The Dresden Fillies: Iron Gate

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

Chapter 1

The forest was on fire, and it wasn’t Twilight’s fault. If the hydra hadn’t shown up when it did, she certainly wouldn’t have lost control of the highly experimental and potentially dangerous spell she had been attempting. And if the multi-headed beast hadn’t come crashing out of the tree line of the Everfree, she most certainly wouldn’t have backpedaled in alarm, breaking the line of the magical circle and releasing the torrent of mystic energy held within to go sparking off wildly into the brush. And if the oversized, pea-brained lizard hadn’t started chasing her around the clearing, she absolutely most certainly could have put out the small blaze before it had a chance to spread into a proper inferno.

Completely not her fault.

Or so she told herself as she vanished in a burst of magic, narrowly avoiding yet another savage strike from one of the hydra’s many heads. She blinked back into existence several yards away, and growled in mounting frustration as she eyed the still spreading fire. Nothing good was likely to come from that. Even if it didn’t scare any of the many and dangerous creatures of the Everfree into a panic that may or may not send them fleeing towards Ponyville, there was still the very real possibility of it traveling far enough to threaten either Fluttershy’s or Zecora’s individual homes. Twilight had come out to the edge of the forest precisely to minimize the chances of her experimentation endangering anypony else, and seeing that spectacularly backfire on her was galling.

The hydra turned, its many heads twisting wildly until one of them spotted her and let out a shrieking roar. Twilight lowered her horn, and let loose a trio of arcane blasts at the creature. The first struck upon its massive chest without the creature even seeming to notice. The second flashed through the empty air between its writhing necks. The final shot however struck square upon one of the hydra’s noses, and the luckless head snapped back with a high pitched bellow. Unfortunately this did little more than enrage the other heads, and the creature lumbered forward without impediment despite the stunned expression upon the struck face.

Twilight vanished again, reappearing behind the hydra and taking off into a sprint to buy her some distance. She could hear the creature’s rumbling footsteps pause, but only for a moment before it let out another roar, the earth shaking impact of its tread returning, coming towards her. She ran, though she had no idea which way to head. She certainly wasn’t about to lead the beast back towards Ponyville, but simply running in circles didn’t seem a winning strategy. She wasn’t ready to bet her life on outlasting the hydra in a competition of physical endurance.

What Twilight really needed was time. If she could scrape together a few unrushed seconds to focus, she ought to be able to pull together enough power to teleport outside the hydra’s range of view. But the inconsiderately hungry creature just didn’t seem to be willing to oblige her on that front. Plus teleporting away would do nothing for the fire that was really starting to get out of hoof now. She needed an advantage of some kind. Or better yet, some help.

Sometimes, Fate can actually be fairly understanding.

Before her disbelieving eyes, a section of space simply parted in midair, and a figure stepped through the sudden hole in reality. Twilight felt her heart surge with hope; the individual was tall, intimidatingly so in fact, and decidedly non-pony. He walked upright on just his rear limbs, the shorter front pair hanging down along his sides. His arms ended in long fingered hands, one of which was gripping a staff. He used the slender length of wood as an aid to help himself step down the several inches the tear in reality floated above the ground, then paused to take a look around. His free hand waved in a casual manner towards the gateway between worlds, and the opening snapped shut.

“Dresden?” Twilight called as she turned towards the new arrival, though the name trailed off as her mind started properly taking in details. Harry Dresden was a human wizard who had twice now visited Equestria, and had left no small mark upon many of the inhabitants of the world, in one way or another. He was a friend, and rather relevantly to Twilight’s current predicament, quite skilled in the ways of combat.

Unfortunately a second look at the new comer made her realize her mistake. A wizard he certainly seemed to be, but not the one she personally knew. Much of his form and appearance was cloaked and hidden by the dark robe he wore, and which Twilight had mistaken for Dresden’s usual heavy coat out of the corner of her eye. The robe’s fabric looked sturdy enough, but it was obviously a far lighter material by the way the morning breeze rippled around the hem and sleeves. A deep purple stole rode across the robe’s shoulders, nearly as dark as the garment itself. He had the robe’s hood drawn up about his head until only his nose and chin protruded beyond the plane of the cowl, but as he turned at her shout the morning sun lit his features.

His skin was a light tan in hue and somewhat rough in texture. His features were long and lean, and combined with his skin gave the impression of an individual who had seen much time in harsh climates, and had endured what nature had thrown at him with casual endurance. A bit of silver hued mane rested upon his forehead, and a short beard of a matching shade rode across his sharp chin. It was his eyes that truly drew Twilight’s attention however.

One was dark, and yet seemed to shine with an inner intensity. There was power in that eye, but also compassion, and wisdom, and a deep weariness that was yet tempered by determination. The other eye was marked by a pair of vicious scars that ran the entire length of his face, long faded with time but still quite prominent. Whatever injury had inflicted those wounds had apparently taken the eye as well, for an orb of what seemed to be polished steel rode in the socket. For all that it was cold, dead metal though, that false eye seemed no less intense than his living one.

The brows above both eyes lifted in an expression of polite surprise as his gaze turned upon her, and then flickered to a calm, casual understanding as he then glanced up and behind her at the oncoming hydra.

“Run!” Twilight screamed as she skidded to a halt beside the man, spinning to face the monster. “Hurry, I’ll distract it!” As much as she was certain he was a wizard, Twilight wasn’t ready to assume anything of his potential combat capabilities. Dresden she knew to be a formidable battle mage, but simple knowledge of magic by itself did not necessarily make one a warrior. And being dropped into an unexpected fight with a multiple ton beast could strain anypony’s ability to react and think rationally.

“That’s very kind of you,” the newcomer said in a calm, deeply resonate voice. His accent put her in mind of Saddle Arabia, though it was also touched with hints of something she couldn’t quite put her hoof on. “However it won’t be necessary.”

Twilight glanced sideways at the man, some of her disbelief at his words tempered by the assured confidence of his tone, and once again hope began to pulse in her chest. The wizard took a slight step, partially placing himself between her and the hydra, raising his staff as he did. She heard him softly utter a word she did not recognize, and gave the tip of the staff a light swirl.

The hydra roared, its many heads pulling back in preparation to strike, half focused upon Twilight, the other half upon the new prey that stood before it. A pair of earth shaking steps brought it closer, and then its pace suddenly slackened. It took another pace, though it wobbled as it did. It lifted a leg for another step, and the clawed foot scrapped across the ground as it wavered. The hungry rage drained from its faces, replaced by a dazed confusion. Its dragging limb simply halted in mid-step, and its eyes drooped even as its long, sinuous necks slowly sagged. With a final, thunderous impact, the hydra tipped sideways, landing in a sprawl upon the ground. Long, deep breaths rumbled within its massive chest.

Twilight realized she was staring. And her mouth was hanging open. And she was making little, disbelieving noises somewhere in her throat. Her teeth snapped shut, and she swallowed drily before turning to look up at the Wizard.

“That…was amazing,” she said solemnly, and truly meant it. A sleep spell by itself was nothing too special, though one powerful enough to put down a creature the size of the hydra would require a serious investment of energy. Whoever he was, the man had summoned up an impressive amount of magic in a very small amount of time, and yet that wasn’t the truly impressive bit.

What had the most talented unicorn of her generation goggling was the fact that she hadn’t felt anything. Not while he had drawn in the magic, not when he had formed the spell, not even when he had released it. A bit of spill-out of energy was something to be expected from any spellcraft, and all but the smallest spells could be felt by somepony who knew how. Training and practice could minimize the amount of power lost to such overflow, but Twilight had only ever met two ponies capable of casting at such an efficiency as to make their workings invisible to her arcane senses, and they both had the advantage of literal centuries of experience to draw upon.

“Hmm,” the man replied in a non-committal tone as he observed the sleeping hydra. He turned to inspect the blazing forest, his expressive pensive. His attention to it reminded Twilight of the catastrophe still unfolding.

“Oh geez!” she exclaimed, racing towards the tree line. She slammed on the brakes after just a few galloping strides, and turned back towards the wizard. “Sorry, don’t mean to be rude, but I really need to take care of this!” she called, and then resumed her run.

“Hmm,” the man repeated, to himself this time as he watched the purple unicorn dart over to where a flat plane of wood sat on the outer edge of the blaze. A bright magenta aura sprung up around the dark stained board, yanking it away from the hungry flames. Twilight turned, and carried it several paces back from the inferno before placing it back on the ground and inspecting one slightly burnt edge. His living eye alight with interest, the wizard followed after her.

Twilight looked up as the man’s shadow fell over her, though she spared him only a brief glance before returning to her inspection. The slab of wood was several feet wide, and except for where one edge was now marred with black and white ash, was perfectly smooth. She had spent a fair bit of time carefully sanding and polishing the heavy maple in preparation for the elaborate circle she had etched into its surface. She had then filled the grooves with a precise mix of gold and silver, carefully melted so as to bond into a single piece, with the gold forming the inner edge of the circle, the silver the outer. It had been a very, very long night, using her magic to keep each metal from mixing randomly with the other as it cooled. The hours of fine, intricate, delicate work had left her more exhausted and strung out than any amount of heavy magical lifting she’d ever done, but the finished product had been worth the effort.

The magic circle she had created was not only a very potent tool to improve her ability to cast powerful and complex spells, but it was also mobile. Granted the thick maple wood was heavy, but not so much so that it was unmanageable with her magic. It was certainly far easier to lug around than say, a certain large stone still occupying a section of floor within the old Castle of the Royal Sisters. Not that she would admit that. Ever. To anypony. Princess Celestia’s prized pupil most certainly never suffered from momentary lapses of foresight before beginning a project, not in the least.

She frowned in annoyance at the burnt edge, but the damage was only cosmetic. The circle itself was still whole, its integrity preserved. The pewter tokens resting within the slots drilled around the perimeter of the circle came free easily enough as her magic tugged on them, and a quick inspection showed her nothing had melted or deformed.

“Interesting,” the wizard said as he eyed the construct. “You made the symbols interchangeable. Not as strong as if part of the circle itself, but more so than if you used something new for the symbol each time.”

“Exactly,” Twilight said as she slotted the pewter tokens back into place. She couldn’t help the bit of pride that slipped into her words. “I figured that repeated use will create a bond between the circle itself and the symbols, forming a more complete whole while still letting the circle itself be modular.”

“It is a sound theory,” the wizard agreed, and Twilight smiled. “And what task are these symbols meant for?”

“I was trying a bit of weather control when the hydra interrupted me,” Twilight said. She glanced from the circle up to the cloud dotted sky. “I just hope I can get it to work.”

The wizard nodded to her, and then stepped back to give her room to work. Setting the board down on a flat stretch of ground, Twilight carefully stepped within the circle, and touched it lightly with a hoof. A simple effort of will imbued the mystic construct with energy, and she felt it when the circle came to life, isolating her from the ever present flows of magic outside. She closed her eyes in a brief moment of concentration, letting her breathing relax and slow.

Her eyes opened, and she began to draw on her magic. She envisioned the symbols etched into the pewter tokens as she turned her attention skyward. They were based on Old Equestrian pictographs, each image embodying a concept of weather, tied to the senses, the mind, and the spirit. The lazy drifting of clouds stood in for sight, and heart stopping clap of thunder for hearing. The scent of a coming storm for smell, and the frosty chill of snow for taste. The refreshing breeze of wind for touch, and the beauty of a rainbow for the mind. Finally there was the pleasant warmth of the sun on a peaceful spring day for the spirit.

Twilight felt the magic flow into her horn, could see clear in her mind each symbol, could envision the whole of each idea represented by the intricately detailed lines. She felt the spell weave itself together from the individual elements, from the power of her magic and mind and will, bringing the various components together into a new whole, stronger by far than any single piece.

Her tail flicked, breaking the plane of the circle, and Twilight loosed the magic she had gathered out into the world as the barrier fell. She felt the spell tugging at her, drawing a steady stream of power from and through her as the effect soared into the sky like flickering ribbons of light. Each violet streamer raced to plunge within a nearby cloud, lighting them from within until the sky was filled with a faint purple tint.

Slowly at first, the clouds began to drift, though they quickly picked up speed. They circled inward, and as they struck one another they merged, growing larger, darker, and sinking lower. The mass of unnaturally purple cloud centered itself above the forest fire, dropping to only a few dozen feet above the tallest trees. The wind died, and a deafening silence hung in the air, the roaring blaze of the flames even muted by the tense, dead air.

Thunder rumbled once, and the rain came. It fell in a nearly solid sheet of water from the cloud bank, in nearly perfect uniformity. The heavy drops hammered down upon the trees in a wave, shredding leaves and breaking branches. It slammed into the flames in a smothering blanket, and steam hissed and bubbled. And it utterly and completely drenched one Twilight Sparkle until she felt like she was nearly drowning from it.

It took less than thirty seconds for the mystically accelerated downpour to exhaust the clouds, leaving behind only thin, white wisps in place of the former puffy greyness. The forest still hissed and steamed, but the flames had been doused, and even the remaining embers were dying as the sudden flood continued to quench them. Twilight felt her knees shake from the effort of the spell, but she still managed a weary smile at the success. It had been a far bigger proof of concept working than she had originally planned for, but that had just helped prove the usefulness of her new magical tool even more so.

She turned back towards the wizard to find him dismissing a small shield of will that he had formed over his head, and which had saved him from the same drenching she had suffered. She blinked at that for a moment, amazed he had managed to maintain even such a simple spell under so much running water.

Twilight shook her head, flinging some of the water out of her mane. She was about to ask about the magical umbrella, but was interrupted by a sudden prismatic blur of speed that came thundering to a halt overhead.

“Alright!” Rainbow Dash shouted over the general vicinity. “Who just messed up my entire morning’s hard work!” she demanded, shaking a hoof angrily at the world at large. Her eyes swept the area for half a second before locking onto the first individual to fall within sight. Faster than she could blink, Twilight found herself nose to nose with the irate pegasus. “What the hay Twilight? I had those clouds spaced perfectly!”

“Oh, hi Dash,” she said weakly, taking a step back. “Uh, sorry about wrecking your work, but it was for a good cause.”

“Oh yeah, like what?” Dash asked, stepping forward to resume actively violating Twilight’s personal space.

“Well like stopping the entire forest from burning down?” Twilight offered, taking yet another step back.

“Oh yeah, that would have been a big loss,” Dash scoffed with a roll of her eyes, though at least she relented in her advance. “Honestly, what good as ever come out of that creepy old place?”

“Be that as it may,” Twilight said, starting to get some of her composure back. “Would you prefer to let the fire flush all the timberwolves and cockatrices out into Ponyville while Fluttershy’s cottage burned?”

Dash narrowed her eyes at Twilight, but the unicorn could see her anger giving way. Reluctantly to be sure, and there was still plenty of frustration evident, but Dash was clearly starting to see the reasonable logic. She didn’t have to like it though, even if she did accept it.

“Bah, alright,” the pegasus sulked, blowing out a disgusted breath. “How’d this even happen?”

“Well see I was out here testing a new spell device, and things kind of got out of hoof when…” Twilight’s explanation was cut off as Dash jabbed a foreleg at her.

“Ah ha!” the sky blue pony cried. “Then this was your fault!”

“Only because the hydra interrupted me at a crucial junction!” Twilight shot back, starting to get annoyed.

“Hydra?” Dash asked, bewildered. “What hydra?”

Twilight stared at her friend for a long beat, then tilted her head to the left. Dash followed the motion, and stared for another long beat at the huge, sleeping form not a hundred feet away.

“…whoa, how’d I miss that?” Dash asked in clear puzzlement.

“Rage induced tunnel vision?” Twilight suggested.

“I…guess so?” Dash replied somewhat awkwardly. She shook her head, her voice regaining its usual brashness. “Well I’m still ticked about losing a whole morning’s work, but I gotta say, that is kinda cool. Slapping down a hydra and then pulling off some wicked weather working. Impressive stuff. You know, for an egghead.”

Twilight tried not to roll her eyes at the backhoofed compliment. “Gee, thanks, but I didn’t take care of the hydra, he did.”

“Who what now?” Dash asked, turning her head. She caught sight of the robed figure absolutely towering over her only a few feet away and let out a very uncool sounding yelp as she leapt into the air. “Whoa! Where’d he come from!”

“He’s been standing there the entire time Dash,” Twilight said tersely.

“…how’d I miss that!” Dash asked again, and the wizard threw back his head in a sudden boisterous laugh. The sound was as deep and rich as his speaking voice, and was filled with a vitality and joyfulness that Twilight had never heard from anypony short of the Element of Laughter herself. She found herself giggling in response to the pure mirth of the sound, and even Dash looked like she was fighting to keep a smile from her lips as she floated back to the ground.

“Forgive me,” the man said as he brought himself under control, a hand wiping tears from his good eye. “I meant no disrespect or insult, but your tone and expression…” He shook his head slowly, a few final chuckles escaping.

“Yeah well…” Dash started to reply, but apparently didn’t know where she was going with it as she trailed off for a moment. “…well who are you? And what are you doing here? And…” she seemed to finally really take a good look at the newcomer. “…and are you a wizard?”

“Please, you may call me Rashid,” the tall man said, offering them both a slight bow of his head. “And yes, there are some places where I might qualify for such a title.”

“Nice to meet you Rashid,” Twilight spoke up quickly. “I’m Twilight Sparkle, and this is my friend Rainbow Dash.” She was careful to alter the fine pronunciation of both her own and Dash’s names as she gave them.

“And a pleasure to meet you both as well,” Rashid replied.

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Dash said with her usual tact; none at all. “What do you mean ‘some places you may qualify’? Are you a wizard or aren’t you? You got the magical looking stick thing there…”

“Staff,” Twilight supplied drily.

“Whatever,” Dash said with a negligent wave of a hoof. “Point is, can you do magic?”

“I can do things that many might consider magical,” Rashid supplied calmly, earning a scowl from the pegasus.

“Are you going to give me a straight answer or not!” Dash demanded, stomping a hoof.

“What do you believe?” came the perfectly honest sounding reply.

“Argh!” Dash growled. “Fine, whatever! But don’t think you have me fooled! I did in fact notice you still haven’t answered my second question at all.”

“That actually is a good point,” Twilight spoke up. “Why are you here?”

Rashid paused to consider the question for a long moment, long enough that Dash was starting to bristle with impatience. “Well!” the pegasus demanded.

“I am here to seek the means to end a grave threat,” the man responded eventually.

“…okay, he’s a wizard,” Dash said sourly. “Either that, or giving lame, unhelpful answers is just part of being human.”

“Rainbow,” Twilight chided gently, but the wizard gave no indication he was offended.

“I am surprised you know of my people,” Rashid said. “This place is rather far off the usual paths. And someone has gone to a lot of trouble to keep wayward wanders from accidentally arriving.”

“And yet, here you are,” Twilight pointed out.

“Indeed so,” Rashid acknowledged, and left it at that.

“Alright, I am so out of here,” Dash said stiffly. “I have better things to do then listen to his not answers, especially if I’m going to get the sky back in order.”

“Hold up Dash,” Twilight said, giving Rashid an evaluating look. “Wizard,” she said after a moment. “You say you’re here because of a grave threat, yet you don’t seem willing to discuss the matter openly. And perhaps you have good reason for that, but if such a threat does exist here, then it is possible that myself or my friends may be in danger because of it.”

“Almost certainly,” Rashid said, his tone suddenly serious.

“Then it would be in everypony’s best interest for us to discuss the matter,” Twilight told him. “It would certainly benefit us all if we might assist each other.”

“Perhaps,” Rashid commented softly. “And perhaps not. Certain knowledge would be required to provide said assistance, and yet that knowledge may itself be dangerous to the wrong individuals.”

“What, you think we can’t hack it?” Dash demanded, zooming up to glare right in the man’s face. “I’ll have you know we’re two of the Elements of Harmony buddy, we eat danger for breakfast!”

“Dash!” Twilight chided again, yanking her back by her tail with a brief burst of magic. “Would you calm down for a moment?”

“Elements of Harmony you say?” Rashid mused, his tone half amused, half considering. He stared at the two ponies for a moment, then closed his eyes. He took a deep, gentle breath, and then the lid of his steel eye began to twitch and shift as if the orb beneath was moving rapidly. Twilight watched him with curious fascination; Dash with grumpy impatience. After a good minute of waiting the pegasus was shifting in place as restlessly as the wizard’s eye.

“Can’t. Take. Much. More…” she growled out through gritted teeth.

“Shh,” Twilight said absently as she tried to focus. She thought she could almost sense something around the man, something not necessarily powerful, but vast and far reaching. Whatever it was though slipped through her hooves each time she tried to bring her mind upon it.

“Well…” Rashid said, his eyes opening again. “Well well well…” he stroked at his short beard thoughtfully with one hand

“Well, what?” Dash demanded.

“Perhaps we can help each other after all,” the wizard said, directing his words to Twilight in a way that managed to completely disregard the fuming pegasus.

“…really?” the unicorn replied, a bit stunned by the simple turn around, but she recovered quickly. “I mean of course we can. So…what can you tell me?”

“Much,” Rashid answered. “But first I have a request.”

“Okay, what?” Twilight asked, and the wizard smiled warmly at her.

“Might I borrow your most excellent circle for a spell?”

Ten minutes later and three ponies were making their way from the clearing, heading off towards Ponyville. Rainbow Dash drifted along in the air above, flying in a series of long, looping arcs as she tried to burn off some of her irritation. Twilight Sparkle meanwhile was carrying her magic circle, the board drifting along beside her sedately.

Rashid walked as if he was no stranger to a quadruped’s gait, and the routine way he had pulled the transformation spell together suggested he had used it on a regular basis. The spell itself had been fascinating to watch, though also terrifying. Rashid’s magic had quite literally torn his own body apart, destroying the original form and flesh and using the resulting mix of magic and matter to construct a new body. Thankfully the visual hadn’t been anywhere near as disturbing, a simple blurring effect that had washed out the form of the man for a moment before replacing it with that of a pony, but she still shuddered at the thought of what such a magical working would do to somepony unprepared for it. She wasn’t all that certain such an unfortunate individual’s mind would come out of such an ordeal intact.

Twilight eyed the wizard thoughtfully. He made a rather unassuming pony. Short and slightly rounded, grey coated and silver maned, his features were plain and somewhat dull really. He had a stubby, rounded horn, and what looked like a pair of doors adorned his flank. She realized he looked like a pony that nopony would give a second glance, and figured that might just be the point. If it was though, his disguise was somewhat marred by the fact that he still bore the steel eye, and the scars that framed it in his face. Perhaps he had been unable to do anything about the eye; there was obviously something special about it. However given the way his transformation spell had worked, surely he could have left out the scars. Then again, if turning back worked the same way as the initial change, surely he could have removed the old injuries at any time he wanted.

“Tell me Twilight Sparkle,” Rashid said, and she felt a small chill run down her spine as he repeated her name back exactly as she had given it to him. She got the feeling that he knew she had mispronounced it on purpose. Her attention however was sharply diverted by his next words. “What, if anything, do you know about Outsiders?”

Back at the clearing, the still slumbering form of the hydra shifted uneasily as the air parted, the second such rip in reality forming exactly upon the same spot as the first. The figure that came through hopped down to the earth, and surveyed its surroundings with a casual indifference. Much as the man before it, the creature wore a robe and cloak, though it was much more thoroughly wrapped in the fabric, until there was not a bit of flesh left exposed. The cloth was also far more ragged and worn than the wizard’s had been, dust and stains marring the fabric in many places. The scent of rot and decay hung about the figure in a miasmic fog.

Its head twisted towards the rising sun for a brief instant, but it quickly turned away, hunching its back to the light. The creature crouched down, digging fingers into the soil with casual ease, lifting the dirt to its swaddled face. It inhaled deeply, and let out a long, pleased growl that bubbled in its throat. It prowled forward, shifting easily to all fours, snuffling along the ground for a moment. It reached the spot where Twilight had performed her weather spell and stopped short with a snarl. Shaking itself like a dog, it moved on, until it came to where Rashid had worked his own magic. The creature paused, taking a deep, slow breath.

It laughed, a sound like sandpaper rubbing together.

“Found you, old friend,” the creature spoke in a rasping whisper.

Chapter 2

Rainbow Dash let out a heavy groan of impatience as she circled the slowly meandering pair below. Sometimes it was really hard being the fastest, swiftest, agilest, most awesomest flier in all of Equestria, because it meant that everypony else was just so feather flipping slow! Even most other pegasi could barely hope to keep up with her, and unicorns and earth ponies might as well be moving in slow motion. She could have flown to Ponyville and back a dozen times already. A dozen and one now! A dozen and two! Dozen and three…

She was tempted to streak off and see if she could repair some of the mess Twilight had made of her sky. Much as she couldn’t exactly blame the unicorn for doing what she needed to do, it still irked Dash to the point that if there had been any clouds left in the area, she would have bucked them into oblivion as a means of venting. Which would have been entirely counterproductive, but dang it, she wanted to kick something!

Rainbow reeled in her impulses though. For one, the thought of having to do the same job twice in the same day just grated on her. Besides, Ponyville could deal with one day of unscheduled cloudlessness, it wouldn’t kill anypony. Granted, her supervisor might just chew her out until she wished for death, but only if he could catch her. Which they both knew he couldn’t, even if she hadn’t been in a league of her own, the League of Ultimate Awesomeness. Hazards of flying a desk there, Future Forecast probably couldn’t keep up with a pony on the hoof at this point, if he could even get that big gut of his airborne to begin with.

Yeah, the heck with it. She’d done her job, totally not her fault somepony else had hijacked her clouds when she wasn’t looking. And if it meant she had to sneak into Forecast’s office to swipe her assignment folder for the next week or so, well that would just add an element of challenge to her day. Celestia knows she could use the excitement, weather working was far too routine to be any real fun.

Really she just stuck around because she didn’t trust Rashid. Everything about the guy just set off alarms of suspicion in her head. The way he had dodged her questions, that weird thing he had done with his, admittedly, kind of awesome looking metal eye, how he'd just casually been able to disguise himself as a pony. Who’s to say he hadn’t been here before, sneaking around and spying on them? And how did he even get here? Rainbow could have sworn she’d heard Twilight saying something about Princess Luna hiding Equestria from the rest of…of…well whatever the hay the rest of everything that wasn’t Equestria is called.

Mostly though she was distrustful of how he had dangled some vague threat to Equestria in front of their faces, and then refused to explain anything until they were somewhere more private, and even then he seemed to imply he was going to withhold information. Threats to Equestria were practically a second job for Dash and her friends. The Elements of Harmony, whether using the actual Elements or not, they had foiled the plans of plenty of nefarious and wicked creatures and ponies. What made these Outersizers so dangerous? Dash certainly wasn’t worried, especially not of a group with such a goofy name.

Eventually, finally, they reached the edge of Ponyville proper. As they did so, Dash saw Rashid pause, his head turning slowly but cautiously. She frowned at the odd behavior, and made a low pass in time to hear Twilight ask him what was wrong.

“Nothing,” Rashid replied calmly. Too calmly in Rainbow’s opinion. “Just presenting an opportunity.”

“For what?” Dash demanded, coming in to land.

“Nothing,” he answered. “Not at this time it would seem.”

“Huh?”

Apparently however Rashid was done with the conversation, as he just started walking again. Dash saw Twilight give the wizard a quizzical glance, and then she glanced over at Rainbow. She gave the pegasus a shrug and seemed to put the incident out of mind, turning to catch up with and resume leading the cryptic old guy.

Dash narrowed her eyes, fixing the wizard with a sneer as her wings flared in a dramatic display of her feelings, but then realized nopony was watching her and let the expression drop. Muttering to herself, she flew off after them, keeping close now to make sure she wouldn’t miss anything. Like how Rashid seemed amusedly surprised at all the friendly waves and greetings of welcome he was receiving from the ponies in the streets as they passed through town. What was that all about huh? Or the way he just all casually held out a hoof to stop Twilight right before the Cutie Mark Crusaders went rocketing on by, narrowly avoiding running the unicorn over with their Scootaloo propelled wagon. Dash had to give the little filly some props, for a pony who couldn’t get herself off the ground yet, she could manage some serious speed.

No, focus Dash! Suspicious wizard is being all suspicious!

She tore her eyes away from the tiny multicolored dot of the Crusaders vanishing into the distance to find Rashid and Twilight stopping outside Sugar Cube Corner. Again, Rashid paused, his good eye sweeping the area, a slight frown of puzzlement creasing his features.

“Odd,” he muttered as Dash zoomed in overhead.

“What is?” Twilight asked.

“This was the most likely spot,” the wizard replied, though his tone suggested he was more talking to himself. He gave a shrug and started walking again.

“Likely for what?” Twilight inquired, turning the group down the street towards the library. Rashid didn’t answer, he just shook his head and remained silent.

Oh he is so up to something, Dash just knew it. She dropped to hover even closer, practically right over the wizard’s head. He craned his neck to look up her, turning his steel eye on her. That was it. He didn’t scowl, or glare, or really do much of anything. And yet Rainbow suddenly felt that maybe she could give him a little more space.

Because she wanted to of course. She landed next to Twilight, on the side opposite of Rashid, where only his normal eye could be seen. Because she felt like walking next to her friend. No other reason.

The group approached the living tree of the library, and once again Dash saw the wizard pause to survey the area as if he expected something to pounce on him at any second. His gaze even flicked upwards to inspect the high branches above.

“Okay, what are you looking for?” Dash demanded, zipping right under Twilight, who gave a startled yelp. She eyed the wizard right in his face, despite the little voice in her head that was screaming out a warning. She ignored the voice; it was always saying stupid things: The ground’s too close, pull up! That passage is too narrow, you won’t fit! Don’t kick the dragon you idiot!

Okay so maybe that last one had been a fair warning, but it’d all worked out fine in the end.

She stared Rashid right in his good eye regardless, ignoring both her inner voice and the odd sense of pressure that had started building, the feeling of suddenly falling forward, of being drawn into that steady dark orb…

“Dash!” Twilight’s voice rang in her ear, jolting her even as she felt the aura of magic seize her and yank her off her hooves. She hung in the air, supported by the unicorn’s power for a second that lasted about halfway to forever as her mind floundered. “Dash, are you alright?”

“Uh, yeah,” Rainbow scoffed as her mental faculties got back in order. “Why wouldn’t I be?” Twilight stared up at her for a long three count, and then let out a sigh of relief. She followed Twilight's gaze as it flicked over to the wizard, who was staring at her with an odd look, like she had surprised him somehow. What was that about?

“Could we please just get inside so we can talk about…things?” Twilight asked, a twinge of annoyance in her tone.

“Hey! He’s the one who keeps holding everything up!” Dash protested as she was lowered to the ground, pointing an accusing hoof at Rashid.

“My apologizes,” the wizard said humbly. “I have not seen a town such as this one before.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Dash scoffed. “You haven’t been sightseeing, you’ve been looking out for trouble. Like you think somepony is about jump on you from the shadows. I mean I don’t know what it’s like where you come from, but around here we generally don’t have to worry about being ambushed.” She flung open the library door as she talked, stepping inside.

Which was when she was ambushed.

Somepony pounced on her from above, the unexpected weight shoving her down almost to her belly even as a pair of forelegs wrapped around her neck. Her assailant squeezed with a sudden, terrible strength, and Dash managed only a startled “Gkk!” before her air was cut off. And then a trumpeting voice erupted right beside her left ear, the outburst of sound threatening to drill itself straight through her skull and out the other side.

“Welcome to Ponyville!” a familiar, overly bubbly tone cried cheerfully. Dash flinched in alarm and pain, and managed to turn her head enough to relieve the pressure on her throat.

“Pinkie Pie!” she rasped, trying to wriggle out of the exceedingly enthusiastic hug of greeting. She felt her ribs creak as the pink party pony relaxed a bit.

“Dashie? Whoops, wrong pony!” Pinkie said, completely unabashedly. She hopped down off Rainbow’s back, and the pegasus drew in a shaky breath of air.

There was a sound suspiciously like a muffled giggle behind her, and Dash turned to glare as Twilight and Rashid stepped through the doorway. Both of them were trying to hide smiles of amusement, and both were failing. Twilight more so than the wizard, though the way his living eye gleamed more than made up for his degree of self-control over his features.

The amusement was knocked right out of him however as Pinkie quickly shifted targets, bounding on over to Rashid and unleashing the full force of her cheerfulness upon the poor sap.

“Welcome to Ponyville actual new pony! And you really are a new pony as well as being a new pony to town and just makes this even more exciting because I love meeting new ponies or even new not ponies I just like meeting new anyones and you are most certainly a new someone…”

Dash rubbed gingerly at her throat with a hoof as she watched, with no small amount of smug satisfaction, the wizard’s normally stoic expression falter, even if it was only slightly. Both eyes were staring wide at the avalanche of greeting rushing towards him. He fell back before that overwhelming babble of sound, slowly perhaps, but step by step he retreated. And Pinkie of course just kept on coming, matching each stride with one of her own, her delight at getting to meet somepony new flowing out in an unending tide of irreverent chatter.

“…was saying to myself ‘Pinkie Pie, that’s just the silliest thing ever’ and of course I was right and that’s how I knew it would just be perfect and so I already sent away for it so that it might hopefully be delivered in time for your party because come on, what is a party without…”

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Dash tore her eyes away from the spectacle to see Spike come clomping sleepily into the main room to investigate the noise. He cast bleary eyes upon the gathering, noticed Pinkie Pie and the new comer, and let out a short grunt. Then he turned to head back upstairs, most likely to resume the nap he had clearly been woken from.

“Hold up there Mister!” Twilight called out, her magic scooping up the drowsy dragon and floating him over to where she was sitting before her writing desk, a quill scratching rapidly across a scroll of parchment. “I have an urgent letter I need sent.”

Spike murmured something that might have been consent, and rubbed at his eyes.

“…and that is why I desperately need to know, strawberry or watermelon?” Pinkie wrapped up, her breath coming in short, quick pants as she paused. She looked up expectantly at Rashid, who had backed himself into a corner retreating from her, but had at least managed to regain control of his features. His metal eye shone brightly as he regarded her for a long moment, and then he replied.

“This, was the least likely of the times and places for you to appear.”

“Well duh!” Pinkie spouted, giving a little giggle and snort. “Wouldn’t have been much of a surprise welcome if you had been expecting it!”

“I…” Rashid seemed lost for words for a moment. “I suppose I cannot question your logic, though your capability to enact it has me baffled.”

“Join the club,” Twilight remarked in a deadpan tone as she rolled the scroll up and hoofed it over to Spike, who trudged over to a window and took a deep breath.

“Spike, wait!” Pinkie suddenly exclaimed, but she was too late. The dragon huffed out a burst of green fire, incinerating the missive. The resulting cloud of ash and smoke swirled out the window…and promptly turned a one-eighty to come streaking back inside. The little guy let out a startled “Whoa!” as he ducked. The smoke whipped across the room and curled in on itself in a sudden tight spiral that quickly transformed back into a roll of parchment.

It landed on the floor right at Pinkie Pie’s hooves.

“…well poo,” the party pony declared.

“Pinkie?” Twilight said, her tone somewhere between bafflement and accusation. “What did you do?”

Pinkie stared back at Twilight for a moment, her wide blue eyes blinking innocently. Then she laughed softly, a laugh that was far too calm and reserved to belong to the party pony. Her eyes closed, and when they reopened they had changed. Those blue orbs were suddenly filled with the weight of time and vast wisdom.

“I suppose there isn’t any point in playing pretend any longer,” a sweet, melodious voice came from Pinkie’s lips. It didn’t belong to her at all, though Dash was certain she recognized the voice. If the look of shock on Twilight’s face was any indication, she did as well.

“Pr-princess?” the unicorn said in disbelief. The form of Pinkie Pie gave her an approving smile, and then she simply dissolved into light. The vaguely pony shaped blur glowed a cheerful pink for an instant, and then it flashed through a whole spectrum of hues before becoming a brilliant white. The light expanded, growing in stature, luminescent wings sweeping wide, a spiraling pulse becoming a horn. The glow faded, and Princess Celestia stood before them all, still smiling favorably down at her student.

“Alright, you may come out now,” Celestia spoke into the stunned silence, and a pair of books toppled from one of the many shelves lining the room. From between the impossibly narrow space created, a poofy pink mane emerged, followed swiftly by Pinkie Pie’s whole head.

“Thanks Princess!” she chirped brightly. “Was getting cramped in there.” She struggled a bit, and pulled a leg out with an audible pop as she worked to wriggle free.

“No, thank you for allowing me to borrow your appearance for this,” Celestia replied gracefully. She turned to face Rashid, who had managed to school his features into a carefully neutral mask. The princess favored him with a smile, but Dash thought she could see something a bit off about the expression, something in the alicorn’s eyes. A sort of tight, controlled concern.

They looked at each other for a moment, just a few seconds, but somehow it was more than that. Rainbow couldn’t put her hoof on it exactly. She knew a lot of ponies thought she didn’t pay much attention, and there was perhaps some truth to that. But when she was watching, when she was focused on something, there was little she actually did miss. One does not simply fly through Ghastly Gorge unawares for example, not with danger lurking in every twisting turn and gloomy shadow. She could be extremely aware, when there was something worthwhile to be aware of.

It was fast, whatever passed between the princess and the wizard. They just seemed to casually look the other over, but Dash knew it was something more than that. She'd been in a few exchanges like that before, that cold, tactical evaluation of somepony else, of trying to figure out what they were capable of, of ranking them as a potential ally, or threat, or somepony of no consequence. Flight camp had been full of such moments. Unfortunately she couldn't understand a single flying feather worth of the exchange before her, and she felt like she was missing out on a great deal of it, as if she just lacked the means to sense all that was going on. Celestia and Rashid however apparently came to some kind of understanding, as they both gave the other a brief, subtle nod at the same time, conveying a sense of mutual respect.

Then the wizard’s form blurred, and the pony was gone, replaced by the man. Dash saw Celestia blink as she was forced to actually look up at somepony, or someone in this case. The way she held her head suggested she was rather unused to doing so. The wizard planted the end of his staff on the floor, pulled one arm across his chest, and bowed at the waist. He held the pose as he spoke.

“Your majesty,” he rumbled in his deep voice, his tone full of respect. “Please forgive me for coming uninvited into your realm. I meant no disrespect by this trespass, and claim only ignorance of how to have acquired permission prior to my arrival. I hope that you may permit me to remain, at least long enough to provide the details of the situation that has brought me into your nation.”

That raised the princess’s eyebrows. A bare half inch at most, but Dash caught it. Celestia didn’t let her surprise slow her response however.

“Rise wizard,” she replied formally. “And put your mind at ease, I take no insult from your unannounced arrival. You have my permission to remain, for a time at least.”

“My thanks to you,” Rashid said, standing upright again.

“Wow, you are really tall!” Pinkie exclaimed, hopping both figuratively and literally into the middle of the conversation. She bounced excitedly as she stared up at the wizard. “I mean I’ve seen taller but only with like, dragons and other super big creatures so I never would have imagined anything taller than a minotaur until Dresden showed up and then I was all like ‘there is no way anyone can be taller than that’ but whoa was I wrong!”

“Dresden…” Rashid murmured, his gaze flicking over towards Twilight for an instant before returning to Pinkie. “Harry Dresden?”

The party pony let out a gasp as if she was about to inhale her lungs right down into her hooves. She bounded into the air, latching onto the front of the wizard's robe in a death grip and bringing her face to his until their noses touched.

“You know Harry?” she squealed excitedly.

Several things happened at once then, though again Dash was left without the proper context to really understand what she saw and felt. Her wings tingled slightly, almost like they did when she was dealing with an extremely well charged thundercloud. Rashid jerked his head back in surprise at the sudden proximity, his staff rising an inch or so from the floor as he sought to maintain his balance. Both Celestia and Twilight tensed, the princess’s hooves sliding ever so slightly to widen her stance, as if she was preparing to either leap into motion or to resist a sudden force.

Then Rashid smiled.

“I do know him,” the wizard confirmed, carefully reaching up with his free hand and gently prying Pinkie loose. He set her softly back on the floor, and as he did, Dash would have sworn it felt just like having a lightning bolt land nearby. She could feel it through her hooves, an energy in motion, and she felt that she could have made a spark if she touched anything metal at the moment.

The tension in the room broke, Twilight and the princess relaxing. Pinkie remained oblivious.

“Are you friends? Cause he’s definitely our friend.” She spread her hooves wide to indicate the room, or perhaps even the entire town. Sometimes it was hard to tell with her. “And friends of friends are practically already friends!”

Rashid however shook his head. “No, I cannot claim friendship with him,” he told Pinkie, who’s ears dropped in disappointment. “Though I think I could well like the man, given the right time and circumstances.”

“What do you mean?” Pinkie asked, something hopeful in her eyes.

“That…” Rashid sighed. “Would be a very long tale, and full of secrets that are not mine to divulge.”

“Oh, okay!” the party pony accepted chipperly, earning a brief hint of surprise from the wizard. Pinkie obviously caught it, because she added. “Secrets are important. I’ve never ask anypony to break a promise of keeping one.”

“Ah,” Rashid replied simply, straightening back up. He regarded Pinkie for a moment more, and then turned his attention back to Celestia. “We have much to discuss I believe.”

“We do indeed,” the princess confirmed. Her own gaze flicked from Rashid down to Pinkie, and Dash finally, finally felt like she understood what she saw. Celestia’s eyes were filled with consideration, her thoughts clearly working towards some conclusion that she reached a second later. When she looked back at Rashid, it was with the sense of a wall collapsing. Dash hadn’t even really been aware of it until the feeling was gone, but its absence all but slapped her in the face.

Celestia suddenly felt like Celestia again, radiating that warm, comforting, somewhat motherly sense of care and happiness Rainbow suddenly realized had been missing since her appearance. Or since she had stopped pretending to be Pinkie Pie anyway.

Wait a minute…

“Hey, princess?” Dash’s mouth started working even before her brain really caught up with her train of thought. “Did you really not know it was me when you jumped on me?”

“Oh, well…” Celestia replied, a trickster’s smile dancing across her features.

“Oh come on, seriously!” Dash protested, and Celestia laughed.

“I am sorry about that Rainbow Dash,” the princess said fondly.

“I hope you realize I was this close to chucking you across the room,” Dash informed her, hovering up into the air in order to bring her two front hooves a bare feather’s width apart.

“And I would have well deserved it,” Celestia acknowledged without concern. “Do you think you might forgive me?”

“Yeah, well, I guess…” Dash grumbled slightly, though her heart wasn’t really in it. The princess suddenly stepped up alongside her, catching her with one great wing that pulled her into a brief hug.

“Tell you what,” Celestia said in a low, private voice. “I’ll owe you a favor for helping out as well as you did.”

“I…I was helping?” Dash most certainly did not squeak, nor did she blush uncomfortably at the sudden, intimate proximity. She tried to shake the feeling off. “I mean, course I was!”

“Deal then?” the princess asked warmly.

“Sure, deal, no hard feelings,” Rainbow nodded, and Celestia beamed at her. Nearly literally really, as close as she was, the princess’s smile was almost like staring into the sun itself. Dash felt dazed by it, and didn’t even realize she had been released until her hooves hit the floor. She had to blink a bit to clear her head.

“Twilight,” Celestia was saying as Dash came back to her senses. “Might I ask you to put a pot of tea on to boil?”

“Of course Princess, right away,” the unicorn replied dutifully. Dash could hear her hoofsteps heading off towards the kitchen, but the pegasus’s gaze remained fixed straight ahead. Coming out of the daze, Dash found her mind focused to a degree she only normally achieved in the middle of her most daring, most exhilarating, most dangerous stunts. It was a presence of mind and awareness that seemed to make the whole world slow down, until she had time to savor ever little detail and nuance.

In that moment, she knew with absolute certainty that she was the only one watching the wizard. That she was the only one who caught the look that passed across his face. Dash didn’t even have to turn her head to know he was looking at Celestia, and his expression flickered through so many emotions that Dash never could have caught them all at any other time.

He was baffled, a question clear in his features. What are you?. Then he was unnerved, uneasy, quickly transitioning into open concern. Then oddly, sadness, a sense of unbearable tragedy, before finally his expression settled into grim determination, his eye shining with defiant purpose. For that instant, he looked ready and able to topple mountains if he thought it necessary.

And then the moment passed, and Dash felt her mind slip back into regular speed even as Rashid smoothed his face into its usual calm. He strode forward as Celestia politely invited him over to have a seat with her, the sound of metal clinking and water running coming from the kitchen. Pinkie Pie was bouncing around the scene, a steady stream of chatter filling the air around her.

What are you? The thought flashed across Dash’s mind like a bolt as she watched the wizard sit down across from the princess, to discuss whatever terrible thing had brought him to their peaceful land.

Chapter 3

The sun was shining bright and cheerily, broadcasting to all that the day was to be a beautiful one. Birds darted lazily about, their uplifting songs joining them in soaring through the air. Throughout the town market, ponies trotted casually, talking and joking happily as they surveyed the wares. Little colts and fillies romped and played with youthful abandon. The streets were suffused with the scent of baked goods, fresh produce, and sugar.

It was nearly unbearable.

The creature lurking in a, somewhat-kinda-sorta-almost, dark alley hissed to itself as the nauseating stench of fresh cooked apples and pastry crust assaulted its sense of smell. It glared spitefully at an orange pony hocking pies from a little cart-stand across the street, her honest, cheerful voice as much an affront to its ears as her merchandise was to its nose. The cloaked and robed figure marked the pony in its mind; if ever the opportunity arose…

But now was not the time. The crowd was too numerous, the sun too bright. Secrecy still needed to be maintained. It could not reveal itself just yet. With another raspy hiss, it turned and skulked down the alley, moving stealthily into the rear courtyard formed by the surrounding buildings. Even here though it was too bright, too clean, too…peaceful. What sort of sickening paradise was this abominable world? There were a few bits of trash cluttering the ground, but not the slightest scent of decay or rot or muck. A rat scampered by, too clean, too fat, and far less nervous and twitchy than any wild rodent had a right to be.

The creature approached one of the back doors, laying a long fingered, cloth wrapped hand to the well maintained wood. It felt nothing; there was no threshold over the building, despite the obvious signs of it being a dwelling. Now that was interesting indeed. At least there was something to be satisfied about here. It tried the doorknob, and was actually a little surprised to find it locked.

Not that a simple lock was any impediment to the creature. It just turned the handle a bit harder, and the brass warped in its grip. There was a series of sharp, metallic pops and clicks, and the entire mechanism shattered within its casing. The door swung open, and the creature stalked inside, and finally found a place with something approaching normality.

There were dirty dishes sitting in a sink of cloudy water, a trash can overflowing onto the floor, and a spill of some harsh smelling liquid drying in a sticky puddle on the counter. Yet even this bit of mess was only a temporary veneer over swept floors and clean countertops; the leavings of a life being lived rather than the neglected debris of despair.

The creature prowled out of the kitchen, finding the rest of the house in a similar state of disarray. It also held the feel of something oft repeated but ultimately transitory. The mess was nothing but a thin film over the interior of the home, something that could and would be removed before it truly sank into the fabric of the furnishings or the crevices of the hardwood floor.

There had been a party here. Wild but contained, boisterous but respectful. The aura, the psychic residue of the event still lingered, and it filled the creature with disgust and puzzlement. Hard drinks had been served, wild music had been played, lustful thoughts had been stirred up. And yet the repercussions that normally skulked along with such an event were pitiful. There had been no fighting, no more anger than what might have been a brief exchanges of glares. No physical or sexual boundaries had been violated. Here there was the sense of someone falling into a moment of despair before being buoyed up by some intensely cheerful presence. There a whisper of a mind badly altered by too many drinks. But neither impression was as deep or pervasive as it should have been.

What little darkness had been stirred up was stunted, pitiful, and every bit as fleeting as the mess. The joyful companionship of the event had utterly crushed whatever negativity had been born of it, and it was doubtful that the participants would really even remember anything but the good times.

What was this horrible place?

Moving like drifting smoke, the creature ascended the stairs, following the single, soft sound that had entered its ears. A gentle, contented buzz of sleeping breaths, coming from a room just off the top landing. It slunk within, and beheld the figure sprawled out on a badly disheveled bed. The pony was an unappealing pure white, save for where some food or drink been spilled upon her side and left to soak into her coat. A tattoo of a musical note covered much of her flank, and a pair of enormous violet glasses rested at an angle across her muzzle. The tip of a short, spiraling horn poked out between the wild mess of her two toned, electric blue mane as she lay prone on her back, legs sticking out every which way.

The creature stalked forward, coming to stand over the bed. The unicorn stank of drink and food and sweat. She never stirred as the robed figure crouched down, her snoring unbroken as the creature reached a hand up to its cloth wrapped face, and tugged down a strip of fabric to reveal crooked, blunt, dirty yellow teeth. Thin, flaking lips curled into a smile full of malice as it leaned in close, one hand pressing the pony’s head down to better expose her neck. Its jaws opened, and a leathery tongue writhed within its mouth like a mottled snake.

And then the creature paused, its body locking ridged as something else filtered into its nose. Something almost hidden beneath the other scents, and yet even more unpleasant than any of the others. Slowly its hand lifted from the prey’s head, a finger coming to its malformed teeth. It bit down on the coarse fabric encasing the digit, and tugged the cloth aside to reveal a single, jaggedly broken nail. It reached down, and with a suddenly swift motion, slashed neatly across the pony’s neck.

A thin, delicate line appeared, barely visible beneath the white coat. The unicorn grunted and grumbled, but did not wake. A spot of brilliant red welled up, and the creature recoiled at the smell. The blood was…foul, toxic smelling, wrong. It gleamed, a vile lie of the usual promise. And yet, and yet the creature could not help itself, could not stop from touching a finger to the spot, from lifting the small stained tip to its mouth. Its tongue slithered out from between the broken teeth, and hesitantly, almost reluctantly, tasted.

Pain erupted from the contact, searing agony that all but hurled the creature upon the floor. It burned! It burned right down into the creature’s core, raking hot coals across its very being, chewing at the dark well of power that sustained it. The creature howled, thrashing wildly. An arm struck a chair, sending the furnishing rocketing away. Glass shattered as the chair struck one of the room’s windows, and voices outside shouted in alarm.

The creature shrieked again, in pain and frustration, and the voices fell into a stunned silence at the sound. The unicorn blinked open blurry eyes, and slurred around a yawn.

“Wha…’m up, ‘m up, party on…”

The creature fled the room before the pony could spot it, stumbling and scrambling on all fours as the searing pain of the blood, of the pure light contained within ripped at its innards. It all but fell down the stairs, striking a decorative topper from the banister as it did. It crashed into a wall, leaving a crumpled dent, and wobbled for the rear door. Gasping, it hastily pulled the cloth back over its face, tucked its exposed fingertip into the folds of its robe, and lurched out into the sun lit day. Inside, it could feel the burning blood ring in a harmonious response to that light, could feel the same power contained within both resonating with each other.

What was this place?

The tea was really quite excellent. It wasn’t exactly Rashid’s drink of preference, but it was one of those things that was nearly a universal concept. He really couldn’t think of a place he had been that didn’t have some form of plant life steeped in a boiled liquid, and his role as Gatekeeper had carried him to more of Earth and the Nevernever than most knew existed, even within the White Council. He’d been served far, far worse forms of the drink; his current cup was actually rather indistinguishable from any he might find back home.

Which was something of an oddity. Truth be told, much of what he had seen of Equestria thus far was unnaturally similar to Earth, especially given the inhabitants. Faerie was not nearly so much alike to the mortal world, and it was closer than any other part of the Nevernever. And it was inhabited by beings that, for the most part, were at least bipedal. Rashid’s experience with the nature of reality was at sharp odds with the world he found himself on. That it wasn’t actually in the Nevernever itself was really even more baffling; it was easier to excuse bizarreness in that realm of pure magic.

He supposed it just went to show that, no matter how much knowledge one acquired, there was always plenty still out there to prove how little one actually knew compared to the whole of reality itself. So the Gatekeeper sipped tea that could have been mistaken for any dozen of blends from Earth, set down the cup that was absurdly ill designed for creatures without hands, and settled back into the chair that made no sense for a race of quadrupeds to use. There were bigger questions to focus on, more important issues highlighting the limits of his knowledge.

Celestia was perhaps the biggest.

She did not fit into the standard template for beings with power on the scale she possessed. As best Rashid could judge without using his Sight, she held power of a level somewhere between a Lady and a Queen of the Faerie courts. He was almost tempted to behold the Truth of her nature, but it just wasn’t worth the risk. He’d Seen too many horrible things in his time, and while his instincts told him that Celestia was very unlikely to give him nightmares, True Goodness could be every bit as stressful as True Evil. One never knew which mind searing memory would be the one to unbalance the perceiver’s sanity.

Fortunately he had means even other wizards did not. His false eye provided him with a middle ground between the safe but limited range of normal senses, and the dangerously unfiltered perceptions of the Sight. Granted it was not nearly as powerful this far from the Outer Gates, but it was still a potent tool. Unfortunately he did not have a proper frame of context or a starting point to make full use of what information it had provided him.

Celestia was mortal, but only in a very loose sense of the word. Death might claim her someday, but it wouldn’t catch her with time alone, and it would take more than just an unfortunate mishap to see her life ended. She held more power then even a semi-mortal being had any right to, and somehow she had managed to live with that strength for centuries, perhaps longer, without being seduced by it. Rashid could hardly imagine the will to achieve such a feat.

Power corrupts. Perhaps not quickly, perhaps not entirely, but none that hold true power are ever free of its influence. Possessing power is the ever constant temptation to use it, and to use power is to be altered by it. Even those with the most noble of minds and pure of intentions could and did fall to temptation and circumstance. Desperation had provided the rationalization to abandon the high road for untold numbers of well-meaning individuals.

Time often claimed those that extremes of circumstances did not. Rashid himself knew he was capable of deeds now that he would have forsaken as unthinkable in his youth. Time had hardened him, had worn at him, had dulled the horror of certain actions from unimaginable to merely painful. His conscience still fought to uphold what was good and decent and right, at least as far as he could judge such things, to be aware of how and when and why he used his power, to seek to be responsible with the way he influenced the world around him. But he knew that his innocence was long dead, his soul tainted and stained in numerous ways.

It was something that happened to all mortals really, so far as experience had shown him. Life and time wore at everyone to some degree, just as wind and water eroded earth and rock. It was always harder on wizards, holding power as they did, seeking knowledge, facing the truth of reality. It made them more vulnerable, exposed them to the erosion more readily. And they had longer to be worn at.

Mortality was one of the great checks on power within the universe. It kept the balance on the long term, as even the extended life of a wizard was but a brief tick of the cosmic clock. Balance was important to the universe, or to whomever had designed it. Power never came with perfect freedom to use it, and where death did not maintain the scales, other forces did. Immortal beings were constrained to times and places and means when it came to their power; the greater their power, the more constraints were laid upon them. Perhaps not always equally, not always in proportion to their strength, but the limits existed.

Only Celestia did not seem to have any. Immortal power without immortal constraint, mortal life without a mortal fate. Free will, untarnished by the temptation of magical might and political strength. Princess she was titled, but Rashid’s eye had shown her to be the highest authority of the land. Equaled perhaps, but not surpassed by any other. She had ruled for centuries, had wielded unimaginable power for even longer, and yet her own subjects paid her only token diffidence. She sat even now among them as if all equals, and freely exchanged small talk and banter with them.

What was she?

“Two bits for your thoughts?” a voice cut into his musings, and Rashid glanced down at the brightly pink pony that had sidled up beside him.

“Merely contemplating the human condition,” Rashid replied.

“Which aspect?” Pinkie Pie asked, as if such a purposefully cryptic response make perfect sense to her. The wizard smiled slightly.

“The way we try to simplify life,” he told her. “How we tend to view the world, and then label the things within it so that we might neatly catalog and file them away. How we tend to forget that those labels are only meant to be an abbreviation for the sake of simplifying the complex. We habitually start to see the label as the thing itself, to forget all the little nuances and differences that aren’t part of the label, because it is difficult and sometimes frightening to realize how little the universe cares about our ability to understand it. And then we run into something that does not fit into our ordered world view, and we either try to force it to fit somehow, or we must let our minds open and deal with the added complexity, to add some grey to the simple black and white.”

Pinkie tilted her head from one side to the other, looking thoughtful, and then slapped three golden coins down on the table.

“That sounded like it would be worth an extra one,” she said brightly.

Rashid picked up one of the coins, turning it over in his fingers. One side contained a clear image of Celestia’s profile, the other an image of the sun. Its weight suggested it was indeed the gold it seemed to be. He considered the currency for a moment, then pocketed it before pushing the other two back towards Pinkie.

“Two bits for your thoughts?” he asked, and the pink pony looked rather serious for a moment. Then her face brightened.

“Hmm…well, confetti spreads out better and covers more ground, but streamers can be chucked further and make less of a mess to clean up, especially were frosting is concerned.”

Rashid blinked at that, and hummed thoughtfully. Fortunately he was saved the trouble of trying to work out a proper response by Celestia’s musical laugh. He looked up to find her watching him, a smile tugging at her mouth.

“Well, I know when I am in over my head,” the wizard said. “Perhaps it would be best to just move on to the matter at hand.”

“Are you sure?” Celestia replied lightly. “I wouldn’t want to interrupt.”

“Quite sure,” Rashid told her politely. “I appreciate the hospitality, but I see little point in further delay.”

“Very well then,” the princess said. “Which protocols would you prefer?”

“An exchange of questions and answers?” Rashid offered.

“That would be acceptable,” Celestia nodded. “As my guest, I invite you to begin.”

Rashid nodded back. “Very gracious of you.” He fell silent for a moment as he ordered his thoughts, and then asked, “How did you know of my arrival so swiftly?”

“The wards that surround Equestria do more than merely conceal its presence,” the princess replied simply.

“Ah, of course,” the wizard said. “Impressive work those. Strong, subtle, even when I became aware of them it was quite difficult to perceive their presence. I never sensed the alarm ward among the illusions and compulsions.”

“My sister does fine work,” Celestia agreed with a smirk, earning a raised eyebrow and a thoughtful look from the wizard. She did not give him time to start contemplating that bit of information though. “And on the subject of the wards, how did you defeat them to arrive here?”

“I did not,” Rashid told her, pulling his reeling mind away from the idea of a second being such as the one before him reluctantly. “I was not aware of the wards at all until I was already mostly through them. I was following a trail which lead me here.”

“A trail?” Celestia asked, and then sighed. “Excuse me, that was out of turn. Please…”

“Quite alright,” Rashid said with a mild smirk of his own. “I believe you might find your answer in my next query at any rate. Have your wards, pardon, your sister’s wards detected an intrusion within the last few weeks by a being that…” He paused, giving a thoughtful look around at the trio of ponies closely watching the exchange. “…has no rightful place in our reality?”

Celestia’s expression flattened, and she too cast a glance around at the surrounding company. “Yes, and on that subject, I’m afraid I must insist that this conversation become private.”

“What!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed.

“Awww,” Pinkie pouted.

“Princess?” Twilight said respectfully, though there was clear disappointment in her tone.

“I am sorry girls…” Celestia began, but Dash wasn’t done yet.

“Come on, it’s not like we don’t know what he’s talking about,” the pegasus protested. “He means that freaky demon thing that tried to…”

“Rainbow Dash,” Celestia snapped. She didn’t raise her voice, didn’t let any hint of anger color the words, but there was a sudden, mountain deep strength underlying the implied command. Dash jerked and cut off as if she’d been physically struck by the simple uttering of her name in such a tone of absolute authority. “This is not open for debate.”

Dash’s head dropped, her eyes staring hard at nothing on the floor. She looked like a child that had been reprimanded for something she hadn’t known could get her into trouble. Celestia herself enforced the impression, her expression and posture one of a loving mother having to deal with a rambunctious child; unhappy to do so, but unwavering and uncompromising in the task. Twilight and Pinkie stood in shocked silence, themselves filling the role of siblings having had the misfortune to witness the event, awkwardness and trepidation making them work hard at hoping no one would notice they were present.

Dash took a deep, slightly shaky breath. “S-sorry princess,” she muttered to the floor.

Celestia considered the pegasus for a moment more, then let out a unhappy sigh and rose. She walked around the table to sit beside Dash, and once again wrapped a great, white wing around the smaller pony. Her head dipped, and she spoke in a tone too low for Rashid to hear. Whatever she said, it took the harshest edge off Rainbow’s unhappy expression, though she still looked mortified.

“Go on girls,” the princess said gently as she stood. “What is important for you to know, you will be told. But for now I ask that you trust me when I say that there is knowledge that can be dangerous by itself, if you do not have the proper experience and understanding to handle it. I will not risk exposing any of you to potential harm when there is not reason to do so.”

Twilight offered the princess a slight bow of acknowledgement, and suggested to her friends that they could go out for something to eat. Dash gave a noncommittal grunt, though Pinkie seemed to regain her high spirits quickly enough as she agreed. She slipped up besides Rainbow as they headed for the door, starting up some conversation that was pulling shallow, reluctant laughter from the other two even before they had departed.

“I’m sorry you had to witness that,” Celestia said stiffly as she returned to her seat opposite of Rashid. He waved a hand.

“No, I am sorry,” the wizard offered. “My journey here seems to have worn me out more than I thought, for I appear to have drifted off momentarily and missed whatever was said after you expressed a desire for privacy. I hope it was nothing important.”

Celestia smiled slightly and huffed out a small breath of mirth. “Nothing important in regards to our conversation. Perhaps you need something stronger than tea to keep you awake?”

“I will manage, now that I am aware of the issue,” Rashid replied with mock seriousness. It turned to true seriousness with his next words. “So, an Outsider did manage to find its way here?”

“It did,” Celestia told him. “Though that makes two questions in a row for you.”

“I might argue that it was the same question phrased more directly.”

“Might you now?” Celestia half smiled.

Rashid sighed and held up a hand in acquiescence. “In this instance, no. Please, ask two of your own to balance the exchange.” The princess nodded graciously.

“Who are you, that you would actively seek out an Outsider? What do you intend to do if and when you locate the creature?”

“The answers to those questions will depend on how much you know about Outsiders.”

“I know more than most, though detailing it would be impractical for a host of reasons.”

“Yes, that is often a stumbling block when discussing such matters,” Rashid admitted. He pondered the situation a moment, trying to find the right phrasing to judge Celestia’s knowledge without giving away more than he should. It was an annoying factor when it came to Outsiders, that even tiny bits of information about them could lead to dire consequences.

Ultimately Rashid decided to take a bit of chance. Beings as old and powerful as Celestia were rarely stupid, and almost always had at least a general understanding of the greater nature of reality. So he leaned forward, and brushed one long finger near his fake eye. For just a second or two, the bright steel changed, replaced by an icy, crystalline substance. It would mean nothing if she did not know, but if she did…

Celestia’s eyes widened, and Rashid could all but see her mind casting back through her memories, heading down paths long laid dormant.

“Wall Watcher,” the princess breathed softly, staring at him intently. Rashid blinked at that, but then nodded.

“Yes, though you have taken the title through a slightly different path of translations I think. The position is known as The Gatekeeper now.”

“Gatekeeper,” Celestia mused. “It fits as well. And I suppose that answers both my questions neatly. Though I must now inform you that your journey has been an unnecessary one. The creature you seek is gone, I banished it myself.”

“That is good to know,” Rashid said. “Though tracking the Outsider was only part of my task, and likely the least of it.”

Celestia frowned at that, though she restrained herself from asking the obvious question, and waited for the Gatekeeper to take his turn.

“I know where the creature crossed into your realm. I should like to see where it was summoned, and where it was banished as well. All of that together might provide me enough to determine where it crossed the Wall. Would that be acceptable to you?”

“If you think it necessary Gatekeeper,” Celestia said. “Though now I must ask, how did it cross the Wall? I thought that was the point of the Outer Gates, to be a deliberate weakness in the great barrier, so that summoned Outsiders would always cross into our reality from a single point, so that the inevitable weakening of the barrier between existence and the vast nothing beyond would occur only at that single location where it might be ever vigilantly guarded.”

Rashid nodded. “That is indeed one of the Gate’s functions. The simple, unfortunate truth though is that they are not perfect. The weakness there is not sufficient to cover all of reality. Thus the Gates were placed to cover as much of the universe as they could, and to cover the locations most likely to contain beings foolish enough to call to the Outsiders. Your realm here is too far from the Gates, far enough that the summoning required less power to call the creature through the Wall itself instead of through the Gates.”

“And that is your true purpose here,” Celestia stated in understanding. “To find where the Outsider crossed in order to inspect the Wall, to determine how badly it might have been weakened.”

“Yes,” Rashid confirmed. “One entrance we can guard effectively. Two, we cannot. Especially not spread so distantly apart. We could never move troops fast enough to respond, and would thus be required to divide our forces to cover both.”

“And the Outsiders could then concentrate all their attention on but one at a time, and face only half the resistance they now do.” Celestia stared gravely down into her tea cup. “And as the breach would be close to Equestria, even my sister’s wards would likely not be able to keep us hidden with the kind of attention and scrutiny that would follow.”

“Likely not,” Rashid agreed. “And I would be only slightly less aggrieved to have Winter turn its eyes upon this land than I would the Outsiders.” Celestia cast him a quizzical look, and the Gatekeeper shrugged. “You have made a real attempt at paradise here. It is a very rare thing to find someone in power who truly wishes for the very best of their subjects, who constantly and actively strives to better the lives of those under them.”

“You’ve hardly been here half an hour,” Celestia pointed out calmly, though Rashid would have sworn her cheeks took on the slightest hint of color. “And you've spoken with me for less than half that. It is quite a judgment to make in such a short time.”

Rashid smiled, and tapped his false eye. “I took a look when I arrived. I did not see everything of course, not even the majority, but enough to be certain of the impression I have received. This world is not heaven, but it is closer than any place I have ever been. I would be damned before I allowed something this beautiful to be unmade.”

“Then I need not worry about you revealing us I should hope.”

“You need not,” Rashid told her. “To that, I swear, upon my power.”

“Thank you,” Celestia replied softly, a hint of tension easing from her, and then her voice turned wry. “Well then, I must only worry about monstrous beings from beyond dragging the pitiless forces of the Sidhe into battle upon my doorstep.”

The Gatekeeper gave her a sardonic smile, which slipped from his face as a hideous shrieking cry filled the air. It forced its way into the library as if the walls were no obstacle, and grated harshly at his ears. Rashid was on his feet before the sound had faded, and Celestia was only a second behind him.

“What was that?” the princess demanded.

“Trouble I should think,” the Gatekeeper replied grimly, the fingers of his right hand touching a ring upon his left. He let his focus fall into the metal band for a second, extracting the spell he had copied within, and once more his form shifted to that of a small, grey pony. It was harder to do without a circle, but easier than working the magic alone. “I think it would be wise to investigate.”

“I concur,” Celestia agreed, already striding for the door and flinging it open in a burst of golden light and power.

Rashid followed after the princess, and hoped that he had misheard the cry, hoped that it had been warped and altered by distance and intervening structures. If it was what he thought it was, then he dreaded what they might find at the source.

Chapter 4

Applejack was not having the best day of her life. She wasn’t exactly having the worst day, but that was mostly because nopony nor no-thing was trying to kill her or her friends, nor trying to take over the world. Or just end it. It probably said something about her life that such things could be considered points of reference to judge other events by. What it said she wasn’t sure though, Applejack was just a simple farm pony after all…most of the time anyway. You know, when she wasn’t busy battling dark goddesses, climate destroying dragons, all devouring swarms, subterranean canines, or deranged ancient cults. Yup, just a simple farm pony here, nothing to get all excited about…cough.

Things had gotten off to a rotten start in the early hours of the morning, early even as reckoned by farm folk. Applejack was knocked out of her bed by an explosion that nearly rattled the house down. It left streaks of color across her vision as the light came blasting in through the window like the curtains weren’t even there. Half blind, half deaf, and twice addled, she just about broke her neck trying to run down the stairs.

Luckily she managed to turn the fall into something of a semi-controlled bouncing roll that none-the-less was likely to leave bruises. It did however give her a bit of extra oomph towards getting out the front door in a rush, though her haste nearly ended up getting her impaled. The shattered and sharply splintered end of a good eight feet worth of four by four came arcing down from the sky to plant itself into the ground close enough for her to reach out and touch it. It landed with a hearty thunk of impact and a disturbing squelch of mud.

It wasn’t hard to figure out where the wooden missile had come from, seeing how the barn suddenly had a sizable hole in the roof that hadn’t been there when she’d gone to bed. Applejack could see wisps of smoke curling from the shingles around the opening by the light of Luna’s moon. She could also see three little fillies standing in the hayloft, courtesy of the open door, and as the ringing in her ears started to fade she could hear the Cutie Mark Crusaders in the midst of what sounded like a heated argument.

“There ain’t no explanation that’s gonna be good enough for this,” she muttered to herself.

“Eeyup,” Big Macintosh agreed, and nearly scared her right out from under her hat. She glared at him for sneaking up on her like that in the middle of night, and grumbled something about him being way too quiet for such a big stallion.

Sure enough, Applejack found her little sister’s accounting of events more than a few bits short of acceptable, or even sensible. Now granted, she would be the first to admit that she wasn’t a scholarly pony, and that her knowledge of astronomy or astrology or whatever was limited to the names of a few constellations. However she was pretty sure that looking at the night sky and trying to fly up into it were two entirely different fields of astro-whatever, and trying to mash them together by strapping fireworks to a telescope just was fated to end badly. And as a matter of fact, had done just so.

Celestia’s sun was just starting to peek over the horizon by the time Applejack finished hauling Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo home, swapping explanations for apologies with their mortified parents, and then getting herself back home. There was nothing to do then but to just make the best of what sleep she had gotten and get right to work. Big Mac had already made some solid headway on the barn, and Applejack was happy to leave him to it. He had a better hoof for carpentry anyway, not that she’d ever say that out loud. So instead she grabbed up the plow and spare yoke, and headed for the fields Mac had been planning to till over that day.

The plow work turned out to be a real pain in the neck, in the most literal sense. Applejack felt like she must have tweaked something during her fall down the stairs, and the yoke around her shoulders wasn't helping. The ache wasn’t content to stay put either, and was currently leading a steady and inexorable march of conquest right up to her skull. What should have been an hour’s worth of work turned into three, and even her normal stubborn determination was ready to raise the white flag by the end of it all.

Applejack could feel every heartbeat in her head as she unhitched herself from the torture device the plow had become, pounding away like her brain was somepony’s personal drum set. Her neck and shoulders ached, and not in the normal, good, burning ache that accompanies hard work. This was more like having a hundred tiny diamond dogs burrowing through her muscles, sharp spikes of pain flaring with every motion. Her legs felt like she’d been dragging the plow through solid rock, and she found herself having trouble focusing on things clearly.

Applejack eventually staggered her way back inside with a mind to do…something or other. She opened the front door, and nearly made a mess of the welcome mat as her stomach lurched at the aroma that came wafting out. Baking apples and pastry, cinnamon and spice, the hint of vanilla. The normally mouthwatering scents ganged up on her in her ragged state and sucker punched her right in the gut, making her insides churn in a truly unsettling way at the mere idea of food.

Choking the rising bile down, Applejack made her way through the ever-thickening cloud of deliciously sickening miasma to the source. Granny Smith was busy bustling around the kitchen, which had turned into the usual warzone it always did whenever the matronly pony got rolling. Five different cutting boards were scattered with three times as many different fruits and vegetables, all sliced or chopped or minced as best suited each. Jugs and jars and bottles and crates and containers of ingredients were stacked, piled, and crammed into whatever space they might fit. And everywhere there was flour, flour, and more flour.

Even as she came to a slightly wobbly-legged halt, Applejack watched Granny flip the oven door open, deftly juggle out six different pies, and just as quickly slip another half dozen in to replace them. The still steaming pies were wrapped in cloth and promptly set into a waiting basket, one of the few objects in sight not so much as dusted with flour. Another four baskets already sat ready, each loaded up with pastries that, Applejack knew without needing to check, would be resting on several bricks that would have been heated up in the oven in order to keep everything nicely warmed.

“Uh, Granny?” Applejack ventured uncertainly. “You do know it’s a chore day right? Ain’t nopony going into town to…”

“There you are Applejack!” Granny Smith cut her off as she finished loading the last basket. “'Bout time child, you want all my hard work to go getting cold? Now help me get these loaded on the cart. I had Applebloom bring it ‘round the back.”

“Granny, I just said…” Applejack tried again, and again the eldest Apple just talked right over her.

“And don’t forget your lunch. You went and started working without breakfast, again.” Granny sniffed with disapproval. “You’re going to start getting all scrawny if you keep that up girl. Just look at yourself, here!” She shoved a thermos into Applejack’s hooves, and then picked up one of the baskets and started lugging it towards the back door.

Applejack regarded the thermos for a moment before daring to crack it open. A familiar, nose wrinkling scent wafted out. Her stomach tried to rally for another venture up her throat and outside, but the pungent aroma clubbed the sensation down before it got much momentum. Granny’s all-purpose-cure-all wasn’t about to let anything be more unpleasant than itself. Applejack grimaced at it, but ultimately decided that she actually felt bad enough to take the vile concoction. It might smell like something dead and baked in the sun for three weeks, and tasted even worse, but it could kick the absolute stuffing out of aches, pains, stomach ailments, coughs, and congestion with equal disdain.

Applejack found herself smiling weakly. Granny had obviously seen the trouble she’d been having, sussed out why, and whipped up a proper excuse to get her granddaughter out of the fields before her stubborn pigheadedness got her hurt. Well more hurt, at any rate. Granny Smith might not be the straightest knife in the drawer, but she was still plenty sharp in her own way.

The trip into town wasn’t fun…not at first anyway. The cart was heavy enough to make her already abused muscles cry for mercy, but eventually the medicine started to kick in. The pain didn’t exactly go away, so much as it lost its freedom of speech. Granny’s concoction flooded through her system like an angry brute squad, bludgeoning down dissension and forcibly imposing a sense of order with ruthless efficiency.

By the time Applejack reached Ponyville, she was feeling so much better, and was intoxicated enough, that she didn’t even really mind that her late start meant all the good spots in the market were already taken. She ambled in a somewhat wavy line for a bit before setting up shop on the outskirts of the town square, and began the joyfully non-strenuous work of trying to convince passing ponies that they just couldn’t possibly make it through the day without a fresh apple pie, tart, fritter or the like.

Even with the less than prime location, Applejack managed to get a steady business going and was generally feeling that the day had nicely turned around on her. Truth however was that she’d merely turned around on it, and the treacherous day took the opening to stab her in the back. There was the sound of shattering glass, and a speed-blurred something came flying out of the house across the street right at her. Applejack had an instant to think ‘Ah crabapples’, and then her head was lit up like her sister’s fireworks display had just gone off inside her skull.

Applejack felt that the blow must have left her concussed, because when her eyes figured out how to open themselves again, she would have sworn that Princess Celestia was standing over her, looking concerned.

“Applejack? Applejack!”

The farm pony’s head slowly turned towards the sound of her name to find a worried, purple face filling her vision.

“Oh, hey there Twi,” she drawled, sounding pretty slurred even to her own ears. She wasn’t sure if that was the head trauma, or just the hooch that was the base ingredient of Granny’s cure-all. Maybe both.

“Man, she does not look so good,” a scratchy voice remarked, prompting Applejack to flop her head to the other side. It took her a bit to make it happen, but she eventually found Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie flanking her.

“Quick, AJ,” Pinkie said seriously. “How many hooves am I holding up?”

Applejack squinted blearily at the party pony. “Um…five?”

“Oh, well then,” Pinkie remarked, sounding relived. “Seems alright to me.”

An odd pressure began to ease itself around Applejack’s head, not unpleasant really, but impossible not to notice. It actually felt kind of nice as it flowed down over the rest of her body, her muscles somewhat relaxing under the sensation. Her gaze tracked skyward as she tried to make some sense of things, and once again she was looking up at what really seemed to be Celestia, the princess’s horn glowing with a soft, golden light.

“Is she alright?” Twilight’s voice swam into her ear.

“She will be,” the apparition of Celestia answered gently. “Her injuries aren’t severe, though I would imagine they are rather…”

The princess cut off as Applejack reached up a hoof and poked her, right in the brisket. Violet eyes blinked down at her, and the farm pony felt her face suddenly heat.

“Oh dang, that really is Celestia, ain’t it?” she asked as her brain started to untangle itself from the knots it had been tied in.

The princess smiled and gave her a soft, musical chuckle. “Yes dear Applejack, it really is me.” She felt the alicorn’s magic flow under her, lifting her up and gently turning her over to set her on her hooves. The world kept right on turning around Applejack for a while, making her wobble. Fortunately, Pinkie and Dash quickly took up positions on either side of her, their shoulders pressing against hers to keep her from toppling until her sense of balance was hauled, kicking and screaming, back to the job. She was vaguely aware of them talking, but something in her head seemed to have not taken well to being set back upright, and her ears were filled with a dull, steady roaring noise that reduced everything around her to a muted buzz of unintelligibility.

Applejack could just make out enough to recognize voices; Dash’s brash tones, Pinkie’s bubbly chatter, the princess’s musical notes, the slightly breathless tint Twilight took on when she was flustered by something. There was also a deep, rich sound that she didn’t recognize at all. Applejack tried to look around for the owner of that voice, though her attention kept getting stuck on things around her; a dog making off with an apple fritter, a gleam of sunlight reflected off a window, a shifting shadow down an alleyway…

There was a sizable crowd surrounding them she realized eventually, already forgetting about the unknown voice. The gawking mob wasn’t too hard to figure out, even with her brains half dashed out. It wasn't every day that the princess just waltzed into town. There was another crowd a bit off from them as well, peering with vulturish interest at something that the press of ponies was blocking from her sight. Celestia’s voice rose slightly, and Applejack watched the princess pass by, parting the sea of ponies before her with just a few words and a determined stride.

The crowd opened, and Applejack got a brief glimpse of a nervous, almost panicked, white coated, blue maned unicorn. Said unicorn seemed to be in immediate danger of being throttled by an irate, grey coated, dark maned earth pony. Applejack’s hearing cleared a bit, enough to catch some of the snarling dialog.

“…utterly sick of your irresponsible partying,” the grey mare was saying, right over the sputtering protests of the unicorn. Then Celestia’s shadow fell over the pair, and they both blinked up at the princess with near identical expressions of surprise that swiftly started to turn into embarrassment.

Everypony was thoroughly engrossed as Celestia calmly broke up the squabble, her voice gentle and soothing as she asked for an explanation for such behavior. The princess patiently listened as the two hastened to answer, often talking right over each other, usually with contradictory comments for something the other had just said. In fact, everypony was so busy watching the princess work that none of them noticed the unfamiliar grey stallion that casually just walked right through the open door of the house across the street.

Nopony except Applejack anyway. She might not literally know everypony in Ponyville like Pinkie Pie did, but she’d lived in the town, well on the outskirts anyway, for her whole life. She was at least familiar with all the faces around town, and she was as certain as the sky was wide that she had never seen that particular unicorn before. It would be rather hard to forget somepony with scars that distinctive.

'So just who the heck is he, and what is he doing sneaking into other pony’s homes?', Applejack had to ask herself.

She managed to back herself out from between Pinkie and Dash without either of her friends noticing. They were too busy watching Celestia gently interrupt the pair before her, their explanations teetering on the edge of breaking out into a rather heated argument. The princess pulled them both back from that edge with a few, well-chosen comments that took the fight right out of both of them, leaving the pair looking ashamed and at a loss for words.

Just as the mysterious stallion before her, Applejack was able to just walk right in through the front door without anypony even glancing her way. The interior of the house was a mess, though she’d seen worse, especially when a few of Pinkie’s more boisterous parties had gotten completely out of hoof. The mysterious unicorn was nowhere to be seen however. A quick circuit of the main floor turned up nothing but more party debris, and she headed upstairs to give the rest of house a look over.

Applejack found the subject of her search in the second floor bedroom, his gaze tracing the interior with slow, steady intensity. She paused for a moment as she came close enough to get a proper look at the fellow, and felt her breath catch in her throat as she really saw how bad the old wounds on his face were. The eye on that side wasn’t just damaged, it was flat out gone, an orb of gleaming metal filling the socket instead.

And it felt like that silvery eye was staring at her, staring right into her as if her skin and flesh were nothing more than panes of glass. It was an uncomfortable, intrusive sensation, and Applejack was more than a little relieved when the unicorn turned his head to regard her with his thankfully normal eye.

The stallion’s metal gaze had knocked her on her backside, emotionally speaking, and it took her a moment to get back up enough suspicion and indignity to jab a hoof at him and demand, “Just what the hay do you think you’re doing in here?”

Applejack blinked at her own words. They had sure come out a whole lot softer and hesitantly then she’d intended. The scarred pony didn’t exactly look like she’d rattled him much...or even a little...or even at all. 'Dang blast it.'

“I suspect much the same as you are,” he answered calmly, already turning his attention back to the room.

“Uh, how do you figure?” Applejack asked.

“We are both motivated by the trespass of another.”

“Uh…well yeah,” Applejack replied lamely. She sighed in frustration at herself, and used the feeling to put a bit more force into her words. “So um, you gunna come quietly or what?” Better, but still not really what she had been going for.

“I suppose that depends…” the unicorn answered, peering intently at a spot on the floor.

“Oh yeah? On what?” the farm pony managed to ask with some belligerence.

“Are you a member of the local law enforcement?” he asked casually.

Applejack hedged. “Err, well, not exactly, no…”

“Then this is your home?” the stranger inquired, nudging the bed over with a bit of magic.

“Well no, but…” she began, but he cut her off.

“You are a friend or family member of the home’s proper owner then?” His magic picked up what seemed to be a small patch of tattered cloth.

“…no,” Applejack admitted shortly.

“Ah,” the unicorn said simply. He made as if to place the cloth scrap away into saddlebags, and then seemed to notice that he wasn’t wearing any. He regarded the strip of fabric a moment, then just rolled it up and tucked it behind one ear. “Then you yourself are trespassing as well, are you not?”

“Okay dang it, maybe I am,” Applejack scowled and stamped a hoof. “But I only did so because I know you’re not from around here. This might not be my home, but this town is, and I’m not about to let some stranger just go walking into pony’s houses. Folks around here watch out for each other, ya hear?”

“I hear you,” the stallion said. “And I can respect that view point. Though I feel the need to point out that Princess Celestia is quite literally right outside this building, and you might well have better achieved your goal of protecting your fellow villager’s property by informing the princess of the unlawful act in question. At the very least, it would have granted whatever action to be taken the measure of lawfully appointed authority.”

“…I…you…uh” Applejack spluttered for a moment, then growled. “I just had my bells rung, all right,” she muttered finally.

“I quite understand,” the stallion replied in a tone that suggested he really did. “In fact, if it helps, I’m perfectly willing to let you take me down to the princess so that you may explain the situation to her.”

Applejack goggled at that. “…what?”

“I’m done here, and Celestia is likely to be interested in what I have discovered. And she seems to be bringing the events outside to their conclusion.”

Applejack blinked, and glanced out the broken window to see the princess lay a comforting wing across the backs of each of the formerly bickering ponies, the now softly crying pair hugging each other tightly.

“Yeah, I guess she is huh?” Applejack agreed, then brought her attention back to the pony before her. He calmly walked over to stand before her, and gave her a look that plainly asked if she was ready to go. “Who are you?”

“Please, call me Rashid,” he answered with a slight bob of his head.

“No offense partner, but that’s kind of an odd name.”

Rashid smiled pleasantly. “None taken. And yourself?”

“Applejack.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Applejack,” he said in formal tones, that for some reason sent a shiver down the farmer’s spine.

“Same to you, I guess,” she replied hesitantly.

“No offense?” Rashid asked with a raised eyebrow, his smile never wavering.

“On that account, I can’t rightly say yet,” Applejack told him with blunt honesty. “Something about you is…I dunno. Off. If I weren’t looking right at you, I’d swear you weren’t even a pony.”

That made the unicorn raise both eyebrows at her, the motion tugging at his scars. His expression became one of consideration.

“Really now? And what would make you say that?”

“I really don’t know,” Applejack admitted, shaking her head. “Something about you just feels…false. Which is double odd, cause I believe your words, twisty as some of them have been. But I don’t believe…you. I dunno how to explain it.”

“Instinct perhaps?”

“Maybe. Or who knows, maybe it’s some weird Element of Harmony thing. Celestia knows, but my life has gotten strange enough since those things became part of it.”

“Hmm, another one?” Rashid said, almost too soft to hear.

“What was that?”

“Sorry, thinking out loud.”

Applejack glared at Rashid for a long beat, her suspicions about him growing by the second. Something was just not right here, something she just couldn’t put her hoof on, but which she swore was staring her right in the face.

“What are you?” she demanded, her mouth seeming to run all on its own. “You ain’t a pony. I don’t know how I know it, but dang it, I know it.”

Rashid tilted his head slightly as he regarded her, calculations clearly running through his mind. Whatever it was he was figuring up, he reached the conclusion quickly enough.

“Very well, if you really must know. You are quite right, I am no pony. I’m a human.”

Applejack blinked at that, and suddenly felt something in her head click into place.

“A hu…oh dang blast it, that’s what it is!” She exclaimed in understanding. “That’s what it is about you, you got the same feel about you that I got from…” She cut herself off, suddenly wondering just how much she really ought to be giving away.

“From Dresden?” Rashid supplied, making the point moot.

“Oh…you know 'bout him, huh?”

“My dear pony, where I come from, the circles I run in, it’s hard not to know of him.” He flashed her a knowing smile. “It is extremely hard not to…”

“Heh, yeah I guess he doesn’t exactly try hard to keep his head down huh?”

Rashid chuckled heartily, and made to slip past her. Applejack let him, turning to follow him down the stairs. “That is a rather monumental understatement.”

They had to pause at the front door to let the two formally bickering ponies come inside, the pair too busy passing apologies back and forth to even take notice of the strangers in their home. Rashid watched them walk by with a slightly impressed expression before heading outside and making a direct line for the princess, Applejack hurrying along behind him.

Celestia looked up from within the mob of ponies surrounding her, her gaze falling upon Rashid. Applejack couldn’t see the look on the scarred face of the faux pony, but it couldn’t have been anything good given the effect it had on the princess. Faster than Applejack would have reckoned it possible without magic, Celestia had gracefully extracted herself from her adoring subjects, gathered up Rashid, Twilight, Pinkie, Dash, and Applejack herself, and had the whole lot of them on the move. The farm pony had raised a brief note of concern about her apple stand, only to watch the whole thing vanish in a flash of golden light.

“Uh, thanks…” Applejack commented uncertainly.

“It’s alright Applejack,” Celestia told her kindly. “You’ll find it back at your farm.”

The princess then turned her attention to Rashid, her horn once again igniting with magical power, and Applejack felt an odd sense of pressure drop over her ears for an instant. It cleared quickly enough, but it left her sense of hearing oddly warped, sounds coming to her as if from the far end of a giant metal tube. Then Celestia spoke, and her voice was comfortingly normal sounding, even as the background noise of Ponyville remained twisted.

“Was that enough time for you?” she asked Rashid.

“Yes, thank you,” he answered with a nod, his voice coming to her normally as well, and Applejack figured that whatever the spell had been, it didn’t affect their group. Or maybe it only affected their group. It was tough enough to wrap her head around magic on the best of days, and today sure wasn't one of those.

“Princess?” Twilight spoke up, looking a bit taken aback. “That conversation you had with Vinyl and Octavia…it was just a distraction?”

“Why does it have to be just one thing Twilight?” Celestia replied with a motherly smile, making her student let out a little ‘oh’ of understanding.

“So you were expecting him to go snooping around then?” Applejack asked, feeling like she was missing a large chunk of whatever story she had just been plopped down in.

Celestia’s wings moved in a shrug. “Somepony needed to, and if I had it would only have drawn more attention to the situation. As it stands now, I believe most ponies will be willing to put the whole incident down as just one more argument between two roommates who haven’t quite managed to find the courage to admit their true feelings for each other.”

“Yeah but, what about that horrible shrieky noise?” Rainbow Dash asked, and a shudder seemed to pass through her. “I mean that was…not normal,” she finished softly.

“Hmm, no,” Celestia allowed, though she didn’t seem too concerned about it. “But from the context of some of the arguments I heard, it would seem that Vinyl Scratch’s exploration of the limits of music have often produced some very unusual sounds. Some time to allow the sharpness of the details to fade into memory, and I should think most will be perfectly willing to rationalize the event away as something relatively normal.”

That brought a short bark of amusement from Rashid, earning him the attention of everypony.

“Sorry,” he said mirthfully. “It just amazes me some times to find what is and is not universal. I’m not sure if I should be comforted or alarmed to learn that self-delusion for the sake of maintaining normalcy is not something unique to my own people.”

“It would be an interesting philosophical topic,” Celestia mused. “However, now is probably not the best time to delve into it.”

“No, indeed not,” Rashid admitted, his smile fading. They walked in silence for a moment before he spoke again. “I fear that something dark might have followed me here.”

“I see,” Celestia said simply. She took a deep breath, and released it as a long sigh. “Do you know what, exactly?”

“Yes, I am fairly certain.” The scarred stallion’s expression turned grim, and it made Applejack glad to have the princess between herself and him. The look was a rather…intimidating. “While other possibilities do exist, most are far too unlikely, and one far too likely.” He let out a long sigh.

“Would you just spit it out already!” Dash demanded. “You’re killing me over here!”

Rashid nodded, and though his expression remained foreboding, Applejack thought she saw the slightest hint of an amused light in his eye. “It is most likely a vampire, one of the Black Court. And one of considerable age and power, to be awake and moving about in the daylight.”

Applejack felt a chill settle into her guts, and was annoyed by it. It didn’t seem fair that after dealing with things like a demon possessed-Trixie or the stomach-turning horror of that 'Walks Behind You' monster, that the mere mention of some new dark creature should set her nerves jangling. She ought to be getting used to such things by now, shouldn’t she? Somehow though, after learning just how bad some of the things out there really could be, it just made things even worse. It really had been easier when she could just laugh such things off as old mares' tales and ghost stories.

The dread feeling however only had a few seconds to sink its teeth in before it was banished by a simple, and rather unconcerned, “Oh, is that all?” from the princess.

Applejack blinked up in surprise at Celestia. For that matter, so did all her friends. So did Rashid. Open surprise did not seem to be a natural look for the fellow, and it was actually rather comical to see it on his features.

“I…can only hope and assume that, from your casual attitude, you have some means of dealing with the creature swiftly and easily?” Rashid spoke, his voice sounding pensive.

“I can't say I know about this Black Court specifically, but I have well dealt with vampires before,” Celestia nodded. “And I saw to it that their kind would never again find Equestria a feeding ground.”

“So then the old stories…?” Twilight spoke, her tone questioning.

“Are mostly exaggeration and fantasy,” Celestia answered. “Mostly. There are some bits of truth, and one of them is of utmost importance.”

“Which?” Twilight asked. Pinkie Pie beat the princess to the response however.

“Sunlight!” the party pony bubbled as she bounced along. “That’s gotta be it, right? All the stories talk about sunlight making vampires go ‘oh no, it burns!’ and then POOF, they’re dust.”

“Exactly so,” Celestia said, nodding in approval. “A few unexpected midnight sunrises saw to most of them. As for the rest, I…discouraged them by ruining their food supply.”

“Uh…but aren’t vampires supposed to feed on…on blood?” Twilight asked. “On pony blood, right?”

“Vile as it is, yes,” Celestia said. “And so I saw to it that they would find that blood as harmful to them as the light of the sun itself.”

“Whoa,” Dash said slowly. “You...changed everypony’s blood?”

“Not exactly, no,” Celestia replied. “More precisely, I changed the sun. I enspelled the light and the power of it to last on, to maintain the quality within it that was harmful to vampires. So it was that the very grass and trees and all other plants became infused with that power as they took in the light, and were able to pass it along when they themselves were consumed.”

Applejack whistled, impressed. She might know next to nothing of magic, but she had a hunch that such a feat wasn’t exactly a bit of everyday spell-casting, even by the standard of the princess herself. The absolutely dumbstruck expression of awe on Twilight’s face seemed to back that intuition up. And Rashid…well Rashid had that look of somepony running calculations again. Only this time, he looked like somepony facing a problem, and having no idea where to even begin working it out.

Without a word, his magic floated the rolled bit of cloth from behind his ear and passed it over to the princess. Celestia accepted the scrap with a curious expression, which quickly shifted into a look of understanding.

“Well, this makes things even easier,” she commented.

“Perhaps,” Rashid said, his tone cautious. “You must understand that the Black Court has been all but eradicated on my world. Those that remain do so without any major power base to support them, and their weaknesses are widely known. Any that manage to survive long enough to gain the kind of power they would need to be active during the day…”

“Have not done so by being stupid or reckless,” Celestia finished for him, nodding. “We must assume that the creature will have made preparations for unexpected company.”

“I would assume that it would not find our company unexpected,” Rashid said.

“You think it might have left this scrap behind on purpose?”

“It’s possible,” he replied. “It would make good bait. It’s too small and fragile to be the focus of any heavy spellwork. It’s not of the creature itself, which added to its delicate nature, would make it nearly impossible to use to target the vampire with a magical attack. It’s good for little more than tracking, and it’s a focus with a potentially short window of use. To escape the spell, the creature has only to discard the article of clothing that the piece came from. It could even be extra cautious and burn the clothing, giving the spell nothing to locate at all.”

“Good bait for a trap indeed,” Celestia mused. “Its only practical use is to lead us somewhere, and if we are to use it, we must do so quickly, without the chance to plan in detail or make lengthy preparations. Easy enough to end up rushing headlong into trouble, if our quarry is ready for us.”

Rashid nodded, and they both lapsed into a contemplative silence. Applejack and the rest followed along quietly, a sense of exclusion from the conversation keeping even Pinkie’s mouth still for the moment. The farm pony wasn’t even sure what it was exactly that made her suddenly reluctant to pitch in. Somehow, the discussion had become something just for Celestia and Rashid.

And that rather irked her. After everything they’d done for Equestria, after taking on the burden of being the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, after risking their necks time and again for the good of the kingdom and doing so willingly, without even asking for reward or recognition or compensation, and this pony-posing human just drops right in and nudges them out?

Her mouth just started speaking out of sheer contrary stubbornness. "Pardon, princess, but... well, it doesn't seem like there's much to think about, so far as using that there scrap goes."

“Oh?” Celestia asked, giving her an appraising look. “Please, continue.”

“Well, as I understand it, this here vampire fella is pretty dangerous. I mean, even if it can’t drink nopony’s blood, that ain’t the same as saying it can’t hurt nopony, right?”

“True enough,” the princess acknowledged grimly.

“Well then, suppose it goes and tries again, ya know, just to make sure that the first time wasn’t a fluke or something,” AJ went on. “And it gets the same result. And maybe it gets angry. Maybe it takes its frustrations out on whatever is nearby.”

Celestia stopped walking. Everypony else stopped with her. Applejack watched as the princess took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and let it out slowly. Her eyes snapped back open, and there was something dangerous in those violet orbs.

“An excellent point, Applejack,” the princess said, her voice hard. “That…cannot be allowed.”

“So then, we track the creature down immediately?” Rashid asked, though his tone suggested that the answer was obvious to him.

“Yes,” Celestia answered as they reached the front door to the library. The door swung open in a glow of golden power, and the princess practically stalked inside. “We will find it, and we will make sure it never hurts anypony…ever again.”

Chapter 5

From high above, the Everfree Forest was far less imposing and threatening in appearance than normal. Under the bright, late morning sun, the untamable expanse of wilderness seemed little different than any other woodland. It was rather beautiful in fact, the vivid green of the trees spreading out for miles below; it reminded Celestia of why it had once been the center of the fledgling state Equestria had grown from, and why her sister and herself had built their first true home here.

“I am afraid there is nothing of substance I can freely share,” Rashid’s voice cut into her musings, and the princess glanced sideways at the wizard floating along beside her in the golden light of her magic.

“Paradox?” Celestia asked simply.

“Some, yes,” the Gatekeeper answered, his eyes opening even as the sense of temporal energy swirling about him faded. “But mostly, the events to come are too uncertain. A major divergence of possibilities lies ahead of us, and it is mucking up any clarity of the events surrounding it.”

“Mucking up?” Celestia asked, a small smile curling the corners of her lips. “Is that the technical term for it where you come from?”

Rashid snorted. “Where I come from, time magic of any sort is forbidden under pain of death,” he stated casually. “Even when one’s position comes with a built in loop hole to circumvent the Law, it doesn’t come with an official manual.”

“Ah, so that would be your terminology for it then?” the Princess chuckled. Rashid was silent for a moment, his expression pensive.

“Sometimes, I feel that we with power take ourselves far too seriously,” he finally replied. “I think it is good to occasionally stop worrying so greatly about seeming dignified all the time.”

“Hence, ‘mucking up’?”

“Hence, leaping bodily upon one’s subjects while in disguise.”

“That was a necessity of the disguise in question,” Celestia replied with mock seriousness. "I was merely staying true to the role."

"And the necessity of said role?" Rashid inquired, earning a small sigh from the princess.

"I was uncertain about you," she admitted. "I wished to get a sense of who you were, and without my position or power influencing your behavior."

"So you wished to see how I might conduct myself around the common pony?" Rashid asked with suppressed amusement. "And you chose Pinkie Pie as your disguise?"

"Perhaps not so much the common pony," Celestia allowed. "But more how you would behave towards those with less power than yourself, especially towards one that could potentially come across as bothersome."

"So you were trying to provoke me?"

"A little," Celestia admitted shamelessly.

"Shall I then assume that, seeing as you didn't banish me from your realm, that I passed your little test?"

"By all mean, assume away."

Rashid chuckled deeply as she let some air spill from her wings. Her tracking spell indicated they were getting close, and she angled her flight path down into a lazy series of wide turns to help kill her speed and altitude, as well as help her get a sense of just where the spell was leading them. Beside her, Rashid watched the forest rising towards them with a casual ease. “I must say, you handle this far better than most earth bound individuals would.”

“Experience,” Rashid replied with a shrug. He waved a hand vaguely at the soft, golden glow encasing him. “Admittedly, this is new, but overall, it is not that far removed from a mode of transport I use with some regularity.” He glanced down at his feet, and then passed them at the ground below. “It is a little unnerving to have nothing beneath me, but what practical difference is there between being supported by magic directly, and being supported by a carpet that is itself being held up by magic?”

Celestia blinked, glancing at the Gatekeeper as if uncertain if he was being serious or not. “You enchanted a carpet to fly?”

Rashid took a deep, thoughtful breath. “Tradition I’m afraid,” he said ruefully. “Could be worse though.”

“Oh?” Celestia prompted.

“Indeed, in some parts of my world, broomsticks somehow became the item of choice. At least a carpet is comfortable.”

The Princess let out a somewhat disbelieving little laugh, earning a wry smile from Rashid. "Do I even dare to ask how you plan to reach the ground safely?"

"Perhaps it is best not to chance it," Rashid answered with overt seriousness. "Knowledge can be dangerous after all." He considered the approaching terrain below, and his tone became actually serious. "We are close then?"

"Less than a minute out, I would estimate," Celestia informed him. "Are you certain you'd rather not just accompany me?"

"I am," the Gatekeeper assured her. "Perhaps I have been spending too much time among the Sidhe, but I feel a bit of subterfuge, as well as holding a few options in reserve, is rarely detrimental when dealing with one's enemies."

"What about when dealing with one's allies?" the princess asked innocently.

"Even more so there," Rashid replied solemnly, and Celestia gave her head a small, amused shake.

"Are you ready?"

"As I will ever be," Rashid sighed. "Even experience only goes so far."

"Well then it is lucky you do not see the need to remain dignified at all times," Celestia said brightly. "Though I promise not to tell anypony if you scream like a little filly."

Rashid had just enough time to give the princess a flat, 'officially unamused' look before the glow of her magic winked out from around him. He dropped like a rock, his arms pulling in tight to his body even as his feet pointed down into the fall, turning his whole body into a living dart that shot down towards the forest. Despite his earlier assurances, and his obvious magical prowess, the princess still felt a niggling sense of worry as she watched him plummet, his fall not slowing in the slightest before he vanished below the trees.

Doing her best to put her concern aside, she refocused her attention on her tracking spell. Glancing down along the slope to where the spell seemed to be leading her, Celestia considered her approach. The destination was an extra thick clump of trees, growing so close that their branches were practically woven together. It would be dark beneath those limbs, even compared to the rest of the forest. A suitable if cliched location for a creature of the night to take refuge she supposed. It would be easiest, and safest, to find a suitable opening in the surrounding landscape to make her transition beneath the canopy, and then proceed cautiously on hoof the rest of the way.

Celestia however found that, at the moment, she was a bit lacking in her usual store of patience and practicality. While she didn't place any blame exactly on the wizard, she also couldn't deny that events in Equestria had taken something of a darker turn ever since Dresden had stumbled into her little corner of the universe. The return of the Nightmare, the reemergence of the Order Triune, the summoning of a greater outsider not just once, but twice, the calling up of demons and pony sacrifice. She and her sister had worked hard to spare this world from the horror of such things, to push that kind of darkness out and away, and she was very loath indeed to see it try to come creeping back in. Equestria may never be a perfect paradise, but whatever issues it might have, Celestia was determined to limit those issues to those caused by the natural population. Other worldly and inter-dimensional trouble makers were not welcome.

So instead of being perfectly sensible and cautious in her approach, Celestia chose to engage in an unusual bit of haste, topped with a helping of shock and awe. As she swooped down across the tree tops her horn blazed, and she flared her wings to kill her speed before she vanished in a flash of brilliant, pure light. She arrived from her teleport a bare inch from the forest floor, and she arrived in a wash of flame and a detonation of displaced air. Smoking and smoldering detritus was kicked into the air by the blast, and the sudden release of heat caused the branches above her to raise up and away, briefly letting in a few bare strands of sunlight that stabbed down into the shadowy darkness like blazing spears. The thunderous echo of her appearance raced through the trees, leaving behind it a deathly silence, though one that was quickly mirrored by her own as she beheld the terrain around her, and the creature lurking within the center of it.

The vampire sat within a field of destruction and ruin. It had ripped apart a circular section of the forest yards wide, and it had brought death upon anything and everything unlucky enough to be caught within. Plants had been uprooted and shredded. Small woodland creatures had been savagely crushed and ground underhoof into bright red stains. The trees within the space had been savaged, the bark flayed loose and great gouges of wood clawed out. Larger animals had been caught as they tried to flee, the earth churned up where they had tried to resist being hauled back to their deaths. Bone and flesh and gore-smeared fur were all that remained, nothing large enough to readily identify the beast it may have come from.

And that was just the first layer of the atrocity laid out before her. The destruction was not random, not merely the savage indulgence of violence for its own sake. It had been put to foul purpose. Twisted symbols had been carved into the ruined trees. The scattering of bones and entrails had been laid out in a system of deliberate asymmetrical patterns. Lines of blood flowed to join the various elements together, and the deaths of the animals that had been sacrificed marked out the circumference of a circle, the lingering echo of the moment the life was brutally ripped from them drifting upon the air. Two larger circles had been gouged into the earth around the ring of death, the dirt moist and reeking of blood and other life fluids.

It was a powerful summoning circle, one built upon death and destruction, one meant to be fueled by the darkest kinds of magic known.

The vampire had not risen at her appearance. Instead it merely turned its hooded head towards her from where it sat, its legs folded beneath it, its arms held out to either side. The long, slender fingers of its hands were bent and twisted into complex forms, the many joints holding impossibly precise angles. Shadows seemed to cloak the creature, unnaturally deep and dark even beneath the thick canopy of the forest.

It was not so dark as to spare Celestia the image of the vampire’s features. It’s face was exposed beneath the hood it wore, ragged strips of cloth hanging down around its neck. It was a corpse’s face that stared up at her, the thin flesh cracked like old, old parchment. Its lips were drawn so tightly that its filthy teeth shown even with its mouth shut. Its nose looked to have just rotten away, leaving a crusted, gaping hole behind. It had no eyes, merely dark, empty pits with grey bone showing around the edges of the sockets.

Celestia hesitated at the sight of the thing. There was just such an overwhelming sense of wrongness about the vampire. It had been a long time since she had last encountered something as foul and unspeakably blasphemous towards everything good and natural as the Dark One Always Behind had been, and she had not expected to encounter anything close to as unsettling so soon again. The encounters stirred up old memories, events and deeds that she had buried deep in her mind long ago. She had fought to push the necessity of such actions away from Equestria, and had put in the work of lifetimes to keep them away. She was not about to let this or any other horror get any purchase back into her world.

The vampire regarded her in silence for a long moment, and then its thin lips curved up in a leering mockery of a smile. It rose with a disturbing grace, the flowing motion of its body something alien to witness. It was not really that tall for a creature standing upright on just two legs, certainly nowhere near the towering height of the Gatekeeper. And yet the presence of the thing loomed behind and above it, a sense of something vast and terrible just out of sight, as if what stood before her was not the entirety of the creature.

“Well now…” the vampire spoke in a voice of sand and buzzing insects. “Not whom I was expecting. And yet I cannot say I find this a disappointment. Indeed, I was even now dwelling upon the question of what sort of power could have so poisoned this world to my kind. And surprise, the answer does simply pop into existence before me.”

“And what, I do wonder, shall you do now that you have your answer, vampire?” Celestia asked, her voice calm and level.

“Please, call me Dnias,” the dark creature said, the unpleasant leer twisting its mouth further to revel even more teeth. It paused expectantly, and only grinned wider as the princess remained silent. “Oh come now, if you can’t even pretend to be civil with me, how can you expect me to play along with answering your question?”

“…Celestia,” she replied after a long beat.

“See there, we can still play, for a bit longer,” Dnias rasped. “Perhaps we might even learn something before one of us lays dead upon the ground.”

“This need not end in violence,” she told it, despite a somewhat contrary desire to call down fire upon the creature and its blasphemous working, to burn everything until there was nothing left but smoke and ash and lingering memory. She held back, for the moment.

Dnias laughed, a sound of cracking glass and grinding rock. “That seems rather optimistic, Celestia. Rather childishly so in fact. If you came not to end me, then what is it you hope to accomplish?”

“I will see you gone from these lands, before you harm anypony else.”

“I have not harmed any…pony. At least, nothing more than a little scratch.”

“Yes, and that alone has kept my wrath from you thus far,” Celestia informed Dnias coldly as she started forward.

"Ohhhh, how very lucky for me," it crooned sarcastically, its weight shifting. Celestia's horn erupted into searing light, her wings snapping open, and the great canvas of her wingspan caught and reflected the glow of her magic, and of the weak, ambient sunlight she gathered around her, directing both light and magic towards the vampire.

Dnias hissed like a furious serpent, an arm coming up to shield its face. The cloak of shadows around it suddenly bubbled and sizzled like grease spilled into a fire, and then the darkness was violently ripped away from the vampire as Celestia poured forth more of her power and light. The creature staggered back, smoke beginning to seep from under its hood. She pressed forward, and the vampire gave ground, turning its face from her, hunching its shoulders protectively.

Celestia came upon the outermost ring of the circle as she pushed the vampire away, a flare of magic tossing aside several of the grisly spell components. A wing tip brushed against one of the flayed trees, and the wood smoked and smoldered, obscuring the symbols gouged within. There was a disharmonious shriek against her arcane senses as the outer circle came apart. That done, she let her power relax, her wings folding back against her body. The unnatural darkness rushed back in around Dnias, the creature’s body shuddering in a hundred tiny spasms. It turned its gaze upon her, and the sockets of its eyes were no longer empty. Twin fires of a deep, harsh violet hue burned within the skull-like face of the vampire, crackling lines of black shadow writhing within the flames.

“What do you want?” Dnias snapped, its voice rattling with a rapid, clicking sound.

“To know why you have come here,” Celestia demanded with as much authority as she knew how to use. Her voice rang through the air, power in the words making the trees sway and leaves fall. “To know if any others came with you, and if any allies of yours could follow you here.”

“And why should I answer any of that?” the vampire spat, shifting further from her. “What guarantee do I have that you will not destroy me afterwards?”

“You have none,” Celestia responded sternly, taking another stride forward. “But know that if you will not speak, I will not just destroy you. I will unmake you. I will crush your power, and bind you here in the Everfree with the very circle you have crafted. You will be trapped, unable to leave this little demesne of ruin you have made for yourself. How long do you suppose you will be able to hold your mind together as the thirst takes you? How long till you slip into madness at the torment? And how long will you continue on after that insanity is all you know?”

The spectral fire of Dnias’s gaze burned brighter, the flames contracting to searing pinpricks that were painful to look upon. It regarded her in absolute silence, in complete stillness for several long moments. The shadows around it writhed in furious motion, and then they too went still. And then, Dnias smiled.

“I see,” it crooned like a swarm of insects. The flames faded, leaving its sockets empty voids again. “You surprise me, to level such a threat of doom. It sits ill upon you, and yet I think you do mean the words. It would be a torment upon you as well, to engage in such tactics, even against one you revile as much as me. But you are willing to sacrifice much for this world, aren’t you?”

“Everything I am,” Celestia confirmed. “To protect those who are dear to me, everything.”

“How noble of you,” Dnias laughed. “How self-sacrificing. How sad, to have power such as yours, and shackle yourself to the pathetic, fleeting lives of the insignificant.”

Celestia’s hoof struck the ground with a detonation of sound, and the vampire flinched away. “I care not to listen to your judgments. Keep your twisted values to yourself, monster.” She pressed forward, nearing the next ring of the circle. “Answer me, before my patience runs out.”

“Very well then,” Dnias sighed, the dusted quality of its voice suddenly sounding bored and resigned. “You are entirely no fun Celestia. The answers you seek: For the sake of the game, no, and very much yes.”

The princess paused, somewhat taken aback by the shift of the vampire's tone. “What game?”

“The game Celestia,” Dnias replied, suppressed glee dancing just behind the words. “The only game that actually matters. The one that has been played since the beginning, the one played for…all.”

“That is not an answer,” Celestia said.

“Isn’t it?” the vampire asked. “Do you truly not know? I speak of the struggle for everything that is, that was, that will be. All.”

The princess paused as a chill settled over her. “You’re a pawn of the Outsiders,” she said softly, the words falling from her lips as the dreadful certainty of the statement took hold of her. There was too much coincidence in a creature of such darkness just happening upon Equestria, right on the heels of the Watcher of the Wall as he came to investigate the recent breaching of the universal barrier.

“An ally,” Dnias corrected.

“A fool,” Celestia shot back. “If you believe you will benefit in any way from that alliance.”

“Ah, but that is all part of the game Celestia,” Dnias smirked. “I know they will betray me, and they know I will betray them. But who shall make that move first?”

“What could you possibly gain that is worth it?”

“What else? Power.”

“Power such as that which you now seek will unmake you,” Celestia said. “It will cost you dearly to even try to learn, and if you can claim it, it will change you, and not for the better. Even one such as yourself can still fall lower. You would truly damn yourself even further than what you already have?”

“There is nothing I would not consider,” the creature confirmed. “I’ll take power however I can, so long as I think I can truly make it mine.” It took a careful step back, and it's foot settled upon the inner curve of the middle circle. Power surged, and the circle sprang to life just before Celestia reached it. It stuttered and sparked a bit, the damage she'd done to the outermost layer of the working obviously disrupting what remained. Dnias however showed itself to be no second rate spell caster as the circle stabilized under it's guiding will, the creature adapting rather impressively to such a disruptive alteration to its work.

"This will not protect you from me," Celestia informed the vampire impassively as she studied the magical barrier. It was not merely a wall against energy, but against flesh and thought as well. It was strongly made, even without an outer circle to bolster it. It was not however that much of an obstacle to her, not if she were to draw upon her full power. She hesitated though. Her strength was not what it had been, not since her injury from, and resulting battle with, the Dark One Always Behind. Recovering the degree of power she had spent in those two incidents was going to take the span of years still, and she wasn't exactly ready to throw another decade or two onto that time period without true necessity. So instead of just hammering her way through, she took a moment to truly feel out the circle, testing its design for weaknesses. Spending minutes now to avoid spending years later by finessing the problem instead of overpowering it was a far wiser tradeoff as far as she was concerned.

"Not for very long, no," Dnias agreed as it returned to the center of the circle, empowering the inner ring as it returning to its original sitting position. "But long enough."

"Long enough for what?" Celestia demanded, but the vampire's only response for a leering grin. Then its head dropped, and she could all but feel it dismiss her from its attentions as it focused on whatever spell it was crafting.

The princess paused again, her mind racing as she considered her options. Throwing her full power, such as it was at the moment, at the barrier could bring the thing down in seconds. It would also set her recovery back, and given the nature of the threats that had recently been invading Equestria, that could very well prove disastrous in the long term. Even with Luna returned and the Elements of Harmony awakened again, Celestia found it difficult to consider further draining her own power, even if only temporarily. She had gotten used to having that power, to holding it ready and knowing how few things out there in the universe and beyond could really stand up to her full might. That power had long been a comforting fallback, one she never really wanted to use, but just to have held at the ready. Not having her full strength available was disconcerting, especially during what was proving to be a time of unusual turmoil.

Her reluctance however was forced aside as Dnias uttered a sudden string of harsh, consonant heavy words, and an patch of air above the creature simply vanished into an inky void. The space wasn't merely dark. It was utterly empty, the complete blackness that indicated the absence of any substance or energy. Around the edge of the void, the air began to churn and boil with a dark, miasmic mist. Celestia didn't need to feel the vile, alien power that the circles were shielding her from to know what was happening. Dnias was calling to the Outsiders, was opening a portal by which to allow them access to Equestria, and by extension, the rest of reality. They were trying to use her world as a means to circumvent the Outer Gates, and if successful, they would bring suffering and death on a scale the likes of which ponykind had no words to adequately convey. No matter what it cost her, she could not allow it.

So ignoring her reservations, Celestia drew forth her true might, reaching down into the blazing wellspring of energy within her. Like the sun she commanded, in proper moderation, her power was that of life and vitality. It could promote growth and health, banish the cold and darkness, inspire hope and happiness. In excess though, it turned into a force of death and destruction on a terrible scale.

The grass beneath her hooves began to smolder as Celestia's horn glowed, brighter and brighter as she focused her efforts. She reached out slowly with her mind as the power continued to build, brushing across the barrier before her to seek out a weakness. She didn't have time to scour the entirety of the circle and locate the weakest link, but she took a few seconds to find a spot where the integrity was a bit lessened. The barrier flared into visibility as her power peaked, the pressure of so much energy pressing against the circle with considerable force. Her head lowered, and the tip of her horn touched the barrier.

The resulting explosion could be felt back in Ponyville.

Celestia's wings beat, blowing aside the worst of the dust and ash. The circle was gone...as was all vegetation for several yards...as was the ground for several feet. A blackened, smoking crater marred the earth beneath her, and the princess hovered forward until she could place her hooves back upon level ground. All around her the forest smoldered in burning patches, the rising smoke slowly eclipsing the sun that had been let in when the surroundings trees had been stripped of their leaves.

Before her, the final barrier of the circle remained, brilliant arcs of violet energy crackling across its surface as it stuttered. Within, Dnias was hunched over, the vampire's form quivering with effort, eyes once again blazing with unnatural light, the spectral fires burning so bright and hot that the dry flesh of its face blackened and peeled, revealing another half inch of greyed skull beneath.

Celestia found herself begrudgingly impressed. Holding together the remains of a circle that had been so badly damaged was no minor feat. If the vampire's decayed appearance wasn't proof enough of its age and experience, such a display of willpower and skill was. Its efforts, however impressive though, were futile. Already she could see the portal shrinking, the crippled circle no longer sufficient to the task of bridging the dimensions between Equestria and the Outside.

Still, no reason to take chances. Selecting a fallen stick from the ground, Celestia gave the broken branch a little flick with her magic, sending it tumbling across the plane of the final circle. There was a crackling snap against her senses, and then a sudden vile wash of foul energy as the barrier collapsed, letting loose the gathered power within. Despite the complete failure of the circle though, the portal did not immediately vanish. It quivered, a sharp, shrieking sensation against her awareness, it's presence a blight upon the very fabric of reality.

"Long enough," Dnias repeated darkly, the vampire's dry, rasping tone overlaid with another voice. A deep, smooth, frighteningly familiar voice, a voice that was unsettlingly ill suited to a creature as dark and vile as the one who spoke it. "Thrice now does my presence grace this insignificant world. Mark this occasion well, Pretender to Grace, for it shall be the beginning of your greatest failure."

"Normally I might be tempted to command thou to get thee behind me," Celestia all but growled as she gathered her power again. "Though it seems a bit redundant in your case."

Her eyes slid over to the portal. It was collapsing in on itself, but slowly, hesitantly. Somehow the Dark One Always Behind was holding it open from the other side, if only barely. Despite the impressive display of raw, mystic strength though, the effort was a failing one. Already the passage was too weak to permit a being with the power of a Walker to slip into the mortal realm. But, again, there was no point in taking chances, not with Outsiders. Her horn flared as she reached for the gateway.

Dnias exploded into motion, a streaking blur that crossed the scant distance between them faster than the blinking of an eye, faster than the beat of a hummingbird's wing. It was with only a bit of hyperbole to compare the vampire's strike to that of a lighting bolt.

It still wasn't fast enough. The raking fingers that had lunged for her throat instead found her horn as Celestia parried the strike. Horn and hand didn't quite meet as the respective power behind each flared in protest, the vampire's own dark power and the bolstering strength of the Walker too much of an antithesis to Celestia's own magic for the two to come into direct contact. The repulsion of the opposing energies caused them both to stagger for the briefest of instants.

During that instant, Celestia felt the portal pulse, felt the surge of power that came pouring out like the breakers before a ship. The Dark One Always Behind perhaps could not make use of the tentative passageway, but something was coming through. Before she could recover enough to refocus however the vampire was once again on the offensive, supernaturally swift and powerful blows streaking for her even as the princess deftly blocked and parried with horn, hoof, and magic. Dnias had no grace or elegance, the creature's assault one of pure brutal strength and animalistic savagery. The attack was unlikely to cause her any real harm before she managed to find and exploit an opening in the ruthless yet sloppy advance, but it was costing her precious seconds. It was stalling her, forcing her to waste time and focus on defending herself while whatever abomination from beyond tried to force its way through the portal. If she couldn't turn the exchange around very soon...

A pillar of concentrated force and entropy slammed into the vampire, blasting through its cloak of shadows, catching it in one shoulder and sending it hurtling bodily away. The magical strike tore at the creature's body, unmaking both flesh and power alike in a burst of heat and a spray of black, glittering dust. An arm went sailing in a high arc, the stump where it had connected to the vampire's shoulder leaving a trail of sparkling motes as the terrible, destructive magic continued to chew away at it. Dnias struck the ground a bare second later, the angle of the blow not imparting much upward momentum. The creature bounced in an eruption of dirt, leaves, and the glittering dust of its disintegrating flesh. It slammed up against a tree with a terrible cracking report of shattering bone. And yet it still managed to react, the claw like fingers on its remaining limb digging into the wood of the trunk and hauling itself aside just in time to avoid the second lance of spirit and water magic. The strike bored through the tree in a burst of splinters and dust, the trunk exploding like a melon beneath a sledgehammer.

Celestia's gaze flickered over towards the Gatekeeper as he strode forward from concealment, the veil around him dropping away as he focused his will and magic upon his offensive. He didn't glance at her, or the portal, his attention wholly upon the vampire. He walked with a deliberate, unhurried pace, his expression distant and remote, his staff held loose in one, long fingered hand, his other held up before him as if reaching out to part a curtain. His false eye blazed, moving independently of his living eye, and Celestia realized with some amazement that he was watching both what was, and what might be, his mind focused both on the now and upon the most immediate probabilities. While it wasn't exactly the first time she'd seen such use of temporal magic, seeing it employed by a mortal was something new and unheard of.

Fascinating though the spectacle was, it was just one more thing she did not have time for. She tore her gaze away even as Rashid swung his staff, fingers twirling the slender shaft of wood to catch the cloud of poisonous vapor that Dnias had sent racing towards the Gatekeeper in streams of twisting wind. The wizard's parry caught up the gas as if the cloud was a bolt of cloth, casting it aside. Putting the fight out of mind and trusting Rashid to keep Dnias busy for the time being, Celestia brought her attention back upon the portal, just as the opening swelled almost like a living thing, and with a sickening, heaving motion, disgorged a nightmarish affront to nature upon the earth.

She swore, under her breath, but still the princess briefly indulged in a few choice words that would have shocked any who knew her that she even was aware of such language. As she verbally vented her frustration Celestia slashed her horn at the portal, her magic lashing out to disrupt the construct. There was the briefest sense of resistance from the other side as the Dark One Always Behind strained to hold the gateway open, but it was a token gesture at that point. The energy requirements for such a working fell largely, rather laughably so, on the mortal side of reality. It would have taken power several orders of magnitude greater than her own to have resisted her efforts to close the portal from the Outside. With another discordant shriek of protesting energy, the abominable passage ceased to be.

Unfortunately the same could not be said for the...thing...that had crossed over. It's body was a long, tapering cylinder possessing five pointed, radial symmetry. It had a mass of short, thick tentacles instead of feet at the narrow base of its body. Ten impossible long and slender arms curved up from the wide apex of its torso, before bending back down without any discernible joint. It's wide, spidery hands reached all the way to the ground, and seemed to provide as much support and potential locomotion as the writhing mass of tendrils. It was covered in a dull, greyish brown carapace, with patches of bristling, quill like protrusions. Feathery antenna stretched up from between the mass of limbs where a head ought to go.

The outsider was also enormous. It was a good four times taller than Celestia, the slenderness of its build belying a bulk that likely outweighed the princess at least six times over. The span of its limbs would have been sufficient to wrap around a small cottage, and the jagged claws tipping its fingers were more than long enough to reach even the deepest of vital organs. And yet for all that size, it moved with a grace and swiftness no natural creature could have possessed, an unsettling and dangerously captivating beauty held within the impossibly fluid motion of its limbs, as if each arm moved with its own perfect awareness.

There was an explosion somewhere off to one side as the Gatekeeper and Dnias continued to battle, but Celestia gave the clash only the tiniest fraction of her attention as she regarded the alien being before her. She could feel its own attention upon her, seething with malicious intent and an unquenchable hatred for everything she was. Dark power and purpose flowed through the creature, sustaining it as blood might any animal of the natural world.

"You have no place here," Celestia informed the abomination coldly, her power gathering. "Your time in this realm shall be brief."

Before she could carry out the promise though, the abomination moved, arms and tentacles pulling it in five separate directions, and with a sickening ripping sound, the thing tore itself apart. It took Celestia a stunned moment to realize that the act of doing so had not killed the creature, as it continued to move, all five parts now containing a pair of arms and an equal portion of tendrils. The individual sections of the abomination spread out in a shallow arc before her, and then as one, they turned to bring the torn, inner halves of their bodies towards her.

Faces. Countless faces stared out at her from those inner layers, flesh the pale greys and reds and blues of internal organs. The faces contorted and writhed in agony, pressing out against the dripping wet flesh as if trying to struggle free, only to be pulled back and vanish into the masses. The faces belonged to all manner of creatures, representatives of ponykind and humanity mixed in with things she could only guess at. They all screamed with soundless voices as they struggled and thrashed in desperate and hopeless effort.

Then, as one, the segments of the outsider pounced...

Author's Note

Alright, it's time to get back in the game. I do apologize about the extensive delay, but unfortunate events got dropped on me some months back, and my free time got itself murdered in the process. Things haven't really changed much on that front, but my attitude towards it has. I've accepted that I'm not getting things back to where they were, and am just going to do my best to work around them, because dammit it all, I've missed writing. So consider this and every future chapter to be me thumbing my nose in the face of Fate and the crap she decided to throw at me.