Rising Star

Chapters

Out of the Looking Glass
In the Cards
Heartsong Harmony
Extras
Dancer and Wolves
Fade Out Stage Left
Nova
Recompense
Secrets Unearthed
Dungeons, Dice, and Destiny

Out of the Looking Glass

There was a burst of light, and then a pony came tumbling out of the mirror, hitting the ground and rolling before coming to a stop at the feet of a unicorn wearing a hat, cape, and a ridiculous number of bells. There was silence for a few moments as the unicorn’s horn lit up while he checked the younger pony for injuries. Thankfully there were none, and so he simply sat back and waited while levitating a tea set over for when the young colt awoke.

After a minute or two the young pony who came through the mirror groaned and sat up. Blinking, he blearily looked around, taking both stock of his surroundings and the proffered cup of herbal tea. “So it really works…”

“That it does colt. That it does.”

The young pony’s head snapped around at this, as if realizing for the first time that he was not alone in the room. His eyes wandered around the room, searching for the source of the voice until his gaze settled upon the unicorn. He choked on his tea.

After pounding himself in the chest with a hoof to clear out his throat, he looked at the unicorn again. “Starswirl? Starswirl the Bearded?”

The unicorn looked amused. “Yes, I take it that I do not look the same in your world?”

His younger companion burst out laughing, “Nope, not in the slightest. My word, if my Starswirl knew that his counterpart was a unicorn…”

The old stallion cocked an eyebrow, “Racism? I would have thought you of all ponies…” he trailed off at the younger colt’s waving hoof, opting to wait for the full explanation.

“No, it’s not that,” the colt finally gasped out, “It’s just… you see, in my world, the unicorn is a symbol of… well, maidenhood.”

“Maidenhood?”

“Umm… female virginity…”

Starswirl blinked as he registered this. Then he began to chuckle as bits of his youth traveled across his memory. Soon he was throwing back his head and roaring with laughter just as loud as that of his apprentice’s counterpart.

A quarter of an hour later the laughter finally died down. Starswirl wiped a tear from his eye, chuckling, before asking, “So obviously some cultural differences between our two worlds, how about physical differences?”

“Well, you’re a unicorn here, and that’s obviously different… do you not have humans here?”

“No… I’ve never even heard of a ‘human’ before.”

“Well, there’s that then, on my world humans are really the only sentient species… one or two magical beings attained sentience, but they’re few and far between…” Here he paused, staring off into the middle distance before turning back to his mentor’s counterpart. “Speaking of magic, do I… can I use magic here? I mean, I’ve got my ambient magic and spells, but real magic, the kind that can be cast, can I do that here?”

The old stallion felt a pang in his heart, so the colt wouldn’t be able to learn real magic on the other side after all… He made eye contact with the pony in front of him, he gave a small, sad smile and sighed. “I’m sorry colt, you won’t be able to cast spells on this side either. You know more about magic that anypony I know twice, even three times your age, but you can’t use it. I’m sorry.”

The colt in front of him smiled, “That’s alright, it’s not your fault. Besides, it was never really all that likely anyway…” He shook his head and stood up. “I should really just go ho—”

To backtrack a moment, when he stood up, he stood on his hind legs, and then attempted to walk to the stairs. He made it halfway there before he overbalanced, tripped, did several somersaults in midair, and then landed with a dull “thud” in a heap at the foot of the stairs. For the third time since he woke up that morning, he found himself groaning as he picked himself up off the ground.

He looked at his hooves. He brought his front ones to his face, felt around it a bit, and then began examining the rest of his body. “Right, physical differences in the world…” He looked at Starswirl. “Have you got a mirror? Besides well…” He gestured to the mirror through which he came.

In response, the old stallion levitated over the tray that the tea set from before had been resting on. The young colt took it from his magical grasp and gazed into its reflective surface.

“I’m… a horse.”

“Pony.”

“Alright, pony then.”

“You seem to be taking this rather well…”

“It’s not my first time being Equine.”

Starswirl cocked an eyebrow at him.

“I… wasn’t always as careful with magic as I should have been… although it did come in handy when you needed to bring in those supplies from town to add another room off the top floor… I’m going to stop talking now…”

The old stallion chuckled. “So there are obviously a number of things you’ll need to be brought up to speed on. Let’s start with you, from what you’ve mentioned there are some differences between you and your counterpart, so why don’t you tell me about yourself, and then I’ll fill you in on what to expect in this world.”

“Alright, well to begin with my name is Inkwell, and even though I know a lot of magic, I can’t really use it. To compensate, I created a new kind of magic that worked by redirecting ambient energy around me. This new ‘Ambient Magic’ provided many opportunities, since even though it wasn’t as fast or effective as real magic, we managed to prove that anybody could use at least some form or part of it…”

They stayed up long into the night, trading stories and talking of their worlds. Starswirl was surprised by various facts about the world Inkwell had come from, and Inkwell faced both good news and hard truths about the world he now found himself in. after a brief five minute tirade about some of the things that particularly aggravated him, Inkwell surprised Starswirl again. Instead of merely finding a way to live with the problem as his own apprentice had, this Inkwell was determined to find a way to change things. What’s more, Starswirl actually began to believe he could do it.

A week later he had theoretical models designed for a dozen separate issues. Within two weeks they had formed into a single cohesive project. Before the month was out he had a working model.

Six months after he arrived he would find himself in a situation where his solution would be put to a use that would make even its original purpose of letting Inkwell lead a normal life pale in comparison when an ordinary market day was interrupted by a full grown unicorn stallion being flung into a fruit stand by a mare not yet in her majority.

And then the rest of his designs would find their homes…

Author's Note

I think I may have found the most creative way to deliver Author's Notes in history... unfortunately I can't use it in this story without a drastic change to the format I want. Welcome to my life.

Moving off of that tangent, I'm mildly proud of this chapter. Not much happened really, but I got some groundwork laid, and I don't think (read: hope) that it wasn't too boring for all of you. I would have made this chapter longer for you guys, but this stuff needed to happen, and it just didn't feel right to tack the story's first real action scenes onto the end of this... Stuff starts happening next chapter though, I promise.

Finally figured out how to post links by the way, so here's the credit for the OC's I cameoed (I think that's spelled right) in that last chapter:
Angel Beats and Comet Burst are from The Golden Armor by Comet Burst.
Daring Do and Braeburn Apple "Colt of the West" are the versions from The Riflepony Series by DiveBomb
And of course Nyx is from Past Sins by Pen Stroke
Nyx will not be reappearing until the Epilogue at least, and the other character references will not be reapearing at all.

Please feel free to leave a comment.

In the Cards

It had been six months since Inkwell had come to this world. He had long since given up on being able to learn to cast magic, but in the months that had passed he had managed to combine his relatively new perspective with Starswirl’s experience and his counterparts own research notes to make a great deal of progress. He had even managed to solve several of his counterpart’s problems with a single magical invention, and he was quite pleased with how it was working. On the whole he was mildly proud of the progress he had made in his magical studies.

Today was in fact the final test of his current project, and it was holding up beautifully under the pressure. Today was the town’s market day.

So far, nopony had noticed anything odd about the Pegasus stallion, and the actual amount of magic used by his creation was low enough that it didn’t even set off the magical artifact detectors at the town’s gates.

“Anything yet?”

Inkwell turned with a smile to face the Pegasus colt sitting next to him on the low brick wall just outside of a small shop. That was another new thing about this world; his counterpart still had his family around. Moreover, he apparently didn’t appreciate what that meant, the fact that his mother and brother and the one sister were still alive, his father hadn’t left before even that happened, that the younger sister hadn’t run off two years ago…

He had made things quite clear to them when he had first arrived; they knew full well that he wasn’t the Inkwell they had known for years. He had lost his family once; there was no way in Tartarus that he was going to let it happen again because of his own actions.

On the whole, he seemed to have a better relationship with these ponies than his counterpart ever did. Go figure.

Featherdancer especially had latched on to Inkwell, his opinion of this new, slightly adventurous version of his brother who took the occasional risk bordering on hero-worship. He had also shown interest in the project and had managed to give Inkwell some help in making sure that it worked right, even inspiring one of the slightly more useful details. Overall he had been enough of a help that Inkwell just hadn’t had the heart to keep him out of this final test.

“Nope, nopony seems to have noticed it, I’d have to say it works.”

“So what’s next?”

“Well, we proved on the way into town that I can still fly, and nopony including the guards with the artifact detectors has said anything, so I’d say that the stealth and subtlety test is a pass. All that’s left is to see if those… secondary functions work and we can call this project a success.” That said, he took a bite of the sweet apple he had purchased for his lunch. He had forgotten how good these were. He really needed to get into town more now that he was done with the project. Of course, now that he didn’t have to worry about finishing the project, he could come into town more…

He finished his apple and was considering going back to buy another. Ordinarily he was slightly thriftier, but today was special and he felt a small splurge would be acceptable. Yes, as he went to stand up he truly thought that his life was now perfect.

This thought lasted for exactly 3.275 seconds before all Tartarus broke loose.

“Get away from her!”

That shout would haunt Inkwell’s dreams for many years to come. There would be times where he would curse and bless that scream in the same breath. He would try on several occasions to forget it, force himself to remember at least once, and never be able to completely purge it from his memory.

Allow me to sidebar her to give a small lecture on fate and destiny. To begin with they are not, contrary to popular opinion, the same thing. They are not fixed either. Fate is a set of choices that we will one day inevitably be forced to make; our special somepony, how we follow our callings in life, the ponies that we choose to call our friends and family, how we face obstacles, and many others.

Destiny on the other hand is rather more fickle. It is the role that we fill. Mother, princess, warrior, mentor. Each individual’s destiny is unique, because each individual will be called upon to fill different roles, and those roles are, when combined, what define our destiny.

Destiny also has another aspect though, one that does heavily involve fate. Think of it this way; at birth, every foal is dealt a number of tarot cards from an unmarked deck. They are dealt in a perfect circle, with the foal sitting at the exact center. Some ponies get more cards than others, but they all get at least a few cards. They are all facedown.

The cards are set. The foal is determined. Their Destiny is decided. But there still remains one question: What order do we reveal the cards in? The cards may be on the table, but until the order of occurrence is determined, a pony’s destiny is still very changeable. There is only one pony with the ability or right to choose the order, and that is the pony in question.

Continuing with this analogy, every pony has defining moments in their lives, moments that can change their entire world, or ensure that it remains the same. Moments where they are, in effect, told to pick a card.

This was one such time for Inkwell. With that scream, Destiny began gathering together the hand he had been dealt at birth.

We now return you to the unbridled chaos of the moment.

A strange sight graced the market that day, one which everypony saw as the cry of rage attracted the gaze of the entire crowd: A flying unicorn.

Specifically a unicorn that was flying upside down across the street out of a small side alley.

He crashed into a fruit stand as its owner dove out of the way, causing the entire thing to collapse in on him. Meanwhile, his attacker made herself known. A tan unicorn mare, maybe seventeen, early eighteen at most, whose sky blue mane and tail each had a single streak of gold running through them, stepped out of the alley, the glow of her horn not yet completely faded, and took a wide stance between the two stalls that flanked the entrance to the passage she had just exited.

At this point the unicorn stallion she had just thrown bodily at least six times his own length stood up from the wreckage of the fruit stand. Using magic to send the peach impaled on his horn flying off into the distance. He gave a dark chuckle, “Missy, you have no idea what you just did…”

“Oh believe me, I know exactly what I just did. I. just. Don’t. Care. She’s just a filly! Even if she was willing, you are way over so many lines! I don’t believe you. Ponies say that the street rats are bad, well at least we have rules! At least ponies don’t have to worry about one of our colts trying to MOUNT a FILLY!”

Dead silence. That was the only response.

For the first time Inkwell noticed the small white shape shivering in the shadow of the mare. A filly, no doubt the one in question, who appeared to be slightly younger than Featherdancer. He turned examined the unicorn stallion with a new level of disgust. The unicorn stallion. The armored unicorn stallion. The unicorn stallion in Discord’s armor. His eyes widened as images played out in his head. The mob. The lynching. The backlash. And then…

Inkwell’s general opinion of ponykind took its most severe blow since the night he had arrived in this world.

Nothing happened. Ponies had fire in their eyes as they turned to glare at the unicorn, and then that fire died as they saw his armor. As they realized what it meant. And then they averted their eyes.

They looked away.

It wasn’t that they didn’t care; it was just that they were scared. That some nameless filly wasn’t important enough. It just wasn’t worth it.

The guard pulled a whistle out of his armor and blew it. There was the sound of a door slamming open, and then two of the Poneekinn drones that served as the bulk of the city guard marched down the street from where they were stationed in the base of a statue at one end of the street.

The mare’s eyes widened as the full implication of what was about to happen hit her. She looked back at the filly behind her, and then down at her own forehooves. Inkwell saw her close her eyes and smile, and then she looked straight at the guard, and her smile became a practiced smirk.

Then something happened that nopony saw coming. A single stone flew through the air, ricocheted off of three separate building’s walls and one metal awning support beam before there was an explosion of wood as the stone met with the guards, shattering the head of one and the main body portion of the other.

Before anypony else could react, Inkwell threw himself backwards without even bothering to look, turning in midair as he tackled his brother, dropping them both behind the wall. His eyes locked onto his brother’s face. Time might as well have frozen in that instant, Inkwell taking in every detail of the scene around him.

Destiny may as well have walked right up to him in that moment. Pick a card.

Inkwell closed his eyes and took a breath. Then he sighed. He made his choice and opened his eyes. He put his hoof on his brother’s shoulder. “Featherdancer, listen to me very carefully. I need you to do something for me. There’s a white filly in that alley that the mare just came out of. I need you to get her and go back to the tree and tell Starswirl what’s going on, he’ll know what to do. Take my bags, and make sure that the guards don’t catch you.”

“But what about you?”

“I’ll buy time until you can get back with the artifact we need, but I won’t be able to do a whole lot, so you’ll have to hurry and get yourself and that filly to the tree so that you can get back here as soon as you can.”

“But what am I getting?”

“It’s a special set of tools that can shut down the Poneekinns with next to no effort. There’s no time to explain any more though, now hurry. Go!”

Featherdancer gave a single nod and dashed down the alley heading for the next street over, carrying the saddlebags that Inkwell had quickly removed three small items from. He quickly slipped a thin piece of curved crystal over his left eye, blinking as the adjustment was made, even as he slipped a small metal circle out from between the feathers on his right wing. He tapped the small item to the inkpad he had removed from his bags, before stamping his own body with the ring. The entire exchange and set of preparations took less than six seconds.

When he stood back up he had already slid both inkpad and stamp into the niches between his feathers on either side. The gaze of the entire marketplace fell on the black colt with the deep blue mane that was just swinging himself up to sit on the short wall. He was tossing a small black orb into the air with one hoof while throwing a cocky smirk towards the mare who was the only pony not picking her jaw up off the ground. “What can I say, I didn’t like the odds.”

Three shrill blasts echoed from the guard’s whistle. The base of the statue of Discord at the end of the street opposite the one that the Poneekinns had come from swung open. There was an echoing rumble, and then they stepped into the light. More Poneekins, these ones armored. City Guards, stronger than the Street Guards that Featherdancer had just shattered, came with armor, weapons, and lethal force. They were normally only used in the city’s defense.

They were now marching down the street, out of the underground tunnel system that transported them around the city, in formation. Five wide, at least twenty deep if it was the full company that the triple blast was supposed to signal. The ponies still present scattered, ducking into stores and homes, diving down side alleys, pegasi even taking to the air, everypony bolting, anything to avoid getting caught in the coming storm.

In the panic, nopony saw the slight glow in Inkwell’s left eye as his gaze flitted over the street, finally settling on the abandoned log balcony of one building. There was a slight pause in his motions as he timed things and followed the angles, and then his left eye flared, a white light spilling from it as the cherry pit that had been directly in front of it flew out, striking a rope on one of the balcony’s support beams just as the front line of the column of guards was about to pass it.

The rope snapped, broken ends flying as they whipped around the post, spiraling in opposite directions before there was a loud crashing sound. One log swung away from the balcony. Then as it reached the middle of its arc, hanging out over the street, it stopped. The whole thing hung there for a moment, suspended. And then the entire balcony came down.

Right on top of the armored Poneekinns.

The whistle fell from the guardpony’s mouth, clattering on the cobblestones. For a brief moment it looked like Inkwell and the mysterious young mare might have just gotten away with their attacks. Then there was a flash from within the pile of rubble, and a burst of blue light flew into the air, exploding in a shower of sparks.

The tramp of marching Poneekinn City Guards came from the first statue. Then from the next street over behind Inkwell. And then again from the direction that the first group of City Guards had come from. Soon the sound of wooden hoofsteps moving in unison echoed from every direction.

The guardpony began to laugh maniacally as the wooden drones came down the street from both directions, the group from the one end climbing over the wreckage from the collapsed balcony. He was silenced by a ceramic flowerpot to the head. The pale green earth pony mare who threw it jumping down from the rooftop she was perched on to land in the middle of the street.

Inkwell and the unicorn mare came out to join her in the road, the colt giving the new mare a nod before the three ponies turned to face away from each other. “So this doesn’t look good…” The smirk he was throwing was half playing the character and half seeing a pair of small figures, one white and the other sky blue making good their escape.

The Poneekinns began to pour from the alleyways at either end of the street, marching towards the three ponies standing in the middle of the road. And then at about a hundred yards out, they stopped, keeping the ponies trapped, but drawing no closer. There was a low rumble, and then the ranks opposite the rubble strewn across the road parted, allowing a large wood and metal construct that bore a striking resemblance to a three-headed dragon to walk down the aisle that had been formed. It reared back, as if to strike the three ponies, and then things got really interesting.

A single glowing cloud appeared in the sky, literally from nowhere. It compressed in on itself, and then spat out a bolt of lightning that blew the wooden dragon’s right head off, even as a rather expensive looking carriage (minus the connecting rods that had once allowed it to be pulled by pegasi) clipped the left one and then spun out, flying over the defiant trio before hitting the ground and sliding away, smashing through the Poneekinn ranks.

A white unicorn stallion with a broom strapped to his back, a picture on his flank of a cloud with a branched lightning bolt coming down from it, and his horn still glowing the same color as the cloud stepped out of one of the stores. At the same time, the door came flying off of what remained of the carriage, and a pale blue pegasus with a silver mane and tail stepped out, followed by a mare with a deep maroon coat and an orange mane and tail. They walked over and joined the ponies in the middle of the street.

Inkwell smiled. “So, just out of curiosity, who all am I going out with today?”

The first mare smiled at him. “Sunbeam.”

The green earth pony nodded as she identified herself as “Lotus Blossom.”

The unicorn stallion gave a mock salute. “Contrail.”

The pegasus mare motioned to herself and then the earth pony behind her. “My name is Moonchaser, and this is Dust Runner.”

The pegasus colt nodded at their introductions. “I’m Inkwell.” He looked over his shoulder at the recovering army and then turned to face the five ponies in front of him again. “One thing before we do this…” Before any of them could react he had struck, tapping each of them in quick succession. By the time they stopped blinking he was already tucking the stamp and inkpad back into the niches in his wings.

He almost burst out laughing at the confusion on their faces as they took in the fact that their color schemes had just been changed dramatically, as had their cutie marks. In short, they might as well have been five completely different ponies. “Disguise magic, so that they can’t identify us. Just on the off chance that we manage to make it out of this.”

The pegasus mare slowly nodded. “And so they can’t go after our families if we don’t.”

Inkwell blinked and dipped his head at her. “Yeah, I’m sure we’ve all got somepony to protect…”

There was a roar behind them as the construct of metal and wood began to recover. The right head was little more than a smoldering stump, and the left was broken and hanging off at an odd angle, but the middle one was rearing back again and charging up to fire off a blast of chaos magic. A single feather flew into the dragon’s mouth, even as it prepared to fire. The explosion that followed engulfed the dragon, several dozen Poneekinns, and a large portion of the street.

As if it was a signal, the six ponies charged the army.

Three hours, seven city blocks, and almost eight hundred Poneekinns later, all six ponies had been subdued, and were loaded up into a prison cart. Featherdancer arrived just in time to see the pony that only he could recognize as his brother look out one of the windows and give him a small mock salute and a sad but genuine smile.

He sat down hard as the awful truth hit him. Starswirl wasn’t being obstinate and unhelpful, he was just doing what Inkwell had wanted him to. There had never been any weapons. It had just been a ploy. Inkwell was just protecting him.

Tears began to soak the cobblestones between his hooves as he came to the end of that train of thought. His brother was going to prison, maybe even to his death.

And it was all his fault…

Author's Note

And there's that action I promised you. Also, probably the end of the groundwork chapters for a while, the next bit is going to be a fairly solid chain of domino effects.

For those wondering about the Poneekinns and guard system, they're basically life-size artist/dress models. wooden body parts, metal hinges, with chaos magic animating them. Not a lot of trouble on their own, but plenty of ways for a chaos being to modify them, make them more dangerous. As for the guards, the real ponies in the guard are basically elite troops, filling the officers' ranks, captains, lieutenants, that kind of thing. Their pay scale is merit based, and they have to pay for their Poneekinn troops out of their own pockets. The larger a city is, the more real guards there'll be. The capital city that this takes place in would probably have about two dozen guardponies, each with their own divisions of troops, organized in a system that becomes more complex and convoluted (and chaotic) the more ponies are inserted into the ranks.

Feel free to leave a comment, review, criticism, question, or suggestion,

NPP6

Heartsong Harmony

The names had been read, the charges presented, and the judgement revealed. The sentence passed, the plan had been shot. All that they could do now was hope, pray, and choose their last words.

An escape attempt would have cost lives, breaking character would cost lives, doing anything other than accepting their punishment and allowing themselves to be blasted away by the banishment spell would cost lives. But they didn't have to do it silently.

Inkwell stepped forward. Everything was hinging on the changes that he had made to the spell circle embedded into the platform. He might not be able to save the others, but he could at least go down with his ship. So much for being a hero... at least I managed to save Featherdancer.

At the thought of his brother he paused for a heartbeat. That was why he was really here, he had taken the fall so that his brother could get away with that filly. He couldn't help but smile at the irony of a bat pony dying because of an overdeveloped sense of loyalty to a pegasus. And the three primary races thought that all bat ponies were traitors.

He gave a smile at the thought that they had technically beaten the Draconequi. Six of them against an army and the real battle had been won. The heartbeat pause passed and he looked out into the assembled crowd. Well, he might as well play his part to the hilt. He opened his mouth and surprised even himself when he began to sing.

"Can you hear it? There's a voice on the wind. I can hear it. It calls injustice to an end."

The twice disguised stallion's eyes widened slightly as he recognized the one universal magic that all Equestrians share. He was singing his Heartsong. Somewhere an ethereal harp began to play a tuneless melody.

"Freedom's coming. I can feel it in the air. A new day's dawning, a time for change is drawing near.

"The world is waking. There's a stirring in all hearts, and hope now rises. This is where. Re. Bell. Ion. Starts!"

Inkwell blinked in surprise as he heard another voice start on his left side, Sunbeam taking up where he left off.

"The world begins to change. I can feel the days grow longer. Yes chaos is strong, but life is always stronger.

"They cannot dim the sun! It burns for all to see. We all live in its light. Part of a greater Harmony."

Inkwell felt feathers brush his side as Moonchaser stepped up on his right, taking up the lyrics as the music's tone changed yet again.

"The dream of freedom is born 'neath the light of the guardian moon. Equestria do not look away, this battle is for you!

"Open your eyes, open your mind. See the problems around you. Do not be fooled by chaos' blind, there is an evil that surrounds you.

"Stand for your freedoms, the time doth draw near. When ponies shall rise, and chaos know fear."

Lotus Blossom stepped up on Sunbeam's other side to take her verse.

"Heart to heart and sister to brother, we must raise our voices for ourselves and each other.

"And if we now march to our doom, then know this ponies: we did it for you."

Dust Runner walked forward to take her place in the formation and the song.

"We made our final stand. One filly united this band.

"Let the curtain rise, let the final score be known.

"Six stood. Each of us would have alone.

"One young filly, her innocence in danger.

"To the price of our acts, none of us was a stranger.

"And when when the dust settled, what was the cost?

"Six ponies were captured, but who the battle lost?"

Contrail lifted his own voice to join the melody as he took his place on the end of the line.

"We would do it again. We knew the price. We chose this trade. It is no sacrifice.

"At the end of the day, what fell to a mere six? If all took a stand, how would our emotions mix?

"What could we do, if we were all united? One sky has one storm, and soon we can fight it!"

The condemned closed their eyes and listened to the harp play, all six of them beginning to subtly glow. Then all present received another surprise as a seventh voice came echoing from the crowd. Inkwell smiled as he recognized his brother's voice, coming from all directions with no discernible source. The colt could even bounce sound.

"Right is right, wrong will be wrong. We all make our own choices, this is our song.

"The ones that got away, the ones that stayed behind, this battle we have won, if you keep us in mind.

"Remember us, carry our song, on wind, fire, and water, earth, star, moon , and sun."

There was a pause as the harp played around to the next verse, as if giving the audience a chance to take a breath, and then at the same instant, seven voices rang out, the same song, the same words, in seven part harmony.

"The day soon is coming when chaos shall fall, and with it come justice and freedom for all.

"This is our promise. This is who we are. This oath we swear now, by the sun, moon and stars.

"Fire and water align now as one. Air and earth also, 'til freedom is come.

"We are the ponies who took the first stand. We fight for Equestria, this magical land.

"But first is not last, so heed now our call. Harmony's coming, ready for it be all!"

The eyes of the six ponies on the platform began to glow different colors. Had anypony been able to see them, they would have noticed that Featherdancer's eyes were glowing a seventh color as well. All of them opened their mouths in unison again, and an eighth voice emerged from them.

"Ponies of all kinds, raise up your heads. the long terror of chaos soon comes to an end."

The six ponies turned to face the Draconequi commanding the ceremony.

"I speak now to Discord. You'll soon face a choice. I charge you now to protect the last spark of hope for your race.

"And as for you Mayhem, your prophecy is more dire. You led the coup, you have gained my ire.

"Your fate is delivered on Hope's loyal wings. Your destiny cometh, listen for three rings."

A pillar of rainbow light surrounded them, and when it faded, they were again facing the crowd.

"Of one for another, another for one; this is our destiny, this is our choice, we stand together. From one to another, another to one, the mark of our destinies, singled out, alone, fulfilled. All of us together, we chose to make our stand, with six destinies made one, there will be harmony without end."

Still acting in unspoken synchronicity, they walked to the edge of the inner circle of the spell and each took a line.

"They cannot destroy life, 'tis given by one more powerful than they." Sunbeam stepped across the glowing barrier into the inner circle.

"A storm of emotions is coming, to bring back the calmest day." Contrail crossed the circle.

"The hearts of all ponies united, joined as one for even an instant of time." Lotus Blossom crossed over.

"Shall be the guiding revelation as harmony's powers align." Dust Runner followed.

"Chaos' reign is blacker than the darkest of nights, but the darkness holds dreams of light." Moonchaser stepped over and took her place in the circle.

"A new hope is coming with harmony's dawn, but for it we will have to fight." Inkwell stepped over into the circle.

The six ponies stood inside of the inner circle of the spell, facing outward. "This is who we are."

Each pair of ponies directly opposite each other, standing back to back took a final few words and then waited for the spell.

"A guardian compass, an emotional stay..." Sunbeam and Contrail closed their eyes.

"One who removes curtains, a sister of ponykind..." Lotus Blossom and Dust Runner bowed their heads.

"A light in the darkness, a friend in the night." Moonchaser and Inkwell finished their line just as the spell flashed and they were gone, leaving a rather impressive scorch mark on the platform.

Featherdancer waited for a moment before beginning the final verse.

"Equestria's freedom, and Harmony's rise. We've counted the cost, we know the final price.

"We cannot ask any to lay down their lives. But those who wish for freedom will soon need to unite."

A single bell rang out somewhere in the city, and as it did, a lightning bolt struck home in Featherdancer's mind. In his head he could hear the strange voice from before speaking in unison with his brother. Almost without realizing it, he began to repeat their words.

"Hear me now Mayhem, that is your first toll. The third ring of the bell shall be your death knoll."

And with that, Featherdancer turned and walked away, sneaking past the guards before taking to the air and flying off to the tree.

Meanwhile, the six ponies who had just been banished found themselves hurtling down a tunnel of light and shadow, their lives flashing around them. Then there was another flash of light, and they found themselves tumbling through the air, landing out cold in the middle of a forest clearing.

As the one most used to being bludgeoned into unconsciousness, Inkwell was the first to wake up. Slowly, he rose, rubbing his forehead with one of his front hooves to try and massage away the massive headache. He began to look around him to determine that yes, he was indeed in the clearing he had intended to land them in. Then he froze.

His gaze flitted between his companions. He turned and rushed over to the nearby pool of water that was the primary reason he had chosen this location for the other end of the teleport. As he took in his own reflection, his state of mind was wonderfully displayed in a single word.

"...What?"

Author's Note

And if you haven't figured out my final reveal after that, then I'm either completely useless at foreshadowing or better at misdirection and more original than I ever anticipated. Oh well...

On a completely unrelated note, I can't help but wonder, I've mentioned it at the end of every chapter, I mentioned it in my only blog post, I even put the story into a group specifically dedicated to it, just what exactly does somepony have to do to get a comment around here?

And now that I got that out of my system, please review, comment, criticize, or just point out something you like about the story.

To anypony still reading by this point: Thank you,

NPP6

Extras

Moonchaser slowly opened her eyes. Looking around, she saw that she was in a small clearing in a forest. As her mind slowly shook off the fog of forced unconsciousness, she noticed Inkwell off at one side of the clearing tapping the ground with his forehooves, while Dust Runner and Lotus Blossom were talking in low tones over by a small pool of water. Sunbeam and Contrail were nowhere to be seen.

Then Moonchaser felt her mind freeze, she closed her eyes and slowly replayed everything she had just seen. Opening them again, she confirmed that yes, she had just seen that.

"Ummm..." Her voiced surprise drew the attention of the clearings other occupants.

"Yes, they are real, no, I don't know how it happened, yes, they do work, and can you please let me concentrate?" Inkwell rattled off without even looking at her. It seemed rehearsed. Looking at their friends' facial expressions, Moonchaser realized that it probably was. She shot Dust Runner a questioning gaze.

The mare shrugged. "He's been like that since we woke up, although there was a lot less of that stuff on the wall then..."

Looking back around, Moonchaser saw for the first time that Inkwell was surrounded by floating pieces of chalk that were drawing things on the side of the small cliff that formed one border of the clearing. Said chalk was being dispensed piece by piece directly from the cliff by a complex shape that Moonchaser could only assume was one of Inkwell's circle... rune... magic spell thingies. She could only assume that the piece of slate he was tapping his forehooves on was obtained and marked in a similar fashion.

"Where are Sunbeam and Contrail?" The noblemare queried.

Lotus Blossom answered her, "They left a little while ago to try and find some food. None of us think that Inkwell's going to be much help for a bit."

Suddenly the stallion in question broke his silent concentration. "Aaaaaaarrrggghhhh! It doesn't matter how many ways I look at it, it shouldn't be possible! The only way that it works is if Discord was trying to turn each of us into a different flavor of cheesecake! What am I missing here!" He walked over to one of the trees and began smacking his head against it.

Moonchaser slowly stood up and began to walk over to him. Halfway there though, she stopped, her attention captured by one of the symbols Inkwell had etched onto the cliff. Her eyes widened in shock as she recognized it. Then they narrowed in rage. Then Inkwell's abuse of a perfectly innocent tree was interrupted by a flying tackle from an angry mare.

The stallion was sent sprawling. Landing on his back, he looked up and found himself staring into a glare colder than any blizzard. "How do you know that symbol?" Moonchaser's voice matched her eyes exactly.

"I-I-I don't... wait... which symbol?"

"That symbol. The symbol! My family's secret crest!"

It was Inkwell's turn to widen his eyes in shock. "Show me." He whispered.

Moonchaser seemed to be caught off guard by this. She stepped back slowly. "I can't. I'm not supposed to show anypony. Dust Runner is the only one I've ever-"

Inkwell cut her off, "Not the crest, the symbol. On the wall." He motioned with a hoof towards his calculations. "Show me."

Hesitantly Moonchaser began to walk back to the wall. As she was about to point to it, a cry stopped her.

"Moonchaser, wait!" Dust Runner came galloping over. She stepped between Moonchaser and Inkwell and locked eyes with the stallion. "If you ever, ever use this against her, so help me I'll-" she was cut off by a burst of clicking. A lengthy burst of clicking that including the physical actions of running his right hoof down the length of his left wing and tapping his heart twice. "Not good enough. I want you to swear it to me. Use the full oath." He locked eyes with her for a moment before slowly nodding. He fired off six clicks.

The instant the sixth click was sounded, twin streams of blue fire burst from the corners of his mouth, winding their way around his head and down his neck, across his back to his wings. Each of them wound its way up from the base of one of his wings, splitting again at the tips, all four streams spiraling down his wings before separating from each other at the bases. They then proceeded to wind their way down his legs, each spreading across the ground from a different hoof. The fires found their way to Dust Runner and then proceeded to repeat the pattern they had just made on Inkwell's body in reverse for her, only varying at the very end as the flames found their way into her ears instead of her mouth.

Inkwell stretched his forehooves out in front of him and lowered his head, wings flaring wide and angling down. "I am in your hooves."

Dust Runner shivered and then nodded at him, stepping to the side and allowing him to walk up beside Moonchaser.

As Moonchaser opened her mouth to say something, Inkwell cut her off, "If you value your friendship with Dust Runner at all, then never mention what just happened to anypony. Ever." He motioned towards the wall of writing with a hoof. "Now then, which of the symbols here is the one you thought was your family's 'secret crest?'"

She tapped one of them with a forehoove. "This one."

His eyes widened. "Are you absolutely sure?"

"Yes."

"Moonchaser... do you know what that symbol means?"

She began to worriedly and slowly shake her head.

Inkwell sighed. "Moonchaser that symbol... it means..." He leaned forward and whispered something in her ear that made her eyes widen with shock. He pulled back and looked her directly in the eyes. "Moonchaser, I think I'm going to need to see that crest..."

Some time later, Moonchaser and Inkwell glided down from the top of the small cliff. The mare was looking rather shell-shocked, while the stallion's expression was decidedly and deliberately neutral. "I've got my variable now." Was all Inkwell said before walking over to his wall of calculations and getting the chalk floating again.

Moonchaser shook her head at the querying looks of Dust Runner and Lotus Blossom. She walked over to the pool and took a long drink, then shook her head as if she had been expecting something other than water. "It's not a crest." She finally muttered.

"What?"

Moonchaser looked tiredly at Dust Runner. "That symbol. It's not a crest. I thought it was a crest, but its not. Its a message."

"What did it say?"

Moonchaser finally snapped out of her daze. "No Dust Runner, that message wasn't meant to be read by anypony. Not yet. Not yet."

"But-"

"No Dusty! I can't tell you. I've put you in enough danger already. Someday, maybe, but not yet. Not now."

The awkward silence that followed remained unbroken until Sunbeam and Contrail came out of the trees, various fruits floating in their magical grasps. "We've got food!" The mare called out.

Moonchaser, Dust Runner, and Lotus Blossom let out a cheer, as much at the broekn silence as the thought of sustenance. As the mares fell upon the fruit, Contrail's gaze fell on Inkwell. "Is he still at it?"

Lotus Blossom nodded, "We got him to take an hour break a while ago, but he's determined to figure out what happened to us. He's trying to figure out how to undo it. He won't stop calling it 'my mistake.' I'm actually worried about what he might do to himself trying to get the rest of us back to normal."

The stallion snorted. "Figures. The one time a bat pony actually does something good, the only thing on his mind is udnoing it." The others went silent around him.

Moonchaser broke the silence. "You're an idiot Contrail."

"Oh really? How do you figure that?"

"For one thing," Came a voice from behind him, "You're completely oblivious to your surroundings."

Contrail turned and locked gazes with the other stallion. Inkwell merely smirked and walked around him, taking a peach and a pear from the pile of fruit. He sat down facing the deep orange stallion. "For another, you have less foresight than anypony I've ever met except one. These changes, they're not a blessing, they're a curse. If we could control it, then yeah, sure, that'd be nice.

"But we can't. And so we're stuck here, like this, six deadponies, hiding out in the woods, unable to go home. It's not just that nopony would know who we are, its that because of those ridiculous pseudonyms, everypony knows who we are. If we go home, we put everything and everypony we care about in danger. I have to figure out how to fix this, or all of our lives are going to be destroyed by my mistake... And I can't let that happen. Not to good ponies like you five."

Contrail nodded. Once. "Fine. I'll give you a chance. So what have you figured out so far? Do we know what happened yet?"

"Yes. I figured out what happened."

"And?"

"...It's my fault. When I modified that spell circle, I was careless. I was so sure that I could do it, and so terrified of what would happen if I failed, and so desperate to get it right... I made a mistake, and then I made another. I thought I knew everything. I assumed that I was the one with all the cards. I made the spell perfect. Too perfect. I failed to allow for variables. And then so many things changed, and now...

"Now I'm trying to pick up the pieces. Because now the fate of five of the best ponies Equestria has ever seen is resting in my hooves, and you can't afford for me to make another mistake. We got lucky this time, lucky that this was all that happened to us. But you only get lucky so many times, and your only hope right now is a failure of a wizard's apprentice who can't even use magic."

Dust Runner put a hoof on Inkwell's shoulder. "You're not a failure. You're a good pony fighting ridiculously far above his level, and impossibly succeeding. You managed to get all of us out of Discord's dungeon. You were the first one to attack the Poneekinns. You're more of a hero than any of us. The only reason we even fought is because you showed us that they could be beaten."

Sunbeam nodded. "I attacked a guard to protect that filly, but even I never would have dreamed of challenging the guard like you did." Inkwell flinched.

Contrail suddenly cocked his head. "Wait a second... those poneekinns, the first two... You never threw that stone did you? That pegasus colt that was with you, with the cutie mark of a circle with a triangle inside it, his talent... its angles, isn't it?"

Inkwell nodded. "And idealistic young colt who can see every angle and has barely more foresight than even you Contrail. Sunbeam stopped a rape. The rest of you were trying to protect a mare willing to sacrifice everything for a noble cause. I was just trying to make sure my little brother made it back home that night. If you want a hero, don't look at me."

Lotus Blossom shook her head. "It sounds to me like you managed to save more ponies than any of us. You took a walk to the gallows for your brother. I have a hard time imagining anything a pony could do that'd be more heroic than that."

"I'm not a hero!" Inkwell shouted. "Heroes get it right! So far the only thing I've managed to do is ruin five good ponies' chances at a normal life and force a colt to watch his brother's execution! Name me one heroic thing I've managed to not buck up completely!" His head dropped and tears began to flow. "I've failed everypony who ever depended on me. I changed everything, and that's still the same."

Suddenly he gasped as he felt warm hooves wrap around his neck as feathers brushed the base of his wings. "You didn't fail me." Moonchaser whispered in his ear. "Down there, in that dungeon, you stopped that guard. There was nothing any of us could do, but you stopped him in his tracks. You are the only reason I still have my honor. You saved me. At the very least, you'll always be my hero."

They stayed like that for a few minutes before slowly separating. Inkwell wiped a hoof across his eyes and opened them. The strength in them restored. "Alright, I'm good now." He took a steadying breath. "Okay, now then, I need some help here. Moonchaser managed to give me one of my missing variables, but there's still some missing data. Does anypony else have a major, life-altering secret they haven't shared with us, because if so, then now would be a really great time."

Contrail spoke up, "I don't know about secrets, but I did notice that the spell seems to have had some kind of healing factor."

"What do you mean?"

"Well I noticed that the scars on Sunbeam's back are gone now."

The palpable silence seemed to be flowing from the mare in question as she attempted to make her mouth work. Inkwell finally broke it, "Umm... Contrail? ...How?"

The other stallion gave him a confused look as he replayed what he had just said in his mind. His eyes widened. "Oh no. Oh no! Nononononononono. Nothing like that! I would never, well I mean not never, but I couldn't, not with, well, with, but not with, time and place, and, and, and, NO!!!" He took a moment to stop choking on his knee. "The cells in Discord's dungeon weren't exactly roomy, and the disguise magic must have changed their color or something, because they were very visible up close, and almost her entire back was covered in them."

Inkwell's gaze was the only one that remained level. Lotus Blossom was busy trying to keep Sunbeam from throttling Contrail, and Moonchaser and Dust Runner were desparately trying to restrain their giggles. Inkwell cocked an eyebrow. "And you know that they're gone now because?"

"We ran into a pack of Lupus Minors when we were gathering food. We wound up hiding inside of a hollow tree. It was cramped."

Inkwell looked at him for a moment before nodding. He then walked over to Sunbeam and whispered a question in her ear. Her eyes widened and she froze for an instant before nodding ever so slightly. "I'm not going to ask what happened." Inkwell said over his shoulder as he began walking towards his wall, intent on finishing his calculations before the last of his light faded away with the setting sun. Then he stopped.

"Lupus Minors." He said. He slowly turned back around to face Contrail and Sunbeam. "How did you get rid of them?"

"What?"

"The Lupus Minors, how did you get rid of them?"

Contrail shrugged. "We lost them in the woods. I already told you we hid in a hollow tree. After they left, we snuck away and came back to camp."

Inkwell paled. "You fools... You can't 'lose' a Lupus Minor, you have to subdue them. You didn't get away, they let you go. They've been hunting you." A baying was heard in the distance. "And now the hunt is about to end."

Author's Note

Yes, I know, terribly mean cliffhanger. Perhaps if one of my readers left the occasional comment, I wouldn't feel so vindictive. Alas, the world may never know. Either way, I should be updating soon. This particular story arc is drawing to a close, and the next part of the saga is eagerly waiting in the wings.

Anyway, a huge thank you to anypony who's still reading for all of their support,

NPP6

Dancer and Wolves

The Lupus Minors let loose another hunting cry. Their prey was close, they could sense it. They could smell it on the air.

Ponies.

There it was, the smell of sweat. Fear. A slight tinge of ozone. And... No. No, it couldn't be.

The leader gave a single barked command. The pack picked up its pace.

A small ways away, six ponies were formed up into a semicircle with their back to a cliff wall. Inkwell had chalk flying furiously, trying to form up some last minute combat runes. The others were doing what they could to get ready for battle.

Contrail's ears shot up. "They've stopped... You don't think they went away?"

Inkwell shook his head without looking at the other stallion. "Those were hunting calls. They only stop when they're getting close to their prey. We're running out of time."

Contrail shrunk back for a moment before pausing. "Wait a second... Why are we afraid? I mean come on, a few days ago, sure, we'd have been dead, but now we've gotta have all kinds of power, right?"

Inkwell just shook his head while Sunbeam stared at the orange stallion. "Right... All kinds of power and absolutely no idea how to use it! Do you ever think anything through?"

Contrail blushed. "Alright then, so what do we do?"

"Fight." Moonchaser said in a low tone. "It's all we can do. We fight the way we know how. Just like the Poneekinns. Only this time... If we lose, we lose everything."

A low growl echoed around the clearing as the Lupus Minors began to stalk out of the woods. They formed a semicircle around the six ponies, staying outside the range of Inkwell's runes. They stared at the six ponies for a few second before tipping their heads back and letting loose a bonechilling howl.

The sound echoed around the clearing, seeming to drop the ambience of both temperature and light. It echoed through the six ponies, carrying itself through their minds, hearts, and souls. It flooded them with raw energy, as if somepony had taken liquid night and pumped it into their bloodstream.

Sunbeam fainted dead away, while Lotus Blossom collapsed, shivering. Dust Runner and Contrail were forced several steps backwards. The runes that Inkwell had hastily scrawled were blown away, ripped apart in flashes of light and shadow. Inkwell himself was unaffected, standing against the onslaught with his mane whipping in the mystic wind.

There was a pause as the constellation wolves watched for a reaction. The one they got was most definitely not the one they were expecting.

Inkwell facehooved. "I don't believe it. How did they even know about that?" He looked over at Moonchaser. "We're never going to be able to get away from those ridiculous pseudonyms, are we?"

The mare shook her head at him. "Somehow, I'm beginning to doubt it."

They looked back at the other four. "Stay safe." Moonchaser said. Then the pair nodded at each other and took to the air, charging the Lupus Minor in the center.

Contrail took a step to follow them before he was cut off by Dust Runner. "Stay out of this one."

"What? Dust Runner, but-"

"Stay out of this one Contrail. Remember the pseudonyms. They're trying to save us. This is a fight we would be completely useless in. Help me take care of Sunbeam and Blossom. They'll be fine."

The stallion still seemed unsure. "But... how can you possibly know that?"

The mare gave him a chilling smile, and for an instant, he could have sworn he saw fangs. "Because," She intoned, "They've already changed the rules. This isn't a fight for survival between predator and prey, its about supremacy between near equals. It's a battle for the night. Besides," She turned to give her attention to their fallen friends. "Just look for yourself. They've got this."

Contrail looked over his shoulder at the ponies taking on the stellar hunters. He shrugged and turned back to help Dust Runner take care of their friends. They didn't need his help.

This was bad. This was very bad. Half of the Hunt was already out of the fight. These two ponies... whatever tied them to the night was strong. Stardust and Moonlight could be tasted in the air as they battled their way through the Lupus Minors.

And that was another thing. The two of them were working together perfectly, every member of the Hunt that challenged them was soon thrown aside, unconscious. For the first time in their lives, the Lupus Minors felt a strange cold feeling. One that they recognised by its scent only. For the first time in history, the Lupus Minors felt fear.

It wasn't that they were winning, that was to be expected with any good opponent. Even an Ursa Minor should give a single Hunt some trouble. It was that they weren't killing. They were tearing the Hunt apart, but leaving the Lupus Minors completely intact. There was no desperation in their fight.

They were holding back.

The Hunt leader watched the last of his wolves fall. Then he leaned back and let loose with a signal howl. The two ponies looked over at him, still catching their breath. And then the rest of the pack came out of the trees.

Inkwell and Moonchaser took to the air again, flapping over the assembled constellations. "So is this all of you now?" The stallion called out. "Alright then. I'm going to give you one chance. Walk. Away." One of the wolves barked at him. "No? Alright then."

He and Moonchaser gained some altitude and then dove, back to back, directly into the fray. Directly towards the one that had just snapped at them.

Hooves flailing, they knocked wolf after wolf aside as they flew toward the constellation that had just revealed itself as the leader of the pack. Their flying tackle carried him several yards, digging a trench a dozen hooves long. When he stopped, he found himself a short distance from his pack, both ponies keeping a hoof on his throat.

"Yield." The stallion quietly said.

The alpha male of the Lupus Minors glared back at the ponies. His lips curled back in a snarl. He had seen these ponies fight, they couldn't kill.

"Yield!" The mare roared in his face. The stallion began applying pressure to his throat.

The Lupus Minor locked eyes with them. He was shocked at what he saw. There was an incredible strength there. It was at that moment that the pack leader realized that they could never have won this fight, not while these two had ponies to protect. His gaze flitted to the ponies cowering... No, they weren't cowering, that one, she was of the day. And the others... they hadn't flinched since the battle had started. They had always known that their friends would win.

"Please," The stallion was speaking again, the Lupus Minor's eyes returned to his. "Don't make me kill... Not again..."

The constellation wolf looked at the ponies for a moment. Then he reached up his head and gave them both a quick lick on the muzzle.

"I yield" he barked.

The wolves faded away into starlight. The unconscious wolves were each taken by one of the remaining ones.

The clearing was silent again as Inkwell and Moonchaser stumbled into it. They hadn't even noticed how loud they had been in the heat of the fight. They just walked over and flopped down next to the fire that Contrail had magically started. "Someday," The mare said, "I'm going to ask you about what you said back there."

Inkwell looked at her for a moment. "Someday you just might get an answer."

"Someday we're going to ask the two of you what you did out there."

Moonchaser levelled her gaze on Contrail. "You may never get an answer to that question."

The orange stallion took in the state of the two fighters. "You know... I think I might be able to live with that."

"Heh," Inkwell laughed, "Maybe we can force some wisdom into you after all."

Shortly after that, Inkwell and Moonchaser had fallen asleep. Dust Runner and Contrail were keeping watch when a muffled thump drew their attention to one side of the clearing. A pegasus colt had just landed and was running towards them.

"Are you crazy!?" He stage whispered. "Why would you light a fire like that tonight? The Lupus Minors are out hunting!"

Dust Runner smiled as he reached them. "We noticed. They're not really a problem anymore."

"Y-You fought them? That's awesome! Are you some kind of travelling monster fighters then?" He almost sounded hopeful.

The mare shook her head at him. "No, we're not monster fighters. We're just some travelers who can't go home yet."

"Oh." He was definitely dissapointed. "You can't go home. Huh, I sure know what that's like."

Dust Runner cocked her head, "What do you mean?"

"I... I can't go home either. At least, not yet. I... did something stupid. I made a mistake and ponies got hurt because of it."

The mare put a hoof on the colt's shoulder. "Whatever it was, running away can't be the answer."

The colt shook her off. "I'm not running! I have to get stronger. I have to get help. I have to find a way to fix my mistake!"

Something about the colt was tickling Contrail's memory, but he couldn't quite place the feeling of Deja Vu. "Fix your mistakes huh?" The stallion said, "Well then you might just fit in here."

Dust Runner swung around to look at him. "And just what is that supposed to mean?"

"I'm just saying, there's a lot of that going around. Also, the colt could probably use some help."

"We can't help him, you know that. We can't even let him stick with us. It'd put him in too much danger."

"How much danger could I possibly be in? I mean come one, you managed to beat an entire pack of Lupus Minors and niether of you even... has... a... scratch... How did you manage that by the way?"

Dust Runner and Contrail looked at each other and shrugged. "We don't know." The stallion said simply.

"What? How could you not know something like that?"

Contrail shrugged again. "They didn't tell us when they got back." He motioned with a hoof towards Inkwell and Moonchaser.

"Two ponies. Two ponies took down an entire pack of Lupus Minors, and you didn't watch to see how they did it?"

The stallion gave him a slightly disconcerting look. "Colt," he said, "when the three most terrifying things you can think of go off into the woods to duke it out, you don't follow them."

"...Who are you ponies?"

Dust Runner and Contrail froze. "Umm..." The stallion thought fast.

The colt cocked his head as he heard the pseudonyms. "That's funny, I'd swear I heard... Yeah, they're just like..." His eyes widened as he looked at the six ponies around the fire. Then he tipped back his head and laughed. A few moments later, he wiped a tear from his eye and looked at the distinctly uncomfortable Dust Runner and Contrail. "I don't believe it, he did it." He chuckled again. "Alright, now what are your real names?"

Dust Runner gave him the same names that Contrail just had.

He shook his head at them. "No, no, not those ridiculous pseudonyms. He's never going to live that down by the way. I meant your names. Your real names."

At the uncomprehending looks that the two older ponies were giving him, the colt facehooved. "Right, obvious trust issues." He lowered his hoof and stood as tall as he could. "My name is Featherdancer, and unless I miss my guess, that stallion over there is my brother Inkwell." His smirk was a dead ringer for their friend's.

"Alright," Dust Runner sighed, "He can stay the night."

Contrail burst out laughing.

The next morning, a breakfast of leftover fruit from the night before was being served. Inkwell and Moonchaser were the last ones to wake up, stirring at the sound of voices and laughter.

Inkwell opened his eyes. He took in the scene before him. He closed his eyes. "Moonchaser, tell me, am I hallucinating, or is there really a blue pegasus colt there?"

The mare smiled. "Yes, he's really there."

"His cutie mark?"

"A circle with a triangle inside of it, all three corners touching the edge."

"Thank you." Inkwell opened his eyes again and stood up. "So then, shall we go see what trouble Featherdancer is about to get himself into?"

Moonchaser was confused until she saw the amusement in the stallion's eyes. "Who is he?"

Inkwell let his gaze travel across the clearing to the five ponies who still hadn't noticed them. "My brother."

"The one you..."

He nodded. "I have no idea what he's doing here though. On the plus side, he can get me supplies, which should speed things up."

"Supplies?"

Inkwell smiled at her. "For the spell, to get us back to normal. It would have taken me months to carve it into the rock with my bare hooves." One of his ears flicked. "Come on, they just noticed we're awake."

Moonchaser stood up and followed him across the clearing.

"So," Inkwell began, as if running across the brother who thought him dead or worse in the middle of the forest were an everyday occurence. "What brings you here Featherdancer?"

The colt smirked at him. "Funny thing, last night the Lupus Minors sounded their hunting cry. Not long after there were the strangest flashes of light from this area. I fly over to check things out, in the absence of our local wizard's apprentice, and I find six ponies camped out around a fire, without a care in the world. Odd though, most of Equestria thinks they're banished somewhere."

Inkwell looked his brother in the eye. "I'm sorry."

"Just promise me... never make me... any of us watch you die like that again."

Inkwell dipped his head. "On that note, feel up to delivering some messages?"

Featherdancer nodded. "Just let me know who to tell."

"Alright everypony, if there's anypony who you want to let know you survived, now's the time to say so." Inkwell raised his voice.

Lotus Blossom was the first to speak up. "My family lives in a small cottage to the west of the city, outside of the walls. Ask around for Wild Ivy, she's my mother."

Moonchaser stepped forward and rattled of a string of unintelligible babble. Dust Runner facehooved. "Maybe try it without the full titles Moonchaser."

The noblemare looked scandalized. "I hardly know this colt personally, whomever he is related to, and my mother does not know him at all. Using anything but her full titles would be highly improper Dust Runner."

Featherdancer handed her a quill and a piece of parchment. She hastily wrote something down and handed it back to him.

Contrail was next. "Find the grocery and jewelry shop on Market Street. Ask for the owners, one of my folks should be able to come out to see you."

Featherdancer turned to Dust Runner. "And you?"

She started to shake her head before looking at Inkwell. Her gaze flitted between him and his brother for a moment before she looked down at her hooves, biting her lip. Then she looked up directly into Featherdancer's eyes and fired off a burst of clicks. His eyes widened slightly, then he nodded. "Does anypony besides Inkwell know?" She shook her head.

He nodded again and turned to Sunbeam. She stared at him for a moment before dropping her head. "No, there's nopony. not for me."

The others gaped at her. "Sunbeam," Moonchaser began, "I know that you don't want to make yourself vulnerable, but the rest of us are all taking the same risk here. Besides, your family must be worried sick about you. I imagine they're very upset right now."

The streetmare looked at the pony that was so nearly her opposite. "Please, keep imagining things like that. The world must be such a nice place through your eyes." A single tear rolled down her cheek. "Eight months ago, my father was sent to one of Mayhem's prison camps. I haven't seen or heard from him since. I have no mother. The only pony who would care besides my da is probably lying in a gutter somewhere bleeding out because I wasn't there to keep Ever Wyte off her back."

"Ever Wyte... That guard from the market?"

Inkwell nodded at his brother. "I think I heard some of the other gaurds call him that."

"So then..." Featherdancer looked at Sunbeam. "Alright, I'll be sure to let Cloudwing know."

The mare started. "How... how do you know that name?"

He gave her a look. "It was the most interesting funeral I've ever been to."

Featherdancer emptied the supplies he had made a morning run for from out of his saddlebags and took to the air before anypony could react. Sunbeam had moved beyond shock and was openly sobbing into Moonchaser's shoulder. The noblemare had a hard look in her eyes as she locked gazes with Inkwell.

The stallion sighed, "My brother is a bit... dramatic. He gets it from our mother. Believe me though, he a performer and showpony through and through. There's another hoofshoe waiting to drop."

The mare's eyebrows rose. "A bat pony mage and a performer pegasus. Your parents must be very interesting ponies."

His eyelids leveled out. "You have no idea."

She nodded. "Do you think they might know a pony who can get forms pushed through quickly?"

"It depends on the forms."

She mouthed a single word. He nodded slowly. "I can take care of that."

"Take care of what?" Sunbeam finally spoke up.

"Well," Inkwell stated, "Since we seem to be so good at it, Moonchaser has decided that we're going to keep pulling off the impossible."

"Wh-what?" Sunbeam was struggling to keep up.

Moonchaser put her hooves on Sunbeam's shoulders and looked into her eyes. "It's about time somepony challenged the status quo. You know how you said that they'd never let you walk down Palatial Lane? Well now you're going to live there."

"Wh-wha-how?"

Inkwell looked up from where he had just finished drawing on a piece of parchment. "I am a licensed notary of Equestria by way of my status as a Court Wizard's Apprentice. I'm also the best forger for miles thanks to this..." He placed his hoof on the rune he had just finished drawing and several pieces of parchment floated into the air along with the contents of a bottle of ink.

Forty-five seconds later, a stack of papers including a false birth certificate and citizenship papers was tied up with a ribbon and placed gently in front of Sunbeam and Moonchaser. A second set of papers floated over next to them. "Alright, now all we need is your signatures and the signatures of these fine witnesses here, and you two are sisters by the laws of Equestria." He noticed their stunned expressions and laughed. "You should see the full spell, I take up an entire room when I activate it."

They stared at him. "What could you ever need to write that would be that long."

Inkwell shrugged, "I designed the spell to transcribe research notes so that they could be shared between wizards' libraries."

Sunbeam walked over to him and locked her eyes with his, perhaps six inches separating them. "Are you absolutely sure that you don't want to help me take over Equestria's crime world?"

When a pair of pegasi landed in the clearing not long after, the six ponies were still laughing helplessly. Featherdancer cleared his throat. "Do we..."

Inkwell just shook his head. "Inside joke."

The white filly next to Featherdancer was looking around as if searching for something. "Where's Sunbeam?"

The mare looked up and stopped laughing. "Cloudwing? But... how?" She glared at Featherdancer. "And just what did you mean 'the most interesting funeral you've ever been to?"

The pegasus filly stepped forward. "Sunbeam? Is that you? I mean, Featherdancer told me that you'd look different, but... wow, I don't even recognize you."

"Yeah Cloudwing, it's me." The two ponies embraced as the elder continues to shoot Featherdancer a look. "I'm still waiting on that explanation colt."

The pegasus rubbed the back of his neck with a forehoof. "Well, after they carted you all off, that one guard came looking for Cloudwing again. He even had poneekinns going door to door. We figured that the only way to get him to stop searching for her was to let him find her, but she had to stay out of his reach. So, the old stallion helped us make it look like she died when you were fighting the poneekinns. I have to tell you," he laughed, "there aren't many feelings stranger than sitting next to a filly in the pews during her funeral."

The filly in question turned her head to look at him. "Yeah? Try having it be your funeral you're attending."

"Eh... fair enough. Anyway, we've been staying at the tree with Starswirl while we're letting everypony forget about things."

"Wait..." Moonchaser spoke up, "You needed to get somepony to stop chasing you, so your first response was to fake death? Suddenly I'm seeing the family resemblance."

Inkwell laughed, "You remember how I told you you have no idea how interesting my parents are?"

"What kind of ponies could raise the two of you?"

The brothers looked at each other. Inkwell finally spoke up. "There are things we're not allowed to tell you. What we can say is that our father is very good at building and rebuilding things. Our mother... is very good at a lot of things."

The mare looked like she was about to pry further when Dust Runner stepped over. "We've all got our secrets, they'll tell us if we need to know."

"Speaking of needing to know," Contrail interrupted, "Did you manage to get a message to our families?"

Featherdancer shook his head. "Not yet, once it gets dark tonight, I'll sneak into the city and pass the message on to our sister. She'll deliver it to most of your families, although since Lotus Blossom's family live outside the walls, I'll be able to deliver that one myself. On that note, how long do you think it'll be before you lot are back to normal?"

"About a week," his brother replied, "Provided you can keep running supplies out here."

The pegasi nodded. "Of course." Cloudwing said. "Anything you need, one of us can fly out here."

"Alright then," The wizard's apprentice's scholarly side took over. "Do you have parchment and ink? This first list is going to be a bit long..."

Author's Note

And that is one more chapter done. A little bit of action, a lot of groundwork, on the whole I don't think I did too bad of a job.

Feel free to leave some sign of your agreement or disagreement. Please.

NPP6

Fade Out Stage Left

Two weeks had passed. In that time, Inkwell had managed to finish the spell that allowed the six ponies to regain their normal bodies, colorations, and cutie marks. They retained the ability to call on the transformation, because, as Inkwell put it, "That kind of power... once its given, you can't just take it away. You can't put it down after you pick it up. It becomes a part of you. It stays with you... forever."

Not that the others truly had a concept of what forever meant, though they can be forgiven for that. They were teenagers and young adults. Despite the maturity forced on them by their individual circumstances, they had trouble planning more than a few days in advance. They couldn't really be blamed for that, it's just the way that young ponies are made.

But that's not really the point. The point is that only one of the ponies who we last saw in that clearing truly knew what forever might mean, and he dared not utter it for the dual fear of being right or wrong. Inkwell truly hoped that he was wrong. But I digress.

The sands of time were falling through the hourglass, slowly signalling the coming of a new age for Equestria. Fate was busy, working hard on making a new loom after the last one had broken. Destiny was gathering energy to forge herself a new deck of cards. Whispers were passed among the stars and legends. The forgotten fables began to stir. They were all getting ready for a change.

And none of that mattered one iota to a bat pony who had recently rebuilt his feathered wings and the pegasus colt he was having a shouting match with over their parents dinner table.

"Featherdancer, for the last time, NO! Yes, we fought them, but that was because we had to. We were lucky last time. We made it out alive and unscarred. Barely. You were here though, you know what our family went through during those two weeks before the spell spit us out. And even after that, when they knew we were alive but they couldn't see us. You saw them all."

"Exactly!" The pegasus returned to his brother, "Mom an Dad should have never had to go through that! Your twin about had a nervous breakdown when she found out that you had gone and died on her! But that kind of thing is happening every day, all over Equestria. Look at Sunbeam, her father was just taken for no real reason. Yes, she was lucky to find you and Moonchaser, but what about the ponies who aren't lucky? What happens to them? You know full well! After all, it was what you stopped in that maketplace."

"You're right. You're dead right. Sunbeam and Cloudwing are the exception to the rule. Life isn't fair, and the things that happen out there are wrong. It could be so much worse though. You have no idea how truly terrible things could get."

"This isn't about Sunbeam and Cloudwing. Or even about that other world on the other side of the mirror. It's about doing the right thing. What happened to the pony who taught me that there's no such thing as a no-win situation? Who showed me that you could challenge the entire world and win, if you put enough into it and had even one pony to stand with you?"

"He failed." Inkwell's quiet voice was in its own way more disconcerting than the shouting match had been. "He tried to be a hero, and he found out that he wasn't as good as he thought he was. Yes, somepony needs to take a stand, but it needs to be somepony who can win. This fight isn't about challenging the world, its about challenging reality. When somepony shows up who can win that fight, then I'll be right there on the front lines. But we can't win this one. Fighting when you won't win is fine, but don't ever pick a fight you won't walk away from. That doesn't make you a hero, just a martyr. There are already plenty of those."

"But we could win. All you would have to do is transform and-"

"NO!" Featherdancer was nearly bowled over by the force of his brother's shout. "We cannot use the transformations. We cannot use the aliases. We have to leave all of that behind us. The six ponies that Discord banished need to be forgotten and stay that way. Even if we could bring that kind of power to bear, we would have no way to control it. And the price for wielding that kind of power is far too steep."

"Alright then, what about that other thing? Those magic spirit jewel things? From the Heartsong."

"The Elements of Harmony? Featherdancer, we don't even know if that's what that was let alone how or why we manifested it. We have no way to do it again, and all the legends point to it being a one-time thing. Even if its not, sure, it could take out a Draconequus. One. And then we just have to deal with all the rest of them, and their guards, poneekinns, monsters, and allies. The Elements are a miracle given solid form. We can't count on a miracle to save the day."

"Why not? You always told me that we make our own miracles. Maybe we don't need a miracle, maybe we just need a hero."

"That's exactly the point Featherdancer. We need a hero. We need somepony to stand behind who can actually win this fight, and we don't have that yet."

The pegasus gave the bat pony a mournful look and then turned and began walking out of the room. He stopped at the door. "You were a hero once." He spoke softly but his words struck home harder than any of the shouting had. "Do you even remember what that was like?" And then he was gone.

"He's right you know" The voice from behind Inkwell startled him. He turned to see Moonchaser standing there. He hadn't even heard her come in. "I'm sorry, I couldn't help but overhear from the other room. But he's right. We can't afford to wait for a hero, maybe we have to make our own."

The stallion shook his head at her. "Come on Moonchaser, you're the one who's been groomed for politics. You know what will happen if we start this fight before we can win. It's not losing that's the problem, its the fact that nopony will walk away. You know how it ends if we take them on and fail."

"Yes," She intoned, "The exact same thing that's happening now, only faster. Equestria is going to die either way, isn't it better to give it a chance to win? Or at least to go out of this world fighting to our last breaths." She shook her head. "The fact is that this war has already started. It began long before we were born, back when Mayhem and the other Draconequi first took over. We just haven't been fighting back."

"But if we fight it will only get worse." He turned his gaze downward. "Enough ponies have already been hurt by me. I can't cause any more pain. Innocents will just get caught in the crossfire as I fail over and over again."

"Haven't you been paying attention? Innocents are already getting caught in the crossfire! And you have no idea how bad it really is out there. Did you know that Discord actually protects ponies from the other Draconequi? Outside of Equestria the rule of chaos gets so much worse. What you're afraid of is already happening, while you just sit here."

"We didn't even get to fight a Draconequus before getting our plots handed to us. How can you still dream of freedom Moonchaser?"

She looked at him for a moment. Then she slapped him across the cheek. Then she leaned forward and gave him a sisterly hug. "Because I once lost that ability. And then in my darkest moment, when there was nothing I could do to save myself, I met a stallion. And he gave me hope. And because of that I'll fight for my dreams. Because of that, they're my most precious possessions."

She ended the hug. "I have to go now. Please... don't lose yourself to your fears. Don't let despair eclipse hope." She turned and left the room, saying her goodbyes to his parents and thanking them for the meal before taking off and vanishing into the night.

Inkwell sat there for a long time, just staring into the flickering flames of a candle. After an hour, he blew it out and left. His parents had already gone to bed, so he let himself out. He flew off into the night, slipping past the guards posted on the walls. His retained ability to match his color scheme to the night perfectly helped some.

He arrived at the tree he called home and quietly entered, taking care not to wake Starswirl as he made his way to his room. He flopped down on his bed with a "whumpf".

It was funny, a month and a half ago, he had wanted nothing more than to be a real mage. He had thought that he would be willing to pay any price. He felt like he had aged years since then. He had been so much younger, more naive, foolish, rash daring... heroic. He almost heard another voice whisper that last word on a nonexistent breeze.

Maybe the others were right, maybe he had been a better pony back then. He walked over to the mirror that hung on his wall. A reflection stared back at him. Not his reflection, but another one. The one that he didn't want. There was another irony. He was a stallion in the first place because he had come through a mirror, and now he couldn't stand the stallion he saw in the mirror.

Wait... he didn't usually have this hallucination. When he looked in the mirror, all he saw was Inkwell, so where had that thought come from? Could it be... maybe he had become a stallion that he couldn't stand to look at, but at least the ponies he cared about were safe.

For now. He continued to stare into the eyes of that other stallion in the mirror. The mirror... that could be a solution, take them all through the mirror, run back to his world to escape... what exactly? There was nothing that existed in this world that wasn't even more terrible back in his own. And what about all the other ponies that that would mean leaving behind, what would happen to them?

No, he could not run. Not from this. But if flight was not an option, then all that was left was...

Fight.

He saw it. He finally saw it. What the others had been trying to tell him all along. He hadn't had a good choice, so he had tried to avoid making a choice. And he had made a terrible choice by doing so. It wasn't that fighting was a good option, it was that it was the best option. The least of all evils. Their only chance.

But he still couldn't do it. Not as he was now. He had to be the stallion... the man... the pony he was before. He had to remember how to throw caution to the wind, trust in luck, believe that a miracle could save him. He had to remember how to be the pony that could start a fight that there was no chance of his walking away from.

And he had to remember how to win anyway.

He reached over and opened up his nightstand, removing his journal. He opened to the first page and began to read. Time passed. The dawn was breaking as he closed the book on the last page of writing.

He walked up to the wall and reached for his wings. Then he stopped. Instead he turned and walked to his closet, extracting a hooded black cloak that would cover him completely. Perfect.

No more running. No more hiding. No more pretending. It was time to challenge the world.

He arrived in the city to see a crowd being gathered. He followed them to the grand palace, where Discord seemed to be wrapping up a speech. It was strange though, Inkwell could hear him talking about executing the eleven ponies standing before him on a set of small platforms, but those spell circles were used for... banishment.

His trained and now enhanced eye could read the mystic patterns from here. The crystal formations were tuned. These ponies were going to find themselves in that one northern settlement, what was it called in his world... Crystalia, or something like that. It was funny though, back in the world he was from, they were major trade partners, but here he hadn't heard a single mention of the place. He had assumed that it just didn't exist here.

But beyond that, why would Discord make everypony think he was executing these ponies if he was just sending them to a forgotten city... very... far... away... Inkwell saw Mayhem and another Draconequus wearing a sash that he recognized. He was Bedlam, the Draconequus Mayhem had put in charge of the bat ponies. He ruled out of Transylmania, the central colony.

He was widely hailed as the most cruel of the Draconequi, but what was he... wait, third pony from the left. He hadn't seen it before because her wings were furled. That wasn't a pegasus, it was a bat pony. Suddenly something Discord said caught his attention.

"But I am not a ruler without mercy" Inkwell almost snorted at his tone of voice until he caught the looks that Discord was receiving from the other Draconequi.

Oh.

So Discord wasn't doing this for the benefit of the crowd, no they were just a part of the show. Then the real audience was...

Inkwell smiled. If that was Discord's game, then he might as well give him a hand... no. The stallion paused as he stood watching from the shadows. If he was going to do this, then there was no going back. No human had the right to interfere in this world. He had to leave that behind him now.

He gave an almost feral grin before turning and making his way up to the top of the palace gates. He was no longer the boy who fell through the mirror. He was a pony. A pony with ponies to protect. And now he was going to go give Discord a hoof with his deception. And send a message to the rest of Equestria.

"My lenience seems to have made ponies think that I will not punish them for their crimes against me. Therefore, I must be harsh and swift in my judgment. But I am not without a sense of fair play. Those ponies who came quietly when we arrested them are even now sitting in my dungeons, where they will remain. These ponies alone attacked my guards, these ponies alone shall be punished for it."

"Let the execution commence." He waved a paw to signal the time for the rite of last words had come.

"I'm sorry," A voice rang clear through the crowd, "I can't let you do that." All eyes turned to the top of the palace gates, where a stallion stood in a black cloak, none of his features visible with the sun behind him. A shadow standing alone in the middle of the day.

"And who exactly are you?" Discord was one of the only beings present not shocked by the stallion's gumption.

"What, you've forgotten me already? Discord, I'm hurt, am I really that forgettable?"

The Draconequus narrowed his eyes. He had no idea where things were going to go now and he didn't like it. He preferred to control his own chaos, thank you very much. "What do you want?"

"My, you really don't pay very much attention, do you? I thought we were very clear in our musical number. We want you, gone. All the Draconequi. We are going to take you down. Now step aside Discord, killing isn't really your style."

"Discord!" A roar ripped from Mayhem's throat. "Kill those ponies, now."

Inkwell saw the hesitation in Discord's eyes. He also saw where those eyes flicked to for a brief moment before his gaze hardened. So there was something in that tower the made Discord obey Mayhem, interesting...

Discord swept his claw in front on him and the eleven ponies vanished in a flash of light. Of course, nopony could know that Inkwell had redirected the spell ever so slightly, just enough to separate the one wearing the mystic brand of Bedlam - Not the bat pony mare, strangely enough - from the others, sending him to a different location entirely.

A bell was heard ringing in the distance. "Do you hear that Mayhem? That bell tolls for you. Twice it has rung, and the third strike shall mark your doom."

"You never answered my question," Discord shouted over the crowd, "Who are you?"

The bat pony looked at the Draconequus. Then, for the first time since he had been in Discord's dungeon, he smirked. He locked eyes with the chaos being from hundreds of yards away. Discord could feel the smirk, and then he felt it change to a grin. A genuine soft smile. "Hope."

That was all the stallion said before leaping backwards off of the top of the gates as guards rushed him from either side. He vanished into the shadows, leaving as much trace as the shadow he appeared to be.

A few minutes later, Inkwell was looking at a message board. The names had been posted of all those arrested at what had apparently been a peaceful protest until some guard turned it into a brawl. Inkwell rolled his eyes. He was pretty sure he knew which one that had been.

Then his breath caught and his heart froze. So they hadn't gotten away. He had been worried when he found the charm that he had given Moonchaser to hide the extras he couldn't take away from her normal body. It was slightly bent and had a dent in it. He had found it in a gutter at the street corner where the protest had taken place. Unless he missed his guess, They had actually started that protest.

He had to shake his head. It would have been one thing if he had to just get them out, but the guards had been indiscriminate. Everypony within a block of the protest had been arrested. He sighed, now he was going to have to get almost four dozen ponies out of Discord's dungeon.

He almost laughed out loud. He wasn't even bothering to question if he could do it, he was wondering how, assuming that he not only could but would, and already complaining about how many ponies he was going to have to make sure chaos couldn't hurt.

He was standing there, on a street corner, all alone and in the shadows of the sunset. He was challenging the odds, laughing at Fate, Destiny, and Certainty. He was staring down the impossible and wondering how much time it was really going to take away from his studies. He knew something that he could never do, and he was going to go ahead and do it anyway.

For the first time in weeks, he felt like himself again.

He paused to look at the mark on his flank, an inkwell with a quill in it sitting in front of a page with writing and a magic circle. He concentrated for a moment and the mark shifted, becoming a pale blue starburst and a silver fleur-de-lis. He smiled, maybe they weren't really so very different after all. But Inkwell wasn't what Equestria needed right now.

The scholar would have to rest for a time. The rebel would take things from here. But he had to be sure.

He tapped two of the names on the list with a forehoof. Aliases, likely Featherdancer's and Moonchaser's. But he had to be sure.

"I'm coming." He softly said to the coming night. "Just hold on." But he had to be sure.

A pony in a black cloak took to the air and flew towards a place he had recently become somewhat acquainted with. As the sun finished setting and night took hold, a bat pony flew over the city of Everfree. He flew to a house, a mansion really, on Palatial Lane. He checked his garment to make sure it could be mistaken for either court robes or a traveler's cloak, ensuring that the door would at least be opened.

Then he raised his right hoof and knocked on the door to the home of the mare with a title longer than his leg who he knew only as Moonchaser.

Author's Note

Alright, one more chapter, an epilogue, and this first installment is complete. I know that it doesn't really cover much, but as I wrote this I realized that there are places that I want parts of this story to go that somewhat contradict each other. So, instead of a single, ridiculously long story, Rising Star is going to be the opener to a larger saga. I should also make it clear that it really is no one character's story, but a chronicle of all of the ponies who shaped Equestria and that Equestria then forgot. All of those beings who are now only remembered by a pair of immortals who are beginning to feel their centuries.

Of course, that situation will be rectified, but that's for the part of this series that will actually take place in the present, which is the other reason I'm dividing up my tales like this. This way, if show canon actually ever contradicts any aspect of my saga, only that one smaller story in the series will need to be tagged as an AU.

So, if there's anypony out there who cares enough to still be reading this (which I myself am unsure of, you'd think they would have responded to my ridiculously unsubtle hints to drop a comment: At this point I think I might almost welcome a flamer.), then thank you for your continued support.

The Rising Star is almost at its highest point in the sky,

NPP6

Nova

The sun had only just gone down. The house was quiet, almost sepulchral in its silence. There were a few exceptions, the butler knew. Dust Runner and the Lady Sunbeam were both in the Lady Moonchaser's chambers sobbing. The Lady Starshadow had not left her own chambers since the news had arrived.

Silver Monocle had been the family butler for decades. He had never seen the family in such a state. He could only hope that another miracle arrived, but they were apparently using a lot of those lately. Then the bell rang and there was a knock at the door. He went to the door fully intending to tell the pony to leave.

As he looked through the door's peephole however, he saw something rather unexpected. A stallion stood on the doorstep, his features could not quite be made out under his garment. In the extremely dim light, Monocle couldn't quite tell if he was wearing a ceremonial traveler's cloak that would invoke the laws of hospitality, or the ceremonial robes of a court wizard. Either way, he supposed he needed to at least open the door.

"Hello, how may I help you?" Monocle would observe proper decorum marching to the gallows.

"I... Is the Lady Moonchaser in?" The cloaked pony seemed unsure of himself, almost as if he couldn't decide which answer he would rather hear.

The butler narrowed his eyes ever so slightly in suspicion. "No. I'm sorry sir, I'm afraid she's not in at the moment."

"May I ask when she will return?" Ahah. An admirer. Silver Monocle was almost grateful for the return to normal problems. Lovestruck schoolcolts he knew how to deal with. He subconsciously shifted into a guard and block mode of conversation.

"No sir, I'm afraid that I have not been made aware of the Lady's schedule." Hold a moment, he had used a shortened form of her titles. He obviously felt he had some familiarity with her...

The cloaked pony nodded. "Would it be possible to leave a message for her with her maid Dust Runner or her sister, the Lady Sunbeam?" For some reason, Silver Monocle found himself thinking back to a similar conversation a few weeks ago with a young mare taking place on that same doorstep.

"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that they aren't seeing anypony right now." Guage the reaction, how does he respond to being stopped at every turn.

The stallion nodded slowly. "Very well, will you please deliver the message to them?"

"Of course sir, what is the message?"

Inkwell paused, what could he say? Tell them I'm sorry. Tell them that they were right all along and I'm a fool for not realizing it. Tell them I'm going to fix things. Tell them...

The cloaked stallion smiled, a small, soft, sad smile. "Just tell them I called." He turned to leave.

"Sir!" The stallion turned back to see the old butler looking at him with a quizical expression. "What name shall I give them for their mysterious caller?"

The cloaked pony looked surprised for a moment. "I..." As he raised a hoof to gesture, he caught sight of it for the first time since landing at the mansion. He almost laughed, he had forgotten... but... somehow, it seemed right. Inkwell was a pony with a life and a family. A pony who may return someday.

The cloaked pony couldn't risk that. He couldn't start a war as another pony and then leave him to one day live with the consequences...

He thought about what he had done. The things that defined him as separate from his counterpart. The wings, the friends, the fights, the execution... the execution... well, it wasn't like he was ever going to escape that blasted pseudonym anyway, although that ridiculous title would have to go. Really though, the name itself wasn't too bad, it was somewhat poetic really, the last light and all that...

He smiled at the butler, a real genuine smile. Then the black alicorn with the deep blue mane reached up and took off his hoood. He gave the old earth pony the pseudonym that had been haunting him since he gave it to Discord's interrogation team, and then he spread his very real feathery wings and vanished into the night.

Silver Monocle stood there for a time, stunned. Then he very slowly and carefully closed and bolted the door. He then promptly broke all precepts of decorum and galloped down the hallways, shouting at the top of his lungs for the mares he served.

When he arrived at the wing of the manor that the family bedchambers occupied, he sat down and slid to a stop, looking at Lady Starshadow standing in the doorway to her chambers with a rather amused expression, and Lady Sunbeam standing in the doorway to her sister's room, looking quite confused while Dust Runner standing behind her looked slightly scandalized.

He sat there panting for a moment, then began to offer his explanation. Several times. Finally he settled for delivering the message. "The Lady Moonchaser had a caller. He just left."

Lady Starshadow raised an eyebrow. "Must have been an important pony to get you worked up like this."

The butler nodded, years of training beginning to reassert themself in his mind and behavior. "No Madame, not to many. In fact, I rather doubt that there are more than a dozen ponies who even know his name."

The noblemare looked at him for a moment. Her daughter had told her about a pony nopony knew. A brilliant stallion with a habit of doing the impossible, but she had also said that he had left, that he wasn't around anymore or something like that. She hardly dared to hope... but she had to hope... she had to be sure. "Who was he?"

"There's a reason that we could never get a straight answer to that question out of Lady Moonchaser. I can see it now that I've heard him make an oath without words."

The mares ignored the awkward phrasing, two of them knew what he meant and the third didn't really care. "Silver Monocle," Starshadow's tone was almost an order. "What was his name?"

The butler looked directly into the eyes of the mare he had served for so long. He said two words. Three identical gasps followed his delivery of what had once been a pseudonym. Dust Runner and Sunbeam started asking questions over each other while Starshadow just looked on with tears in her eyes. If anypony could give her daughter a chance, then it was the stallion that she never stopped talking about. The pony that Moonchaser claimed could do the impossible.

It was amazing how much hope could be infused into a home so laden with despair by only mentioning a single name. Just two words that were originally supposed to protect an identity had now somehow become one. Watching the other three ponies present, she saw why Moonchaser believed in him so much. If his name could do this, then what could the pony himself do.

Smiling for the first time that day, she turned and went back into her chambers, whispering under her breath those two words. The name of the pony that changed the rules of the game...

"Midnight Star."

Author's Note

And there's the final reveal, although, you all probably saw it coming.

This also ends what I'm personally thinking of as my origins arc. There'll be an epilogue to wrap things up, cycle out the ponies listening in the audience, and give a general break. It'll also lay a little bit of groundwork, but it'll focus on bringing a close to the storytelling by Discord, Celestia, and Luna. I'm not completely sure about breaking the story up like this, but I'm going to go with it.

So, cameos coming up, and a conclusion to what's going on in the throne room in a quick return trip to the present.

If anypony's still reading by this point, then thank you so much for your support.

NPP6

Recompense

Equestria

Canterlot

The Throne Room of Canterlot Castle

Present Day

...Again

There was a dull clatter as the inkwell Twilight was using to take notes tipped over when she leaped to her feet in shock. "What!?" She blushed as her cry echoed through the room.

Celestia smiled. "Yes, Inkwell managed to ascend and became the alicorn Midnight Star."

The purple mare stared at her. "But...then...if...he...wait...no...if...then...who...wait..." Her eyes widened as she shook her head at the princess of the sun. "No. No way. That's just... It's not... You can't be..." Her old mentor nodded, prompting the younger alicorn to burst out laughing, much to the confusion of the rest of the audience.

Discord laughed. "As usual, Twilight seems to be ahead of the game."

"Ya'll mind explaining what in tarnation Twi's figured out that the rest of us ain't?"

The diarchs looked at each other and smiled. Flames erupted from their hooves, white for Celestia, black for Luna. The fires began to work their way up the alicorns' legs in a show vaguely reminiscent of Chrysaslis's reveal, even as they began to speak.

Celestia began. "A thousand years ago, Equestria was a very different place. The reign of the Draconequi made it so that we could not simply become alicorns the way that Princesses Mi Amore Cadenza and Twilight Sparkle did."

Luna took over from her sister, "The fact that the disguise spell that Inkwell had placed on us mingled with our alicorn transformations gave us an opportunity. One we took. Our alicorn forms gained the names that we had given to the interrogation teams. While our civilian identities remained protected, the six alicorns rose to fight to free Equestria."

"Nopony realized that even as Lotus Blossom, Contrail, Dust Runner, Inkwell, Moonchaser, and Sunbeam seemed to be going about their slightly abnormal but still relatively peaceful lives..."

"They were leading the revolution as Lace Heart, Mirror-Sister of Ponykind, Afterburner Blaze, Conqueror of the Eternal Storm, Shade Darkwing, Ruler of Eternal Shadows, Midnight Star, Lord of the Night Sky, Luna, Queen of the Moon, and Celestia, Empress of the Undimmed Sun and Heir Apparent to the Throne of the Universe."

Celestia leveled a glare at the assembled ponies' giggles. "We shed the titles the instant we could and destroyed all of our interrogation records."

Luna cut her sister off before she could get into a familiar tirade. "Inkwell's meddling with the magic of our ascension gave us the ability to move back and forth between forms. That's actually something that became quite useful as our lives became increasingly more complicated."

The sisters suddenly began to float into the air, the fire flowing up around them to form a pair of floating spheres. The light grew until everypony was forced to close their eyes and turn away.

When it died down, they heard a familiar voice say, "You can look now."

The group turned and stared. The pair of ponies that stood before them was no bigger than they were. That was the first thing that struck the ponies who had been listening to the story. Then they noticed that the princesses were gone. Then they realized that the two mares in front of them were alicorns.

The one alicorn six of them recognized. It was Luna, but not Luna as the others knew her. It was Luna as she had been on the night of that Summer Sun Celebration Three Years ago. Luna as she had appeared after Nightmare Moon had been blasted away from her by the power of the Elements of Harmony. The only difference was that her cutie mark was not that of Luna, but rather a crescent moon not unlike the one in Nyx's cutie mark superimposed on a full moon's silhouette, with a silver star in the part of the full moon not occupied by the crescent.

The other mare was one that none of them knew. Her coat was tan, with a red half sun on either flank. Her mane and tail were blue, with a gold streak running through each. She was the one who spoke. "These are the forms we grew up in... relatively... In those days, my name was Sunbeam."

Luna smiled at them. "And mine was Moonchaser."

Twilight spoke up. The others were more than happy to let her lead the investigation. "But... In your story, Moonchaser was a pegasus and Sunbeam was a Unicorn..."

Sunbeam nodded. "We were."

"But all the history books say that the two of you were born as alicorns!"

Moonchaser stepped forward. "And Celestia and Luna were born as alicorns... so were Sunbeam and Moonchaser for that matter, we were just raised differently because of... complications."

"And you're supposed to be sisters biologically!"

Sunbeam rubbed the back of her neck. "Again, complications..."

Moonchaser stared at her sister. "Really? It's that much of a habit that you can't volunteer information even after they already know your biggest secret?"

"Not our biggest secret sister, they still haven't heard that one yet."

"They will soon enough."

"Yes, but..." Sunbeam's eyes danced around the room. "Spoilers?"

"You're stretching sister, you're really stretching."

"No, I mean... Some of us still haven't lived through it yet."

"We were already much further along when those two showed up for the first time."

"Yes, for them, but we stopped just before the first time they showed up for us."

"Sunbeam... It's time to let secrets go. You're not the only one anymore, there are a half-dozen immortals in this room alone."

Sunbeam's eyes widened. "You weren't supposed to... they didn't know! They weren't supposed to know! How can they-"

"They deserve to know! They deserve to know how short their time truly is so that they can treasure it." Moonchaser put a hoof on the other mare's shoulder. "Sometimes the kindest thing we can do for our little ponies is to show them their illusions for what they are."

Sunbeam wiped a tear out of her eye and nodded. She turned to the ponies who had silently watched the entire exchange. "Moonchaser and I were born alicorns. But Moonchaser lost her horn to a disease that turned her magic to rot it from the inside out. It had to be amputated to save her life. I lost my wings even younger than she lost her horns... but all events in their order and we're not yet to that part of the story."

"Umm..." Nyx's quiet voice came from near the forgotten statue. "Something's happening..."

The 'something' in question was that the base the statue was on had lit up with an unusual pattern. Luna and Celestia trotted over to examine it. At Twilight's raised eyebrow, Luna laughed. "What? The transformation sequence? That was a one-time thing. After the changeling invasion Celestia thought that it might cause a panic if anypony saw us as Moonchaser or Sunbeam, and so she had the brilliant idea of locking us in our full power forms. A thousand years of Chessmastering an entire country and she still can't tell when an illusion is completely inappropriate." She turned to look at the symbol. "Where's the ink?"

Celestia turned to look at her. "What?"

"The ink. Where is it?"

"Luna, what are you talking about?"

"That's the spell circle he uses when he needs to do that notetaking thing. The one that lets him telekinetically control the ink directly. How do you not know that?"

"I didn't build the platform, he... had... it... ready... I really hate that stallion."

"I found it!" Everypony's eyes turned to Scootaloo as she pointed to the inkwell that Twilight had spilled earlier. It had poured out across the floor in a pattern.

Pinkie pointed out the obvious. "Ooh! It's a message! It says 'Discord... me...' Now just what is that supposed to mean?"

The Draconequus in question floated forward and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. A lightbulb appeared over his head, which he reached up and turned upside down. It promptly began filling with sand, until right as it topped off... "That's it!" Discord began to laugh. "Oh that's clever. You know, he always was my favorite pony. Let's see what happens when you give Hope a little chaos..." He tapped the stone alicorn on the tip of his horn and promptly vanished.

Wind began coming from nowhere, impossibly pulling starlight from the windows. The beams of light began to coalesce, forming up and taking shape around the statue like a second skin. The starfield that had surrounded the stone alicorn began to gain color, and soon what stood in front of them was not statue, but a very real black alicorn with a mane and tail two shades of deep blue and a picture on his flank of a pale blue starburst and a silver fleur-de-lis.

He smiled at them softly. "Hello, you'll have to forgive me for not shaking hooves, I can't really leave the spell circle."

Luna walked up to him with tears in her eyes. "Midnight, I... we..."

He stopped her with a raised hoof. "You and I need to talk, but it's going to need to be longer and more private than present circumstances allow." At her nod he continued, "On that note, I come bearing gifts! First Luna, I ran into an old friend of ours, and she gave me something for you."

In front of the base he stood upon, starlight began again to gather, forming up into a small pendant, a white flower whose six petals could easily be mistaken for a snowflake. The Stallion was smiling widely. "The Winter Star sends her regards. She also wanted me to tell you that she can finally see your night, and it's as beautiful as she imagined."

"Then, you..."

He laughed and shook his head at the mare. "No, by the time I got there, she had already been destined to become a star. I was quite literally the last one to mark her for ascension. She earned her place there on her own, and continues to earn it."

"So then, she can come back right?"

His smile slipped. "No Luna, she can't come back. She's not like me, she lived her life. Now, she's happy to look down on Equestria and help ponies as a Wishing Star. You know, she's actually one of the ones that helped me release you from the moon."

"...Is she happy?"

The soft smile was back. "The best friend she ever had has finally been released from her prison and nightmare after a thousand years, and she gets to help ponies every night. She's very happy."

The alicorn mare nodded. "Alright, I'm sure I'm not the only pony you need to talk to."

Now the smile was sad. "No, I wish I had more time, but this is taking a massive amount of energy." He looked out over the small crowd. "To the sandstone pegasus in the back, I can only say 145 North, 16 West. For the bat pony mare on the far left, I can say that you need to trust yourself and your friends, it all works out in the end. And now things get complicated. Doctor!"

"Yes?" The stallion in question moved to the front of the crowd, a pegasus mare in tow.

"You came here to ask a question. I'm going to give you your answer. 27F64K1C6.6F039, 8V548D3.8645JK."

"...How could you possibly know that?"

"Because that's what you told me to tell you the first time around."

"A causality loop?"

"It was the only way you could think of to save her."

"So I told you so that you could tell me. So now why don't you tell me why I didn't just prevent this happening in the first place?"

The alicorn flinched. "Because it needed to happen. It had to happen. It was the only way that it could happen, because when it was time for it to happen, it had already happened."

The Doctor stared at him. "How many causality loops are we actually dealing with here?"

"Enough to make it impossibly dangerous to try and break one. Besides, this was the only way to save her."

"Save her?"

"Ditzy Doo... such a sweet and innocent filly, with such an absolutely amazing mind. I once accidentally entered her Dreamscape... it took me a week to find my way out. So how do you take one of the most intelligent fillies in the universe, one whose brain works on a level quite literally anachronismically, and protect her when the last two guardians aren't speaking and while one is ignorant, and the other cannot interact with the physical world?

"There really is only one answer, only one thing I could do. I had to make it so that she could never understand. Because how could she ever understand? How could the filly who would grow up to become the hope of dozens of races, a symbol of mercy the universe over, ever understand what was being done to her... by her own mother...

"She couldn't. She couldn't understand all of that at such a young age and still grow up to be the mare the universe needed. Because it does need her, the angel of mercy to temper the traveler's wrath. So I delayed the inevitable. I made it so that she could grow up in perfect innocence, and then when she was old enough, when she was mature, when she was ready, she could understand."

"So why now? Why not just let her be the innocent forever?"

"You already know Doctor, you have already seen it. You can't just take a pony's mind and tell it to work differently. The spell is deteriorating, and it's going to take her mind with it."

"How long?"

"Long enough."

"HOW LONG DO I HAVE!?" In any other situation an earth pony roaring at an alicorn in that tone would have been humorous. For some reason, their audience found it terrifying.

Midnight Star sighed, "Two weeks. You have two weeks to get her to me at that point in time."

The Doctor sat down. "I... I can't. I haven't been able to fly the TARDIS that accurately since..."

"Since you came to this world." All eyes were once again on the stallion on the stand. "I know. And I know why. You and I, we are not born of this world. You are still sitting outside, looking in, and you can't be. You are a force of destruction, The Oncoming Storm, The Wizard of the Traveling Box. Your name is spoken at night in different worlds to frighten or comfort children. You. Are. The Doctor.

"But here, you've found an entire world where innocence and goodness thrive. You're afraid, terrified that if you let yourself become attached, then It'll all go up in flames. It's just a matter of time before someone comes for you and all of this gets caught in the crossfire.

"And you can't let that happen. Which is why you have to let go. You've been stopping yourself and you haven't even realized it. You cannot bounce around time and space meddling in the way things happen knowing that you will never have to live with the consequences. You have to let yourself become a part of this world."

"I have obligations, back in the world that I... we come from."

"Forgotten who you are? There'll be time enough for that later. Right now you have a choice to make. Become a part of this world and save Ditzy... or let her descend into madness as the universe burns around her and all life everywhere goes out in the exact same instant."

There was silence for a moment before the Doctor looked up from the spot on the floor between his hooves. There was a light in his eyes that was quite literally the stuff of legend. It had been seen by dictators, warlords, orphans, pirates, soldiers, and hundreds of others of every creed, race, code, and class imaginable. Everywhere you went, any being you asked would tell you exactly what it meant. They would always say the same thing, A miracle is about to happen."You already knew which choice I'd make, didn't you?"

"Doctor, by the time I met you, you already had."

"Come on Ditzy, we've got some history to show up in. Allons-y!"

The two galloped out into the gardens. There was a brief pause before a light began to flash and a rasping noise echoed into the throne room. There was a brief silence that Twilight suddenly broke.

"Wait a second, I know that pony!"

"So do most sentient races."

"No, I mean we know them, that was Derpy Hooves!"

"No," The firm statement was given simultaneously by each of the elder alicorns. Midnight explained further, "That mare was Ditzy Doo, companion to the Doctor and bearer of over a dozen titles. She is a symbol of mercy that is quite literally universal. She also happens to have one of the largest targets in history strapped to her back. Derpy Hooves is a mailmare from Ponyville who lives there happily with her family."

There was a sigh. "No, it's alright, at the very least they should know." Derpy Hooves walked around a corner, the same brown earth pony who had just left trailing behind her. "Told you I wasn't a single mother." Twilight turned a very interesting shade of mottled red.

Derpy sat down, looked around at those from her own town, and sighed. "My name now is Derpy Hooves. I originally gained that name as a derogatory term after Midnight Star helped me protect my mind and soul from my mother's... actions. Because of that, I gained a reputation. I had to deal with a lot of bullying growing up, but I was better off in the end than I would have been. Needless to say, when the main character of the one fairy tale I had actually known growing up showed up on my doorstep, I left with him in a heartbeat. I never saw my mother again, and I can't really say that I care.

"After we left here, we went back in time to have Midnight remove the spell. We kept travelling, and one day we found ourselves looped back on ourselves, caught up in a revolution that took place before we had even met the ponies we were fighting alongside. Things got complicated, and towards the end of the war we were forced into retirement after breaking reality one last time. But I'll let the ponies who lived through things chronologically tell you about that.

"Time Turner and I are happily married now, though we still have to pop around to stop crises and keep our enemies off our tails, and he can't be seen around Ponyville a whole lot, so he uses a disguise spell that Midnight gave us. When we realized this morning that we were out of the disposable runes, we realized today was the day. Time Turner and I popped over in the TARDIS, the girls are on the train, they should be here for the next part of the story in the morning... which begs the question of who's going to tell Dinky? We already bounced Sparkler back for the first time, so she already knows, but Dinky... We've tried to avoid telling her, let her have a normal fillyhood for as long as possible." She looked a little sheepish.

"We got comfortable, we got careless. Just when we thought we could keep the ruse up forever..." She shook her head. "I still want to know just what we did to get Fate so vindictive."

"NO!" The three elder alicorns looked at each other. Celestia took the helm this time, "No, believe me, you'll find that out soon enough. for now, take comfort in not knowing. A lot of comfort."

"Fair enough," Time Turner spoke up for the first time, "Spoilers and all that."

His wife shot him a look. "We really are going to have to rethink those rules. But that's beside the point. A few weeks ago, Cheerilee's class got far enough to cover basic pony anatomy. They even had a pediatric physician visiting. Dinky was just a little too quick on her hooves for her own good in this case. Long story short, the fact that she has two hearts threw the entire class into disarray. We were lucky that somepony apparently set off a ridiculously large number of high explosives at the exact moment that she blew her own cover. Or was it really luck?"

Her pointed look drew laughs from Midnight and Luna, a gentle smile from Celestia. "No." Seemed to be the general consensus. Midnight paused though. "Actually... It might have been her... I'll have to check, I didn't think she took it yet, but..." He smirked at the questioning gazes. "Not my secret to tell. Anyway, continuing my gift-giving, I have one here..."

A small door on his platform opened and a scroll rolled out onto the floor. "For the... intrepid Cutie Mark Crusaders." The look on his face was familiar to both Celestia and the brown earth pony with the hourglass cutie mark, though neither could quite figure out why. "In the hopes that you might find it useful, a map and key to my old lab."

Rainbow Dash wasn't quite fast enough to keep the scroll away from the fillies. Twilight stepped forward, confused. "Wouldn't your lab currently be in the ruins in the Everfree Forest? How do you expect them to find it with a thousand-year-old map?"

"That lab is not bound to any one place. As long as you know how to get there, it can be anywhere you need it to be." At her blank stare he sighed. "Honestly, you mares make it so hard to be mysterious. The lab is enchanted. The map will keep them running around for a bit while it attunes to and tests them and then create a room for them to find that will have supplies and equipment already inside of it. The actual location will have specific meaning to them, and can actually be changed if it truly needs to be. Because they have one of my keys, they will also have access to a small portion of my research notes, which should help them get started."

"Isn't it a bit reckless to give those fillies access to whatever they need to play around with dangerous magical forces?"

The alicorn stallion sighed. "Honestly, it was a desperate gambit, although it seems to have at least partially worked." He motioned to the space that the four fillies had once occupied and the smaller door that had formed and opened in the middle of Discord's drawbridge to let them out. "I don't know when they'll be back though, so I have to make this short. Rainbow Dash!"

The pegasus in question looked up from where she had crashed trying to catch the scroll before the fillies. "Yeah?"

"I need you to understand that I'm breaking a completely ridiculous number of rules to tell you this."

The mare flew forward and stood to attention. "Umm... isn't breaking rules usually a bad thing?"

"Yes, and there will be repercussions, which is something you need to understand." She nodded and he continued. "Scootaloo's parents are both very good ponies, but good ponies can make mistakes, and the one that's coming... Rainbow Dash, understand that I'm doing this for you as much as for her."

She gave him a confused look and he took a deep breath before continuing, "I know the secret wishes. You hung one wish on me over a thousand times. I know your secret, I know your shame. There is no way to undo what has been done." Rainbow was whiter than Celestia and shaking.

"So this is the only way I can grant your wish. I cannot change what happened all those years ago, but I can give you a chance to change things this time.

"I know why you have to be the fastest, the most loyal, the best, the hero. I know that you have to win because of the one time you lost, you have to succeed because of the one time you failed, you can't leave your friends hanging because of the one time you did. You absolutely have to be the fastest pony in Equestria because you are constantly running from the memory of the one time that you weren't fast enough.

"Fluttershy I created The Stare, it won't work on me, so don't bother. Twilight, I have centuries of magical experience and several wars under me, you don't have the power. Applejack, I'm a spiritual manifestation, you can't actually touch me, so if you try to buck me you'll just go right through. Rarity, you aren't a combatant, you could be, but you just aren't on a high enough level to beat anypony in this room. Pinkie Pie, breaking reality won't do anything since I am presently both outside of it and manifesting via chaos magic. That should take care of everypony who was about to do something stupid, now let me finish.

"I know Rainbow Dash. I know where you are. So now, I'm going to give you a chance. This time, you have enough warning. This time you can be fast enough.

"Get Scootaloo out of that house. In one month, Scootaloo's father will lose his job. This is the final domino that will lock in a chain of events that was started a long time ago. There will be nothing you can do. He will have a full mental breakdown. At his lowest point, he will make a mistake. a terrible, terrible mistake. He realizes what he's done, actually commits suicide because of it, but by then its too late. The damage has already been done.

"You have to save her Rainbow Dash. There was once a pony who you meant more to than anypony else, who trusted you to be able to take care of her no matter what. You weren't able to save her, and that wasn't your fault, but you still haven't ever been able to forgive yourself. Now there's another pony, and she looks at you the same way that that first pony once did. If anything, she sees you as an even greater hero. Scootaloo you have a chance to save. Let this be your recompense."

When the pegasus mare looked up at him, the tears had already dried. "What happens if I fail?"

"We lose Scootaloo."

"She dies?"

"...Eventually."

The mare stared at the door that the filly in question had left through. She looked into the stallions eyes, her gaze daring him to lie to or coddle her. "What's the catch? I've seen enough movies to know that you don't get something like this without paying a price."

In a single instant, a thousand possible responses flashed through Midnight Star's mind. In that same instant he settled on the best course of action overall. The bald truth. "Yes, there is a price. One that Scootaloo will pay. We're breaking reality to save her, and the universe only has one punishment for that. Somehow, someday, someway, she will gain the same curse as the rest of us. She will gain eternal youth."

"Eternal youth is a curse?"

"You have no idea." Echoed out in five separate voices.

Midnight continued, "It's a lot worse than it sounds. Scootaloo will remain young even as she watches everything around her, her parents, the other crusaders, you, maybe even Equestria itself, grow old, sicken, and eventually die. Lonely Eternity, that is the price for going outside the rules. Young, forever, alone."

There was a sound. A sound that was not a sound, but a feeling. One that four ponies present knew well. It was the sound of a barrier breaking, of Destiny gathering up her cards and Fate restringing her loom, of reality running scared as the boundaries of the universe bent under the force of sheer willpower. It was the sound that was heard when the impossible was about to happen.

Rainbow Dash looked deep into Midnight Star's eyes. Huh, so that's the feeling they always talk about... "No. Not happening. I don't care how hard it is, or who says it can't be done. I am never going to let Scootaloo face that. She. Will. Not. Be. Alone. Do you hear me?"

There was a laugh, a soft gentle laugh from Rainbow's right. She turned to glare down the immortal alicorn princess of the night. "What are you laughing at? You don't think I can do it? Is that it?"

Luna paused for a moment before shifting back to Moonchaser. "No, I'm laughing because I think you can. You're going to save the pony who's counting on you, and just try and stop you. The Elements did indeed choose well, I couldn't have picked a better pony to wield Loyalty."

Rainbow Dash gave her a questioning gaze. This time Luna (she was doing a lot of back and forth) was joined in laughter by Celestia, Derpy, and Time Turner. "You still haven't figured it out? We were the original bearers of the Elements of Harmony. Before they manifested on that execution platform, they were aethereal forces before then... sort of. They manifested once every generation to pull off a single miracle. With us they became physical objects, bound to us until we severed those bonds in various ways."

Midnight picked up from Luna, "Nopony can truly bear more than one element. At least... not for long. It's too much, the feedback of energy destroys the bonds... It's how Celestia lost her bond to the elements, when she was forced to turn them on us in that last battle, where we stood against her as Nightmare Moon and Starless Night. When I was a younger pony I wielded the Element of Loalty. You are my successor Rainbow Dash."

"And," The Doctor spoke up, a slightly manic grin on his face. "That comes with some baggage."

Derpy nodded. "Responsibilities, expectations, capabilities."

Luna reverted to her Moonchaser form. "You are the new bearer of the Element of Loyalty, which means something to beings across Equestria."

Sunbeam looked kindly at the blue pegasus. "Their eyes will be on you."

Derpy Hooves, Time Turner, Sunbeam, and Moonchaser, the only four ponies in the room who had experience with that special kind of oath Rainbow had just made began to circle the pegasus with the technicolor mane, speaking in turn, overlapping and letting their voices flow into each other in that way that only ancient beings and ponies who have known each other for a ridiculously long time can.

"They will be watching you because they know the power of Loyalty, and they know the meaning and might of your words. Across Equestria, even beyond, you can go, find anypony with true power and ask them, ask them what it means when a bearer of Loyalty makes an oath. And they will all tell you the exact same thing.

"When Loyalty swears by nothing, but gives you their word and binding oath. When they tell you that they are going to challenge fate, destiny, and reality. When they say that they are going to take on the entire world and win. When Loyalty has somepony to protect and they tell you that they will come through, hang the odds, buck the rules, and clop the consequences. When Loyalty tells you that they are about to do the impossible while everything in the universe tries to stop them, Then there is exactly one thing you can be sure of.

"One fact that transcends all others. One constant that will always define the truth. One ideal, one concept, one uniting factor that will always be there. Because when Loyalty stands up, and challenges the greater plan, it will always, always mean one thing:

"They're selling themselves short."

The four ponies stopped circling the mare in the middle, stepping back to the crowd to let Rainbow Dash face her predecessor. Midnight smiled as he stepped to the edge of the platform. "You will save Scootaloo, from both of her fates. If you have to build door number three with your bare hooves, you'll save her. I know you will. I know because I felt it, what you did just now, I felt the powers of the universe shift as you made your oath before you even spoke the words.

"But always remember Rainbow Dash, the true power of Loyalty is not what we can do. Loyalty gains power from those it is loyal to. Trust your friends, because at the end of the day, they're the real power of loyalty."

The mare smiled, nodded, and slauted with a wing.

Midnight returned the mare's nod and turned to her friends. "Pinkie Pie, a word of advice on those surprise cupcakes you're planning for Spike's birthday, have Twilight check the gems before you put them in. Rarity, don't go with the wire frames you were considering buying from that one dealer, that particular alloy has an unhealthy attraction to lightning. Applejack, there are currently two pairs of travelling salesponies on their way to Sweet Apple Acres, they'll both arrive in about a week and when they do you need to let old grudges go and trust the Flimflam Brothers.

"Flutteshy, my message for you comes from two very desparate friends of mine. When you get home, you will find a package left on your doorstep by the stars right before your arrival. Please... take care of it.

"That's it for the warnings on this next month's disasters, and also as far into the future as I dare look. Which leaves me with only one thing left to do. If the young filly listening at the door could please come in now?"

A small black alicorn sheepishly looked around the corner. "Are you done with the 'grown-up' stuff yet?"

Her mother gasped, "Nyx! How long have you been there?"

The filly shrugged. "Pretty much the whole time. I wasn't actually trying to listen or anything, I just... I got worried. Nopony would hand us something like that without a good reason, and the only thing that really happened was..."

Midnight nodded. "The Crusaders, the only foals in the room, left. So you got suspicious, and you snuck back." He lowered himself to bring their eyes as close to level as he could get them. "We do need to know how much you heard though."

The filly looked the stallion in the eye. After a few minutes, their staring contest ended when she slowly nodded and threw him a winning smile. "Absolutely nothing. Besides, it's not like a filly could do anything to help a mare anyway."

Midnight chuckled, "Atta girl. Alright then, back to business."

"Twilight Sparkle, if you could please step forward." The purple mare walked up to the base of Midnight's stand. The stallion smiled at her kindly. "Celestia chose her student well, you really are just like the pickpocket who started a war so long ago. A librarian who regularly holds the fate of Equestria in her hooves. And what's more, you regularly save it with a performer, a farmer, a dressmaker, a baker, and a veterinarian. Not very far from the street thief who inspired a noblemare, a maid, a gardener, a grocer, and a student to take down a world-spanning government.

"But you are more than that, aren't you? You are a scholar, a mare, a mentor, but above all else, you are a mother. A mother whose child will never be able to escape the reputation she gained because the adults in her life made some very bad mistakes." Nyx's eyes widened in shock and some red began to creep into her mother's mane. "But those mistakes lie on the heads of those much older than you."

"I have a debt to repay.

"After the final battle, where Celestia sealed Nightmare Moon away as the mare in the moon, the Elements were turned on me, turning my body to stone while my mind, heart, and soul were sealed into my star. I became one of the wishing stars, and as such I have the responsibility to help ponies achieve the hopes and dreams that they hang on me. I am responsible for protecting those wishes.

"A little while ago, I failed at that, and one little filly had her wish of being able to live in peace with her mother shattered completely. I tried to stop what happened, and in doing so, I inadvertently caused it.

"Celestia had stopped listening to me, and had in fact placed spells on the castle to keep me from appearing to ponies here. I knew what Spell Nexus was up to, and I tried to get a warning out. I made a mistake. I tried to contact Celstia's unicorn protege, thinking that she had enough magical power for me to manifest to her. Had my timing been better, it probably would have worked.

"Unfortunately, I was so desparate to stop what was about to happen, that I got careless. I forgot to account for her own internal conflict and state of shock.

"It was just too much. She went into sensory overload and froze up. Her brain shut down almost completely, stuck looping through the same few thoughts. It took her daughter's terrified cry to restart her mind.

"But by then it was too late. The mare was unable to keep her child from being taken away from her and forced to bear the mantle of dread that others expected of her. Because of we unthinking immortals, Nyx will never be able to escape the fact that some ponies will look at her and see only Nightmare Moon.

"Funny thing," The stallion smiled for the first time since he had begun his monologue. "For a good third of the occupants of this room, the fact that something can never be done is basically an excuse for them to be able to do it.

"So Twilight Sparkle, if you happen to have a rather large supply of parchment and ink on hoof, then I happen to have a way to begin repaying my debt to you and your daughter."

Fifteen minutes later the light of a spell circle died down as the last page gently floated down on top of a stack taller than Celestia. Midnight began speaking again, "Gather those supplies and study those research notes. When you're done, contact Luna and we can get the spell working. I can't promise anything drastic, but we should be able to make it so that ponies don't look at her and automatically see Nightmare Moon returned. Also, a word of parenting advice that the Star of Prophecy asked me to pass on: 'When the innocent are in danger because of the memory of the terror, when all magic fails and even the last light cannot reach you, trust in the ancient one.' I have absolutely no idea what it means, and I doubt even you lot could make that star stop being cryptic."

The stallion stood tall and proud as he faced the ponies assembled in the Throne Room. "Alright, thank you everypony for coming, it's been a lot of fun seeing the physical world again, but-" He was cut off by a flash of light. When it cleared, he was staring at the new jewel that had shown up in the row along the side of his platform, where there had previously been an empty socket. "The seventh..." He tipped back his head and laughed. "Featherdancer I don't know how, but apparently you even saw this angle, didn't you?" He looked at the six mares wearing six of the most precious pieces of jewelry in existence. "Well, things are moving along quite quickly now. Prepare yourselves, I get the feeling that the game is about to change."

"Completely." The assembled ponies turned to see a black filly slightly older than the Crusaders. Her coat was black and her mane and tail were ice blue. Her cutie mark was a white outline of a single large cut gemstone.

"Black Diamond!" The voice from behind her belonged to a colt of roughly the same age, or so they supposed. The only real feature that they could see was the cutlass blade sticking out from under his cloak. "We're not even supposed to be at this point in time! What are you doing interfering with events!"

"Relax 'Time Pirate,' we'll get back to her soon enough, but I've got to close this causality loop first."

"Aaagh! We don't have time for this! She's in trouble, and we have to get back to her-"

"In a completely different point in time. We've got room for me to close this loop, Distra, back me up here."

A light blue unicorn mare with a darker blue mane and tail stepped out of the shadows to join the squabbling duo, her cutie mark - a swirly circle of some kind - making The Doctor freeze up. "Black Diamond is right, she needs to close the causality loop. Besides, in my current state I can't open the time vortex for another few minutes anyway."

"Fine, but -"

"Would you relax? Honestly, you'd think you're the only one with somepony waiting. I'm just as worried about Nightingale as you are about her, probably moreso, considering he doesn't get a come-back-from-the-dead-free card."

"We've told you, she didn't inherit that trait! If she dies, then that's it, she's gone!

"Black Diamond! Time Pirate! Nopony is going to die. Trust me, this next vortex should drop us there right on schedule. Besides, Stopwatch, Spell Nexus, and Zap Apple should be able to keep things under control."

Black Diamond burst out laughing. "Yes, because we're all so good at keeping things under control. I mean honestly, the school was taken. Ponyville Elementary. The most well-defended fortress in Equestrian History. To cap that off, all of the alicorns and the elements have been removed from the game, as has every hero we've ever had, the Crusaders have all been captured and are being held at the school that they once called safe, the trio is MIA, and our resident pirate's fillyfriend is about to sacrifice herself to stop -"

"DIAMOND!" Distra's scream cut through the filly's tirade. "You can complete the causality loop, but you can't reveal any other future information. At this point in time, it might just cause all of us to stop existing."

The black filly sighed, "My point is that we are well and truly bucked. Are you sure that this vortex will open up in the right place and time? Because if we're all gonna wind up gone anyway, I'd at least like to save some ponies."

"I'm sure, this will get us to the exact place and time we need to be to turn the tide of the battle."

"Alright then, just let me close the loop." Black Diamond nodded at the mare and then stepped forward. "Rarity, bearer of the Element of Generosity, someday soon, you are going to find yourself facing a choice about the direction you want your life to take. When you do face the choice, you will know that it was the one I spoke of. That day will come, and when it does, remember my words. Follow your heart, trust in your friends, ignore reality, throw destiny, fate, chance, and caution to the winds, it will all work out in the end."

Rarity slowly stepped forward. "Any clues as to the choice in question?"

"You'll know it when you face it. You will know."

"...Why tell me this?"

Black Diamond looked away with a smile. "Because. Because someday a filly will come to you with a question, one that only you will be able to answer." The filly took in her hoof the pendant she was wearing, gazing at it as she spoke, "And you'll give her the same advice." She let the pendant drop to hide again in the shadows pressing against her chest, the white scale flashing in the light before vanishing.

Midnight Star cleared his throat from the back of the room. "I'm sorry, but that armor, is it..."

Black Diamond smiled at him and saluted. "Yes sir, I wear it with pride and honor."

Midnight raised an eyebrow "Aren't you a little bit young to be one of my guards?"

The filly sighed. "You didn't have a lot of options sir. I was the only pony you could recruit at the time. Nopony else was close enough to do anything, near enough to darkness, and not an actual part of the threat themselves. It was a case of right time, right place, and I'm trying to make it right filly."

The stallion looked at her for a moment before slowly nodding. "You know, I think you just might be."

She returned his nod and dropped her salute with shining eyes. Her cloaked companion stepped forward. "Alright then come on, let's go. We've got to..." He trailed off and paused for a moment before taking a deep breath and turning back to their audience. "Is Derpy Hooves or Ditzy Doo here?"

The gray pegasus and her husband stepped forward. "That depends, do you want the time traveler or the mailmare?"

The colt paused for a moment as if weighing his answer before speaking. "The mother."

Across time and space, the names of The Doctor and Ditzy Doo were known. Tyrants feared them, the helpless loved them. In some worlds, there were even religions that had been formed around them (they tried to stop it, but usually it took a couple of centuries for them to even find out about these cults). At those two words, the literally universal heros ran screaming from the personas of Time Turner and Derpy Hooves respectivelly. The mailmare and repairpony felt a chill run down their spines as they recognized the tone of the colt's voice. Whenever a time traveller had that tone, it meant that something had gone very wrong in the future and that said time traveler was about to break the rules to fix it.

The gray pegasus looked at the cloaked colt for a moment longer before nodding. "Go ahead, I'm here."

The colt took a breath. "On the day when the skies turn black and your two lives collide, an enemy will rise. When the buildings are bathed in flame, and fire and lightning rain from the heavens, Ponyville will burn. One mare's body will be lost to flame and ash. When the sun rises in a black sky, you will know that the day of my prophecy is here. When that day comes, the only thing you will be able to do is run. It is the only way to prevent the slaughter. Run for your life, your country, your town, your family. Take nothing with you, not even your husband and children. They will be fine, you will be fine. Vanish into the Everfree. Seek refuge with Zecora. Once it happens, you can come out of hiding, you can fight. But don't be in Ponyville when they arrive. Please, I don't know how much good it will ultimately do, but don't be the casualty that starts the war."

The mare nodded. "So, sunrise against a black sky, run and hide with Zecora. Leave my family to an uncertain fate behind me with only the promise that it might prevent the fire and destruction you're talking about. Yeah, do you even know who you're talking to?"

The colt gave a soft, sad smile that many of the room's occupants were familiar with. "Do you?" He withdrew two halves of a wooden sword from beneath his cloak, setting them on the ground in front of him. A stray breeze blew a part of his cloak free from his leg, which he was just barely too slow to withdraw. The pegasus mare was the only one to see it, and she rushed forward to peer beneath the hood of the colt's cloak.

Her eyes widened in shock as she stepped back. She sat down and stared at him. He gave her a moment before speaking quietly, "If you don't yet, then I can only hope that by the time that day arrives, you will know just how much I care about your family. Please don't make them go through the pain of watching your death spark the war that destroys their home."

The blue unicorn mare and the brown earth pony stallion both cried out at the same time that Derpy's tear hit the floor. They turned to gape at the cloaked colt. Distra was the first to speak. "You... you changed time."

The colt smiled, "Oh good, it worked."

"Do you have any idea what you've done?"

He turned around to look at the mare. From behind him, the ponies of the present felt his grin turn feral and his gaze harden. "Nope, I haven't got any clue at all as to how things changed, but frankly, it's got to be better than the Tartarus we left."

The Doctor stepped forward. "Colt, while I appreciate what you just did, messing with things like that is dangerous. The universe doesn't like that kind of thing, there will be consequences."

"Let them come." Those bearing witness would have almost called it a passing of a standard. "The universe can go stick it up their plots. The ponies that I care about were hurt. I changed that. If the universe has a problem with that, then they can come and get me."

"Why would you risk so much?" Distra inserted herself into the conversation again.

The colt's grin turned natural. Something again felt by those around him rather than seen. "Because I met this stallion once, and he taught me that sometimes there are things that are important enough to break all the rules for." He cocked his head at the same time as Black Diamond. "Oh look, new memories. Wait... why didn't anyting change? Nothing's different until..."

Distra gave him a sad smile. "Because I had to seal everypony's memory. On the day when the sun rises in a black sky, they will gradually begin to remember, but until then, they will forget this moment where the throne room slipped outside of time. You will be given a dream last night, where you watch this whole scene play out. you will forget it until the right moment when the words ring through your mind. All of your memories of the previous timeline will also be given to you in the dream, and released slowly, as they would have occurred. This will be done via psychic projection, and the causality loop will prevent the majority of the paradox. Black Diamond will receive her memories of the old timeline in the same way. Everypony here will forget until that day everything that has tranpired from when I dropped us out of time when you stepped forward to the point where time restarts in 3... 2... 1...

"Alright then, now that that causality loop is taken care of, it's time for us to go." Distra was herding her companions away from the crowd. Her horn briefly lit up and a spiralling hole opened in the air. "Everypony through the time vortex please, I can't hold it open forever thank you. Time Pirate, Black Diamond, it's time to go, come along." The two younger ponies cast one last look back over their shoulders before leaping through the vortex. Distra smiled, winked at her audience, and then vanished through herself, the vortex closing behind her.

"Well... that was interesting. Why didn't you tell me that there were more time travelers out there?"

Time Turner shrugged. "There aren't. Not yet. Although if that unicorn's cutie mark was anything to go by, then there's at least a few more generations of us... Eh, timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly. I suppose we'll figure it out when we figure it out."

Derpy nodded. "I suppose so, I just can't shake the feeling that there's something important we're all forgetting..."

"Try not to think about it love, we'll know when we need to, I'm sure."

In the future, an army marches into a small town. A certain mare is not in the market at the time. Thus she is not one of the ponies rounded up and taken to the town square, and is not there in the wrong place to say and do the wrong thing at the wrong time. Because of this she is not executed, and her execution cannot spark the outrage that escalated back and forth between one earth pony and an army, culminating in Ponyville's town square being bombed off the map by airships. Hundreds of ponies escaped slaughter that day because a certain mare had serendipitously been somewhere else.

Hundreds of years down the road, somepony let slip about a certain prophecy. The Pirate became a name with almost as much baggage as The Doctor basically overnight. Of course, with time travellers, overnight can be a very long time, or literally impossibly short. One fresco depicts a pony with a strange sword locking the gates of Tartarus. Archaoelogical tests put it at predating Celestia and the elder alicorns by three thousand years.

Derpy sighed, "I suppose so."

Midnight Star spoke up. "Alright then, I'm running out of time here, the spell is putting too much of a strain on myself and Discord. It won't last much longer. Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, if you and your husband could please come to the base of my little platform here, I have a final gift of hope for the two of you."

The two stepped forward, sitting down at the edge of Midnight's platform. He leaned forward to the very edge of the spell circle that formed his boundary and spoke in a quiet voice so that only the couple before him could hear. "I'm not going to say which, but one of you hung a wish on me, and I'm going to do what I can to see it granted. I know that the two of you are undergoing some tension over the subject of children. I know that you, Cadence, have been trying to hold off because you were worried about immortality and potential lifespan issues. With what Luna said earlier, I have no doubt that you are now positive that you will outlive your husband, and any children that the two of you may have.

"If I had a physical body, this would be the part where I lightly bop the two of you on the head.

"Put bluntly, I'm sorry, but you're one of the immortals. You bear the curse of eternal youth. You will remain young while almost everypony you know grows old and dies around you. That is part of the burden that alicorns bear. But alicorns also bear the burden of having to interact with those same short-lived ponies that we cannot help but come to care for, whether asfriends or something more. This is because we are bound to an attribute - dreams, emotions, revelations - some ancient force, strong enough to need an alicorn to represent it and bring it.

"I am the Alicorn of Hope, and so now I bring hope to those who have lost it, as is my duty. Princess Cadence, you are nearly immortal and eternally young. You are the alicorn of love.

"So how could your love ever die?" He paused for a moment to let the thought sink in. "Love is a force eternal, unchanging, and undeniable. But it requires two ponies. The alicorn and her lover, an immortal pair."

He smiled as he stood back up, the two of them looking at him with tears in their eyes. "You two take care of each other now, your life forces are bound to each other. If one of you takes on that last great adventure, then the other one will follow them. Considering I'm the only midwife with experience with delivering the children of immortals, I expect to receive a notification via Celestia within the year." He winked at them and raised his voice so that the others could hear.

"Alright then, wishes granted, messages delivered, time running out, yep, I'd say that I'm pretty much done here."

"Wait." Luna walked up to the alicorn stallion. "You and I still need to have that private talk. How do I contact you?"

He smiled at her. "Hope and stardust, that's all I really am right now. Sound like anything familiar to you?"

She smiled softly. "You still chase your dreams after a thousand years of banishment?"

His tone changed slightly, as if he were unsure of his next few words. "Do you still dare to believe in hope?"

The two alicorns locked gazes and for a moment seemed to have a silent conversation. Then Luna nodded and stepped back, making a noise as she did so. The Doctor and one of the mares in the room went wide-eyed.

Twilight stepped forward cautiously. "Princess Luna, was that... clicking just now?"

The princess of the night smiled at the younger mare. "Was what clicking?"

The purple alicorn shook her head. "You know what, I'm not going to bother." She turned and looked at Midnight Star. "I do have one more question for you though."

"I will answer what I can."

She pulled a book out of one of her saddlebags and flipped through it, stopping when she found the right page. She spun it around so that he could see. "Right here, The Pony Who Went to the Stars, it's one of the last stories in the book, placed just after the one that warned me about the events of the Summer Sun Celebration. The pony it talks about... It's you, isn't it?"

He looked at her amd smiled with a tear in his eye. "Well I'll be... Yes, the story is about me, and the other Inkwell too. How did you... of course. More meddling Sunbeam? Although I have to say that it was a slight stroke of brilliance on your part to give her my book."

The white alicorn actually blushed while the pruple one looked confused. "What do you mean your book?"

"I mean my book. As in the book I wrote. Over a thousand years ago I took portions of two separate tomes, combined them with the stories of myself and my friends, and wrote them into a single book. The one you hold in your hooves right now, the Chronicle of Legends.

"All of those stories are true, if you can decode them. Some are straightforward like Luna's, others are symbolic, like mine. There are numerous tales in there, all of them true and powerful. The Alicorn Prophecies, The Forgotten Legends, folk tales and fables that I met personally. Everything I could discover about the greater game."

"Greater Game?"

"Twilight Sparkle, you have been to the other side of the mirror and into the plane where alicorns go. You have seen many mysteries and marvels, so let me ask you, who do you think planned it all out? It wasn't the alicorns, we came after things were already set in motion. So who?"

"Faust?"

"I thought so once too. She says that there are those even above her, and I believe her. The Alicorn of Equestria was very emphatic about the fact that while she forged this land into something better, it was already here when she found it. She still won't tell us what the answer is, probably for the same reason that The Doctor will never check.

"There are some things we just aren't ready to know yet.

"When I came to that conclusion I stopped looking for the players in the greater game. Frankly I'm not sure what I'd do with the answer. But I do know that Equestria isn't ready yet. Honestly I hope that we never are, because we only get to see the ultimate chessmaster when the game is done. We'll find out the answer when the world dies, and that's more than enough for me. I'll find the answer to that question someday, in the meantime I'm going to live my life.

"And now my time really is up." He stepped back to the center of his platform and reassumed the pose he had been in when they brought him here. "Until we meet again." There was a flash of light, and the pony was replaced by a statue as the spell circle began to die down. There was a moment of silence and then the stone alicorn's horn sparked a deep midnight blue before spitting out a multicolored blob that bounced off of several walls before turning back into Discord as he hovered over the ponies.

The draconequus snapped his fingers and the drawbridge turned back into the doors that the throne room usually had. Only Fluttershy noticed the slight tells that he was in pain. "If its all the same to you, there's a good deal too much Harmony in this room, so I'll be on my way." He snapped again and teleported away.

The gahered ponies looked around for a moment, unsure what to do. There was a knock at the recently restored doors and a royal guard walked in. "Princesses, I'm sorry to interrupt, but there are some ponies here to see you." The door opened wider to reveal some familiar faces. Standing there with saddlebags over their backs were Lyra, Bon-Bon, and Lyra.

Wait...

Lyra, Bon-Bon, and another mare who looked exactly like Lyra save for the fact that she didn't have a horn. The not-Lyra could have passed for the other mare's twin. Even the cutie mark was the same. The only odd thing was that Not-Lyra seemed to have something white stuck to her hooves. Closer inspection revealed these small white blobs to be bits of cloud that she was wearing like hoofshoes.

The guard started to speak again, only to be shoved aside by an ever-so-slightly irate Bon-Bon. She marched straight up to Celestia, saluted almost mockingly and spoke. "Agent Sweetie Drops of Her Majesty's Secret Service reporting as requested Ma'am. Coming in off of almost five years of deep cover on assignment in Ponyville. Accompanied by assignment Lyra Heartstrings and civilian Lyra Heartthrob Ma'am. I'm afraid my cover may have been blown Ma'am, may I enquire as to the impending crisis that would require you to reactivate an agent, loose cannon, and civilian so close to a major state secret Ma'am? Or to rephrase:

"I have been in deep cover in Ponyville for five years now! I couldn't not build a life! Lyra and I were living out our lives completely normally! She managed to fully adapt to the culture, as I told you in my reports, and we. Had. Lives! And now you call us back up here again, drudging up old wounds, even calling in Heartthrob, and blow our lives straight to Tartarus! I can understand wanting to brief the newest princess. The Elements of Harmony, sure. But no, you had to call us all the way up here to blow our cover in front of everypony and the mailmare! So I am going to ask you exactly once Ma'am: JUST WHAT IS SO CLOPPING IMPORTANT THAT YOU WOULD FEEL JUSTIFIED IN LITERALLY DESTROYING THE LIVES WE WORKED FOR FIVE YEARS TO BUILD!?!?!?"

Celestia flinched. A part of her wanted to point out how much she was getting yelled at today. A much larger part of her quashed that thought with the point that she had earned every decibel and then some. She looked at the loyal agent she had sent into deep cover five years ago to help a human adapt to pony life. She sighed, "Isn't Miss Heartstrings usually the emotional one?"

"She is. The two of us had a talk on the way over here. When we met with Heartthrob, we ran it by her and she agreed. I was the only one of the three of us who stood a chance of getting through an interview without physically assaulting you."

The Solar Diarch flinched again. Yes, she should probably just be glad that Midnight hadn't had time to light into her. It had been a long time since she had last been humbled. She supposed that she was going to have to get used to the feeling again. "I'm not sure I wouldn't deserve that. For the nonexistant record, everypony in this room is either a sworn guard or has a clearance level of at least... Blue... Delta... Three. Half of them are Black Omega Zero." She would have to remember to upgrade Cadence's clearance level, an Equestrian Princess that was married and led her own small kingdom really shouldn't be at the bottom of this group... maybe two-thirds of the way down the list, but at the bottom? Well, Celestia supposed that was what happened when you made a filly a princess and then got used to keeping the more volatile secrets away from her.

"I'm looking at a mailmare and a repairpony by the names of Derpy Hooves and Time Turner. How are they Blue Delta Three?"

The earth stallion was wearing a trenchcoat that had been in a now discarded saddlebag. He reached into it and pulled out a six-inch piece of metal with a light on the end. He spun it around his hoof and pointed it at a part of the wall near the main doors. An archway appeared. It was quickly filled as the cloud that the gray pegasus mare had just pulled out of the sky flew through it and into the hall. It hit the wall and there were cries of shock and mild pain as it spat lightning.

The gary mare landed next to her husband and hollered to the guards she had just zapped, "And that's why you should always apply an anti-lightning spell to your metal equipment, regardless of where you're expecting to be." The archway vanished as the mare shot the dumbfounded agent a winning smile.

The stallion held out his hoof. "Hello, I'm The Doctor."

"What?"

"I'm The Doctor. I travel around time and space with my lovely wife and companion Ditzy Doo, fixing things like history and reality whenever they have something go wrong with them."

"But-But-But... You're Time Turner and Derpy Hooves, you live in Ponyville. You're a repairpony and a mailmare."

The Doctor and Ditzy both laughed. The Doctor caught his breath first. "Yes, and you make candy for a living. Really though, the whole repairpony/mailmare thing was a bit of a joke on our part. Problem was that nopony in Ponyville knew enough about us to get it. I fix things and ponies, travelling around to save time and space, making sure things work out alright in the end. Sort of the universe's ultimate repairpony.

"Ditzy's pretty much the same. The universe's ultimate mailmare. She travels through time and space to deliver messages from me. Usually messages of hope to opressed races. Sometimes something along the lines of shape up or ship out. And rarely, very rarely, she delivers a warning. That there's an Oncoming Storm, and you'd better get out of the way. Her tears are legendary throughout the universe, they're called the Harbingers."

"...Why would they be called that?"

"It connects to an old legend of another world. Four beings who ride out to signal the end of time. Pestilence, Famine, War, and finally Death. The bringers of the appocalypse. But that's not what you asked. You wanted to know why that particular name would be attached to her tears.

"A long time ago, when I was a very different stallion, Ditzy delivered one of my messages. She tried to be an angel of mercy for a particularly warlike nation. She made her appeal to their high command during a session that was being broadcast on an intergalactic frequency. They laughed at her, scorned her, and clipped her wings. They made her cry, four of her tears fell, caught forever on camera for all the universe to see.

"There is now a rather lovely asteroid field where their capital planet used to be."

"Y-y-you killed an entire-"

"No, I did something much worse. I landed my TARDIS in the middle of their senate floor. I stepped out and picked her up off the floor. I turned to look directly into the cameras. I said four words, 'The Grey Angel cries.' I turned and looked directly into the eyes of the high commander. I gave him a final warning, 'You should run now.' I took Ditzy into the TARDIS and left. I looked away. I still don't know what happened to the planet, I just know it isn't there anymore."

Bon-Bon sat down hard as she looked at the secretary of the local PTA and the repairpony who couldn't seem to get her toaster to work right for longer than two weeks at a time. The mailmare stepped around the candymaker gingerly. "If you'll excuse us, we really need to get to the train station to pick up our children."

Two of the most terrifying forces in the universe walked out of the throne room, nodding to some sheepish and slightly singed guards on the way. It was Princess Luna who broke the silence. "Well then, Lieutenant, if you could please see our guests to their rooms, I think that will be all for the night."

The guard who had led in Bon-Bon and the Lyras looked at her in shock. "Uuuh... M-Ma'am, that's usually something that-"

"I or my sister handle as a royal duty, yes. And under most circumstances it would be, but the rooms have already been prepared if you'll just check with my sister's staff to see who goes where. I'm afraid that we are going to be slightly busy for the immediate future, and will be unavailable for the next few hours. My sister is going to be writing an exception regarding my chambers into certain spells that have been placed on the castle." The mare in question winced at Luna's tone.

"A-and you Ma'am... Thatisifyoudon'tmindmyasking?" The poor guard broke into a cold sweat.

Luna smiled at him. "I... have some dreaming to do." And with that she walked out into the garden, and took to the air in the direction of the castle's tallest tower.

Author's Note

And that's it. I can't believe how long this epilogue took me, although I can hardly call it that at this point. I had no idea it would wind up this long. Over 12,000 words, I just... Yeah, this one definitely ran away with me.

There's a lot in here that I wasn't originally planning on putting at this point, but that just felt right for this bit. For example the gag with the time travelers was completely unplanned and I was going to have Seetie Drops/Bon-Bon show up with the Lyras the next morning originally. I also wasn't going to put in the bit with Nyx's 'Recompense Gift' from Midnight until he actually got released, but then as I was writing this I figured that I should really put some foreshadowing in on something as huge as I'm planning for that. That seventh gem showing up in the statue base was another thing I was originally going to wait for a bit on, but then figured I might as well throw in here.

I'm actually pretty glad that I was able to get this story out for you guys when I did. I'm going to be taking a break now, a very long break. I might be able to get you guys a oneshot before I leave though, we'll have to see how that goes.

That's really everything for now, if I have time before my life plans take me away, I might be able to edit this stuff and polish off the errors I missed in my cursory read-through. This is the first fanfiction I have ever seen through to a relative conclusion, so to anypony still reading this, thank you so much for your support.

See ya' through the mirror,
NPP6

Secrets Unearthed

Equestria

The Everfree Forest

Beneath the Ruins of the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters

Present Day

The room was dark. Beyond dark. It was pitch black, just as it had been for a thousand years. Or, almost…

Three years ago it had been extremely well lit, when events in the outside world had finally started to peek back in, and once again, a light emerged from the darkness. It was poetic really; the very meaning of the life of the room’s sole occupant now disturbed the room, the vault that had become his tomb.

Three years ago the stars had aligned, and an inevitable chain of events had been triggered, was even now occurring. History was repeating.

Three years ago, the mantles were taken up anew, and six colors of light had filled the room. Since then the lights had revealed a pattern, a progression of events.

Nightmare Moon. Discord. Queen Chrysalis. King Sombra. The ascension of Twilight Sparkle. Sunset Shimmer. The mirror.

History was repeating. Each of these events in the outside world had been accompanied by a flash of dancing lights inside the otherwise dark room. Dancing lights that had emanated from six gemstones at the base of his statue.

The gems were utterly unique, unlike any others in existence. Of course, given their origins, that was to be expected. A thousand years ago, the pony depicted in this statue had died, his fatal flaw taking him again, one last time.

And then a sound, the first besides the music that came with the light. The first natural sound in a thousand years.

*CRACK*

And then a thread, a thread of a new kind of light, softer than the dancing lights, not as penetrating, less focused, but just as strong. Just as welcome.

There was a dull clanking, a grating of stone on stone, the thread of light started to widen, and then…

*SNAP*

The sound of a rope breaking, and then wood shattering, metal shrieking, and the crashing of stones and rubble falling on either side of the wall the light came from and even echoing from inside the wall itself.

There was silence for a brief moment, and then the stone slabs that had been sliding apart fell, toppling into the room and breaking themselves and part of the floor when they hit. It also revealed two ponies on the other side, hard to make out with the torches backlighting them, but obviously a stallion in a cowpony hat and a mare in a pith helmet.

“Uh… that ain’t what was s’posed to happen, was it?” The Stallion queried.

His companion shot him a look in the half-light. “What do you think?”

“That’s a ‘no’ then.”

The mare rolled her eyes and lit her lantern, walking into the room and looking around, her gaze falling on the statue almost instantly. She slowly walked up to it, setting her lantern down before beginning to examine the statue, seemingly searching for something. “This is incredible, its exactly like she described it! Every detail, perfectly preserved after all this time! This is just amazing for a piece of this size…” her adulation trailed off as her focus was absorbed by the statue in front of her.

“Wait, ah didn’t even see any traps comin’ on down here, if’n the Museum’s known about this here statue all along, why’d they send us out here to get it? It ain’t even that far away from Canterlot.”

The archaeologist snorted, “Please, there’s almost nothing left from the Discordian Era. if they knew about this they’d flip. There’d probably be at least a dozen people with us, and we’d never have come this deep alone. The Museum has nothing to do with this expedition.”

The stallion’s confusion was plain in his voice. “But, if we ain’t doin’ this fer the Museum, who is payin’ fer this here statue? It’s nice an’ all, but a lawn ornament ain’t exactly right fer a farm…”

His companion tapped a hoof to her chin. “Actually, that might be the most unusual part of all this, the pony who commissioned us for this expedition is apparently the one who put this statue here in the first place. It’s just… weird. Everything about this job is completely against my norm. It’s easy, simple, the pony that put the artifact away actually wants me to remove it, and instead of delivering to the Museum, we’re going to be landing the airship directly in the castle courtyard.”

“Wait a minute, the Canterlot Castle courtyard? Ya don’t mean…”

“Oh yeah, sorry, she asked me not to tell anypony until we were on our way back. We’re here to get this statue by personal special request of Princess Celestia herself.”

And so the pony known throughout Equestria, whose very name could stop or start firefights and saloon brawls depending on how or where you said it, was struck absolutely speechless. His partner with the monochrome mane was quick to pull a camera and flash from under her wing and capture the moment for their posterity.

Equestria

Canterlot

Just Outside the Throne Room of Canterlot Castle

Present Day

“So Twilight, what’s this all about?”

“I don’t know Rainbow Dash, Princess Celestia just told me that it had to do with my being a princess and to come ‘with all speed.’ I have no idea what’s going on.”

“Well I certainly hope it isn’t something too dreadful. After that last incident with Sunset Shimmer I’d hate to have to watch Twilight go off on her own again.”

“Oh, don’t worry nopony’s going anywhere. Princess Celestia probably just wants to let us in on some huge secret that’s going to shake Twilight to the core, redefine Equestria as we know it and completely throw our lives out of whack for the next few years.”

“What makes ya say that sugarcube?”

“Just a hunch.”

Twilight froze. Then she dropped and brought her forehooves over her face. “No. Oh no. Nonononono.”

Her friends gave her some rather concerned looks. “Are you okay Twi? What’s wrong?”

“Every time. Every time Pinkie says something like that on a hunch, she’s right. Every single time!” Twilight took a deep breath “Elements girls, if Pinkie’s right we may just need them.”

The six ponies put on their respective necklaces/crown and began walking again. When they and the four fillies with them reached the doors of the throne room, Twilight nodded to the guards, and as one they crossed the threshold.

The sight that greeted them was a strange one indeed. Princess Celestia was standing in the middle of the room, apparently watching the sundial in the courtyard just outside. An Earth Pony Stallion in a duster and cowpony hat and a Pegasus mare in an olive green shirt and white pith helmet were standing off to one side, glancing around and looking rather uncomfortable on the whole, especially since the guards seemed to be eyeing the Stallion and the rifle on his back. But what really made the scene strange wasn’t even the large cloud crash cushion next to the throne. It was the statue that seemed to have been placed as a centerpiece for their meeting, or more specifically the effect it was having on the room’s only other occupant.

Discord was in shock. Full-blown medical shock. He was sitting on a stool with his feet in a wooden tub of steaming water, staring at the statue with a blanket draped over his shoulders while cradling in his claws a hot chocolate that appeared to have had half the mug sipped off of it. He was even muttering incoherently under his breath.

Their entrance drew the gaze of everyone in the room except Discord, the two ponies off to the side smiling in relief at seeing some friendly faces and the guards relaxing ever so slightly with the Element Bearers present. Princess Celestia smiled at them brightly, but with a slight hint of regret in her eyes. “Twilight Sparkle and her friends. It is good to see you again. Now we’re just waiting on a few more ponies and–”

She was cut off as the door opened again and Shining Armor and Princess Cadence walked in. “It seems that almost everypony’s here then, I do have to ask that nopony take action when Princess Luna arrives.”

The small black alicorn filly next to twilight had until this point been giving the statue a scrutinizing stare. At Princess Celestia’s comment her eyes went wide in shock and a small “oh no” escaped her lips, going mostly unheard by the other ponies in the room.

A pegasus guard with a sun-shaped halberd snapped his head around to stare at her. “Princess? What… but…” he shook his head as if to clear it. “Princess Celestia ma’am, if you expect violence from your sister then it is our duty to–”

A sad smile graced the Princess’s lips as she interrupted him. “No captain, I’m afraid that I probably deserve what’s coming. I may even deserve more than she’s going to do…”

Discord finally broke out of his trance, genuine fear showing in his eyes. “You mean you didn’t tell her? Clear the room, abandon ship, every pony for themselves! Tartarus has nothing compared to what’s about to come dow–”

He was cut off by the doors to the throne room blasting open and slamming against the wall, one of them proceeding to fall off its hinges. Through the smoke and dust all that could be seen was a pair of glowing eyes. As it cleared, a pony was revealed, her form flickering between Princess Luna and Nightmare Moon, as if she couldn’t quite decide whether to go dark or not. “Celestia!”

Those ponies that didn’t get out of her way on their own were removed by Celestia’s and Discord’s magic as Luna charged into the room at full tilt and fired off a magic blast sending her older sister flying backwards into the cloud crash cushion. As Rainbow Dash and the guard with the sun halberd from earlier leaped forward they found themselves stopped short in midair with their tails in Discord’s claw and paw respectively. He reeled them in while shaking his head at them. “There are two…” He paused and cast a sidelong glance at Twilight and her daughter “three things in this world that I am unashamed to say truly frighten me, and Luna when that pony is involved is the second one.”

Their attention was diverted by another magic blast from Luna, this one deflected by a shield Celestia hurriedly threw into place which shattered even as it stopped the magical attack. It did nothing about the verbal onslaught however. “You knew! This whole time you knew where he was and you didn’t even bother to tell me!?”

“No Luna, I didn’t tell you. I didn’t think you were ready… I didn’t think any of us were…”

“How dare you Celestia! How dare you make that decision for me! How—” Something seemed to snap in Luna, her voice dropping in tone and a pair of crystalline droplets falling from her eyes. “How could you? Midnight followed me through Tartarus. Even after I turned, even after I became Nightmare Moon he stood with me. He never stopped fighting for me. Me, not the nightmare, just the moon. Just Luna. Even in that final battle where he had to fight me to save me, he was still fighting for me. And then I escaped, and I got healed, and I found out that he was finally gone. I thought he was dead Celestia. Dead! As soon as I realized that you were dodging my questions about him, that he wasn’t just off on some mission or other saving Equestria again… I was locked in my room for a week! You had to temporarily take over raising and setting the moon again! And now I find out that you knew where he was this whole. Entire. Time. Why didn’t you tell me Celestia? Why?”

“Shame. And fear. I thought it better that you not see him… like this.” She nodded to the statue. “Equestria had forgotten about him and I thought it better to not dredge up old memories. He wouldn’t have wanted to be brought back only to be a fallen hero. A martyr. He would have preferred to only be remembered by those who actually knew him. You know that”

Luna took a long look at the statue. Then she took a deep breath. “Who did this Celestia? Who did it and just what hole did you throw them down, because it’s not deep enough to keep me from going down and throttling them.”

This time it was Celestia’s turn to have a single tear roll down her cheek. “I didn’t throw them down a hole Luna. I didn’t lock them up or put them away. Instead I gave them a fancy title and built them a castle on a mountainside. Do you understand Luna? I turned Midnight Star to stone.”

Twilight interrupted “Excuse me Princesses, but who exactly are we talking about?”

The pegasus mare with the monochrome mane stepped forward “I’d kind of like to know that too, this pony is apparently a key historical figure, and yet I don’t recognize him at all. Who exactly is this Midnight Star?”

“Midnight Star is quite possibly the single most important pony in Equestrian history. He is also one of Equestria’s most closely guarded state secrets. Before I begin though, let’s get everybody comfortable, Discord, some couches if you please.” Celestia raised her voice slightly, “Doctor, you can come down now, I’m afraid you won’t be able to hear very well from the balcony. Feel free to come on down now.”

At this point a bat-pony mare wobbled in, obviously dizzy and more than a little punch-drunk from being caught in the vacuum of Luna’s wake. She then proceeded to collapse in the middle of the floor.

As the guard with the halberd rushed over to her and Celestia cocked an eyebrow at her sister, Luna had the good grace to blush. “Umm… I was talking with her when the news arrived…”

A hidden door in one of the walls opened up and a brown earth pony with an hourglass cutie marked walked out rather sheepishly, followed by a Pegasus mare with a gray coat and yellow mane and tail.

“Now that everypony’s here,” Discord queried while fixing the doors Luna had destroyed (Read: Replacing them with a solid steel drawbridge that was painted pink with blue flowers and purple polka-dots plastered all over it and a fish tank in the middle.) “Do you want to start telling them all who Midnight Star is, or should I?”

“I’ll do it.” Luna finally came out of the frozen state of shock she had been in since her sister had informed her of who exactly had turned the pony in question to stone. “Discord I don’t trust to tell it right on general principle, and you—” she shot a glare at Celestia, “—have already lied about him enough as it is. Besides, I know more about the beginning than either of you do… although I’m obviously not up to date enough on the ending, which begs the question of why you sealed him away in the first place Celestia?”

“He asked me to. He told me to use the elements to send him to the stars and told me that it was the only hope left for either of you. The only way to get you back from Nightmare Moon, and the only way to stop Starless Night.”

Nyx gasped and dove between her mother’s legs at the last bit, frantically whipping her head back and forth, looking around in a state of dead terror, almost as if expecting something to jump out of the shadows at any moment and grab her. Twilight looked down at the alicorn cowering beneath her and then back at her mentor. “Who’s Starless Night? And more importantly, why is my daughter terrified of his very name!?”

“Starless Night is the second most dangerous and feared pony Equestria has ever seen. He trumps Sombra and Chrysalis combined. He rivals Discord at his worst. The only reason that you don’t know him is because he was eclipsed, quite literally. As for why Nyx is so personally afraid of him, well—”

The filly that was once Nightmare Moon spoke up, finally realizing that the topic of conversation wasn’t actually in the room with them, her whisper somehow resonating through the room and silencing all other noise as it carried to every ear. “He was my general.”

Those four words would have started a panic if not for the sharp sound of Celestia’s forehoof striking the stone in front of her. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. This really needs to be told in its proper order. Luna, you’re right, you do know more about Midnight before… that than either myself or Discord. Why don’t you start?”

The Princess of the Night nodded as she stepped forward. “Just over a thousand years ago…”

1038 Years Ago

The Main Road to the Library, Almost Outside of Town

The Village of Everfree

Most Definitely NOT Equestria

Inkwell was running full tilt. The extra studying he had done last night had kept him up later than usual and he was now running late. He could only hope that the old man was starting late like he usually did, but given Inkwell’s usual luck…

The wizard’s apprentice took another bite of the apple in his hand without breaking stride, even as his other hand supported his weight as he jumped over a farmer’s hay cart. He landed, reaching into the satchel at his side, and then pulling out a small box which he threw into the air in front of him, running all the while. The box unfolded before it hit the ground, revealing that it was in fact a long plank of wood that had been folded accordion style with a crystal on the back end that had two wooden flaps to either side with glowing runes inscribed upon them.

The young boy smirked as he jumped aboard his floating creation; his late-night studying and modifications had been worth it, with the new tweaks he should be able to just make it in time. He tapped a foot to a glowing rune on the main body of the board, and raced away in a cloud of dust.

Two minutes later Starswirl the Bearded came down the stairs into the main room of his tree after hearing a knock that sounded suspiciously like his apprentice’s body striking the front door. He opened the door with a genial smile on his face and took in the scene on his doorstep in an instant, his smile growing even broader as he did.

He watched as his apprentice picked himself and a long piece of wood up off the ground eyes twinkling as he observed, almost as if talking to himself “A word to the wise, never start something unless you happen to have a way to stop.”

Inkwell grinned ruefully even as he flushed and the leaned his board up next to the door as he followed his mentor into the tree that served as his home, library, and laboratory. The old wizard then led the way through a door and down a spiral staircase into the basement, the subtle spring in his step betraying how pleased he was in both his student’s progress with his transportation project and his excitement at the near-completion of his own most recent project.

The project in question was today going through its final stages of experimentation before being put into use. The completed device would revolutionize the study of magic. Imagine, being able to turn any reflective surface into a portal to a world beyond their own, the discussions he could have with the alternate versions of himself alone would provide astounding insight into magical theory…

As his apprentice had pointed out though, the nature of the magic was such that performing the final test in the enclosed and underground space of his basement probably wasn’t the best of ideas, especially since the spell was bound to the physical location. So that was how they found themselves lifting an antique mirror, uncounted pages of notes and calculations and various magical implements into his backyard.

The experiment had to be completed today as well, because it would be at least another three moons before the moonrise and sunset were so exactly aligned, and he would need the ambient magical energy of the celestial alignment to open the gateway. There was simply no way he could generate that much magical energy on his own. They had to act quickly though, moving things outside had taken more time than expected, and they still had plenty of preparations to do, magic circles, spell containment fields and the like. Starswirl and Inkwell may have been slightly reckless and without forethought in some of their experiments, but they were by no means stupid. This was dangerous and untested magic, and they would have to be careful with it.

Fortunately they managed to finish in time, and just as the sun and full moon both reached the halfway points of their respective rise and set, a thin beam of light, thinner than a thread linked between them, passing through a crystal at the top of the mirror. The thread broke, almost as if the light were trapped inside the crystal, and then spread, flicking from jewel to jewel around the mirror’s rim, forming a magic circle across the flat and magically treated crystal before the mirror itself flashed and came to life.

Soft white light poured from the mirror and onto the grass. Inkwell picked up the note that his teacher had written, folded it up into a bird, and used a small flare of his magic to set it flying through the portal. Another paper creation came out and landed in Inkwell’s outstretched hand. He smiled as he looked at the giant dragonfly cradled in his palm before he silently stroked its back before tapping it just behind the head and between the wings simultaneously with two fingers on his free hand.

The note shivered at the small amount of magic in his touch and then unfolded in his grasp. He read it and grinned as he held it up for the old wizard to see. Same message. Different fold job. Same tongue. Different hand.

The portal worked.

Next to see if living things could pass through the portal. Inkwell carried over a cage of mice with wheels attached and rolled it down a ramp and through the mirror. There was a short wait as before, and then a cage full of mice suspended by a miniature hot air balloon floated through.

The mice were alive.

Inkwell plucked the cage out of the air and walked over to his teacher, setting it on the table for him to see. “You know, I’m noticing something here…”

Starswirl smiled, “Getting a reckless idea?”

His apprentice paused for half an instant, head cocked to one side, one eyebrow raised, and then shrugged. “Eh… yeah, probably.”

“Well then tell me what it is boy in case I have to pull you out of the flaming wreckage.”

Inkwell took a deep breath, “The message that came through, the paper folding spell that was used on it was my spell. Not my preferred spell, the spell I created. And the binding on this cage, I know those knots. I created the design for them myself. They draw in ambient magic and use it to strengthen themselves so that they don’t come apart. The things that are coming through are coming on the power of my ambient magic spells.”

The old man cocked an eyebrow. “Are you going somewhere with this?”

“Well if the world on the other side of the portal has another you, then maybe they have another me…”

“Probably, I’m still waiting for the part where I caution you against rushing in and you cite back some stunt I pulled and do it anyway.”

“What if we umm… switched? Me and the other me that is.”

The wizard raised a finger, counterargument already half formed on his lips. Then he stopped. He put his hand down. “Actually, that’s a good idea. An exchange of sorts. The two of you switch places and learn about the magics of each other’s worlds, while imparting what you already know of your own world’s magic to the other’s master… yes, I rather like the idea. You should be warned though, just because it has another me and another you, other people you know, your family, friends, everyone, they may not have a counterpart. And the same is true in reverse. You’ll be going in half-blind, with a third of a map and some inverted directions written into a riddle, are you sure?”

“Yes, I want to study magic to its fullest extent, but I can’t do that since I can’t actually cast it. All I can do is draw on the ambient energy around me, and even that’s limited away from the tree. I need to find a new kind of magic that I can really use, not just these tricks. Plus, it’s the fastest way to trade techniques between the two worlds. I need to do this.”

“Then you have my blessing… Inkwell.”

The young man started, it was the first time that his teacher had used his real name since he had begun his apprenticeship. He had once asked why that was, the reply had bugged him until he finally worked out what it really meant.

“As long as you’re my apprentice, that’s all people will think of you as. You need to make your own name for yourself, you need to earn it. Only then will your name mean anything more to history than the boy who ran errands for Starswirl.”

He felt a tear forming in recognition of the event. Even if he couldn’t cast magic himself, even if this didn’t work, even if he was only ever able to draw on those around him, it didn’t matter anymore. He was respected as a wizard and researcher in his own right by one of the very few people whose opinions actually made any difference to him. “Thank you.” He smiled, took a breath, and stepped through the mirror. He wasn’t sure, but as he was going through he thought he might have caught a glimpse of his own face passing him, and then he was gone, beyond the world he had grown up in.

Meanwhile a body tumbled out of the mirror, rolling a bit before coming to a rest facing the sky. It was Inkwell. Or rather, it was the other Inkwell. Of that there was no doubt. He was exactly the same, a dead ringer right down to the clothes he wore. Starswirl walked to the boy and knelt down. He gently brought him around, only to jump back in surprise and then amusement as his apprentice’s counterpart screamed at the sight of him and began franticly patting himself down and inspecting his body.

The quiet laughter in a voice that so resembled his own master made Inkwell look around before his eyes settled on Starswirl and widened. This only seemed to increase the old man’s amusement.

“What’s so funny?”

“I take it that ‘human’ isn’t the form you were born with?”

The boy shook his head, “No, what happened?”

“Laws of the universe, humans are the primary sentient race here, so the primary sentient race of your own world takes on human form when they come here. I’m sure that the reverse is true for us. By the way, I couldn’t help but overhear you, do you really have wings in your world?”

“…Yeah. And you’re just the same as the Starswirl the Bearded in my world. Did your Inkwell head across to learn to?”

“Yes, although I suspect that having wings will distract him for a time, just as learning to use his Crystalboard will no doubt occupy you for a while. Out of curiosity though, in the other world, your form, what is it?”

“I’m not sure you have them here, what would the name do?”

“Just an off chance, besides, I need to use proper syntax and diction in my letters, and words like ‘people’ are pretty much human terms. So tell me, what form were you born with?”

“I’m a pony.”

Author's Note

For anypony who's wondering, yes, I did have several cameos from slash sidelong winks to other fanfics.

Daring Do and Baraeburn Apple "Colt of the West" from Divebomb's Riflepony series made an appearance in the first section, and were there in the background of the second.
Yes, the guard with the halberd and the bat-pony mare are references to Comet Burst and Angel Beats from Comet Burst's Golden Armor series.
And Nyx of course is from Pen Stroke's story Past sins.

They won't be making any more appearances in this story, or at the very least not until the epilogue.

Also, if somepony can let me know how to imbed links into my Author's Notes so that I can link to story and profile pages, that'd be great, thanks.

Dungeons, Dice, and Destiny

Inkwell lowered his hoof and watched Featherdancer until the prison cart turned the corner and he was lost to sight. At least he had managed to keep his brother safe.

He looked around the interior of his current transport. Moonchaser was staring at her hooves in a corner, while Sunbeam was lying on her back staring at the ceiling with her forehooves crossed behind her head. The others were all either in other carts or had gotten away. Inkwell was hoping for the former.

Then the cart stopped and the door opened up again, three more ponies being pushed inside. Well, it was a nice hope while it lasted.

Once Contrail, Lotus Blossom, and Dust Runner had been loaded up, the doors closed again and the cart began rolling once more. The only sound was the white noise from the street and the clacking of wooden wheels on cobblestone streets. It was Lotus who finally broke the silence. “So, what’s everypony’s story?”

Inkwell and Sunbeam shook their heads at her. “No.” Sunbeam firmly said. “No details, tell each other nothing about your lives. If you can, forget everything you know about yourselves.”

“What, but—”

Moonchaser interrupted her, “The less we know about each other, the less we can tell them. If we don’t have any information, then we can’t sell each other out. It’s the only way to keep our families safe if they try to retaliate for this.”

“…oh.” The mare looked crestfallen. It occurred to Inkwell that she might be only now realizing how this would affect her friends and family.

Inkwell cocked his head and looked at Contrail. “I am curious though, I thought I saw you get away, how’d they get you?”

The other stallion looked sheepish as he raised a hoof to rub the back of his neck. “Heh heh, funny story… I actually did manage to get away. I was looking for a place to lie low and wait for this to blow over, so I ducked into a shop a few blocks from the fighting…”

Contrail leaned against the counter, trying to catch his breath. When he looked up, the shopkeeper was giving him an appraising look. “Is it… alright if I... stay here for a bit?”

The shopkeeper’s expression didn’t change a bit, he simply asked, “You one of the kids causing all that trouble out there?” Contrail nodded. “Well then, stay as long as ya’ like, I’m just gonna go get somethin’.”

Fifteen minutes later the shopkeeper was back with the guard.

“…Really? Really!?” Sunbeam’s words expressed Inkwell’s reaction rather nicely. “You really… you just… you actually… ugh!” The mare threw her hooves up in the air in defeat.

Dust Runner seemed to be trying to stifle giggles at the other mare’s antics, which drew the attention of her friend. “Dust Runner,” Moonchaser began, “I know that I saw you get away back by that fountain we threw the Spruce Manticore through. How did they catch you?”

“Well I was hiding in an overturned haycart…”

Dust Runner was having a hard time controlling her giggling, but she had to keep it stifled. The guard that started this fiasco still hadn’t woken up, but several more had arrived and set up a temporary command post. The ranking guardpony was currently shouting his head off about how his troops had better “bring these rebels down!”

Four yards away, one of the fugitives he was giving himself an ulcer over was struggling to not blow her cover. It truly became difficult when one of the hapless guards reported that they had lost track of one of the mares – Dust Runner could only assume that that meant her – and the pale blue actually turned a deeper shade of crimson than the red flower that Lotus Blossom had hit the first guard with.

When the tomatoes came sailing in out of nowhere to paint the entire command post red, the floodgates burst.

The commander and the other two actual ponies of the guard stared at the cart that was on its side at the mouth of an alleyway. “Is somepony there?”

Dust Runner froze. Uh-oh, think fast…”Um… No. Nopony here but us uh… haystacks!”

“Haystacks?”

“Uh… yeah, I’m a uh… Laughing Haystack of the Western Plains.” At this, a hastily constructed haybale with a goofy face drawn on it popped up and jumped over the cart into the cordoned off area. “Well, you nice ponies look awful busy, so I’ll just be going on my way and leave you to it, bye!” A dusty afterimage was left in her wake as the disguised mare galloped down the street.

“Commander, I think that was one of the ponies we’re looking for.”

The guard’s superior stared at him. “You think… of course that was one of the ponies we’re looking for you idiot!”

“Should we arrest it then? I’m not sure that the law actually applies to haystacks. Or at least, I’m pretty sure that they can’t break the law. I think. How would we put the irons on a haystack anyw—”

“Soldier, shut up and get that haystack!”

“Yes sir, charge!”

The commander would be in the hospital for months after being trampled by the poneekinns that his subordinate had been commanding. Said subordinate would be facing the Draconequis equivalent of a court martial at the time, the fact that he did manage to bring the “haystack” in downgrading his punishment to a major demotion and transfer to a position outside the city walls.

The true irony of this had yet to unfold.

Inkwell facehooved. It took him a moment to realize that the echo was four of the other five occupants of the cart doing the same.

Contrail summed it up rather nicely, “That makes my capture look good…”

Sunbeam looked around at her fellow prisoners. “So did anypony not get captured in an utterly embarrassing fashion?”

Contrail looked slightly offended by this. “So how’d you get caught then Oh Celestial One?”

The mare shrugged. “Not much to tell. I got flashy with some of my spells and they upped their game. Seven Oak Ursas and a whole lot of troopers overwhelmed me. Most of ‘em are firewood now though.” She gave a rather proud smirk.

Moonchaser dipped her head at that. “And we all saw Lotus Blossom get captured, nice job though bringing down that treasury ship over Mayhem Lane.”

The earth pony blushed and looked down at her hooves. “I was just trying to give it back to the ponies who needed it…”

The unicorn mare turned to the pegasi and asked, “What about you? Last I saw the two of you were making the entire Air Guard look like so many lead balloons.”

Moonchaser bit her lower lip. “It was my fault, one of the guardponies was riding a Yew Hydra and started targeting ponies randomly. I took a spike that would have hit a bunch of schoolfoals. Inkwell tried to rescue me, we almost got away before the Rowan Lupines brought us back down again…”

Sunbeam nodded, “How many of ‘em did ya get?”

Inkwell smirked at her, “All but the one that mattered.”

For the first time since they had met, the unicorn mare actually laughed. Then the cart stopped. A grating sound of metal on stone was heard as the gates opened. The cart rolled forward again, and Discord’s fortress swallowed the six ponies whole.

Several hours later, the same conversation was being played out in six separate rooms. Six different interrogators were facing the same set of responses from six ponies. The only variations in fact were vocal pitch and facial expression. Nopony knew it, but the six troublemakers were actually even speaking in unison.

“What is your name?”

“I already told you my name.” Dust Runner smiled innocently.

“That cannot be your name!”

“Sorry, it’s the only one I’ve got for you.” Lotus Blossom looked slightly confused.

“That name is obviously fake! It is ridiculous!”

“My parents have a very warped sense of humor.” Contrail deadpanned with a deliberately neutral expression.

“Where did you get the title from?”

“Popular vote?” Moonchaser said with a hopeful smile.

“Who gave it to you?”

“A few ponies with similar names and titles. I think you actually have them in another room.” Sunbeam grinned.

“You are making a mockery of this inquisition!”

“You bet your flank.” Inkwell smirked.

Shortly after that the interrogation team gave up. The six ponies were taken into a dungeon that had three cells along one wall and a large wooden platform with crystals imbedded in it taking up the other half of the room. It was a place that they all knew from stories about previous rebellions, the place where the Draconequi kept their enemies awaiting punishment.

They were on Death Row.

Lotus Bloom and Dust Runner were led into the cell furthest from the door. The earth ponies were locked in their cell, but otherwise had freedom of movement. Sunbeam and Contrail were placed in the middle chamber, they had special collars and helmets put on them to prevent their using magic, but otherwise they had the same rights of movement as the earth ponies. Moonchaser and Inkwell on the other hand were chained to the wall, almost as if they were lying on their backs against it. Their forehooves were manacled above their heads, while their rear hooves were chained to both wall and floor. Their wings were spread wide and shackled to the wall by their primaries. The barred window in each cell gave an excellent view of the courtyard were the crowd would be gathered to watch their punishment, though they didn’t really let in much light.

Their guards turned and left. There was a brief moment of silence, and then the wooden door to the dungeon opened once more. Three sets of hoofsteps echoed through the chamber, and when they stopped, Inkwell looked up to see the guard that Sunbeam had thrown across the market flanked by two other guardponies and smirking at them.

Sunbeam sighed, “Oh joy, time for the villainous gloating.”

The guard scowled. “Maybe it’s about time somepony took that attitude away from you Filly.”

One of his companions stepped forward, “Commander Wyte, our orders are only to get information…”

“Thank you Lieutenant, duly noted and considered.” The guardpony, apparently Commander Wyte, began to reach for the door to the unicorns’ cell.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Wyte stopped and turned to look at Moonchaser. He stalked forward and opened the door to the cell she and Inkwell shared. “Oh really missy? And why ever not?”

Her response was as immediate as the reaction it drew. “You’re skating on thin ice already after this, I can only imagine what your superiors would say if you harmed one of us before we could be publicly punished. Besides, you sir, are a sick and twisted parody of a pony who will be left with nothing when your usefulness to Discord and his kin runs out.”

Wyte snarled at her, “Discord pays me because I’m viscous. Your friend kept me from getting something I want. I always get what I want.”

“How very foalish of you.”

The commander began to pace forward, his expression changing to express a very different emotion than anger. “There are plenty of things I can do to you that will leave you perfectly intact for your punishment. For example, I didn’t get what I wanted from that filly in the alleyway, but I suppose that you’ll do as a replacement until I can find her again.” As he took his first step into the cell, sparks flew into his face, driving him back a half step. He looked up to see a glare that would have melted lead and a voice that could have frozen flames.

“Leave. Her. Alone.” Inkwell had whipped one of his chains against the wall.

“What?” Wyte began laughing. “And just what are you going to do hero? You’re chained to the wall in a fortress full of my allies, how exactly do you plan on stopping me from doing anything to them or even you should the mood strike me?”

Inkwell never flinched as they locked eyes. His expression didn’t even change. “I wiped out an entire company of your Poneekinns with a cherry pit at almost a hundred yards, you tell me. The question you need to ask yourself isn’t whether or not I can carry through on a threat, it’s whether or not it’ll be worth it when I do. Because this time you’re gambling with your life. If you or any of the other guards tries anything like what we stopped you from doing, they’re a deadpony.”

Wyte took a step back. Then another. “A shame you’ll never get the chance to back any of this up colt.” Then he slammed the cell door shut, turned and stalked out of the dungeon with the other two guards on his heels, one of them giving Inkwell a very slight nod as they left. Then the door closed, the sound of sliding bolts was heard, and it was quiet again in the dungeon.

After a few minutes Moonchaser turned her head to get a good view of her cellmate. “Thank you for that, I… if he had… I don’t know…”

Inkwell shook his head at her. “Don’t mention it, I didn’t really do anything. You and Sunbeam were the ones who got him cornered, I just called ‘checkmate.’ Besides, if my sister ever found out that any mare had had that happen to her when I was around, she’d come to the land of the dead, drag me back to this world and send me to the other side again herself. Being completely immobilized at the time would have been no excuse.” He turned to look at the door again. “I’m just glad I didn’t actually have to kill him.”

Sunbeam looked over at them from her cell. “Wait, that wasn’t a bluff?”

Inkwell smiled sadly. “No, that threat was very real.” He stopped and looked at the unicorn mare’s cellmate. “Contrail, what are you doing?”

The other stallion looked over at him. “Oh, well I got some of this gravel through the window, and well… there’s this game my little brother loves to play with some of the neighborhood colts. You put say thirteen little rocks in a circle, and then a circle of twelve inside them, and eleven inside them, and so on until there’s only the one rock in the center, and then you each take another rock and pick a spot on the outside ring, and you take turns shooting a rock from one of the pebbles at pebbles on the next ring in. first pony to get to the middle wins. Kinda like marbles, but… more affordable. Anyway, my brother is really good at this game, and… well…”

“Playing it reminded you of him.” Inkwell finished. Contrail nodded. The pegasus got a curious look on his face. “Tell me, how good are you at that game?”

The unicorn looked down. “Not very, I can’t usually even get to the second ring before my brother wins.”

Moonchaser looked at Inkwell and whispered, “Dust Runner is an excellent shot at marbles, if that helps.”

Her companion turned and cocked an eyebrow at her. Then he turned his gaze on the far end of the dungeon. “Dust Runner, tell me, can you see any discolored feathers near the base of my wings?”

“…Yeah, why?”

Inkell sighed in relief. “Good, I was worried that they wouldn’t show through the disguise. Do you think you can hit them with a pebble like Contrail is using?”

The mare paused for a moment. She seemed to be judging the shot. “Yeah, I should be able to, but that’s awfully close to a couple important bones that I wouldn’t want to break.”

Inkwell chuckled at a joke that only he seemed to have heard. Under his breath he muttered. “I wouldn’t know, that’s a pegasus thing.” Moonchaser gave him a rather confused look, having been just close enough to hear him. Then he raised his voice slightly so that the others could hear. “Trust me, I’ll be fine, but you need to hurry and make the shot.”

Contrail handed Dust Runner a hooffull of gravel. She turned and made eye contact with Inkwell. “Are you sure about this?” at his nod, a pair of pebbles flew through the bars, striking a single white feather on either one of Inkwell’s wings. There was a heartbeat of silence, as if the world was taking a breath.

And then Inkwell’s wings changed. The black wings instead became a deep blue, the single white feather on either wing changing to a paler shade of blue. He almost burst out laughing at the other five ponies picking their jaws up off the floor. In fact the only thing that kept him from doing so was the knowledge of how they would react to the actual big reveal.

Inkwell gave them a moment to process what their eyes were telling them, and then said, “Yes, I’m not really a pegasus, and these aren’t my real wings. They’re a frame I constructed because well… these are my real wings.” And Inkwell’s actual pair of leathery bat wings spread from where the feathers had hidden them.

And he closed his eyes and waited for the avalanche…

And he waited…

He cracked one eye open to make sure that they hadn’t all run off on him to assemble a Lynch mob. He found a true surprise.

Five expressions ranging from bemused to “desperately-trying-not-to-laugh” greeted him. Needless to say, not what he was expecting. Check that, four expressions. Contrail had fainted.

Inkwell blinked a few times. “…This usually goes a lot differently…”

Moonchaser still looked completely bewildered. “Why?”

You could have heard a pin drop. Inkwell, Sunbeam and Lotus Blossom turned to stare at her. Dust Runner just shrugged. “She’s led a very… sheltered life.” She offered by way of explanation. “I’m pretty sure that this is the first time she’s ever even heard of a bat pony. What reaction do you usually get?”

Sunbeam answered for him, “Not the good kind, believe me. For him even coming into the city is like me walking down Palatial Lane.”

“What would be the problem with that?” Moonchaser queried.

Sunbeam gave her a deadpan stare. “Just how sheltered are you? I’m a street rat. The only reason I haven’t starved to death is because I make a living stealing food from other ponies. The only reason I haven’t bled to death is because I can fight well enough to wind up here. The only reason I’m still intact is because I haven’t let myself get swept up by a gang and I’ve let all the other rats know that I’m three times as good as an entire one.

“I had a price on my head before all this started that most ponies could retire on. I don’t know if you’ve heard my name if you’re sheltered enough to still be confused, but I’m the Mare of the Mist, the only solo career female thief in the country. I know most of the guards by name they’ve tried to catch me enough times. I have a unique capacity for deception unrivaled by anypony within a hundred miles.

“The upper class kind of pony that sit around in their big old mansions all day sipping tea and pretending nothing is wrong with the world while Equestria goes to plot around them would prefer to pretend that me and my kind don’t exist. If I got within ten blocks of the upper districts, the guard would be carting me off in minutes.

“My very existence is a threat to their oh-so-perfect world. They’ve got their heads stuck up their plots thinking that Discord and his ilk have turned the world into a Utopia, and I’m sure that it is. For them.

“The rest of us on the other hoof have to wade through life, barely getting by. What we stopped today was only rare because of that filly’s age. That doesn’t fit into the rich ponies’ perfect world, and so they ignore use, keep us very far away, where we can’t get their world dirty, and then pretend we’re not there. and as soon as one of us crosses that line, they hit us hard enough that we fly all the way to the moon and those that dare try and do something about it wind up here.”

Moonchaser had tears in her eyes by the end of Sunbeam’s tirade. “No… its not… I don’t…”

Sunbeam’s eyes widened as she took in the other mare’s reaction. Then she sat down. Hard. “Horseapples. You, you’re one of them aren’t you?” She spun around to face Dust Runner. “And you? What are you two, a pair of rich girls who thought that they’d have an adventure? I expect Mommy and Daddy are going to be here any minute to buy your way out of this pit!”

“Leave her alone!” Moonchaser’s voice carried across the stone dungeon. “Dust Runner is my maid, if anything she probably agrees with you. She’s no more well off than any of the others, but she is a dear friend…” Moonchaser choked here. “A dear friend… and the only reason she’s here is because of me…” Her voice trailed off.

There was a small awkward silence that followed until Inkwell broke it. He had pulled a feather from the false wings with his real ones and had been using it to pick the locks on his chains. He looked up at Sunbeam. “So why aren’t you running for a torch and pitchfork right now?”

She turned to him and shrugged. “Like I said, I’m a street rat. You can’t really afford to judge other ponies based on trivial things like what kind of wings they’ve got.”

Inkwell finished unchaining himself and moved over to the door of his cell. “Alright, what about you Lotus Bloom?”

She smiled at him. “I’m a gardener, when ponies need help with plants they come to me. Bat ponies need fruit trees, and those need a lot of care since they don’t do well with chaos. How about you Dust Runner?”

The maid stepped back a bit. “I-I… I can’t tell you.”

“What?”

“Why not?”

“Not even me?”

“I’m sorry Lotus Bloom, I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone Sunbeam. And no, not even you Moonchaser, especially not you. I’m sorry, I just… I can’t.”

Inkwell hadn’t responded during this exchange save to give her an appraising look before turning back to the lock. After the door swung free, he walked over to the earth ponies’ cell and peered in, staring hard at Dust Runner for a few moments. Then he stepped back. “I see…” He turned and began to walk towards the door to the dungeon, but stopped and looked back over his shoulder at her. He made a weird clicking noise, and then cocked his head as if expecting something. He had almost turned away when a pair of clicks came back at him. He smiled and nodded at the mare before turning and continuing towards the door.

“You won’t tell anypony will you?”

Inkwell turned back to her. “Never.” A few more clicks went the mare’s way.

She shook her head. “I trust you.” At his cocked eyebrow she blushed. “I don’t actually know how to say anything but the ceremonials and customaries, even though I understand it all…”

The bat pony nodded before continuing on to a small cupboard next to the door. Sunbeam suddenly spoke up, “Hey wait a second, was that some kind of other language just now?”

Dust Runner raised an eyebrow at her. “Was what some kind of other language Sunbeam?”

“That clicking thing you just did.”

Inkwell turned with a cloth pouch in his hoof and looked at her. “What clicking?”

Sunbeam’s mouth tried to work for a few moments before Lotus Bloom interrupted her silent tirade. “I don’t think that they’re going to tell us anything Sunbeam, I’ve heard that click-speak between a couple of my customers before and they always deny it happening.”

Dust Runner’s eyes widened. “I thought—”

“If she took care of their fruit trees then she’s not technically an outsider. She’s not close enough to actually teach, and they aren’t allowed to confirm anything, but they don’t have to actively keep her in the dark either. We, on the other hand, do. It’s complicated.”

“So then I can tell Moonchaser after all! That’s so great, I mean—” A furious burst of clicking cut her off. “But why not?” More clicking. “And if I do anyway?” More clicking. “Why?” A lengthy wave of clicking. “I see, but what if I use” She fired off some clicks. He responded with some more clicks. “No, I don’t want that… Why is this so bucking complicated.” Another long set of clicks responded to her, this one with a couple of whistles in it. “Alright… I’ll do that. If we get out of here alive that is…”

Inkwell smiled from where he had been doodling on the floor with chalk dust. “That’s not going to be a problem, now that this is set up.”

Sunbeam looked at him. “A pretty drawing on the floor? What’s that going to do?”

Inkwell laughed, “It’s a Runic Circle Spell.”

“A what?”

“Ambient magic, the same as the disguise spell we’re all wearing. It works by—”

“What’s it do?”

“Basically anypony who steps through that doorway will be filled with an overpowering urge to turn around, forget why they’re here and everything that they see in this room, and then be somewhere else.”

“…Join me Inkwell, and together we can rule Equestria’s criminal underworld.”

“Get back to me after I save our lives.”

“Alright, just hurry up and break us out already.”

He shook his head at her. “I can’t do that.”

“What! But—”

He interrupted her before she could work up steam, “If we escape now, vanish into the night, then they’ll never stop searching for us. When they can’t find us, they’ll retaliate against everypony in this city, maybe all of Equestria. We… I can’t let that happen. Life is hard enough for these ponies, I can’t make it any harder for them.”

“Most of them wouldn’t do the same for you.”

He shook his head at her. “That doesn’t make it right. Besides, I’ve got ponies to protect.”

“You’d never survive on the streets, you know that?”

He smiled, “I was lucky enough to find a good man to apprentice under.”

“What? I didn’t quite catch that.”

“Thank you.”

She tipped her head back laughing. “Alright hero-colt, so what’s the plan then?”

“This is a giant chess game with only one rule, ‘we can’t win.’ We have to die, and Discord or Mayhem or whoever is overseeing our execution has to see us die. Outside of that, anything goes, but the government has to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we. Are. Dead. It’s the only way to save the city.”

Moonchaser cut in. “But if we have to die, then how is this an escape attempt?”

Sunbeam was grinning from ear to ear. “We don’t have to die Moonchaser, that just has to be what everypony sees. What they walk away knowing to be absolutely true. I am curious as to how though.”

“The execution platform. It’s one gigantic ritual spell circle. Funny thing about ritual magic, it always works the exact same way. But, if I draw in a few extra lines and runes in such a way that the spell burns them away without a trace, suddenly the spell that’s supposed to erase our bodies from existence becomes an oversized teleport pad. One that I can target to an area in the forest that I happen to know very well. We hide out for a couple of days, let this die down, and one by one we quietly slip back into our lives.”

“And you’re sure this will work?”

He turned to look at Lotus Blossom. “I’ve been studying magic under the direct tutelage of the greatest wizard of all time for eleven years. My special talent is knowing magic that I have no ability to use. Yeah, I think I can manage to correctly modify a spell circle this big with a full apothecary available to me. Provided I’m allowed to concentrate of course.”

Eight hours later he extinguished his candle, swept the redirection rune away, quietly slipped back into his cell, locking the door behind him, put his wings back on, and latched himself back into place on the wall. He then slept for four hours before he was awakened by the dungeon door opening.

The guards had arrived, one of them began turning a crank, opening the ceiling and raising the platform into the courtyard above. Inkwell and the other prisoners were led into a small room, where they had their various imprisonments removed and had explained to them very deliberately what would happen if they made an escape attempt with so many civilians present.

There was a pause as the opening ceremonies played out, and then they were marched out into the courtyard and up onto the platform. They turned to face the assembled crowd, listening as their charges were read out, interestingly a rather lengthy list for only a few hours of damage. Not one of them could keep a straight face as their names were called out, their executioners had been forced to execute them under the ridiculous pseudonyms that they had given them. And then a single word rang out that stopped their hearts cold.

After their charges had been announced and their names read off, their judgment had been revealed. It wasn’t what they had been expecting at all.

“However, being the merciful ruler that I am, I, Discord, Lord of Chaos and ruler of Equestria shall not be executing these ponies. No, instead their punishment shall be… Banishment.”

To their credit, none of the condemned moved. Instead, five sets of eyes snapped to Inkwell. “Okay spill,” Sunbeam whispered, “What does that mean for us?”

Inkwell resisted the urge to shake his head or gulp. “I… I don’t know. Half of these ancient ritual spells are based on intent. When I modified it, that was what I had in mind. If Discord only tries to banish us…”

Moonchaser cut in, “Alright then, what do we do?”

“Nothing.” The stallion responded. “We can’t afford to react. If we try anything, the only thing it will accomplish is getting more ponies hurt. Foremost us.”

“So what then?” Lotus Blossom asked.

“We gamble.”

“Gamble?” Dust Runner seemed almost unfamiliar with the word.

“We roll the dice, hope that this works. Hope that the difference in intent won’t be enough to mess with my modifications. Or that it’ll just make the spell ignore them.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Contrail shot from the far end.

“Well, I don’t know about you five, but I made my peace back in that market street. I was prepared to die on this platform when I took on those Poneekinns. We all knew where that was heading. I suppose that all that’s left to do now… is choose your final words.”

Inkwell then looked up and saw Featherdancer in the crowd. He opened his mouth and began to deliver his final words. Then to his surprise, he heard Sunbeam start hers, then Moonchaser, Lotus Bloom, Dust Runner, and finally Contrail. And then an answering voice came from the crowd, redirected to bounce off all the walls so that the source was indiscernible.

A slight glow seemed to emanate from the six ponies on the platform, as they sang with the unseen voice. Inkwell, Moonchaser, Dust Runner, Lotus Bloom, Contrail, Sunbeam, and Featherdancer, all singing the same Heartsong in seven part harmony. And then the song ended, each of the six taking a single portion of the last verse before stepping across the border and into the inner circle of the spell. And with a final flash of light, they were gone. The only thing that remained was a voice on the wind, singing the seventh part of that ending verse. And then it too faded away, leaving only a promise of return that chilled the blood of the assembled Chaos Lords.

What nopony could know is that Destiny had just had her cards handed back to her. The events set in motion in the courtyard that day would change all Fate’s designs. The altered spell echoed through time and space, creating powerful magicks, changing circumstances to forge new heroes, changing the very nature of the interaction Fate, Destiny, and all their kind had with mortal beings.

But most notable is the fact that with that spell, most of the previous rules went out the window. Destiny would need a new deck of cards, and Fate a new loom. A new age was about to dawn over the magical land of Equestria.

And the first grain of sand had just fallen to the bottom of the hourglass.