrage, kept her from becoming more than slightly muddy --

-- leaving her as a unicorn. One who had just lost all flight capability, was out of upward momentum, and was also about to see forward convert to down.

Twilight didn't have enough time to scream. Couldn't do anything in the split-second before the surprisingly-dense claws of the draconequus' paw tapped her unlit horn.

The unicorn's legs began to move, looking as if she was running on air --

-- the blue fur vanished. Purple returned. The soil heaved, rose up to meet her, rocks and small boulders adding extra density to the base, and she ran down the ramp.

"Oh, you think you're so clever!" Discord shouted. "Counting falling as a surprise! Just because most ponies get that shocked look!" Another snap, and wind blasted at her. She changed into the pegasus form, flared her wings and deflected the gust to the sides, the air came right back at her, arrived as the densest of fog, clamped around legs and torso, making her stumble just before the solidifying mass brought her to a complete stop, billowed up around her head, hid her from sight --

-- but that would only work on a --

-- and the unicorn raced out of the vapor, found jets of flame erupting from the valley's walls, the earth pony smothered them in soil. And then a wall of ice blocked the valley from base to ridge, about five hoodwidths across, too high to fly over with Discord's rules in play, with no way around it. The pegasus hovered for a second, thinking.

The temperature of the entire valley dropped by five degrees as the pegasus went up again. A portion of the wall near the absolute top began to drip water and the pegasus kicked at what was now the weak spot. It took a while to make a hole large enough for her form, and then she dove as quickly as she could, trying to reach ground level before the next surprise could be launched. It was barely enough to let tan hooves touch the earth before the talons snapped for the final time.

The unicorn stopped. Looked around. Continued to do so with open confusion, her ribs heaving as sweat dripped from her coat.

"Er," she tried again. "...where is it?"

"Where's what?" Discord politely asked from five body lengths away.

"The -- next surprise?"

"Surprise!" Discord grinned. "There wasn't one! Because sometimes nothing happens. And then you stand around fretting, wondering what's about to go wrong, because nothing happening gives you things to imagine and I assure you, whatever you came up with for what might happen next was probably very creative indeed. Come on in!"

Slowly, she began to trot forward, sweat still falling from her fur.

"All that changing," Discord softly told Twilight, "really takes it out of her, doesn't it?" At more normal volume, with the unicorn just about in front of them, "So there you go! Now, why don't you say something to our guest while I work on your grade? So let's see... I need a blackboard... mortarboard -- Twilight is here, so everypony will shortly be bored..."

He scribbled, looked thoughtful, erased one number, then rendered the other imaginary. The unicorn finished her approach.

"Hi, Twilight." Tone slightly shy, with her breaths coming too fast: she was nearly panting. "We're just -- practicing."

Not without stun, "You do this all the time?"

"No... it's only been three days --"

"-- and done!" Discord declared as the blackboard puffed away. With a smile wider than his face, "Congratulations! You failed miserably!"

She blinked, and both ponies looked up at him.

"I failed?"

"Miserably," he nodded, and a Last Place ribbon appeared around her neck. "Also spectacularly."

"But I reached you!"

"Yes, you did! And you followed the rules, too!" Which was when he leaned in, snorted directly into dripping fur. "The same way you followed every rule he ever gave you. I pronounce you an addict to rules." Nodded to Twilight. "It's actually-if-briefly fortunate that we have you here, as I'm told it takes one to know one and frankly, between the two of you, you count for fifteen." Back to her. "First, you just about exhausted yourself. Another change or two, and anypony could have knocked you over with a feather. Well, any pegasus. Second, you are hungry, and please don't bother denying it: you are currently a produce vendor's best friend and an all-you-can-eat vegetable raw bar's worst nightmare. Third: as soon as you went unicorn, you could have simply teleported to me and ended the entire thing immediately! Sun and Moon, Tish, you don't have to follow every rule! Especially not the stupid ones!"

She blinked a few times.

"...how do I tell which rules are stupid?"

Discord's talon came up, paw moving to hip as his mouth opened, the entire warped body moving into a lecturing pose --

-- his mouth closed. The uneven jaw worked a few times.

"Actually," he considered, "that is a very interesting question. Please let me know when you figure out the full answer, and then tell me immediately. But for starters, any rule which requires you to hurt yourself for somepony else's satisfaction is generally going to be stupid and for the majority of those occasions, you can safely assume the same thing of the pony. All right, Tish: that's enough for now. I'm sending you back for a little while, as Twilight has made a special request for my time, and that's such an unusual event as to prevent her mere presence from making me yawn." The unicorn's expression barely had time to start turning miserable before he added "But if she's willing, I'll make sure you get some time with her before she leaves." Followed by a very pointed side-eye at Twilight, which wasn't all that subtle with his eye jabbing into her side. "Just ask her now. Politely. More or less."

"Can I see you for a little while?" the unicorn asked. "Before you have to go back?"

Still more than a little stunned, "...sure..." Flames?

The unicorn smiled. Discord simply said "All right. Make sure you eat."

"Yes, sir."

"Don't call me 'sir'! Call me Discord!"

"Yes, s -- Discord. And -- " she hesitated. "-- if you two are going to be talking for a while -- may I please -- "

He waved a dismissive paw. "Oh, we both know you're going to do it anyway. Probably first. Go!"

Talons snapped, and she vanished.

Twilight looked up at him, and all of the questions she'd planned were momentarily put on hold.

"What was she asking permission for?"

He snorted. "Permission. Her father trained her to be gracious and polite: unfortunately, he succeeded. Well, give her a few minutes to get there, and then I'll show you. I deliberately sent her to the Solar kitchens, so she could eat." Another snort, and the valley's edge trembled. "And put the cape on her, because she's still worried about how the staff might react. The Grimcess and Countess Nocturnal Remissions have welcomed her into the palace -- which, of course, means everypony's secrecy documents just saw a few new lines. She's sleeping there, she's spoken with the Sisters Snore at least once already, and they're trying to get her used to being around groups. Which means any number larger than one." Which was followed by just about the last thing Twilight expected: a soft sigh. "I do not expect it to be a fast process. It will be quite some time before she can go out into Canterlot, and that is simply from her lack of experience in that kind of environment. Lady Shadowplay has offered to accompany, use her illusions and make it look as if no change is happening -- but eventually, Equestria will need to meet her. And vice-versa, of course, even though direct reversals aren't as interesting as you might want to believe. She wants to meet ponies -- but she's afraid to, and part of that is the reactions to her mark."

"How is she feeling?" It was an automatic sort of question, and so she'd asked it of an entity whom she could barely perceive as bothering to learn the answer.

"Uncertain. Fearful. Dreading contact with strangers, in case they should pull back." His voice softened. "Eager. Taking everything, everything in. Learning..." He leaned back against the dirt wall. "Just about everything she does with others is being done for the first time. Even some of the things she does by herself. The perspective of an adult and the newness of a foal: that's how she put it to the Grimcess, after she thought about it for a while. And for a foal, the world can be a very scary place. It's all new, and you don't understand..."

The red eyes briefly closed.

"And," he softly added, "she misses him." Before Twilight could speak, "She told me that. He was all she knew. She knows not to go back. She'll tell somepony if she's thinking about going back. But for ponies, even for her, it's hard to change all at once. She'll miss him, and she'll hate that she misses him. She knows he's the worst thing for her, and when a Solar pony sees her horn receding and pulls away from her, she still thinks about going back. That'll change. But it takes time."

A shrug.

"Time for things to change," Discord snorted. "You have no idea how annoying that is. As annoying as using low-temperature fire for safety. But if that's the only means available, then I suppose we'll have to work with it. Why are you here, Twilight?"

She thought about Applejack. About strength and stubbornness. Fluttershy, and moving forward in the face of terror.

"Because it was time somepony asked you some questions."

"Oh, really." More than a little snide, with talons tapping against the dirt. "And what makes you believe you can trust the answers?"

She'd expected something like that, and so had practiced the response. "I don't. But until you say them, I don't know what the lies are."

He blinked.

"Fine," Discord shrugged. "With the understanding that nothing I say is the truth. Or everything. Or some amount in between. And I reserve the right to ignore anything boring, which is making it rather hard not to ignore you. What's your first question?"

"When you broke out the first time, why didn't you just teleport us into lava as soon as you were free?" She was hoping he hadn't expected her to go that far back. That it would let her effectively sneak up on the present.

But instead, she got "What fun would that have been?"

You're not the only one who gets to be sarcastic. "A lot more fun than being put back in stone."

The talons carved furrows into the dirt.

"If I had killed you all on the spot," Discord finally said, "the Elements would have survived, and potentially attuned themselves to a fresh set of Bearers. After a while. And then I would have to locate that group. Inverting the group kept the Elements with the current Bearers while rendering them useless. Additionally, it was somewhat entertaining. And should you so desire, you might wish to investigate the difficulties involved in using teleportation around areas of extreme heat. The Grimcess can manage it. But Doctor Gentle left his own fire on hoof. Admittedly, that wasn't an extreme case, but he was also somewhat disoriented at the time."

She didn't ask how he'd known that. He'd shown signs of scrying abilities, the capacity for hiding unseen...

"Why did you attack Fluttershy directly?" It was a question which had been lurking at the back of her mind since the original fight, and it was also one step closer to her goal.

He snorted again. "Have you noticed that she is nowhere near bearing Honesty?" Changing the pitch of his voice, more imitation than mockery. "'...but I am weak and helpless!' Two lies in six words. She was resisting. Do you have any idea how rare it is to see a pony resist, especially in an era when none of you had experience with my power? It was frustrating, and frustration is seldom fun, at least when I'm going through it. So I decided to stop wasting time. I touched her mind --"

Stopped.

"-- I touched... her," he softly finished. "I didn't reach down to her core. I didn't recognize the contact, because it was so small. But it's in her, it's in all of them. That little fragment of my power, for as long as they live. I touched her, and..."

Slowly, the distorted head moved from side to side, with horn and antler phasing through the dirt.

"It makes her," Discord decided, "something less than boring. Is there a point to this? I'm told having a point makes conversations much more interesting."

Fine. "Why did you send us on the mission?"

"Equestria," he smugly said, "may be on the verge of the kind of chaos it hasn't seen since me --"

"-- you're lying."

He glanced down at her. "Oh, really."

"You said that in the Hall. I didn't believe you then --"

"-- wait." He raised his paw, awkwardly cupped it against an ear. "Yes, there she goes." An exasperated sigh. "Just as I suspected: she took her entire meal to go. Don the feedbag, and then she's at it again. Well, you did ask..."

The talons snapped, and when the memories receded, they were in --

"-- the Grimcess doesn't use this tower," Discord softly said. "So she can. And no, she cannot see or hear us. So she's at it again, because there was just one thing she asked the Siblings Ancient for, and it was this. According to the glossary she spent an hour paging through before the request, it's called an atelier. An artist's workshop."

And she was painting.

Still a unicorn, with the brush held carefully within the gold field, and -- not doing too well. The image didn't seem to be emerging all that smoothly, and the accuracy wasn't there. Twilight knew it was a painting of Pinkie because the mane had been rendered perfectly, every last curl captured in mid-bounce -- but the face just wasn't going well.

"What's wrong?" Because something had to be wrong. The painting of Primatura had been so beautiful...

"She's used to painting by mouth," Discord pointed out. "But she was told this was an excellent way to work on her field dexterity, as the movements need to be small and precise. So she's trying --"

The brush was slammed down at the edge of the easel, and she stared with open frustration at the ugly slash of blue which now ran from the side of the image's left eye. The golden corona intensified --

-- the blue drifted away from the canvas. Moved backwards, becoming increasingly liquid as it streamed towards the brush. Finally, it had coated every bristle, and then she tried again.

"-- and of course," he finished, "it let us discover her trick." Another snort. "Can you imagine? Barely any time-affecting spells known to ponies, and hers only works on paint. I suppose her concerns about wasting what was once limited supplies wound up at soul level. What a waste of magical potential. But this is what she does, whenever she isn't training or resting or talking, or trying to figure out how to stay in a palace cafeteria without breaking for the door. She paints." The paw gestured to the doorway. "Under supervision."

Twilight looked up, and saw the chaos pearl flash into amethyst. It had been mounted just above the top of the doorframe, giving it a full view of the circular room.

"He kept that one with him to the end," Discord softly added. "Discharged, of course, and she will never wear that necklace again. But she feels better, having it nearby. All that power, all that lovely potential for chaos, and what does she want to do? Paint." He shrugged. "Well, I suppose blood will out..."

The talons snapped, and they were back in the valley.

"She was actually working on that one for a few days," he casually added. "Didn't quite get the chance to finish. And did you notice the way she looked at you? Scrutinizing your features? That was reinforcing her memory. She'll get to you eventually. It's necessary. I'm told that some of the greatest works are painted on top of boring ones, and once Tish captures you, the first requirement for that accomplishment --"

It finally hit her.

"You... you called her Tish."

"Yes," he calmly stated. "Short for Triptych. A trio of paintings, rendered onto three hinged panels, with each of the images being singular and distinct, while still being recognizable in their sum total as a single larger work." And he smirked at Twilight. "Did you expect me to just go around shouting 'Hey, you!' for the rest of her life?"

She seemed to be blinking far too quickly.

"She picked it," Discord added. "From the glossary. Because she'd been doing things for so much of her life without knowing what any of them were called, so she just had to find out. 'Memories' for paintings... she's a little embarrassed by that now, but what else was she supposed to call them? And when she found that term, she felt it fit. So she named herself." Idly scratching at the dirt again. "Names limit. There's something horribly wrong with that. A name defines, and once you've been defined, then how are you supposed to be anything else? But at the same time..." The talons were now drumming, seemingly without his notice, although he did take a moment to banish the snare. "...'you' might have been a little too vague. And besides, who says you have to keep the same name forever?"

"Names define." She had to have more words than that.

"Well, to a degree," he shrugged. "I can say an apple is now named 'Orange' and unless I put a little dazzle into it, all I'll get is an angry lecture about how I don't understand farming or Manehattan family trees. But there are times when changing the name can change the basic concept. Under the right circumstances, a name can mean everything..."

Which was when he looked directly at her.

"For example," he innocently proposed, "what do you think would happen if we took the name 'Star Swirl' and changed it?"

She had wanted to be the one who brought them there. Who controlled the discussion. But she had been hoping to control chaos.

There was nowhere left to go but forward. Marching into fear, just like Fluttershy --

" --you're very frightened right now," Discord calmly observed. "It's easy to see. The set of your ears, the flicking of your tail. I have experience with frightened ponies. So tell me something, Twilight, or we end this right here." The twisted body loomed over her. "Are you afraid of me?"

And all she could do was nod. Just once, as her tail flicked and her ears tried to press themselves through her fur.

"Yes," Discord quietly said, and pulled back again. "You fear those things which you feel can hurt you. So you're afraid of me. And you are so very terrified of what I might say next. In your way, you have just as many fears as Fluttershy and despite having her as an example, there are times when you deal with them more poorly. Even with that singular example so very close to hoof, and closer still... So many fears, and one of them is the next question. Ask it."

She swallowed several times, felt the trickle of blood running down her throat from where she'd bitten her tongue.

"What was Star Swirl like?"

It got another snort out of him. "Arrogant, self-absorbed, thought magic was the answer to every problem, had no capacity for taking the smallest joke --" and stopped again.

"It has been," he softly observed, "a long time. I remember it perfectly -- but that recollection is from the perspective of one who, for quite some time, did not regard them as something worth knowing about. And afterwards, it took additional time to move into the category of 'know your enemy'. It was more towards 'Know your most active, occasionally amusing toys.' Who was Star Swirl? He was one of them. He was their Magic. On the occasions when he teamed up with that pegasus --" and there was a moment when the red eyes closed "--no, the other one: you're probably thinking of the mare -- they could work some marvelous jests, at least for ponies. Their Laughter had a wicked sense of humor, and Magic provided the power to back it up. Some of what they tried to get away with..."

It was, at best, half a chuckle. The sound of somepony remembering a joke which had been played long ago.

"You are asking me about him," Discord went on. "How much do you hate the Grimcess right now, to be speaking with me? And naturally, after everything that happened, you've been wondering about the rest of them. But that scares you, because you are afraid of many things, Twilight. You are afraid of your own mind. The questions it insists on presenting, the way it refuses to let go of your queries. You cannot have the bliss of ignorance, and the questions hurt to the point where no matter how harsh the answer is, at least it'll make the question go away. You wonder about him, and you wonder about them. You feel the Grimcess may only lie to you and tell her sister to do the same, so you can't trust either of them." Which triggered another snort. "So there's your next mistake, because Celestia doesn't control Luna. Even Zephyra had times when she failed at that. Perhaps Luna might have answered you -- but fresh from what you saw as betrayal, fearing the possibility of lies, you instead approached the near-certainty. There's a lesson in that -- but we'll get to it later. For now, let me guess at your questions, and see where the lies should go..."

A soft breeze whistled overhead, and Sun steadily shifted through the controlled sky.

"They were six," the draconequus said. "Or seven, really. I would hope that one of the smaller lessons from the mission is that you should never underestimate the value of having someone with hands around." He exaggerated the shudder. "And that axe!"

Their protector. Something with hands. And if it was carrying an axe, that means the most likely species would be --

But he was still talking. And where Celestia's words had shattered the world, Discord spoke as if he was recreating it. There was no light, no sound of talons snapping against each other. But his words filled the valley with perfect recollection, and she knew that within his mind, he was there again. It was now, and it was then.

"Once upon a time," the oddly steady voice said, "in the magical land of Eris, there were two sisters who went forth into chaos, for they could no longer remain within their barricade. There had been an intruder, you see -- and then they realized that the intruder was also a pony. Things change when worlds collide and to live, they would have to leave. They had learned something of the world, and they hated their world. They felt that things needed to change. That it was worth their lives simply to try, even if they failed, simply so that somepony would have tried at all. Ultimately, the elder pledged herself to the land, swearing to spend all of her days fighting to heal it, with no knowledge of the centuries required to fulfill her vow. The younger followed, freely giving everything of herself to her sister's dream, trying to bring succor to those cowering in shadow. That was who they were. And so they remain."

Eris.

He had named it, and the definition began to take shape.

"The pony who had crashed into their lives -- that was the third," Discord continued. "Eventually, another decided not to kill them, for theirs was the sort of madness which a true tactician loves: if there's going to be a crazed final push for victory, why not do it in style? Eventually, they begged for the kindness of a stranger, one who had no need to give it, and that kindness came with them. And at the last, they sought out magic." He puffed out what passed for his chest. "I take some credit here, of course: if I had allowed him to remain comfortable, he never would have gone anywhere! But he went with them, and... they became friends." A minor shrug. "I frankly didn't understand that at the time. I didn't realize that it was important. But they were friends. All of them. They never should have been, it never should have worked -- but they were friends. And then two changed..."

It took her a moment to realize he'd just read her expression. To once again reconcile that he could read expressions at all.

"Yes," he softly continued. "Before they trapped me." A long pause. "And incidentally, they were both earth ponies -- oh, get your hindquarters out of the dirt. Really, Twilight, you should have figured that out on your own! Two from each race! You knew they had a pegasus and a unicorn, and that mixed families were impossible! They were earth ponies. Perhaps that was part of why Doctor Gentle decided he had a chance, for as far as he knew, it was earth ponies who changed first."

This smile came across as rueful.

"Incidentally, despite any rumors you might hear to the contrary, one of the reasons they beat me is not because I was too distracted from laughter at watching them trying to fly." He snickered. "Oh, it took them a while to get the hang of that one! And their first attempts at projecting coronas... well, I suppose most of the craters filled in eventually. But they were earth ponies." Almost casually, "Cadance was a pegasus. And you, Twilight Sparkle -- you are the only unicorn to ever come this far."

Her entire body was trembling. But the swirling storm within her mind, given a single stable particle (positive or negative almost didn't seem to matter), began to spin into an accretion disc.

"What happened to Cadance?"

He shrugged. "I spent some time being somewhat distracted. Attempting to fight off total conversion into statuary has a way of occupying the mind. She wasn't there, and then she was. I only know of her former state because somepony mentioned it within my hearing."

She was next to what might be the oldest entity in the world and in the face of that great age, all she had was a foal question.

"...where do alicorns come from?"

And he laughed.

It was soft. It shook the walls. It turned the clouds pink, and then white again.

"...ah, there we are," he observed. "We come to it at last. What would you like to hear, Twilight? That all ponies were once alicorns, everypony possessing all of the magics? But then they fell to fighting and with Harmony lost, their arguments fractured them into the races you know? That alicorns have never existed as a natural species, and as two have refused to breed, one is just recently married, and it's hard to see you tumbling into another's bed any time soon, nopony knows what their children would be? The Grimcess sold her lie about one pony in every fifty generations being born if the conditions were just right, while never specifying what those conditions were: that's how the world accepted Cadance, as nopony knew anything else of her. But we both know your real question, don't we? What happened to you?"

He leaned in again, bringing the talon forward.

"What could have changed so much," he spoke in something close to dream, "that it wound up being you."

A tip gently poked through her fur, touched the sternum.

"You," he told her, "are six."

Her breathing stopped.

She couldn't move. She couldn't think. All Twilight could do was listen.

His voice was nearly a whisper. "You are Rainbow Dash, for you learned daring from her. Applejack, for stubbornness and practicality. Fluttershy gave you her courage. Instruction in subtlety taken from Rarity, because you needed somepony to teach you. Somewhere in there is Pinkie's joy. And holding it all together at the center is the one and only -- thank goodness -- Twilight Sparkle. You came to them as an empty vessel, looking to be filled. You took your lessons from them. You tried to think like them, for you knew nothing else. You took them into yourself..."

And now the hand was cupping her chin.

"But you want the technical part of the process, don't you? The Elements gave you a portion of their essence. It took them as they were at the moment of the change, and merged those shadows with your soul. Oh, it didn't hurt them: they would have been a little tired for a few days, weaker in their magic -- but the Elements allow healing to take place. And somewhere within them, they were willing. It never would have happened if the ponies who existed in that moment had not wished to help you with all their hearts. Those unchanging shadows are within you, and you will carry them for all the days of your life. Every time you reach for their magic, you touch them. You bring them back, as they existed in that single instant. You are six."

He let go. Looked at her, waiting.

"...I..."

Still waiting. It was unusual patience, for Discord.

"...I'm --- them."

"Just as the sisters carry their Bearers -- and each other -- and call on them still," he softly told her. "Just as you called upon Rainbow to fly, and Applejack to hear. And for them, it never would have happened had the Star Swirl who existed in that single moment not cared about them. If he hadn't loved them, as your friends loved you. Whatever he became... that which remains within them still waits for their call. The same way the Applejack of that instant gives you her magic, for it is what she always would have done. Out of love."

And he straightened again.

"Now you," he thoughtfully continued, talons stroking at his chin, "you're a little bit -- shall we say -- off? Because there were two hybrids involved. For the other three -- perfect, boring, orderly balance. But you're a little more unicorn than you should be, and somewhat less pegasus. I don't know what that does to your potential, much less your lifespan. It makes you interesting. And with Pinkie and Fluttershy involved -- it would be too small to do anything, with no power it could exert -- but is it possible that there's just the tiniest fragment of me in there?"

It made him grin.

"I am actually looking forward to finding out! And the first time you call on Pinkie... I want pictures. I insist that somepony take pictures. But only if nopony's managed to wrangle a movie camera." He thought about it some more. "Or you could just invite me. Actually, consider me to be potentially inviting myself."

And then the paw was rumpling her mane.

"As part of the family."

There was a moment when she searched through her soul (a soul carrying shadows), and found only two words. "...why me?"

"Because things changed," he told her. "You changed. Star Swirl... I would imagine that he took a few lessons along the way. But he was also arrogant, could quite frankly be a major buzzkill, and don't even ask about his feelings on the superiority of unicorn magic! When everyone knows that quite frankly, what the unicorns got was the scattershot leftovers. In the end, he believed in his magic beyond all else, and it buried him. Lost within himself: I imagine Luna had plenty of time to ponder on any degree of irony. He believed in his power -- but you, Twilight..."

He leaned in again. Not staring directly into her eyes: simply reminding her of how close he was.

"...you are afraid of it. Afraid only of the things which could hurt you, and so you are afraid of your own potential." Thoughtfully, "Well, I imagine that believing one had turned their parents into decorative plant life would leave something of a scar..."

I don't
I don't think about it
I can't ever think about

"You are terrified of what you might be able to do," he decided. "So there are times when you still push ponies away, because then there's no way you can hurt them. When you do perform research, it's frivolous: a power which might be able to reshape the landscape is being directed towards putting mustaches on scales, because at least that's harmless! You are incapable of seeking power for its own sake, because it's an additional source of terror. Many things changed, Twilight, because life is change and death is the state where nothing changes. Order is death. And no, decay doesn't count as a death change, as it progresses in an extremely predictable fashion and the dead one doesn't care. You lived, and you changed. Star Swirl is the past, and the past is dead. It never changes. You are the present. And in the future... anything can happen."

It was the worst smile in the world.

"That," Discord declared, "is what makes it fun."

She was standing on stable ground. He hadn't changed anything since their return from the palace. And still the world spun around her.

"But Celestia's spell..."

"So what?" he openly dismissed it. "Some ponies have always believed in reincarnation. Perhaps Star Swirl would have come back regardless. Perhaps the other three are here right now, scattered around the world. He's dead. His story was told, and the fact that the Grimcess decided to go for a twist ending doesn't change the fact that it ended! You're here now. You may be here for a while. And, to paraphrase a certain party..."

He casually waved a paw through the air, and so conducted the music.

"...to find who you will be. You know something of who he was. Who are you?"

""You'll never be like him."

"And how can you be so sure?"

"You admitted to it. He never did."

He was quiet for a while. Both of them listened to the music as it played.

"But then," he finally said, "I did promise you a lesson." The scroll flashed into existence, and ink-dripping talons quickly moved across the paper. "And here it is. 'The best kind of lie is the one where you can tell the absolute truth and nopony will believe you.'" He dropped it at her hooves. "Send that off whenever you're ready. So are we done here? Because if I don't fetch Tish back, she will be at this all day --"

I don't know what to believe.

It sounds right. It feels right. But it's him.

I went to him.

She had sworn by him.

I carry them with me...

"-- why did you send us?"

"I am chaos," he smugly said. "Being reformed chaos doesn't change or cancel the basic definition: it just adds a suggestion as to how that chaos should be channeled. I happen to feel this bit of disorder is good for Equestria."

And she decided that he would say nothing more.

"We're done."

"Glad to hear it," Discord told her. "Go bore somepony else."

She began to trot toward the path out.

"I still don't trust you."

Snidely, "Good. I look forward to a very long time of your not trusting me."

Began to walk up the gentle slope. She knew the train schedule, and if she didn't run into too many problems within the city, there would be time to --

The words were just barely audible. "You saw where he kept her, didn't you? At the very end."

Twilight stopped. Nodded without facing him.

"The same view, day after day," he quietly went on. "For a lifetime. Unable to move, no hope of escape, knowing only that she wasn't what she was supposed to be, and the only way she could ever be free was if she could just find a way to change..."

He took a breath, even as Twilight did not. The only breath he had taken at all, drawn in something almost like empathy.

"No one should ever be trapped in stone."

Signature

I am six.

As thoughts went, it took up a lot of space, and so there was a way in which Twilight's current travel situation could be viewed as a positive. She didn't have to worry about little things like interruptions, intrusions, somepony saying exactly the wrong word (and doing so at the exact split-second before she figured everything out), ponies asking for blessing... any of it. She arguably needed some time to herself, some space, and she'd been granted both. The method of acquisition, however...

She hadn't left the valley immediately. Twilight had stayed long enough to silently watch one additional exercise (and wound up having to dodge some of the dirt clods which had enough momentum to reach the top), in the name of keeping her promise. Then there had been a little private time with -- Tish... in order to make sure Discord had been treating her well (a concept which took some getting used to), that there hadn't been any major problems in dealing with the palace staff, and that things were generally coming along as well as could be expected during the first stage of adjusting to... everything. The conversation convinced Twilight that there were no immediate disasters to deal with, and so she'd left with a promise: if there were no missions and she could coordinate schedules, she would come back in a week or so, accompanied by at least one other Bearer.

The mare had smiled. Nuzzled her, the nuzzle meant for friends, something Twilight had watched the taller mare practice over and over again within the agony of memory. And then she'd gone back down into the valley to spend time with her teacher, while Twilight had headed back to Canterlot. The last sound she'd heard before passing the ridge had been laughter.

Tish had a good laugh.

But there had been a little more traffic on and above Canterlot's streets, with not all of it willing to let her pass in peace. That had been followed by the train, and for the trip to the capital, Twilight had used one of the earliest departures: something which had seen her in a car with a familiar conductor and a few commuters heading to work. The ride back had found her ticket accepted with stun by a pony who'd never seen her before, had no idea what the protocol was supposed to be for an alicorn riding the rails, and so had decided the safest thing he could do was invent it on the spot.

It was early afternoon: not a heavy travel time for those taking the train from Canterlot to Ponyville. It meant that with an entire car cleared out for Twilight's personal use, the rest of the train was no more than moderately crowded. Of course, that didn't account for the feelings of those who felt that a bench designed for three was best used by one, with any additional occupancy serving as a glare-triggering crime against order itself -- but Twilight hadn't asked for any of it, hadn't found the words to stop it. And now she could look out any window of her choice, watching for the first true signs of home.

Six.

It probably did qualify her for a few extra seats, although giving her the entire car still seemed excessive.

I'm Rainbow...

"Stop being Twilight. Try being me."

How had Rainbow even thought of that? Had thought been involved at all? Was there a deeper instinct which told the weather coordinator's subconscious what had happened and the best way to proceed? Twilight had some of Rainbow's essence, her magic, her shadow, and so the best way to tap it was by putting her own thoughts into that configuration. The sisters, with centuries of practice, could presumably do it with no effort at all, at least for the simplest things: flight, the ignition of a corona. But for other, deeper access, there might have to be a request. An attempt at delving deep. And if her mind wasn't at peace...

...the party. Swooping somepony out is what Rainbow would have done.

...had that been a side effect? It seemed possible: Twilight couldn't point to a single moment of the mission and claim peace. Or had it just been acting as she'd believed Rainbow would do, taking her lesson from a friend?

I am Pinkie...

That one was harder, after a moon where joy had almost felt impossible. But Pinkie's essence... it was within her. The dream had shown her all of the shadows, rising up to defend her from nightmare. She just didn't know what kind of mantra she might need to find that echo within her. There would have to be one for Rarity, another for Fluttershy -- but Twilight felt that whatever called Pinkie's essence forward was going to either be the single most complex effort or the simplest. Given that she would be dealing with some distillation of the baker, it seemed reasonable to be dealing with both conditions at once.

She didn't know how to call on Pinkie. She wasn't sure it was possible to do it from a state of inner centering. Bringing that essence forward seemed to demand a certain degree of tilt.

I'm carrying them with me.

Discord had said that he didn't know how the imbalance would affect her lifespan. It was possible that it had been shortened, or would be -- normal. She would deal with the first when she saw signs of it. The second was hardly an issue. But if she still turned out to be like the sisters...

For as long as I live, they're with me.

(He could have lied. She was sure he hadn't, and didn't know why.)

But the essence wouldn't change. Life was change.

It's been a little over a moon. And just from this mission -- we've changed. All of us have. Pinkie and Fluttershy know what they are now. Applejack broke the Secret. Rainbow's always changing, even if we only really see it when we look at the results. After what happened, Rarity might trust her own capabilities a little more. They've changed, and the shadows won't.

Photographs. Or perhaps even a filmstrip: images flickering by, creating the illusion of movement -- but no matter how many times you looked at it, the result was always the same picture. The Elements had captured a single moment, bound it to Twilight's soul. Who they had been, not who they might become. For the sisters, those within them were still on the journey: Discord yet to be defeated, Eris instead of Equestria, they were all friends -- and for their shadows, that would never change.

I am Rarity. I am Fluttershy. I am Applejack.

Who did Cadance carry? Twilight didn't know. Just that there had been five who had chosen the pegasus to live, and so she had. A picture taken at the end of life. Cadance, from the first moment of her new existence, had carried the dead. And that gave Twilight's former foalsitter something in common with her -- except that with Tish, every single shadow had been stolen from what had already been a corpse.

The first place he went, with the first of his pearls, was a grave...

She'd realized it, just before the end. Rarity's find had been the chaos pearl which had once been charged with Primatura's essence. His spouse had died in childbirth, and so there was a sort of painting available. The masterwork of her existence. And he had looked at his daughter as a place in which to assemble the gallery.

I don't think he believed Primatura would just -- take over. But that something inside would be able to hear him, maybe even speak with him... yes. He did everything he could to make it happen. Because he loved her. And he pushed himself away from his own mark, because to love his daughter was to lose his wife forever --

-- no: it had started before that. At the instant he'd seen where the cap wasn't. But learning about essence would have reinforced it. His hate had been as strong as his love, and both together had been more powerful than his mark.

She carries eight. Who are they? He implied they were important. Which made sense: treat every cemetery as a garden, harvest only the best. Can she find them, without knowing who they were? What do they give her?

Celestia's words, in both Hall and Courtyard... Twilight suspected there had been ponies who had tried it with an imbalance of races, along with those who'd just gone with More = Better. She wasn't sure it was possible with three. Six had been proven. Nine might have been the effective limit, and it was possible that only the chaos energies had kept Tish alive. But she could easily picture ponies trying to take things into the dozens. And as the Solar alicorn had said, when something did happen, the lucky ones were those who'd died quickly.

(Perhaps as quickly as a Stage Three backlash death, for some unicorns did choose that final ending. When they all knew about it, when it felt as if it would be so easy, when she had laid awake in the Gifted School picturing...)

Twilight looked out the window again, trying to distract some part of her inner vision from the multiple screaming results of her imagination. The water tower was starting to make itself visible, and craning her neck would allow her to pick out the dam. A clear day for Ponyville: seasonably warm, a little breeze later, and with Rainbow back in charge for all of it, a portion might even happen on time.

I am six.

In some ways, that felt like the wrong way to put it. There was a soul, and there were shadows. But they were shadows of those who, at the moment of merge, had loved her. Shadows who loved her still, who would always love her, because they could never change.

Celestia and Luna carry each other. No matter what the Nightmare did to Luna -- and she no longer believed the entity had been the younger at all -- Celestia could always look into herself and find her sister as she was at the moment they both changed. Something which didn't know anything was different.

How much does that hurt? To look into yourself when all you want is the real and find...

...a shadow.

Celestia carried Luna. Zephyra. Two whose names she did not know. And the Star Swirl who had been her friend, who was still her friend, who could never understand what had come next.

Six.

The train's steamstack vented, and a whistle blew. She was almost home.

The burial took place without ceremony. Nopony gave a speech, for there was nopony in attendance: while there were many ponies who would have been perfectly happy to see him dead (to go with quite a few who would have demanded proof), the majority of them didn't know what his real name had been, a few were currently in prison, and most of the rest (his parents included) had decided they had better things to do.

There was no marker. Admittedly, he never would have suffered the little stone monument used by so many earth ponies, or gone with the pyre favored by western pegasi. But he hadn't even arranged for the device which would project a hue-dimmed image of his red tape icon into the night. A pony who took his delight in ruining the lives of others had never considered the possibility of his own death, and so there had been no plans left behind at all. For the most part, he had been buried because there was a body upon which the autopsy had been concluded, and putting it under the ground would go a long way towards stopping the smell.

The ground was opened. The remains were placed inside. The dirt was placed on top of them. And that was it.

In life, the pony had, in an act of childish cruelty (something which had never changed), decided that a young mare would have no friends. It was a wish which held for a surprisingly long time and in making it, that pony changed the world. His hatred led to the rediscovery of the Elements, the end of Nightmare, and all which came after. It could be said that in a very real way, he'd been one of the most important ponies to have ever lived.

But nopony knew it. Even if they had, he hadn't meant to do any of it. He hadn't had control.

And so it could also be said that somewhere within the shadowlands, the screaming might never end.

The grey pegasus spotted Twilight coming out of the empty train car, or at least her left eye did. Her immediate response was to swoop down, with several ponies hearing the wingbeats, looking up, spotting just who it was, and immediately clearing a lot of extra space.

She stopped the descent just before she would have had to touch down, hovering in front of Twilight. Her head went back towards her left saddlebag, the yellow mane obscured most of the mouth movements and eventually, a letter was offered. Twilight's field accepted it, and the mailmare went on her way.

Twilight had recognized the fieldwriting, and so a tiny flare of corona light quickly opened the missive.

...they found her, they told her she didn't have to go to Trotter's Falls any more but not why, she's heading to her next scheduled stop and hoping she can make up for the lost travel time, she's glad I'm okay whether I want to believe that or not, but she really wants to know what happened, and she also wants me to look at this formula when I get the chance. Most of the sigh was internal. She still wasn't sure what she could tell Trixie, much less how to say it. What she could tell anypony at all.

I wish she would put Ponyville back on her circuit. If she was here, Rarity and Pinkie could reconcile with her. Maybe they could even be -- and the train of thought crashed into a wall made from solid reality. -- tolerant of her until she left again. And that hurt a little: Trixie was becoming something very much like her friend, and for that friend not to be fully accepted into the circle...

Maybe if she apologizes.

It was Trixie.

Maybe if she apologizes a lot.

At least with Trixie, Twilight could tell her the formula looked good.

Her field folded the letter, closed the envelope and tucked it into the saddlebags which had been originally carrying her lunch. There was no point in trying to compose her response just yet, not even as a purely mental first draft. She had stops to make.

Twilight didn't know what to tell them. But she had to see them.

With Rarity, things frequently looked normal at first glance. The initial view of the Boutique's interior found dresses, sewing devices, a few trays of materials, a central sales desk, and a rather tired-looking, currently-bespectacled unicorn. To get closer was to see the dozens of crumpled paper balls which had been concealed behind the desk, along with the cat who was happily (and possibly deliberately) batting a few of them towards greater visibility.

"Oh, Twilight," the designer yawned. "I am glad to see you out and about --"

"-- what happened?" Because Rarity knew a dozen makeup tricks for concealing bags under the eyes, and had apparently been tired enough to forget about all of them.

"Simply an attempt at a new dress," Rarity sighed. "One which is presenting me with some difficulties. At the moment, I am stuck at the concept stage. There is no point in advancing to a trial gallop until I have something I am willing to live with for five seconds, which would be two over the previous record. Especially since, given everything which was happening at the time, I hardly had the chance to acquire her measurements..."

Which gave Twilight the clue, and so her field projected towards the nearest discard --

"-- oh no, don't, they are hideous --"

-- and smoothed out the results.

It triggered another sigh. "Yes, well, it is something of a challenge. Having her overall hues remain the same is helpful, but the locations shift. Additionally, I am trying to make something which both works with wings and functions perfectly well without them. You might imagine that the concept of including a hat went rather early. And frankly, when it comes to measurements -- did you notice that her numbers would change for each form? I did. And the dress has to fit them all. So given that I am currently dealing with the challenge of a lifetime, perhaps any designer's lifetime, you may find the broken spines of emptied sketchbooks behind the Boutique. Please let me know if anypony complains when the growing pile begins to block Sun."

"A dress for her." There was a little wonder in it.

"Eventually," Rarity crossly declared, "she will need a proper debut. And she will be dressed for it, in something far better than what he forced her to emerge in. I can only hope to work out how such a garment could function." Another sigh. "At the very least, I will be making a trip to the palace so I can measure her..."

Which was when the blue gaze moved over Twilight.

"...actually," Rarity decided, "she may not be the only one in need of a new fitting."

In a desperate attempt to escape from pins, "You took my measurements at the castle! You adjusted for wings!"

"I did," Rarity nodded, and squinted through the glasses. "But... perhaps it is simply the exhaustion having its way with me. But you appear to be very slightly... taller. And as petite as you are..." Her eyes closed, and soft blue briefly massaged the lids. "Perhaps I need sleep more than I thought."

"Rarity?"

"That," the designer noted, "sounds like concern."

It had been. "Are you okay?"

"I could ask you the same," Rarity yawned.

"...I'm -- better than I was."

Her friend smiled. "And I believe you. So, as I believe you and this day is regrettably slow, I may choose to let Rainbow be my guide, at least for the half-hour of the nap." Not without hope, "Unless you have any thoughts regarding her dress?"

"I think," Twilight quickly said, "I still know to leave it to you."

Which got her a mild eye roll as Rarity pushed herself away from the desk. "Of all the lessons to stick... very well. Please forgive me, Twilight, but as you are feeling better and I am simply exhausted, I regret that this meeting shall be short. May I drop by the tree after Sun-lowering as apology?"

"Please. Spike would love to see you."

Another smile. "Feel free to lock up on your way out." The white body moved for the ramp --

-- paused.

"Twilight?"

Who waited.

"Do you remember," Rarity quietly said, "what I said during that one bath? About -- not knowing what I believed in any more?"

It was almost a whisper. "Yes."

"Well... I've been thinking it over. Quite a bit. And... I believe in us."

The sister she'd never had began to climb towards her rest.

"I suppose that's enough," Rarity softly declared. "Good night, Twilight."

The one she'd expected to spend the most time tracking almost touched down in front of her. It was hard to get Rainbow out of a hover.

"So I got my hat back," the pegasus angrily declared.

Twilight looked around, found nopony else within sight or hearing of the shortcut she'd been using to cut behind the bowling alley and get that much closer to the bakery. "The Guards found it in the castle?"

"I wish," Rainbow snorted. "It just flashed into my house. You know -- the sort of flash you get when talons snap? And it came with sort of a note. A note which basically said I didn't know how to keep a hat on, I had to leave hat-wearing to the professionals, I looked stupid in a hat, there was only one pony in the world who could get away with that hat and if I kept wearing it, she'd be too embarrassed to meet me!" Forelegs twitched from not-at-all repressed rage. "He is such a jerk!"

Things change...

Under one of the other hooves, they hadn't changed that much. "Sometimes," Twilight admitted. "Um... did he say who could get away with wearing that hat? Because Daring Do isn't real..."

A snort. "Maybe. I'm not sure. He could have put that part under the dome. I already washed off everything else. At least he kept his horse apple smear away from the autograph."

Twilight nodded. "Glad to hear it," and found that she was. "You look like you need a nap, Rainbow."

"Oh, very funny --"

"-- no, I mean it. You look tired."

The pegasus shrugged. "You know... end of a mission. Lots of adrenaline to dump."

And then she touched down.

"Twilight?"

"What?" Purple eyes looking a little less up towards magenta than usual: even when they were both standing on a level surface, Rainbow was still taller.

A little too casually, "You're okay, right?"

There were ways in which Twilight knew her friend by heart, and somewhat deeper. Teasingly, "You want something..."

In an instant huff, "Just because I'm asking if you're okay doesn't mean I want something! Maybe I just want to know if you're okay!"

Twilight waited for it.

"-- and if I can come over tomorrow," Rainbow shamelessly continued. "To work on my manuscript." And before Twilight could say anything, "Look, I know it won't be published. Not for a long time, if it ever could be at all. But that's it: I want it not to be published because it can't be, not because it shouldn't be." A little more quickly, "Where 'can't' is the stuff in it and 'shouldn't' is the way I wrote it. You get that, right?"

She did, although she considered that any written version of that speech might seem to be screaming out for editing. But that would have been unfair, since it was what Rainbow had actually said. They would just have to be more careful about whatever text wound up going around it. "Yeah. But Rainbow -- it's not going to be a few days and then everything's fixed. We might be working on this for moons."

Casually, "That's okay."

Twilight blinked. "It is?"

And a vicious grin. "Because it might take years to get you up to my flying standards and for every writing lesson, there's going to be an equal amount of time with you up in the air. See you tomorrow morning, Twilight! Because we're going to be practicing over the dam. We'll see how long you can hold it without going into the water, especially when you're not supposed to be thinking about the water."

"...over the dam."

"And that water's getting cold. You'll see that. But only as long as you don't feel it."

"Rainbow?"

"Yeah?"

"When do we practice lightning?"

It triggered a frown. "Not for moons. Spring at least. Why?"

And with images of retaliation pranks regretfully postponed, "No reason."

She had to wait a few seconds before she could talk to Pinkie. (The bakery's tendency to clear itself out in alicorn presence helped: after all, nopony wanted to be the one who accidentally ordered what Twilight had wanted to pick out.) And then they wound up in the pantry, where the most likely eavesdropper was an ingredient sack and Pinkie assured her that as gossipers went, Madame LeFlour was completely reformed.

"You're tired," was the first private observation.

"I'm fine! I just --"

"-- you've all been tired," Twilight cut in. "And I'd rather solve this before I get to Applejack. Pinkie, what's going on?"

The baker winced.

"Um... Luna sort of dropped by. You know. During the night. Or during the nightscape." Thoughtfully, even as Twilight's tail began to tuck itself between her hind legs, "In the nightscape? Anyway, the whole dream thing. And she said... that you weren't feeling good, and she was worried about you. So she wanted us to watch the tree. And if my Pinkie Sense told me something which --" awkwardly "-- I really really don't ever want it to, we had to get inside. Even if we had to take the tree apart to do it. She said she trusted me to get in there. So we were sort of... up for part of the night. And all day. And then night again. Some of us took shifts. But then Luna said we could go home. So..." Her head dipped for a moment, and the bright curls lightly bounced as worried eyes came up again. "...are you okay?"

Luna, you --

-- probably did exactly what I should have expected you to do. "I'm... trying," Twilight honestly replied. "But it's not as bad as it was. Not in the palace, or a couple of nights ago."

Pinkie gently nuzzled her.

"Good." Stepped back slightly, closed her eyes. Took a deep breath, visibly gathered strength from everything around her. "I told the Cakes."

Sun and Moon... Whispering now, "What did they say?" The proprietors hadn't looked angry, or -- scared...

"They..." Pinkie swallowed, refused to look at Twilight. "...they knew I was deaf and mute for a long time. They both tried to teach me, just in case it was just the rock farmer tools which didn't work for me. Applejack did too. Sometimes they even did things for me, when I asked, but... I asked them not to ever try and change their voices. Not to make it sound like it might be me. It's... wrong, letting somepony speak for you that way. I know. So they knew I was deaf, and mute, and... they loved me anyway. And when I told them, we all sort of cried for a while, and the twins were crying because we were crying, and then... they loved me anyway. They... got used to having a kid who was kind of weird, and all I really told them was why. It didn't change who I was. And... it didn't change how they felt. That's what I was afraid of, more than anything else about telling them, but they loved me anyway."

She smiled, opened her eyes and blinked away the tears.

"Because they're my mom and dad. That's what they do."

Twilight nuzzled her back.

They stayed like that for a while, among the scents and sacks.

"Doctor Gentle chose them," Pinkie softly stated. "Did you know that? He asked around until somepony mentioned them, and then he brought me in. He didn't make them take me. But when he heard about the Cakes, he chose them..." A small breath, as she stepped back a little again. "I'm going into Canterlot to visit him in prison. Next week on my half-day, if we don't get a mission or anything."

Twilight spent a few seconds in searching for words, and the only one to get as far as her mouth was "...why?"

"Because..." All four knees bent a little. "...he didn't love her. But we were his, and I think he did love us, at least a little. He couldn't love her, but his mark was supposed to be for loving and caring and -- maybe that's why we got it." Sadly, "Can you imagine how much love he should have had for her, for all of us to get some? I was his experiment, Twilight, I know that... but I still feel like he loved me. And Fluttershy thinks he's sick. So I thought... if I visit him every so often, let him know somepony's thinking about him -- maybe it'll help him get better one day. I want him to get better. I hope..."

A little smile rippled across bright pink fur, even as the tears began to fall again.

"It hurts," Pinkie plainly said. "Hope hurts. Hope is horrible. It's going to hurt every time I see him. He might yell at me for a while. For a lot of whiles. But maybe he'll get better. I just hope, and it hurts to hope, and -- I'd rather hurt that way than not hurt. Does that make any sense?"

And all Twilight could think to do was nuzzle her again.

It turned out to be enough.

Fluttershy didn't look tired. But then, Twilight was dealing with Fluttershy.

"...as long as you're okay. But I'm still visiting tomorrow." It had taken a while for them to get that far. Visiting Fluttershy had its own hazards, and Twilight had needed to get past two new otters, three snakes (and as it turned out, her wings were not only very good at automatically flaring out in fear, but also had their own expertise in knocking over mugs), and was currently trying to talk to Fluttershy by peering around the outskirts of an extremely large, desperately shaggy, and rather patient dog. It seemed prepared to sit on the grooming table for hours and let the ponies talk because as long as that was happening, no grooming would take place.

"How about you?"

"...me?" Because it wasn't as if Fluttershy always understood why she might be worth worrying about.

"Everypony wants to know about me." It was reassuring, loving and, by the time she'd reached her fourth friend, had also become somewhat exasperating. "How are you feeling, Fluttershy? And what are you going to do next? Pinkie told me that she let the Cakes know, and it --" was the best-case scenario. Twilight suspected there would be parents who wouldn't take the news anywhere near that well, and she was already dreading what would happen when it reached them. "-- went really well. But what about you? I've never seen your parents."

"...they travel," the caretaker softly said. "It's... part of their job. They're stormbreakers, Twilight. For the other countries, when one of those nations gets something which could kill... most of them don't have their weather controlled. But they have a deal with Equestria, that if it's really bad, we send pegasi. And it's a big world, with a lot of storms. I don't see them too often, and... I don't want to just write them. I want to tell them myself. So I'll wait. It'll -- give me more time to think of something to say."

Stormbreakers... "That sounds like a high-risk profession."

The one visible blue-green eye briefly closed. "...it is. But it's their marks, Twilight: both of them. They come back. I... always have to tell myself that they come back. It doesn't keep me from being afraid for them. But I think they're more afraid for me, most of the time. They understood about the animals, or at least they understood it was my mark. They don't understand me, but they love me -- and they're afraid for me, because there's no mark for being a Bearer..."

We come back. We keep coming back.

Until the day one of them wouldn't.

"Our laughter died first..."

"...why are you nuzzling me?"

"I just wanted to." Instantly worried, "That's okay, right?"

"...yes. You just came around the table really fast."

The dog considered rolling over, and then thought better of it.

"Fluttershy -- how are you feeling? Please."

The caretaker thought it over.

"...I'm scared," she finally admitted. "Because so much is different now. But I'm scared almost every day, and I still get up in the morning. I think that's something."

"I spoke to Discord." The first friend she'd told.

"...really?"

You did it.

He gave it to the only one of us who would use it the right way.

The strongest.

"He told me I learned about courage from you."

The caretaker smiled.

"...he likes to say funny things to make me feel better," she finally decided. "That's what friends do."

Just to save time, the first thing she said when she saw Applejack was "I'm fine."

It was a market day -- but it wouldn't hold that status for much longer. Some stall owners had already started dismantling their setups, while Applejack herself looked as if she was ready to stick it out for a while. There were very few potential customers left, but there were a lot of apples -- and there was also an extremely frustrated-looking pony standing behind cart and barrels, who had been half-glaring at everypony going by.

"No, you're not," Applejack decided. "But you're not as bad as you were, either. Come on over." She sighed, shook her head: the entire blonde mane shifted. "Not so good on my end, Twilight. I just didn't get the sales today."

"The apples look good," Twilight decided as she automatically increased the number she'd meant to purchase. "Any idea what happened?"

"Yeah," the disgruntled farmer replied. "I sort of figured it out right around the time somepony led the police over to the cart, pointed a forehoof at me, and screamed that I was a changeling who didn't know what it was supposed to be doing."

The wince settled in for a good long stay. "Which one?" Realistically, there were only three candidates.

"Flower Wishes." Applejack sighed. "Figures, right?"

It was rare for Twilight to find herself rising to the Trio's defense, and she wished for a way to get the sudden foulness off her tongue. "Well --" and wasn't sure how to say it. "-- Applejack, you don't... they don't know what..."

Applejack looked around. Her ears rotated, and the right foreleg gestured Twilight closer.

"They don't see a hat," Applejack softly said, "and they don't think I sound right --"

You don't. In a way, Twilight had been using the degree of intermittent appearance for the farmer's accent as a means of measuring that recovery. But this felt like things had gone backwards.

"-- so I can't be the right pony, or a pony at all. For them, that's what passes for logic. But with my customers..." Another sigh. "I guess they're not used to it either. They just don't know how to ask. So they stay away, and then they don't have to. It isn't exactly good for my bottom line."

Another look around.

"Come around to this side of the cart?" Applejack requested, and Twilight did. The farmer made one last check --

It was a whisper. It had to be. "-- I'll train you."

She didn't know if her reply was meant to be a protest. It felt like one. "Applejack --"

"-- Twilight, you've got a voice. That means somepony's got to teach you what to say, and how to sing. It's a duty. And there's nopony else. I'm supposed to spend some extra time with you until you get yourself sorted out from all this, and this is part of what I want to do with it. You need training. Every singer does. So I'll train you."

It took three attempts for Twilight to make her words audible. "If -- if anypony finds out that you're --"

"-- we'll deal with it," Applejack firmly (if softly) said. "But yeah -- we'll have to be careful." A soft sigh. "You know how you're always worried about saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and ruining everything? I finally figured out what that feels like, because now, so am I. But we'll get through it. Starting won't be that hard, since we already harmonize."

"We -- what?"

Her friend smiled.

"I heard you, back there," Applejack whispered. "When you were trying to find him. That's how I found you. And it's funny, Twilight, it's the last thing I was expecting -- but you sing a lot like me..."

And Twilight couldn't speak.

Applejack shrugged. Looked out into emptying aisle and market again, just as a rather distinctive, somewhat-bandaged stallion trotted out of the blue tent.

With just a little more volume than before, enough that Twilight didn't have to strain for the words, carefully watching as the stallion got his teeth around the first stake, "He's ugly, isn't he?"

Twilight carefully examined all of the verbal options available when discussing somepony who sometimes appeared to have swapped out features for geography.

"Er."

"I mean, look at him."

Twilight tried again. "Um..." This did not represent progress.

"But it's this weird kind of ugly," Applejack pondered. "It's the kind of ugly you just keep looking at. You get used to having it around. When you don't see it for a while, you wonder what happened to it."

"Erk?" Which didn't even feel like Equestrian.

The farmer fell silent. Watched for a little while.

"I asked Luna for a favor. Before we left the palace."

"Really?" Oh, good: the words are back.

"Yeah. Took some doing, too." Sounding vaguely insulted, "For starters, I had to have Guards watching me the whole time, and I only got about five seconds with the thing before they made me give it back. But Luna told them it was for the intended purpose, so it happened. I got into Apple Bloom's room while she was sleeping, with the snitcher, I touched it to her..."

"Gah."

"Sorry?"

"Um..."

Applejack shrugged.

"Some stuff happened while we were gone," the earth pony softly said. "Because it always does. See those bandages on him? That's part of it. His tongue got a little burned, too, so don't ask him to talk much for a while. But... I think the Crusade might be getting close to ending. For Apple Bloom, anyway. At least, that's what the snitcher said. That her magic was on the rise. It was all I wanted to know. That she had a chance. So I'm going to do whatever it takes to make that chance work for her."

And Twilight found a smile.

"I'm glad, Applejack. I really am. I know how hard it's been. Waiting. Worrying --"

"-- thinking she was going to get herself killed," Applejack quietly finished. "Yeah. But... things change, Twilight. My little sister might finally be growing up. Everything changes. She's going to figure out who she is. And when she does, the best thing I can do for her is let her go her own way. She's not meant to be on a farm her whole life -- oh, that reminds me: I'm going to need the library exchange program forms. A bunch of them. Tomorrow, if you can."

"I can do that," Twilight readily said. "What kind of books did you --"

"Because she has to make her own road."

"-- because I could recommend something in most --"

But she was looking at the stallion again.

"Hard worker," she observed.

Twilight nodded.

"He's a lot more gentle than he looks," Applejack added. "And smarter. I mean, think about it. All the ponies in town, everypony the palace could send, and he's the one Fluttershy trusts to watch the cottage. Had to pick up some vet skills to do that."

Twilight, who was the only pony in town with access to the stallion's reading list, nodded again.

"Heard he's been tutoring Scootaloo, here and there," the farmer continued. "Little less Crusading when that's happening. Apple Bloom even said the grades are up."

She was starting to feel like a rather limited kinetic sculpture.

Applejack closed her eyes. Took a deep, slow, centering breath.

"Now," she declared, "I'm not saying this is going to work."

Twilight, with no idea of what the current subject under discussion was, went with her go-to move.

"There's a lot to get through. He might not want it. Things might be wrong from my side. Maybe it just won't happen. Best-case, it's a long road, Twilight, and I don't know where it ends. But I don't know if it goes anywhere until I start trotting."

She had to say it. "Applejack, I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you're talking about --"

"-- but the way I figure it," the earth pony cut her off, "if this goes as far as it could... there's a lot worse things than kids who can fly." And with that, her head went down, her jaw nipped at the handle of a drawer which had been built into the cart, and a nimble movement sent the hat into place. "Hey, Snowflake! Ah got somethin' t' ask you!"

The stallion, who'd been carefully folding the tent, looked up from the blue canvas. Patiently waited while Applejack approached. And nopony else ever heard exactly what she said to him. They only saw red eyes go wide with shock, hooves scrabbling at dirt in a localized, instinctive expression of powerful denial. But then she smiled at him, an honest smile, and he said the only thing he could have. The right thing.

"Yeah!"

In time, Twilight would attend the trial.

When it came to serving as nothing more than a silent watcher, she would only be there for one day. She hadn't initially planned on doing so, not as a spectator, and she'd been the only one: a trial which was being held privately in the name of national security wasn't going to have much in the way of audience seating. So where her previously-assigned position had been within the witness box, questioned by a calm prosecutor and then a frantic defense, the visit found her in a hidden place. Watching without his having any knowledge that she was there at all.

She'd come on the day of his testimony, because of course he'd overridden his lawyer, insisted on testifying in his own defense. He wanted to explain himself because to him, that explanation was what won ponies over to his side, and the failure rate for that tactic could be seen as rather small. So he carefully arranged himself on the witness bench, until his position was as comfortable as it could ever be. Forced himself to speak, with occasional breaks for the medicine which allowed him temporary relief from the damage which could never heal. The agony which was now a permanent part of his life.

He shared his pain. He made his statements. And as he did so, he watched the jury box. Watched as they, in his opinion, failed to understand. Explained himself all the more, went into the deepest details, saw their expressions shut themselves against him. Tried all the harder, forelegs beginning to frantically gesture, volume increasing until his voice began to break, sentences fragmenting as medicine and forced self-control wore off.

Her last view of Gentle Arrival was a partial one, with his body surrounded by both court security and medics. But it didn't stop him. He continued to speak, and that didn't end until the doors closed on his final failed defense.

"It was the children! You don't understand, I did it for the children!"

She was on her way back to the tree and for the most part, Ponyville was leaving her alone -- or rather, the portion of the population which had chosen to follow was doing so at a distance. It gave her a chance to think, trotting with her head down, not really paying attention to where she was going. It was home. She knew the way.

Two weeks.

That is the absolute deadline. Two weeks and I get everypony together. I tell them about essence and shadows and -- everything. Two weeks to find the right words, because --

Because secrets had inertia. She needed some time, and she'd chosen to go with two weeks. But to reach that deadline, feel she still didn't have the right words, use that as an excuse to wait one more day -- it would mean waiting one more day. And once she'd waited another day, she could find a reason to wait for a week. Then it would be a moon, a season and from there, the calendar stretched out to something approaching forever. Two weeks was fair, because anypony tasked with talking about this was entitled to try planning the speech. But if she waited for verbal perfection, or what she would lie to herself about being exactly the right moment to do it -- those were reasons to never say it at all.

Two weeks.

Starting from tomorrow. It's been a long --

-- two weeks starting from today.

She sighed (and several ponies wondered what was wrong). She was tired. She'd been on the move for most of the day, and even the train rides felt as if she'd galloped across the distance. She just wanted to --

"-- nice to see you again, Princess."

And she looked up into green, brown, and fallen scales.

The reporter's left forehoof stomped. "Just a quick question to start off with -- oh, and notice I didn't bring a camera! So there's nothing you can do to me. One quick question, and then we can get to all of the other questions. It's about that envelope."

Twilight blinked. "What are you talking about?"

"Like you don't know!" A single harsh bark of a laugh cut through the air. "It showed up at the Canterlot offices today. Real thick envelope, and on the outside, it's got some things written on it. Like 'Secrets Of The Bearers' and 'For Immediate Publication'! So of course everypony was sort of curious. And they were just about to open it when there was this flash of light out of bucking nowhere, light without a horn, and then this voice just said 'Compensation!' and the envelope was gone. So tell me, Princess. What do you know about that?"

...he...

...he just...

"I'm sure I couldn't tell you," Twilight answered. "Goodbye." Started to move past her --

-- the reporter twisted, got in front of Twilight again. "Oh, we're not done! Why were you in Trotter's Falls for so long?" The furious eyes quickly moved across Twilight's body, looking for signs of a pregnancy which wouldn't have appeared for moons even if it had existed. "Because I've got a few ideas! And I'm getting ready to print every last one --"

"-- I'm going to start with the mines."

The words had been calm. Even. Twilight even felt it had been a reasonable place to begin.

"...what?"

"Well," Twilight explained, "the metal for counterfeit money has to come from somewhere. And I thought Murdocks might be doing some of the minting. So I'm going to start with the mines. Homes which are near them. Frequent customers. Sales receipts --"

"-- no you don't," the reporter shot back. "You ambushed me in Trotter's Falls, but I'm ready for you now. That's a Princess invading somepony's privacy. You have no right to do that. It's a breach of royal protocol, and when the public finds out that a Princess is --"

"-- why do you keep using that word?"

The interruption had been rather soft. It had also come with just a touch of corona flare, and so the reporter rather abruptly stopped talking.

"Actually," Twilight decided, "I get it. A little. Because there was a coronation, and then there was some singing. So that word got kicked around a lot, and it landed in everypony's ears. But it got kicked by mistake, and it was believed through sheer habit. And it's still wrong. Even Celestia got that wrong and because she didn't have it right, everypony else made the same mistake. Even you."

"What --" Reeling, visibly shaken, all control over her own verbal assault gone, with no idea what Twilight was trying to do. "-- what the buck are you trying to pull --"

(Behind them, around them, ponies were listening.)

"She called me a Princess," Twilight softly explained. "When I'm just an alicorn. But to her, to you, to everypony and everyone -- a Princess is all an alicorn's ever been. All one could ever be. But I don't have a nation. I have a library. Yes, I have a -- call it a part-time job -- but in the end, the library is the only thing I have dominion over, and that's with the mayor setting my purchase budget. That doesn't make me a Princess. It makes me a librarian."

(Somehow, it almost felt as if everypony was listening. As if the world was holding its breath.)

"And I'm sure there are rules for royal protocol, which Princesses should abide by," Twilight gently continued, watching every word as it kicked. "Not that I trust your interpretation of them, but I could look them up sometime. They just don't matter, because they don't apply. A Princess facing you as a problem might have to follow some kind of protocol. But I'm a librarian, and when somepony gives me a problem -- I. Do. Research."

If somepony was watching closely, it was possible to see the moment when the force of that simple statement truly hit the reporter. It was considerably easier to see her hindquarters hitting the cobblestones.

"Oh, and here's a scoop for you," Twilight smiled. "For your trouble, especially what you'll get when the pregnancy story goes bad on you. Did you know I keep a little printing press in the library's basement? I used to borrow Cheerilee's, but it was just more practical to have my own so I could replace damaged cards for the catalog. I'm sure it won't take long to figure out how articles are blocked out. So feel free to publish that. I certainly will."

She began to step around the half-fallen, hard-breathing form.

"You can't," weakly came from behind her. "It's... it's not right..."

Twilight flicked her tail across the false journalist's face.

"Tell your boss I look forward to seeing him soon," she stated. And casually trotted away.

The last part of the trip found her working on a letter. It was just a first draft, and so the words were nowhere near reaching a scroll. They simply went around and around in her head, with the edges becoming a little more smooth during each trip. Soon, she'd have something workable. Maybe once she got home -- well, a little after, because that was just a matter of turning the corner and then --

It was supposed to be home. Her sanctum. The place of safety. Her one and only dominion. It now mostly looked like a bunch of very full tarpaulin-covered carts, albeit ones with some leaves placed into the back layers.

Ponies were moving around those carts. The majority appeared to be stallions, quite a few were unicorns, and all were struggling. Some coronas had already gone double as they tried to manage any part of the load. Others were flickering, threatening to wink out as ponies who simply weren't up to the task decided to see how long they could keep going before their bodies forced them to admit it. And moving around all of their legs...

"I told you! I told you to just wait for her! She'll be back soon! She'll have to check the inventory, and she'll do that no matter what you want me to do!" This was followed by a groan: Spike had an inherent aversion to taking inventory. "And why are you trying to move it at all once, anyway? Who are you trying to impress? Because it's not going to be me. Why not just take the tarps off and do it a few at a time? And that doesn't matter, because I don't want any of you doing ANYTHING --" several ponies jumped at the roar "-- until she gets the chance to inspect --" And that was when he spotted her. "-- oh, thank Moon! Twilight, they've been here for about ten minutes, they're trying to dump-and-gallop --"

"-- do you know," the largest (and most heavily-sweating) of the stallions asked, "how much this stuff weighs? Getting it off the train was bad enough! We just want to go home..."

Slowly, Twilight approached. Eight carts, all stacked up to three times her own height.

"What is this?"

Spike, a sealed envelope clutched in his right hand, claws lightly scoring the paper, slowly walked up to her.

"Check it for magic," he quietly said. "Carefully."

"It's clean, Spike." She was confused, starting to feel just a little frantic about it, needed to know what was going on -- but there was nothing wrong with her feel. "The carts have a bunch of signatures around them, but I think that's just from when they were loaded: basic manipulation. I'm not getting any workings. So what's going --"

He silently held out the envelope. Her field surrounded it, brought it to her, opened --

The lettering was surprisingly small. But it was also expertly formed, and perfectly legible. In a way, it could be described as the sender's most distinctive feature.

What would hurt me more than anything else is knowing that you were afraid to find joy because of me.

She looked at the carts. Truly looked, and heard cart wheels groaning under the weight.

He... he couldn't have...

Her field lanced for the nearest tarp, whipped it into the air. Went for one of the exposed boxes next, pulled it to rest in front of her forelegs, yanked it open --

"Discord's talons!"

It was all Twilight said and, judging by the way so many ponies jumped, she didn't really need to say anything else.

Spike's words didn't have a lot of volume behind them. She was proud of him for that. You never knew where a collector might be lurking.

"That's a Fortreeze."

She nodded. Nodding was an option. But so was unblinkingly staring, and she felt like the best thing to do was to keep going with that.

"That's his Fortreeze..."

"No," one of the stallions groaned. "It's yours. All of this is yours. By express shipment. You don't want to know the cost. And it's all books."

"Plus an animal feeder," somepony said.

That earned him a glare. "Fine. Books and an animal feeder. The books weigh bale-tons. And we already had to take them off the train. So we just want to finish and go home --"

Her horn ignited, one more time.

Every stallion's corona winked out, mostly from embarrassment.

"Thank you," Twilight peacefully said, carefully settling bale-tons of book-filled boxes down onto the cobblestones. "Does one of you have the inventory sheet? -- oh, good. Yes, thank you -- oh, you just saw the wings? Well, it is getting dark. Now straighten up and never do that again, because entering a greeting stance for a librarian is just silly. Now, you're all tired. So go to the hotel. Because I'm not signing this form until I have personally verified the contents of every box, along with checking the sheet itself for signs of alteration and forgery. That's because I'm not stupid. And that also means you're all staying overnight. At least. So good night to you all. Unless anypony is too tired to reach the hotel on their own, in which case, I'm certainly willing to carry you -- oh." She shrugged, focused on fast-moving tails. "Enjoy the hotel!"

And then it was just them. Along with the books.

"How much do you think is here?" Twilight softly asked.

"I'm going to say --" Spike was visibly estimating his odds, and also the work. "-- all of it?"

"Which would include the things from the conference room," Twilight quietly noted. "We have to go through those carefully. Some of it's going to need more security than the tree even has. I need to research security spells -- no, that'll take too long. I need to pay for security spells. Maybe with a Royal Voucher. I know it's not a mission, but having some of this get out might create a national emergency."

"The Fortreeze?"

"The Daring Do first printings. Do you really want to find out what Rainbow's willing to do in order to keep them? But also the Fortreeze. And whatever else is in here. Spike, we might be checking these titles for days --"

--and then the big sister truly looked at her little brother, standing quietly under dimming light.

"-- actually," she said, "that's going to be kind of boring for you. So maybe help me two hours a day, and I'll take the rest. Plus we're going to have friends visiting. A lot. They can help." She looked up, checking the sky. "Moon's going to be raised soon, and Rarity's coming by. So tonight's job is just getting this all inside, finding a place to put it, and maybe locating the Daring Do books. Especially Canon #7. I'm pretty sure Rainbow would kill somepony for a first printing on Canon #7, especially if it's the error copy. And it might be me."

"You're sure? It's a lot of work, and -- Twilight, you were gone all day. I didn't know how long you'd be talking to him, I was getting worried, and --"

"I'm sure." Her corona gently rubbed his crest. "I won't lie to you, Spike. Things aren't completely better. But it's not as bad as it was, nowhere close. I promise. And right now..." She looked at the boxes. "...I'm kind of curious about what's here --" which was when he began to give her A Look "-- okay, really curious. Desperate. But Rarity's coming over, and after that -- it was a long day. We both need sleep. And I'm sorry for making you worry."

"It's okay," he told her, and scales gently moved across her fur.

"Spike?" He waited. "Are you going to be okay? After everything that happened?"

"We're home," he simply said. "We're home, and you feel better. That's what's important."

Gently, "Is there anything you want to talk about?"

Immediately, "What Discord said to you. I think... I said everything else last night."

"We will. But I might need a few days. Two weeks, tops. It's -- complicated. Can you wait?"

Cautiously, "You promise two weeks?"

"Even if we're in the middle of a mission and I have to shout it over the spells. Two weeks, max."

"Okay," he decided. "Are you coming inside?"

"In a minute. Open the basement doors for me? It's one less thing to manage."

He smiled, went into the tree, vanishing from sight just as Moon came into view.

I told the Archives about your talent, Quiet: we accomplished that much. I don't think you can make print forget you. And the palace will be searching...

Could they find him? Could anypony? What would he do out there, with the cult's leader awaiting trial and the conspiracy potentially shattered? Would he try to go forward on his own?

Or does a stallion nopony's seen before move into a new settled zone? Maybe another nation, one with a decent pony population. Just arrives as a normal pony, no title, nothing special at all about him, and...

...meets a mare.
Falls in love.
Settles down.
Has children.

She didn't know what he would do. She only knew what he would dream.

Twilight looked up at Moon, saw some pegasi moving about. Putting a little chill in the air. It meant Rarity would be arriving soon and once that happened, there would be one more source of distractions, where the books had already offered up something close to infinity. She needed to review her draft, while there was still time.

Celestia,

There are lessons I've never put down in scrolls, because they were things I already knew about. There didn't seem to be any point in writing about them, not when I was living them.

About rejecting ponies. I'm really good at that. But I'm even better at telling myself I was doing it before they could reject me. The truth is that I was really just trying to protect them. From me.
About feeling like I did one horrible thing and had to spend the rest of my life making up for it.

And now, after this mission... I think I understand a little more about love. How desperate it can be. How, when you've lost something you love, you might do anything to have it back. How love can make you feel like a monster.

How I've always felt a little like that.

And I think you know what every last one of those feelings is like. Because now I feel like you live with them every day.

But monsters aren't sorry. A monster is something which can't admit it was wrong. That it made a mistake. Or that it did what might have wound up as the right thing, but they did it for what they finally felt was all the wrong reasons. A monster doesn't see reasons, not ones which aren't 'I want.' Sometimes, a pony does the wrong thing, and -- something good happens.

I understand what you said now, about mine still being alive. We've watched each other grow and change. While we live, we change. But the shadows will remain just that. We carry them as they were. So I want to be with them as they are, for as long as I can. To see how we might grow, isn't that how you put it? Because my friends will change, and so will I. That's what living means. I hope we'll remain friends. I think we'll be okay just as long as we talk to each other. We have to say what's in our heads. That's how we stay together.

I'm not ready to come back yet. I need some time, to find the words. To think of the questions. But when I ask them -- I hope you'll answer. I hope you'll talk.

I feel like you've needed to talk for a very long time.

Please talk to me. Not as teacher and student. As the first word of this letter and the last. So I can know what you've been through. So I can help. You said I made you proud of me. I'm hoping I can show you why.

I'll see you soon.

Twilight

She stood outside, under newly-risen Moon. Ignited her horn, began to lift the first of the cartloads. And there would be problems to come: she knew that. There would be bad days, times when she doubted herself. The horror of being locked in her own thoughts, unable to escape. Misunderstandings were almost inevitable. Missions would intrude, and monsters would strike. There would be pain and sorrow, because that was part of living. Lessons to come which she'd never imagined, and it was possible that they would never stop.

"Promise me..."

But for now, a librarian had books to take care of, and had to do so quickly because there was a friend coming over and a little brother who would want his dinner. All part of a perfectly typical night at home.

And Twilight Sparkle was content.

Moonlight streams in through the tower's windows, and most of what that illumination provides is challenge. She's never worked by Moon before, and is trying to find some way of adjusting to the shift in hues. She suspects that's going to take a while, and she's also not certain how much time he's going to give her for a first session. After all, he put up such an effort in pretending he had to be talked into this.

He is grumbling still, as he strikes a pose. Complaining about being captured in some form of order, not mention to having to hold a single pose. She is quickly learning that he loves to grumble, and suspects he mostly does it because doing so gets him attention. But here he is, posing for her (although getting him to keep a constant size is a challenge). Her first live model.

It's her reward for doing well: that's how he finally decided to justify it. According to him, stooping to this. She also suspects he's enjoying it.

She doesn't know how long she'll be here, in palace or tower. The training will take time, because it always does. Eventually, she'll have to go out into the city, and she longs for it and she's terrified of it and she has to find a way to have the first feeling win. She'll have to find her place in the world, as something unique within it. She doesn't know how to do that, and it scares her as much as anything -- everything -- else.

But he's teaching her. About control, and so many other things. Eventually, she'll be ready. She'll go out into the streets, and -- she doesn't know what will happen after that. But she believes it will happen. He is trying to teach her so many things, getting her ready for the day when her training truly ends.

And the first lesson he taught her is that there are always new beginnings.