Alpha Centauri

Chapters

Chapter 1: One Night in May
Chapter 2: One Step Forwards, Four Steps Back
Chapter 3: Divine Aid...Hopefully
Chapter 4: In the Starmaker's Court
Chapter 5: Antagonizing the Supreme Being
Chapter 6: A Way with Words
Chapter 7: Complications
Chapter 8: Diplomacy Fails Once More
Chapter 10: Unexpected Exile
Chapter 11: Dinner with Friends
Chapter 12: Reawakening
Chapter 13: Bow to Me!
Chapter 14: Hearts and Minds
Chapter 15: Trouble with Bugganes
Chapter 16: Shock Therapy
Chapter 17: Memories of Proxima
Chapter 18: A Slight Snag
Chapter 20: The Speaker for the Flames
Interlude: Ignorance
Chapter 21: The Empty Theatre
Chapter 22: The Hollow Mountain
Chapter 23: Folasciathán
Prologue: Beltane
Chapter 9: Dealing with Mephistopheles
Chapter 19: Under New Management

Chapter 1: One Night in May

Twilight Sparkle felt that there was something odd about her situation, but she couldn’t figure out exactly what was wrong about it. It was a conundrum – the strange sense that something, somehow, was off about the world, yet despite this knowledge she was unable to determine exactly what the issue was. She opened her eyes slightly, fighting back the temptation to just slip back to sleep on the incredibly comfortable red-sheeted bed she was curled up on, and took a look around the water-filled room she was in. She briefly considered the “underwater” thing to maybe be the issue, but dismissed that as preposterous – she could breathe, obviously, so that was probably normal. Besides, she had to admit that the Library was much prettier underwater – there were some bioluminescent snails or something on the wall, keeping everything brightly lit despite the evident depth, and granting the familiar space an ethereal cast.

No, it wasn’t the state of submergence that was odd, she decided, snuggling closer into the draconequus that was curled protectively around the bed. Maybe it was the bed. Didn’t she have something simpler than this silk-sheeted monstrosity they were laying on? If so, she decided getting something more like this would probably be a better idea. It was round, comfortable…and warm. And she had company. That was always a plus.

With a yawn, the draconequus stirred, stretching his mismatched arms and scratching at his side. He raised his head and blinked at his surroundings, puzzled. Twilight giggled.

“Morning, Dissy,” she said, hugging him. Discord blinked down at her and cocked an eyebrow.

“Well,” he started, slithering off the bed and out of her grasp like an eel. “I can honestly say I was not expecting this when I decided to interfere with your dream to bring you a message.”

“Might you mean ‘massage’?” she suggested playfully. The sound of crunching popcorn behind her caused her to glance back, and she realized with some mortification that Princess Luna was in the room with them, snacks in hoof and situated comfortably on a chair.

“Pay thee no attention to me,” Luna ordered, waving a hoof dismissively. “I am merely observing.”

“Luna, this is private – “

“Thou hast thy trashy romance novels” - she smiled - “and I have dreams.”

“But – “

“No, no, Twilight, she has a point,” Discord interrupted thoughtfully. “It is a dream, after all.” He grinned mischievously. “I wonder what restoring your real memories while allowing you to keep your dream memories would do…”

“Don’t thou darest, Discord,” Luna warned. “My supervision is intended to curb such impulses. ‘Twas a requirement of me granting thy request, was it not?”

“You got boring on the moon, Lulu.” He sighed disappointedly at the closing of a wonderful opportunity to cause mischief and turned back to Twilight. “Well, Miss Sparkle, from an examination of the memories this dream insists I be bestowed with, I can say it was a rather remarkable night, but sadly I must be going.” She let out a disappointed groan. “I somehow think you’ll be singing a different tune when you wake up. That was the message by the way. Wake up!”

And then the draconequus’s smiling face turned into a ringing alarm clock.

With a start, Twilight bolted upright at her desk, bringing a sheet of paper that had the temerity to cling to her face with her. She blinked in the golden sunlight streaming through her window – a nap? She’d fallen asleep?

“Spike!” she shouted, getting out of her chair. “Spike, what time is it?”

“Seven in the afternoon,” he answered, poking his head through the door of the small room – one of the many unused spaces they’d found in the library, and hadn’t really known what to do with. This one, she’d turned into an impromptu study, a quiet retreat away from the near-constant interruptions that came from living in a public library. Spike kicked the door open fully, unable to use his hands thanks to the neatly wrapped stack of books he was carrying. “I was just about to come wake you up! Rainbow Dash’s birthday party’s in like an hour!”

“I know!” She lifted the books out of his hands and floated them along behind her as she galloped out of the room. Just outside and to the left was a spiral staircase; she slowed her pace to a safer trot and started to descend. “I can’t believe I fell asleep – while reading, too!”

“You were up kind of late planning it,” Spike pointed out, following her down.

“That’s no excuse!” She reached the bottom of the stairs and paused. “Telescope! We need the telescope! Spike, go grab it from the balcony!”

The baby dragon groaned. “Twilight, it’s just a stargazing party! Do you really need a telescope?”

“Of course we need the telescope!” She frowned. “It’s an astronomy party! You can’t properly stargaze without a telescope.”

“But – ”

“Spike, this party has to be perfect,” she cut him off. “I’ve put too much effort into this for it to go wrong now!”

“Fine, fine,” he mumbled, starting back up the stairs again. “I’ve never seen you get this worked up about a party before. Not any of Pinkie’s, not Moondancer’s…”

“This is different. I planned this, Spike!” she responded. “Hurry!”

While he grudgingly marched back upstairs to fetch the heavy telescope, Twilight continued down into the Library’s main room to wait. On impulse, she grabbed a few books off the shelves in the Astronomy section that might prove useful – Starly Skygazing Secrets, Astral Anomalies, The Music of the Spheres: A Beginner’s Guide – and her saddlebags from beneath the table in the center of the room. She slipped the presents and other books into them, and them onto her back, smiling; Rainbow Dash would love her present, she was certain. The library hadn’t been receiving as many book donations as it once had over the last few years, and so its collection of Daring Do novels had turned out, on closer inspection, to not be quite as complete as Twilight had boasted when Rainbow Dash first discovered the joy of reading – a jarring find for them both. Therefore, as an ideal birthday present for her friend, Twilight had hunted down the latest three novels in the series – and found copies for herself and the library, of course, but she resolved not to put them on the shelves until some time after Rainbow was through with hers.

Spike returned several minutes later, panting as he tried his hardest to keep the telescope from banging against the stairs. As soon as he was in sight, Twilight took the delicate instrument out of his claws and brought it over to follow her instead. “Thanks, Spike.”

“No…problem!” He collapsed to the ground comically, misjudging the wisdom of doing so on stairs and sliding painfully down the remainder of the steps. “Owww…”

Twilight chuckled. “Take care of the Library tonight!”

“My head…”

The sky was clear when she stepped outside and checked. She nodded to herself, satisfied; a cloudy night would have ruined her plans, not that she’d been expecting one – the weather pegasi usually held to their schedule in Ponyville, unlike in Canterlot, where union contract disputes occasionally led to solid weeks of unscheduled light rain and overcast skies. Of course, a cloudy night would have given her the perfect opportunity to test some of the aeromancy she’d been studying…

“Twilight!”

She turned her head at the sound of her name, smiling as she saw Pinkie galloping down the road. The baker skidded to a halt in front of her, somehow keeping the large white box that was balanced precariously on her nose from falling. She snatched it off and opened it in a single fluid motion, showing off a small rectangular cake perfect for sharing between friends, with blue-black frosting and a star-encircled Wonderbolts insignia done in icing on the top.

“Just came out of the refrigerator!” Pinkie declared happily, closing the box again. “I guess I could have baked it later, but I got it done this morning so I could give it time to chill, since cold frosting is always the best, especially cold buttercream frosting! I wasn’t sure what to decorate the top with, since it’s Dashie’s birthday, but it’s an astronomy party, so I just mixed the two and I think it turned out well.”

“It looks delicious, Pinkie,” Twilight assured her. “Better than what I could’ve done. You know how my attempts at baking turn out.”

“They turn out helpful!” Pinkie grinned and nodded vigorously. “The Living Oatmeal actually made the frosting, so if it tastes a little like pencil lead or charcoal, that’s why.”

“Thanks for helping, Pinkie.” Twilight started trotting down the road in the opposite direction from the way Pinkie had come. The party was being held on a hill outside of town, where the admittedly sparse light pollution of Ponyville would be all but negated by distance. She grinned; yes, this party would be perfect, especially in light of Rainbow Dash’s recent interest in the night sky.

“You’re welcome!” Pinkie giggled, bouncing along beside Twilight. “This is gonna be fun, going to a party I didn’t plan! You covered all the bases, right?”

“Applejack’s bringing plenty of cider, specially made for this occasion – ”

“Is it hard cider? ‘Cause if it’s hard cider, we should pick up some water on the way there, so I can drink something that won’t give me a headache in the morning if I get thirsty.”

“No, Pinkie, it’s not hard cider.” She rolled her eyes. “Applejack even refused to bring any, not that I asked. We both learned our lesson at Apple Bloom’s party.”

“Yep!” Pinkie chirped. “That was a fun party!”

“In any case, we’ll have plenty of cider on hand. Rarity is in charge of the decorations, so I feel completely confident they’ll be stellar – “

“Did you just make a pun?” Pinkie gasped.

“Maybe.” She grinned. “Fluttershy might bring Discord along later, but she had to make sure Angel was feeling better, first. I’m still not sure how he managed to ingest Poison Joke, but that potion Zecora made for him seems to be working, at least. Why are you grinning so widely?”

“Oh, no reason!” she answered. Her grin didn’t shrink at all. “I’m just happy Angel’s feeling better! Maybe a few days of having horns and scales will change his attitude about things.”

“What things?”

“Stealing-carrot-cupcakes things.”

“Hm.” Twilight had the odd sense she was missing something obvious. “Well, if all goes well, all the girls will be in attendance. Plus Discord.” She shuddered slightly as a vague memory of a dream came back to her. “Tonight’s going to be perfect…I hope.”

The road led them out of town, past the darkened windows of sleeping houses and the bright doorways of night-owls. By the time they’d passed the outermost home – the residence of the Hooves family, if Twilight recalled correctly – the sun had set almost completely, and a dark new moon was edging up into the eastern sky. The stars began winking into existence, one by one or in small clusters, outlining constellations against the dark of night. The beautiful sight was all she needed to confirm her predictions, in her eyes – tonight would be absolutely perfect! The first-ever party she’d planned herself was set to go off without a hitch.

When they finally reached the hill, barely ten minutes before eight o’clock, the sun was gone. Only the stars now lit the sky, clustered in a milky streak or scattered across the rest of the heavens. The hilltop was crowned by a sextet of poles stuck into the ground, with lights just bright enough to enhance the visibility of the table of food. Rarity and Applejack trotted down to meet them while Twilight carved a flat platform out of the dirt for her telescope.

“Everything’s all set, Twi,” Applejack declared. “Plenty of cider and fresh-baked snack food.”

“And since nopony else seemed to think of it, I brought a platter of sandwiches,” Rarity added. She glanced nervously back at the hilltop. “Oh, I do hope this will be enough! Heavens know it should satisfy Rainbow Dash, at least, but if I’d had more time, I could have done so much more.”

“It’s perfect, Rarity,” Twilight assured her. The telescope’s tripod stuck into the packed earth, and, satisfied it wouldn’t fall over and break one of its lenses, she left it alone. “We’ll mostly be watching the stars tonight, anyways. Everything is fine.”

“Certainly, it’s fine, dear,” she sniffed. “I don’t do anything less than fine. What I’m worried about is whether it is perfection or not.”

“She already said it’s perfect, Rarity,” AJ snorted. “C’mon, Fluttershy and her guest’ll be here soon. We should probably start reinforcing it, really.”

“Yes. Her...guest.” The fashionista sighed. “Perfection may be difficult to achieve, with Discord in attendance, however nicely Fluttershy assures me he cleans up.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine. Fluttershy wouldn’t bring him otherwise,” Twilight said, though there wasn’t a great deal of conviction in her voice.

“Yeah! He’ll be like a party magician!” Pinkie agreed, bouncing in place. The cake was on her back, still; Twilight watched it nervously as it hopped into the air with each bounce. “Or a party prankster! That’s a really important position, after all, and we don’t have anypony to fill it yet. Maybe he can even help with catering!”

“It’s a mite bit late for that,” Applejack chuckled. Pinkie shook her head.

“Not if he makes chocolate rain!” she continued. “The most super-amazingly scrumptious weather phenomenon in all Equestria!”

“No,” Twilight said flatly. “No rain! It’s an astronomy party. Clouds, cotton candy or not, would just get in the way.”

“Ah, you’re so booooring, Twilight,” Discord’s disembodied voice moaned. With a flash of light and an old-timey piano sting, the Mad Lizard himself teleported into the party, bringing along with him a very frightened yellow pegasus. He wore a neon-green shirtfront, black silk bowtie, golden monocle, and a top hat that appeared to have been last washed in Winsome Falls. He seemed to notice her attention, and asked, “Do you like the ensemble? I thought it fitting, considering whose party I’d be crashing. Though perhaps” – he grinned – “you would prefer me unclothed?”

“Discord!” she snapped, blushing as a slightly more clear memory of the dream forced itself back to the conscious levels of her mind. He laughed.

“So, has our polychromatic guest of honor arrived yet?” He pulled an old-fashioned alarm clock out from behind his back and examined it. “We seem to have arrived precisely three-point-two-four-three-F minutes ahead of time, so I doubt it.” He sniffed the air. “Is that hard cider I smell?”

“It wasn’t,” AJ grumbled. Discord laughed again.

“It’s been a long time since any pony has invited me to a party. It may as well be a proper party, if I’m attending!” He snapped his claws, and a spray of fireworks screamed up into the sky, detonating in a quintet of multicolored blasts of sparks. “Let the festivities commence, then!”

Twilight frowned. “Rainbow Dash hasn’t arrived yet.”

“Perhaps she’s decided to show up fashionably late?” Rarity suggested.

“Darn inconvenient time for her to decide to start doin’ that,” Applejack grumbled. “Ah left Big Macintosh to watch Apple Bloom and her friends tonight.”

Twilight turned to Fluttershy. “You delivered the invitation?”

“Oh! Um, yes,” she answered. “I pushed it through the mail slot on her front door this morning before she left for weather patrol. She should have got it.”

“And I went up and put one in all her windows!” Pinkie added. “She can’t possibly have missed it!”

Twilight nodded. “Very well. We’ll just have to wait for her.”

Discord shrugged and conjured a hammock in the shape of a giant banana peel to lay on. The fireworks fell back out of the sky, completely intact, a second later. “Well, let the waiting commence then!”

High above Equestria, higher than even the most daring of pegasi would attempt to go, a shooting star streaked through Equus’s mesosphere, leaving a brilliant trail of orange-yellow fire in its wake. It drove downwards through the thin air, its angle of attack varying wildly and for seemingly no reason at all, until finally it entered the uppermost extremes of the troposphere. Pony astronomers everywhere would have recounted it as a stunning stellar anomaly, a true wonder – Princess Luna never, with no exceptions, allowed a meteor to dip down into inhabited airspace; a shooting star so deep in the atmosphere would have excited the entire stargazing world.

But then that shooting star hit an anvil cloud somewhere between Fillydelphia and Baltimare, and went out like a candle in a rainstorm. Had any amateur astronomers been watching, they would have been extremely puzzled. A shooting star does not just "go out". They fade away, yes – burned to a crisp and then even further, reduced to ash by their speed; sometimes, they even explode, if Luna were in a particularly bad or show-offish mood – one need only read about the Sibearian-Equestrian border disagreement to find evidence of that in a history book (the incident was resolved in Equestria’s favor, naturally, when the Sibearian representative from Tunguska unexpectedly changed stances on the war bill). No, a shooting star did not go out quietly. Fortunately for confused astronomers, this was not a shooting star.

Atop that cumulonimbus cloud at the terminator between light and dark, waiting nervously for her detector spell to report back, the avatar of the star Beta Centauri paced. Her mane had faded back to its normal proportions, after boiling a soccer-field-sized trench into the cloud from her landing. The dense water vapor felt almost springy beneath her hooves, tendrils of it sliding reluctantly off her kelpie coat as she tugged her feet out repeatedly to walk. She’d cast the spell the instant she’d landed, to give it as much time as possible to search the nearby pony megalopolises for Alpha’s magical signature, and knew the exact instant it would be finished thanks to the magic of repetition, yet still she paced.

“Why am I nervous?” she muttered to herself, glancing up at the faintly star-flecked eastern sky. The west was still an incandescent orange, thanks to Celestia’s setting; it almost reminded her of herself. “Why am I so nervous? It’ll just be the same as every other time! Every – last – time.”

She jumped slightly as the spell returned, a rushing in the ethereal winds around her as the magic bent to her will. With a slight sense of trepidation, she let the results unpack inside her head, and growled. “Nothing!” she spat, returning to her pacing. “Okay, not nothing…thirty-four percent match, on a funny little purple filly…eighteen percent on a black-and-red – thing, I guess. Thirty-six percent on a grey pegasus mare with bubbles on her butt…” She giggled slightly, a sound verging on hysteria. “Thirty-six percent! That’s almost as good as that thirty-eight percent match I found last year…or was that last decade? So hard to distinguish…”

Abruptly, she catapulted herself back into the air, employing a little-used thunderbird technique to accelerate herself back up to supersonic speeds almost instantly, leaving a shockwave of flame and a trail of fire in her wake. She pointed herself arbitrarily towards Canterlot, casting her detection spell every time she spotted a village below her, laughing all the way from the simple exultation of flying fast. The sky darkened almost unnaturally quickly as she sped off towards the night side of Equus, until she found another cloud to bury herself in. With a startling right-angle turn, she slammed into the side of a developing stormcloud, the heat of her wake reducing most of the cloud to so much mist.

The spells caught up to her soon afterwards while she looked down on the glittering sprawl of ancient walls and new apartments that composed the capital city of Equestria. She smiled wanly; she could remember when Canterlot was little more than a cattle-driving earth pony village, almost fifteen hundred years ago. She’d watched it grow up, every year seeing new houses added, even the year after the Great Fire that had destroyed most of the old city. It was kind of comforting, really, seeing something else as durable as herself, especially when all her subjects died so quickly. So quickly…

While she examined the latest results of the spells, she cast another one over the city. It returned as soon as she decided that absolutely nothing of note existed in the scattered villages of Ponysylvania and Mareland provinces – she’d only get really excited for a 50% match – and she set upon the report with her usual eagerness. Then, she froze.

“Wha – What?” she gasped. She cast the spell again, waited patiently for another minute or so, and examined the second set of results to confirm the first. The spell didn’t lie, or at least it lied the same way both times. “An eighty percent match?”

In a flash of heat and light noticeable even from the ground, Beta vaporized the cloud she stood on and tucked her wings in, the wind pressing against her face almost putting out her mane as she dived. With a roar of metal against metal, she snapped her wings open again just above a hundred feet from the ground, leveling out and gliding towards the maddening mass of white towers and onion domes that was the Royal Palace. The city passed beneath her in an eyeblink, and she was past the guards on the Palace wall before they could even raise a cry of alarm. The closest official entrance to where she wanted to be was the main gate; the closest hole in the wall to where she wanted to go was some kind of stained-glass window. She decided to take the window.

A blast of burning air preceded her into what the locals would call the “throne room”. The window – a priceless work of art by the earth pony glassblower Glittering Mosaic depicting the defeat of Nightmare Moon – was reduced to a hail of priceless shards before Beta even passed through. When she landed, the room was absolutely silent; remarkable, considering that not a minute earlier the Princess of the Night had been failing to moderate a shouting match between a cadre of incensed monks and a gaggle of furious astrologers. Now, both sides stared in open-mouthed shock at the celestial intruder. For her part, on her black marble throne on the raised dais at the head of the room, Princess Luna simply looked confused.

“Where is she?” Beta demanded, a mad gleam in her eyes. She strode to the center of the chamber and fixed Luna with her gaze. “Where is Alpha Centauri?”

Luna frowned. “Is it not in the sky right now? We were under the impression it was night.”

“No, not Alpha Centauri the star!” she snapped. “Alpha Centauri, my sister! She’s here, I know it – eighty percent match! Within margins of error! Take me to her!”

“We have no idea what thou art speaking of,” Luna said. “Art thou – “

“I am completely sane!”

“ – okay? Thy head appears to be on fire,” she finished. “Though that may have been a valid question as well.”

A hooded monk cleared his throat. “Princess Luna, if this is a bad time, the Order of the Evening Star would be more than happy to reschedule.”

“Er…yes, as would the Equestrian Astrological Society,” a monocled mare across the room agreed. “You seem to have another…rather insistent guest.”

“Trouble thyselves not with this matter.” Luna shook her head. “We shall have the Guard escort her out.” Without further signal, bat-winged pegasi in dark armor seemed to materialize out of the deep shadows of the hall, pushing through the petitioners and advancing on Beta. For an interminable instant, her vision went black.

She caught herself before she toppled to the floor, her internal clock telling her that a mere two minutes had passed. Around her, scattered like so many toys, was the charred and smoking armor of no less than six guards. Luna’s mouth hung open in shock; the petitioners had pressed themselves as close to the walls as they physically could, and several of the monks appeared to be deep in prayer. Beta was breathing heavily; her heart was hammering like she’d just been in a pitched battle. It slowly dawned on her what had just happened.

“No, no, no…” she muttered, staring at the bones. “No, I fixed that, I’m not – “

“Get thee gone from my throne room, Nightmare,” Luna hissed, standing from her throne. Shadows seemed to congeal into armor around the Princess of the Night as she made to advance down the steps of the dais. Uncertain, Beta retreated a step. She jumped in surprise as the throne room’s doors slammed against the walls behind her.

“Luna, hold,” a tired voice commanded. The Princess did no such thing; if anything, she started walking faster. “Luna, I know this mare. Hold. She is a friend.”

“Tell that to my guards, sister!” Luna retorted furiously, gesturing to the half-melted platemail. Beta dropped her head in shame, Luna’s inflection on the final word calling up memories she would’ve liked to never have had.

“Aren’t they magical constructs, Luna?” Celestia asked, stepping alongside Beta. “Calm down, please. This is no Nightmare – this is Beta Centauri, Queen of Domhan. She is on Equus with my permission.”

“Wait – the signature!” Beta realized, her head snapping back up. She backed away from Celestia, cast the spell again, focused squarely in the alicorn’s direction – and the results came in. Eighty percent match, precisely. A false-positive. Of course Celestia’s magical signature would be similar – she was a star as well! “Nevermind. I need to go – good night, Celestia” – she nodded to the Princess – “Luna” – nodded to her as well – and galloped for the opening she’d blown in the throne room wall. She was caught in a golden aura of magic before she was even halfway there, spun around, and made the victim of one of Celestia’s calm smiles.

“What brings you to our Palace tonight, Beta Centauri?” she asked amicably. “Surely, it must be of some importance, to bring you so far from your world.”

“Well, I tend to come here often. Once a year, actually. I’m searching for her, you see,” she answered. “I’ve been searching for her for a long while. I thought I’d found her tonight, but really, it was just you – eighty percent match” – she cast the spell once again, with greater refinement, to prove to herself that it really was Celestia she’d detected, and the results came back almost instantly. Thirteen percent precisely.

Her eyes widened in surprise. She cast another spell, in Celestia’s general direction instead of on her exactly, and got the result again – eighty percent. In a flash, it came to her – she wasn’t detecting Celestia’s magical signature, she was detecting the trace of someone else’s magical signature in her aura!

“Beta Centauri?”

She ran a quick set of calculations in her head; if she was correct, an eighty-percent match from a mere trace would mean that the trace was likely from close contact with someone who had an even closer match than that, and if said contact had occurred within a month, the decay in the signature trace’s fidelity would amount to exactly twenty percent. Celestia had had physical contact with Alpha within the past month!

She realized that she’d been standing silently, staring at the alicorn, for almost a minute.

“Beta Centauri?”

“Celestia, I need a list of everyone you’ve been in magical contact with for the last month,” she said. The madness was back in her eyes; Alpha was here! Alpha was within her grasp! “And I need it fast.”

“To what purpose?” Celestia demanded.

“To find Alpha, that’s the purpose!” she replied. “Your aura bears a trace that matches Alpha’s magic signature with an accuracy of eighty percent. Someone you have had magical contact with in the last month is her, I’m sure of it!”

Celestia sighed. “Beta, Alpha was a close friend of mine. Her death at Proxima’s hooves was a tragedy. I have searched for her incarnation as well, all across Equus, and found nothing. If you have similarly found nothing on Domhan, then I believe it is time we face the truth.”

“She is here,” Beta insisted. “I am certain of it! More certain than I have ever been of it before, in two thousand years of searching. I will not give up now!”

“Beta – “

“You’ve found her, haven’t you?” she demanded, suspicion seizing hold of her. “She’s close to you, and you know it! If you will not help, fine – I shall continue searching, if I must search each and every cave, home, and city on this world personally to find her!”

“Beta – “

“And when I do find her, Celestia,” she continued, grinning darkly. “When I do, if I discover that you have harmed her, or hidden her, or prolonged my search…well” – she giggled – “we’ll see how long it takes to find you.”

“Beta Centauri!” Celestia snapped. The alicorn closed her eyes and sighed, and when she spoke again it was much calmer. “I have not found her. I do not know where she is, Beta. I – “

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Beta asked, more softly. “You’ve been in actual, soul-to-soul contact with her, and not recognized her.” She snorted, galloped over to the edge of the shattered window frame. Before she leapt back out into the night, she glanced back. “Your blindness is irrelevant. She’s here. She’s close.” She grinned. “Before the year is out, we’ll be back here to say hi. Maybe then you’ll see.”

And she was gone. Celestia tried to imagine she hadn’t seen a flash of red in Beta’s eyes before she’d jumped.

Author's Note

07/10/14 - Edited for spacing betwixt paragraphs as later chapters have. Also I am no longer sure what I was thinking with the content of the initial dream...that's a bit painful for me to read now. Note to Future Self: Change that.

Chapter 2: One Step Forwards, Four Steps Back

Discord, unsurprisingly, had been the first to get bored. Really, the time it took was the only thing that caught Twilight off guard; it was almost three hours before he stretched, yawned, rolled up the banana like a scroll with himself still in it, and declared to all who could hear, “Well, this is boring.”

“I don’t understand. She should have been here by now!” Twilight mumbled, her eyes searching the sky for any sign of Rainbow Dash. “How can she be this late?”

The banana dropped from its low hover and began to roll slowly downhill. “I’d love to stay – really, I would – but I’d really rather be asleep right now. I have a long shopping list to accomplish for Tia tomorrow – resolving international incidents, exploring dangerous ruins, eggs, bacon – the usual – so I feel it would be best if I – “

Everypony jumped as the banana suddenly detonated with the colorful fury of a Royal Arsenal’s equivalent in pyrotechnics. Shreds of banana peel and globs of pulped fruit spattered everything in sight, followed by a wave of concussive force that blew their manes back and yet somehow left the decorations unharmed. In a few moments, the fruit dissolved away, but it was still enough to nearly send Rarity over the edge.

“Never. Again,” she hissed, staring straight ahead, almost shaking with fury. One did not simply cover her entire night's labors with fruit mush and expect no reaction.

Fluttershy, hovering uncertainly near the platter of sandwiches, cleared her throat. “Um…I think I’d better go back home. To make sure he doesn’t frighten any of the animals – um, if that’s alright with you?” She looked to Twilight. The unicorn nodded.

“Fine. Have a nice night, Fluttershy!” she called after her; she’d never seen the timid pegasus fly anywhere nearly half as fast as she did just then. The breeze from her departure caused the lights to stir, and provided the only noticeable natural wind since the sun had set.

Another hour later, Applejack had to go. “Ah can’t just leave Big Mac alone with those fillies all night!” she explained. “They’ll tear him to pieces!”

“Oh, make sure Sweetie Belle’s alright, please,” Rarity asked. “Hopefully, she hasn’t talked them into doing anything too dangerous.”

“They were just gonna help the rest of mah family paint one of the smaller barns,” AJ chuckled. “How bad could it get?”

“Well…” Rarity shook her head. “No. I’m certain you deserve whatever surprise lies in store for you for invoking that.”

Applejack frowned. “Consarnit, ah did it again, didn’t ah?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Good night, Applejack,” Twilight said. AJ tipped her hat and galloped down towards the path to Ponyville.

“Night, Twi! Give Dash mah regards if she shows up!”

“She will!”

She still hadn’t arrived by the time Rarity had to head home. Twilight barely even paid attention to the pleasantries of farewell, preferring to continue scanning the horizon for Rainbow Dash’s arrival. She could tell by the position of the moon that it was well past midnight; if she hadn’t missed her guess, she could say with some confidence that it was nearly 1 AM when Pinkie, too, had to head home.

“What?” she exclaimed, giving Pinkie a look that would have been more appropriate for the baker revealing that she was actually King Sombra in disguise. “What do you mean, you have to go home? You’re the party pony! This is a party!”

“Even I have to get some sleep sometimes, Twilight,” she answered tiredly, smiling. “I have a job to go to, after all! I can’t just stay up all night forever. I’m already out here past my bedtime! The Cakes will get nervous!”

“Ugh. Fine,” Twilight groaned. “I guess we’ll just be stargazing by ourselves, then. Good night, Pinkie.”

“Night, Twilight!” She began bouncing away, but paused and said over her shoulder, “Maybe Dashie took a nap? You know how much she likes sleeping!”

“She’s awake. She’ll come,” she insisted. “I know she will.”

“Oooh, are you getting some kind of Twilight Sense?”

“No. It’s based on scientific intuition and a basic knowledge of Rainbow’s – “ Pinkie yawned. Twilight smiled gently. “Good night, Pinkie.”

“Night, Twilight!” And then, she was alone on the hill.

The minutes stretched on into another hour as Twilight lay on her back and watched the sky, both for her friend and her own amusement. Sleep pulled at her eyelids, but a quick caffeination spell banished any thought of rest from her mind. Instead, just to keep her mind occupied, she started identifying stars, working outwards from Alpha Centauri – an exercise she’d developed as a filly to stay awake while waiting for meteor showers. Partway through, while debating whether to count Sol/Celestia or not, she was distracted by the most peculiar shooting star she’d ever seen – its flight path was erratic and angular, veering suddenly from northwest to southwest for a few minutes before doubling back on itself. Intrigued, she sat up, already hypothesizing about what it could be. A pegasus with a flare? Ball lightning? Some as-yet-unknown transient magical phenomenon?

The meteoroid finally seemed to settle on a course, streaking southwest at breakneck speed. At its current rate, she estimated it would pass over Ponyville in under five minutes; she rolled to her hooves quickly and galloped over to the telescope, adjusting it to point along the path she quickly predicted the meteor would take. When she glanced up to check her orientation, she groaned as she saw that it had diverted from its course again – it looked like it would pass over her hill now, in a slightly longer time period.

She squinted as she spotted something else in the sky – a shadow, moving rapidly towards her and occluding the starry background. It was small, possibly avian; a pegasus, maybe?

“Twilight!” she heard somepony call out; when the call repeated a second later, she identified the voice as Rainbow Dash and grinned. She’d been right! Rainbow Dash hadn’t forgotten! She’d come a bit late, but…

Wait a second, she thought, as the shadow grew rapidly in size. At that speed, there’s no way she’ll be able to brake in time, unless… Her eyes widened and her smile slowly faded. She’s going to crash!

Rainbow Dash was a cyan streak when she entered the dim light of the hilltop. She plowed into the snack table with all the force of a runaway train, carving a shallow crater into the soil and splintering one of Applejack’s cider barrels. The force of her impact dislodged the support pole closest to Twilight, and she was forced to leap out of the way as it toppled over and slid into the telescope. Forgetting she could use magic for an instant, she dove to catch the expensive instrument before it hit the ground, but the sound of shattering glass told her that she was too late.

Rainbow Dash rose from her crater and shook herself to get the worst of the dirt and wood off. “Sorry about the table, Twilight, but I just saw something awesome up in the sky!” she apologized. She glanced around at the rest of the still-standing poles, the now-dead lights strung between them, and the ruins of the table she had just demolished – Rarity’s platter had survived, and landed on a pair of cider kegs, the triangular sandwiches still stacked neatly. “Heh…this is a lot of food for just yourself. Can I have a few?”

She must have nodded, despite not taking her eyes off the extremely expensive broken telescope. Dash popped a sandwich into her mouth and continued speaking around it. “Anyways, I saw this really awesome shooting star off towards Canterlot – it’s still there, too, I think! I flew over to the library as fast as I could to warn you, but Spike told me you were out here tonight. Last I saw, it was heading this way…” Her voice trailed off. Abruptly, she let out a triumphant cheer and leapt into the air again, looping upside down once. “Aw yeah, I just outflew a shooting star! Fastest flier in Equestria, right here!”

Twilight slowly rose back to her feet, her face expressionless. Dash landed again and looked around once more. “This is a lot of fancy decorations just for stargazing. What, were you going to throw a party…or…something...” She chuckled nervously. “Uh…yeah…buck.”

“Yeah,” Twilight agreed calmly, despite the hot anger that was simmering inside. “Buck.”

“Yeah…I think I saw a note from Fluttershy on the floor earlier, but it’s my birthday and I didn’t want to go help rescue some kind of spider family like she had me do last time” – she shuddered – “I hate spiders. And, uh…I think Pinkie left some envelopes in my windows, but it was kinda windy earlier today, and, uh…she may have sung a song, but I closed the door and wasn’t really paying attention.”

“Why?” Keep calm, Twilight, she told herself. Maybe there’s a really, really good reason for this. Yes! She wouldn’t just ignore everypony and ruin your hard work because of something stupid!

“Uh…well…” She rubbed at the back of her neck awkwardly. “I kinda wanted to stargaze tonight instead. Heh. Guess I could’ve just come out here with you.”

Now you can explode, her brain helpfully informed her.

“Let me clarify,” Twilight began. “You ignored Pinkie – the party pony of Ponyville – when she was giving you a singing telegram – which she mainly uses for invitations – on your birthday, because you wanted to stargaze, which you would have done anyways if you had listened to her and come to the party? And because of that, I waited out here for hours, when I could have been writing the friendship report I was putting off to plan for your party, until you flew out here and crash-landed and destroyed my telescope in the process?”

“Sorry?”

She couldn’t keep it down any longer. A full week of planning, three days trying to figure out how to bake a cake without it combusting on exposure to oxygen before asking Pinkie for help, sixty bits spent on books, hours of waiting, procrastinating on a report for the Princess, and the destruction of her prized telescope – all for nothing, because her friend was too thick to get a hint?

With a pulse of wild magic, Twilight’s coat bleached to bone white; her mane and tail ignited into yellow-orange infernos, and her eyes flashed blood red. Nervous, Dash took a step back. “Uh…I said I’m sorry?”

Twilight let out a giggle that sounded ever-so-slightly unhinged. “You will be.”

“Nothing!” Beta muttered, her hooves barely touching the puffy cumulus cloud before she was airborne again, her detector spell barely picking up a three percent match in the sleepy town below her. The sky blurred as she raced off in another direction, eventually punching halfway through another cloud over the large forest near the village. Another pulse; another report. “Nothing!”

With an irritated growl, she sawed the cloud in half to give herself a flat surface to pace on. Nothing, nothing, nothing! Not a sign of her in any village between Canterlot and the Everfree Forest. Not a hint of her north of the city. Not a trace to the east or the west. After two thousand years, Beta would’ve liked to believe she could handle disappointment, but to have come so close…

“She’s hiding her,” she decided, shooting a dirty look back towards the distant capital. She could see the towers of the Palace from her vantage point, like some kind of spidery mushroom growing out of the side of the Canterhorn. “She has to be! Eighty percent, for Caelum’s sake! She knows, she has to know, nobody could be so blind as to come into contact with someone’s soul and remain ignorant of their true nature – “

She paused, reversed course in her pacing. “ – unless she’s being willfully ignorant! She must know something, but she’s deliberately misinterpreting it, or ignoring it completely. Why? Is she trying to protect her? From who, me? Proxi?” She dropped to her haunches, irritated. It didn’t make sense! She had to be somewhere nearby!

“Maybe I’m deluding myself,” she admitted, trying to ignore the pain even that hypothetical caused. “Maybe she’s not on Equestria. Maybe she’s back on Domhan and I’ve missed her, or maybe she’s on Wolfie’s little planet – Wulfgard or whatever. Maybe in all this time I’ve been searching on Equus, she’s been a Wulfgard wolf.” She chuckled. “Maybe while I’m sitting here worrying, she’s eating a moose with her pack.”

She stood. “This will be my last” – her voice cracked slightly – “maybe I’ll alternate between Wulfgard and Equus, searching for her.”

Nerves calmed slightly by the new plan of action, she spread her wings and prepared to take off again – and something about the magical landscape of the sleepy town shifted. Startled, she instinctively surrounded herself with the most powerful ward she could summon, casting her mind out on spell-threads in search of the monster that had evidently arrived. Something had just happened – a shockwave of magic both terrifying and intimately familiar.

She let the ward drop and straightened her posture. “That almost felt like…” Her eyes widened. “Alpha!”

She cast her detector spell again, not even daring to breathe for fear it would somehow affect the results. She knew that feeling – that was the feeling of Alpha’s combat magic; that was the feeling that had hit her every time the Nightmare had driven her into battle with her sister. Somebody, somewhere close, had just angered Alpha immensely, if she was resorting to that.

The spell returned, and Beta felt her heart soar. It was perfect – absolutely perfect. One hundred percent match. Negligible uncertainty. Alpha.

The spell told her where to go. With hardly a thought for her own self-preservation, Beta hurled herself off the cloud and flew towards the magical signature.

“T-take it easy, Twilight!” Rainbow Dash stammered, retreating a few steps as Twilight advanced towards her, still grinning manically. “It’s just a party!”

“Just a party?” she giggled. “Just a party? Yep! Just a party that I spent a week preparing for that you missed because you were too thick to listen to Pinkie!”

“Hey! I’m not thick!” Dash protested. She frowned. “Wait, what do you mean by that? Like, fat thick, or – “

“Irrelevant!” Twilight snapped. Her mind was coursing with magic, deeper than it had ever been before; a unicorn’s control of magic required them to reach out without mental defenses towards the seething background fabric of energy of the world, and that usually resulted in temporary thaumaturgical contamination, but this was different. She felt like she’d tapped into something much deeper than what she normally did, something she’d only barely brushed against once before – and something faint and distant was there, helping her along. The rush was overwhelming and exhilarating and dangerous, and it took all her willpower to merely see red. “You ruined it! I spent a whole week on planning this party out, procrastinated on a Friendship Report for it, and now it’s ruined. Ruined! Just because you were too selfish to read Fluttershy’s letter and listen to Pinkie for five minutes!”

“I said I’m sorry! Can’t we just have the party another night?”

“No,” she growled. “I specifically chose tonight because there was supposed to be a meteor shower – though it looks like that didn’t show up, either!”

“There was that weird meteor earlier, wasn’t there?” Dash pointed out. She tried to maneuver to get the wreckage of the snack table and cider barrels between herself and Twilight, but the fire-maned unicorn dodged fluidly around the broken furniture, her mane darkening the wood where it touched. “It’s behind you now! We can still get some stargazing in, Twilight!”

“It’s bucking 3 AM Rainbow Dash!” she spat. “The sun will be up in three hours! There’s not enough time!”

“That meteor’s getting closer…” Rainbow Dash was no longer looking at Twilight, but at something behind her. Curiosity overcoming magic-fuelled anger, Twilight glanced behind her and realized there was a massive fireball racing towards her hilltop and approaching rapidly.

“Get out of the way!” Dash screamed, crossing the space between them in a flash and knocking both of them clean off the hill in the split second before the meteor hit. Twilight’s fury vanished like a candle in the face of a hurricane wind as the shockwave and thunderous roar of the impact hit them, sending them tumbling even further.

She came to a rest on her back, stunned, with the constellation of Pisces above swimming like it was a genuine fish. She could feel Rainbow Dash’s wing draped over her protectively, though a quick check told her that the pegasus was almost certainly unconscious. With a groan, she rolled over and got back on her hooves, shaking her head in an attempt to stop seeing double. The hilltop was surprisingly intact, aside from the blackened and scorched grass that covered it; the meteor had left only a small furrow in the dirt. Realizing that this was probably going to be her only chance to take a sample of something from beyond the sky ever, she galloped towards the hill again as soon as she was able, ignoring the painful protesting of her legs and rib cage, excitement stirred by visions of herself presenting her findings on such a miraculous object before the Royal Canterlot Academy of Sciences to thunderous applause, of awards and recognition and collaborations with famous scientists - she hardly cared whether whatever it was was dangerous. Life was dangerous! Self-preservation was overrated! This was a chance for science.

Then, something rose out of the crater, and she came to a screeching halt at the base of the hill, visions of academic glory shattered, and her excitement skipped town and was replaced by fear.

The creature looked a bit like a pony, of Celestia’s size - terrifying enough; it was twice her height! - but with a pale grey coat that more resembled a seal’s than a pony’s. Her mane and tail were streaks of orange flame, dancing wildly in the chaotic air left in the wake of her landing and buffeting Twilight with waves of heat. She had wings of metallic gold feathers that rattled and crashed against each other as she shook the worst of the dust from the impact off herself, though numerous larger clumps refused to be dislodged from her coat. Around her neck she wore a silver torc with a disc at the front that was embossed with a trio of four-pointed stars. She was completely alien, and yet somehow she looked almost familiar to Twilight. She also seemed to be talking to herself.

“Right here. She was right here,” the creature muttered; Twilight had to strain to hear her. “Was I too late? Was I just too slow?” She giggled slightly. It was not a happy sound. “Maybe I’m just hallucinating now.”

Twilight cleared her throat. “Um…welcome to Equestria?”

“Too late for that, far too late,” the creature said with a giggle, hardly glancing at Twilight; Twilight wasn't quite certain who she was talking to, her or the voices. Then, frowning thoughtfully, the creature turned to give the unicorn closer consideration. “Were you on this hilltop just now?”

“Yes. You nearly killed me and my friend!” she answered. The creature hopped over the rim of the crater and strode quickly towards Twilight before she even managed to get halfway through the sentence. Her eyes flashed with magic for an instant, and Twilight felt the press of another pony’s spell against her aura. Taken by surprise, she couldn’t get a counterspell formulated in time to stop its effects – none of which she could feel. The creature grinned and laughed – and this time there was genuine happiness in the sound.

“One. Hundred. Percent,” she giggled. Twilight turned to keep her in sight as she started pacing back and forth excitedly. “One hundred percent! I found her! I found her!” Without warning, the creature beat her wings, almost deafening Twilight with the unexpected sound of a thunderbolt, and went spiraling up into the air triumphantly “I found her!”

Twilight took a hesitant step back as the creature looped lazily around overhead, laughing and getting lower with each completed circle. Finally, she swooped low and slammed into Twilight, wrapping her in a tight hug.

“I found you,” she whispered.

“What?” was all Twilight could manage before the hug crushed the air out of her. The creature released her – such as it were – a few seconds later, but somehow Twilight couldn’t pry herself off of her; it was like the creature was coated in glue. The creature giggled.

“Right! Kelpie skin, sorry!” Her eyes flickered with magic again, and a swirl of cloud coalesced above them and let loose a localized downpour that soaked Twilight to the bone, but let her slip free, coughing and spluttering. “There you go!”

“What is going on here?” Twilight managed to splutter once she dried her mane out magically and shook the worst of the water off her coat. “Who are you? What are you talking about?”

“You can’t remember me?” she asked, confused, but her face brightened a moment later. “Memory loss! Right! Unrealistic to expect you to remember after two thousand years. My name is Beta Centauri, and I’ve been searching for my sister for almost that long. And I’ve finally found you!”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Twilight responded. Beta stared at her expectantly, and it dawned on Twilight what she’d probably meant. “You think I’m your sister?”

“I don’t think, I know,” she answered, beaming. “Two thousand years of flying to Equestria every spare day I had, refining magical detection spells, research into the fundamentals of auras and stellar reincarnations – and it paid off! Tonight it finally paid off! I found you! You’re her! Alpha Centauri! My sister!”

“What?”

“I said – “

“No, I heard that,” Twilight interrupted. “It – I just – you’ve made a mistake! My name is Twilight Sparkle, student of Princess Celestia, Bearer of Magic – “

“Student of Princess Celestia?” Beta asked, her expression suddenly serious. “You’re in contact with her often?”

“Of course!”

“When was the last time you met with her?”

Twilight searched her memory. “A month ago, more or less. She was teaching me how to – “

“You’re her!” And she was beaming again. “I’ve visited her already! The impression of your aura in hers had decayed by precisely the amount a month of elapsed time would yield. Oh, I can’t believe it! Can you believe I was about to give up searching for you on this world?”

“I’m not her!” she protested. “I was born and raised here on Equestria! My parents live on Starstreaked Lane in Equinox, right outside of Canterlot – “

“Oh, I saw that place get founded,” Beta interjected.

“ – and you can go ask them who I am!” Twilight finished angrily. “I’m not your sister!”

“Of course you are!” Beta exclaimed. She started pacing again, switching directions fast enough that it almost looked like she was chasing her own burning tail. “Your magical signature matches Alpha’s perfectly! You’ve been in contact with Celestia within the past month, making it a good bet that 80% match I found in her aura was from you as well. The magical pulse I felt just a few minutes ago was Alpha, too, and it led me straight to the hilltop. And, finally, you match her perfectly! Nothing, absolutely nothing, can alter the magical signature of a living creature’s soul!”

“But detection spells can give faulty reports!” Twilight pointed out. “Like yours must have, since I’m not her! Your insistence on this hypothesis when all support comes from inherently flawed methods is ridiculous!”

“You – you might be right.” Beta sighed frustratedly. “Was there anyone else on this hill with you?”

From her prone position at the base of the hill, Rainbow Dash groaned. Beta’s eyes flashed once more as she cast the detector spell on her, and she growled. “Of bucking course you’d both have the same signature. One of you is her, I’m certain of it!”

“I’m sorry you thought you found your sister after two thousand years, but neither of us is her – and the fact that your spell somehow reads us as the same pony is probably a sign of a deeper flaw,” she said. “We’re just ponies – Bearers of the Elements of Magic and Loyalty. That’s all. Not some kind of alien robot-pony thing.”

“Robot-Pony?” Beta frowned and glanced down at her wings. “What are you – oh! No, these are Thunderbird wings, not mechanical wings. We specifically intended to look like a merger of the species we ruled, if…you…” She grinned. “Ha! I know how I can tell which of you is Alpha!”

“Neither of us – “

“A deep-memory scan, of course!” Beta muttered to herself. “If she’s been reincarnated, she’ll have kept some memories, and I know how long she was a star, there’ll be something left there! That’s it, that’s perfect, that’s all the proof I need!”

“What are you talking about?” Twilight frowned uncertainly. Something told her that a “deep-memory scan” would likely be unpleasant – and would give this creature a more dangerous access to her mind than she was willing to grant her.

“I’ll do the blue one first,” Beta decided. With a beat of her wings and crash of thunder, she leapt from the hill and glided the short distance to Rainbow Dash, landing softly and spreading her wings around the pegasus, blocking her from Twilight’s view. Anxious about letting a delusional stranger with an intent to use magic that involved the subject's mind near her friend, Twilight galloped towards them, but the light from Beta’s eyes glinted off her feathers and told the unicorn that she was too late to interfere. There was a crash as Rainbow Dash stiffened and kicked the golden plumage, and then Beta was closing her wings and Dash was on her hooves, stumbling away from the creature with a storm of emotions playing across her face.

Beta turned to Twilight. “Not her. Now I’ll do you, and I can confirm my theory, and we can go home.”

“What did you do to her?” Twilight demanded. Beta’s response was to start advancing; her wings rattled slightly as she held them slightly away from her body, shaken by the slight night breeze. Twilight started to retreat, trying to keep away from her, but she stumbled over her fallen telescope, and Beta leapt forward.

A pair of glowing white eyes filled her vision.

She was an old earth pony mare, rocking gently in a chair on the front porch of a neoclassical manor in a clearing in a forest. The trees past the treeline forty meters away were lined up in neat, unnatural rows – pines, and oaks, and cypress, and willows, as far as the eye could see. A green filly with a braided brown mane maybe twice Apple Bloom’s age was running out of the woods, an image of a cluster of bright red berries on either flank and a serious look on her face. Twilight smiled warmly at her granddaughter.

“Holly!” she called out once the filly was in earshot. “The saplings in the east nursery ready for uprooting yet?”

“Granny – Willow – something – happened!” the filly gasped, once she skidded to a halt in front of Twilight’s rocking chair. “Something – bit – “ – gasp for breath – “something bit Uncle Rowan!”

The memory of a brown stallion with kind eyes and an easy smile flashed through Twilight’s head. She was on her hooves in an instant, ignoring the protest of old joints forced to move too quickly. “Where?” she asked urgently.

“The east nursery!” she answered. A pause; then, “Yeah, they’re ready for uprooting.”

“Never mind that, filly!” she snapped. Harsh, perhaps, but they were in the Forest. If something bit her son, he needed medical attention, and he needed it five minutes ago. “Get my staff and emergency kit from the shed out there and meet me – where is he, precisely?”

“Row eighteen, column four,” she replied quickly. She turned and started galloping again. “I’ll meet you there!”

“Stay away from anything that looks like it might bite you, you hear!” she shouted after her. Not waiting for an answer, she started to gallop as well, her legs taking her along the familiar route to the east nursery. Trees blurred past, their branches shifting slightly in greeting. Her own personal forest – friends she’d never forget, if she had any say in how the afterlife went.

The east nursery was separated from the rest of the property by a shallow ditch, half-filled with water. There was a bridge near the main road to the house, but it would be faster to just jump it. She turned sharply, leaping with all of her strength, and cleared the ditch easily enough, but on her landing her foreleg caught a loose stone – and the jolt of pain that its shifting sent up her leg told her that she’d likely twisted something. Gritting her teeth, she pressed onwards into the immaculate rows of apples trees they grew to sell to farmers across Equestria. The pain in her hoof hobbled her, but she liked to think she still made good time.

“Granny!” Holly managed to shout around the stout staff she held in her mouth. She spat it out and bucked it before it hit the ground; Twilight caught it easily.

They found Rowan lying atop a young sapling, the first in column four to be newly planted. His straw hat was crushed alongside him. A ragged dent was carved into his right hindleg that made Twilight wince in sympathy; the dirt below it was damp with blood.

“Hey, ma,” he said weakly as she limped to a halt next to him. Holly dropped a black doctor’s bag next to Twilight as she stuck the staff in the ground and examined the wound more closely. “Monster got me good, huh?”

“ ‘Taint so bad,” she answered gently, trying not to wince again. Veins stuck out in sharp relief around the wound, black as pitch and snaking their way up the limb below the fur. Poison, for sure. “You see the critter that did this to you, boy?”

“Leech,” he answered. “Big one.”

“Ain’t no leech that did this to you, Rowan,” she said. “Holly, dig out that – “

“Leech!” Holly screamed, shooting past Twilight and Rowan, eyes wide with terror. Surprised, Twilight grabbed the staff up and whirled to face the monster – it was, indeed, a leech. A giant one, reared up like a snake ready to strike, and hissing like one as well. She tried to give it a good whack with her staff, but it wrapped itself around the end and slithered along the stick towards her. She hurled it away before it could take a chunk out of her, too, but it was coming back as soon as the rod hit the ground.

“Rowan, get – “ she started, as the leech coiled and sprang for her face, but the sound of the rest of her order was lost in the face of her son’s wordless cry as he stood and hurled himself between the monster and Twilight. It hit him full in the throat, and latched on. Twilight saw him mouth one word – “Run” – before the leech’s venom reached his head and his eyes glazed over. He was gone.

Tears streaming from her eyes, she grabbed Holly and ran.

She was a grey-coated pegasus mare with a single bubble for a cutie mark, lying on her side on a patch of cloud and watching a small newborn foal try to climb her flank. A stallion she knew as her husband was against her back. They were laughing. The foal toppled over backwards, waving her legs around in the air for a moment before winning free of the cloud and righting herself. She stared at Twilight with wide, awe-filled golden eyes and a bubbly smile, and hiccupped. They laughed more.

“Mama!” the foal chirped. Then she tried to climb Twilight’s flank again. They weren’t laughing anymore; instead, they were beaming. Their daughter had just said her first word.

He was a white stallion of the Royal Guard. His squad was shambling aimlessly across the corpse-strewn battlefield of one skirmish or another – they all started to look the same, after a while – in a crescent formation. They’d taken their helmets off to let the foul-smelling breeze wash over their heads and cool them off.

“Hot out,” the soldier to Twilight’s left grumbled. Twilight chuckled.

“Could go for some eternal night myself about now,” he remarked. The others laughed.

“Treasonous talk right there,” the soldier to his right chuckled. “Going to have us a nice eternal day soon, probably. Night’ll be hung for treason.”

“Going to be a hot one,” the one to Twilight’s left responded. He stepped atop a bat-winged body and jumped in surprise when it groaned. Before they could react, the mortally injured longma had hauled itself to its hooves and threw itself at the soldier. He reacted without thinking; swung the point of his spear around so the bat-pony impaled itself. With its dying breath, it murmured, “Thank thee…”

He let the body slide off the spear. They all watched it hit the ground. From Twilight’s right, he heard the guard mutter, “War doth suck.”

Nopony did anything else but nod. Their eyes never left the body.

She was a star.

Floating the void of space, dancing with her two sisters, she had an idea she had to share. She didn’t have a language yet to express the idea, but she got the gist of it across to Beta and Proxi. Let’s make a planet! She told them. Tia made one, let’s make one too!

What should it be like? Proxi asked.

I kind of like those trees Tia made, Beta suggested. We could make it covered by those?

Seems a bit dull, Twilight said thoughtfully. Some oceans, too?

And mountains! Proxi exclaimed eagerly. And caves, and rivers, and plains, and hills!

We could make some things to live on it, Beta offered. Tia has those funny ponies to play around with.

She’s always trying to teach me how to speak like them, Twilight laughed. I’ve told her, speaking gets in the way of learning, but she doesn’t care. Sometimes, she even thinks in their tongue!

They’ll need a language, Proxi pointed out. Unless you just want them to eat each other and walk around?

True, she conceded. I guess we’d have to learn how to talk to them, too.

It’ll have to be a fun language, Beta said. And there should only be one, so we don’t have to learn too many.

We should make the planet first, Twilight smiled. Then we can decide on what they speak.

Who will get to warm it? Beta asked. They descended into a thoughtful silence.

I want to! They all shouted at once.

Well, this won’t work at all, Proxi mumbled.

We should share it, Twilight decided. We all will contribute to making it, so we all should share it.

Wouldn’t it freeze on its way out to me? Proxi asked.

Not if we switch off when you’re closest to us, Beta answered. Alpha and I get it one half of its year, you get it the other half.

I suppose that would work… Proxi agreed. How do we start?

I think Tia started something like…this! Twilight replied.

Space rippled as she reached out with her magic, the magic of a million years and the perturbation of gravity, and a region of dust in the great disk of matter that suffused their system started to coalesce.

It looks a little small, Beta observed. We should make it bigger.

Small planets are no fun, Proxi agreed. Here’s some gas and stuff. That should make it big – oh! That’s pretty.

The three stars looked in wonder at the small violet marble they’d created. It was puffy and cloudy and not suited for life at all, at least life like they wanted it, but it was a start. They all agreed that it should be Alpha’s – after all, making a planet had been her idea first.

She was a unicorn again. The constriction in scale was staggering. Gasping for breath, overwhelmed for a second by the feeling of air on her coat and grass under her hooves and the magical fields around her horn, she nearly blacked out completely, but Beta held her up until she recovered. She pulled away, breaking the comfortable magical cocoon Beta had supported her in, as soon as she felt like she could stand on four legs again, and tried to put some distance between herself and the star.

“What – what did you just bucking do?” she gasped. “What was that? What were those? What did you do to me?”

Beta was grinning ecstatically. “You’re her. You’re her!” - she laughed manically – “Oh, by Caelum, I knew it! You’re her!”

“What just happened?” The world flickered once, trying to dissolve away and dump her back into the pit Beta had punched through her mind, but with an effort of will she managed to stay firmly grounded in reality. Phantom outlines of half-familiar ponies flickered in the corner of her sight, but by the same effort she managed to ignore them and force them back into unreality.

“It was a deep-memory scan! Every past life leaves traces,” Beta explained. “You just have to find the traces, and from there you can easily piece back together full memories – and I found enough to tell me that you are definitively Alpha Centauri.”

“I’m not – “

“Yes, you are,” she cut her off. “You’ve got the memories back now, you should be able to tell that for yourself!”

“I don’t know who you are, or what you actually did,” Twilight said. “But those are not my memories. You’re insane – clinically insane! Schizophrenic, maybe, or bipolar, if I can remember that psychology dissertation I read last week, or some other mental disorder I haven't read about yet! I’m sorry you lost your sister, but I’m not her!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Alpha,” Beta laughed. With a quick flap, she was next to Twilight, pulling her close with a surprisingly warm wing. “It’s been a long time, but I think it’s time for us to go home again. It’s going to be wonderful having someone else to reign alongside me – you cannot possibly understand how hard it’s been keeping three suns moving in the right ways, alone, for two millennia!” She giggled. “Maybe I can finally get some sleep!”

Before Twilight could protest, she felt a wave of unfamiliarly familiar magic engulf her, and the world seemed to cease to exist.

Still reeling from the unlocked flood of memories, down at the bottom of the hill, Rainbow Dash could only watch helplessly as her friend was kidnapped. By the time she was able to think again, her own mental voice overpowering the babble of seemingly hundreds of other ponies in her head, the morning sun was just cresting the horizon and painting the scene of the disastrous birthday party in gold. She had to do something, but she knew – and the newly-minted voices of past hers in her head agreed when they weren't too busy fighting her for control – that she couldn’t do anything alone. She needed help.

As fast as she could fly, Rainbow Dash shot off to find the closest near-omnipotent being she knew of.

Author's Note

People who favorite but don't upvote stories perplex me.

On a more cheerful note, thanks for the feedback I've gotten so far!

07/10/14 - Edited for spacing betwixt paragraphs as later chapters have.

Chapter 3: Divine Aid...Hopefully

They were sitting at a fancy wrought-iron table in a shaded clearing in a forest of rose bushes, Rainbow Dash and Cloud Ferry. Across from Dash, the white-coated unicorn noblemare sipped delicately from a porcelain teacup. She was wearing a sun hat that would make Rarity green with envy and a dress that seemed to be made of solidified light. Her eyes were brilliant blue, and her elegantly styled mane was striped with the colors of the rainbow, though paler than Rainbow Dash’s own mane. Dash found it almost repulsive that she had ever once been this mare – but it was accepting that she’d been reincarnated a few times or accepting that she’d gone insane, and that was the last thing she’d ever admit to being. Crazy awesome? Sure, why not. Crazy? Not in a thousand years.

“Why am I wearing this stupid dress?” she mumbled, glancing down at herself. Granted, it would have been acceptable for the Gala or some other formal occasion, more than acceptable even, but wearing it just for a snack with a memory? “And this hat?”

“Because it’s sunny out, dear,” Ferry smirked. “Drink your tea, it’s getting cold. Sugar in it?”

“What do you want?” she asked, trying to ignore the spoonful of sugar that was floating stealthily towards her own untouched cup of tea. “Twilight’s been kidnapped! I need to find a way to save her from that weird space alien! I don’t have time for this!”

“What has the world come to when two mares don’t even have time to sit down for a simple cup of tea?” Ferry shook her head disappointedly. The spoon dumped its load into the cup and drifted off for another scoop. “Honestly, it’s heartbreaking!”

“I can’t believe I was ever you,” Dash grumbled. “You don’t even have wings!”

“I can’t believe I turned into you,” the unicorn snorted. “You barely have a basic grasp of etiquette, if that, and your mane looks like you were run through a thunderstorm. Your feathers are misaligned and your eyes are…what color are those, even? Red? Pink? Magenta?”

“I don’t have time for this!” she snapped. “Why did you want me here?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, dear, if I’d a choice in the matter I’d be taking tea alone.” The spoon dumped another pile of sugar into Dash’s cup. It didn’t even dissolve completely; the peak of the pile stuck out stubbornly like a granular mountaintop from a warm brown sea. “Just say when.”

“Then why am I here?” she demanded.

“I’d assume it’s because you fell asleep,” she answered calmly. “Which, if you’re truly so short on time, you probably shouldn’t have done” – she sipped from her tea again – “but then, who am I to criticize? I’m little more than a mix of a ghostly memory and a figment of your imagination. If I’d any choice at all, dear, I’d be at the races right now.” The spoon dug deeply into the bowl of sugar and stuck there. “But I’m dead, and now my soul is in you. I suppose I’ll just have to make the most of it. Care for some more sugar?”

“You’re crazy,” Dash snorted. “How do I wake up?”

Ferry smirked again. “Perhaps like this?”

The spoon shot at Dash’s face, and the world dissolved.

With a start, Rainbow Dash snapped out of her exhausted sleep. She was at the deepest end of a lung furrow carved into a hillside; she could hazily remember coming in for a crash landing at Fluttershy’s cottage before deciding in her impact-addled state that it was a good time to take a nap. The sun was out in full force, shining from its late-morning position and glinting occasionally through the leaves of her friend’s tree-home; shading her eyes with a foreleg, she sat up and glanced around to get her bearings. She heard a door open very close behind her, and looked up to find herself staring into the calculatingly mad features of Discord. She’d come to a halt maybe an inch away from the door.

“Well, well, well…” the draconequus smirked, resembling Cloud Ferry for an instant to Dash’s eyes. His voice had taken on a slight Canterlot accent and was much deeper and more refined than usual. “If it isn’t the esteemed Rainbow Dash! Beds too good for you now, as well?”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded, unconsciously rising to the challenge in his tone. “So I crashed in front of Fluttershy’s house! What’s that have to do with – “

“Seeing as you are apparently too good for your friends now, I deemed it a cogent question,” he interrupted. He pulled an aged wooden pipe from somewhere and idly bit off the bowl, staring pensively off into the forest as he chewed noisily. “Good heavens, do you not even recall the party you missed? All your friends were there, of course…dear Fluttershy was most upset you failed to come…”

“All my…buck,” she realized. “Uh…I can explain?”

“Oh, no need!” Discord smiled, his voice returning to normal. He coiled backwards into the house, chuckling. “I understand completely! After all, who needs such saccharine things as ‘friendship’ or the magic thereof when you’ve got yourself? Honestly, I wouldn’t even care all that much, except you did upset Fluttershy…I hope you didn’t come expecting a birthday favor or some other nonsense unless you’ve got a truly random plan, as I promised your former friend Fluttershy some ice skating lessons in my personal palace in the Everfree later on.”

“Discord, wait!” she shouted, following him into the house. “I’m sorry!”

“Oh, I’m not the one you should be apologizing to!” he replied. His head was mounted on a plaque on the wall to the left of the door; Rainbow Dash jumped away from it in surprise. His body came running out of the kitchen a moment later. “It’s poor, poor Fluttershy, whose tiny kind heart was broken into a million pieces by the betrayal of the one called loyalty,” the mounted head continued somberly.

“Left alone on a cold hilltop, waiting patiently for a friend who’d never come,” the body picked up, hanging its long neck morosely, the flat raw end of it folding as it spoke like some kind of weird mouth. “Tears streaming from her large, bulgy pony eyes as she dejectedly headed home for the night, seeking the comfort of a friend who actually cared…”

“Wait a second.” Dash frowned suspiciously. “You’re making this up, aren’t you? She never came to the party at all, did she?”

“Oh, of course she did!” the plaque scoffed. “As did I!”

“I left first, I admit,” the body said.

“No, that was certainly me,” the plaque corrected snippily. “And Fluttershy left second.”

“With me!”

“No, not with you. We left together, didn’t we?”

“I can’t recall,” the body admitted. “I’ve a poor head for such things. In any case, she was distraught.”

“Broken inside!”

“Weeping openly.”

“You’re just trying to make me feel bad now,” she muttered. She hated to admit that it was working a teensy bit. The head and body both laughed.

“Oh, of course!” the head said, teleporting back onto the body – though facing backwards. “Everything I just told you was the honest truth, though, even if I did add a bit of poetic embellishment.”

“Where is she now?”

“Out in the Everfree Forest picking flowers, I suppose.” With a flash of light, Rainbow Dash found herself back outside in the sunshine, Discord grinning in the doorway with a furry paw resting on the door. “You should probably go apologize to her! Ta-ta, now!” He started to close the door.

“Wait!” she shouted, throwing herself against the wood. Her weight managed to stop it from shutting altogether, though it steadfastly refused to move backwards. “Discord, please! I need help!”

“What was that?” All resistance vanished, and the door swung open instantly and dumped her on the floor at Discord’s feet. His voice was one of mock shock. “Did – did the incomparable Rainbow Dash deign to say ‘please’? To me?”

“Yes!” she confirmed, standing up again. “Please, Discord, I really need help. Some kind of weird alien monster came last night and ponynapped Twilight!”

“Did she just ask nicely again?”

“Discord, this is serious!”

He sighed. “Fine, fine, I’ll put my ‘serious face’ on.” He tugged his face off and made no effort to replace it. “Now, what’s this tomfoolery about an alien menace? Has my mere presence been enough to start raids by eldritch star-horrors?”

“It was this weird giant pony, maybe Celestia’s height, with metal wings,” she told him. “We thought she was a shooting star at first, but she came flying at the hill and almost blew the top off it! She did some kind of weird thing to me – some kind of forced memory montage, I think – then she did the same thing to Twilight and they disappeared!”

“Hm. A forced memory montage; this does indeed sound serious. Have a seat, I’ll be with you in a moment!” With a snap of his fingers, Discord called into existence a hybrid of a chair and a black bear underneath Rainbow Dash. The thing took her along forcibly as it trundled into the house; Discord vanished.

The chair dumped her onto Fluttershy’s couch. Discord reappeared a moment later, wearing a grey no-nonsense business suit and a pair of square-framed glasses – his face was still absent – and hovering in a cross-legged position about three feet off the floor. He pulled out a notepad and spoon and cleared his throat. “Tell me, madame – “

“Please don’t call me that.” She shuddered at the brief image of Cloud Ferry that passed through her head. Discord cocked an eyebrow.

“Very well, Miss Dash. Can you provide any further details about the perpetrator of this crime? Date of birth?” The question came from the mouth of a duplicate of the draconequus’s head that popped out from beneath the cushion she was sitting on. “Mane color? Driver’s license registration code? Airline of choice? Sexual orientation? Approximate height? Preferred ice cream flavor? Immigration forms? Tax returns? Prison record? Societal status? Was she an Australian?”

With each question, another head pushed out from behind something, until Dash was completely surrounded by faceless duplicates of Discord’s bespectacled head. Angrily, she shoved them aside to get a good glare in at the original. “I don’t have time for – “

She felt a tap on the back of her head and whipped around, finding herself staring into Discord’s actual face again. “Could you tell me her name, perhaps? If dear Lulu is any indication, pony madmares seem to enjoy declaring that very loudly.”

“Beta Centauri.”

He teleported back to his original position, the spoon and notepad vanishing in puffs of reddish-green flame. “Did she give a reason why?” he asked. For once, Discord sounded genuinely surprised.

“I think she said something about Twilight being her sister?”

Discord snorted. Then, he chuckled, which developed into a full-throated laugh until he dropped to the floor and began rolling around in hilarity. “Oh, that’s rich, Rainbow Dash! You really had me going there!”

“Hey!” she snapped. “I’m not kidding!”

“Oh, but that makes it even funnier!” he exclaimed, wiping a tear from his eye and regaining control of himself. “There is no way, in Equestria or Tartarus, that little bookish Twilight Sparkle is Alpha Centauri, Queen of Domhan and single-hoofed defeater of not just one, but two Nightmares. It’s hilarious! Beta must be well and truly off her rocker.”

“So?” she demanded. “She still took Twilight! We have to save her!”

“Oh, is it ‘we’ now?” he snorted. “Rainbow Dash, you can be a little thick sometimes, can’t you?”

“Hey! I’m not fat!” she protested, but he spoke over her.

“Please,” he continued. “If anything, I am extraordinarily disinclined to help at all. So long as Twilight’s gone, I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, whether your precious Princesses want me to or not. Can you believe what they’ve been making me do? ‘Solve this international crisis,’ this, ‘fix this magical disturbance,’ that, ‘could you help me lift this ham into the refrigerator,’ the other – and I’ve had to actually do it! I thought there’d be some grand purpose in reforming me, honestly, but no, they just really needed an extra heavy to do some footwork around Canterlot. Now, there’s no Elements of Harmony hanging like a pasta slicer over my sorry neck, and I can finally have some fun; take a day off now and forever, teach Fluttershy how to roller skate, pull a few memorable pranks…”

“You have to help!” she protested. “If you don’t, I’ll…I’ll go to the Princesses!”

“Why didn’t you do that before?” he asked curiously.

“You were closer.”

He rolled his eyes; when they stopped, one had five pupils and the other had two. “I was hoping for snake-eyes,” he muttered. “’I was closer.’ That’s really the best reasoning you could come up with? You’ve wasted your time, Rainbow Dash.”

She grinned suddenly. “If I go to the Princesses, I can tell them how uncooperative you were.”

“So?”

“They might decide you’re not reformed after all,” she explained predatorily. “And when we do get Twilight back, I’ll make sure you’re stuck as a statue again…forever!”

He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “You make a compelling case, Rainbow Dash. Perhaps I will help you after all.” She was ready to do a victory lap, but he held up a paw. “Don’t celebrate just yet. See, there is but one way to get Twilight back if Beta is convinced she’s her dear departed sister, and that’s to go over head and appeal directly to Queen Caelum herself.”

“Who’s that?” she asked, confused. “Is she a Changeling?”

“Queen Caelum, the Starmaker, is essentially to the stars what Celestia is to Equestria,” he explained patiently. “Her court is unreachable by normal means.” Dash groaned. He continued speaking. “Fortunately for you, I know a way to get you there. Unfortunately for you, once you’re there you’re on your own.”

“Why?”

“Due to prior…indiscretions, shall we call them, I am exceedingly not welcome in Caelum’s court anymore. My presence would likely get me minorly injured and you reduced to so much stardust,” he admitted reluctantly. “You going alone would be your best bet. If a mortal can get to the court, she will grant them an audience without reservation, so that part should be easy enough. I know a way for you to get there, though it will require you to learn something not related to flight.”

“I have to learn something,” she repeated. “As in – book-learning? School and homework and stuff?” Discord nodded. With a nervous gulp, Rainbow Dash did too. “When do we start?”

“You’re just full of surprises today, aren’t you?” He smirked. “Fly by the newly refurbished Palace of the Royal Pony Sisters around sunset today, and I’ll see what I can do. One tip I can give you in advance: try not to be exceptionally dense then or afterwards. That could probably make Fluttershy very sad.”

“Why?”

“Why – you’d be dead.” The grin he gave her made her almost as uncomfortable as saying please to him had.

Twilight’s world was nothing but darkness for what felt like an interminable moment lasting from the beginning of time to a good bit after time ended. It was a bit like being asleep, she thought after her body had recoalesced back into something able to support thought; she couldn’t feel anything during the transference, unlike the normal electric tingle of a teleportation spell, and even more oddly she couldn’t tell how much time had passed during her brief period of nonexistence.

When her conscious mind came back on-line, her second thought after the maudlin musing that had come was more along the lines of, Sweet Celestia I don’t have a body oh stars oh stars oh staaaars fix it!

With a flash of light that looked oddly like sunlight, Twilight’s body popped back into existence next to the much more collected Beta Centauri, about a foot in the air, and she crashed to the ground with a rattling clatter of metal.

“Are you okay?” Beta asked, concerned, as Twilight stumbled to her hooves and dropped into a defensive crouch, eyes darting around warily. They seemed to be in some kind of half-hemispherical alcove; the arched entrance was obstructed by a diaphanous curtain of cloth that had a deceptive, beautiful depth to it – her eyes widened as she realized the distant dots in it were stars. The walls were made of glossy black stone that glittered with flecks of gold and were veined with thin bands of clear quartz, running in every direction like a cobweb. Beta frowned at her lack of response. “Alpha? Is everything alright?”

“I’m not Alpha,” Twilight breathed. Her mind was still trying to process her surroundings, trying to figure out where in Tartarus they even were, but it had enough computational power to spare to let her straighten and loom angrily over Beta. “Get it? I. Am. Not. Her! I’ve never seen you before in my life! I’m not your sister! I don’t know what kind of spell you used, but it was wrong! I am Twilight Sparkle of Equestria! Not Alpha Centauri of – of – of wherever!”

“Domhan?” Beta suggested.

“I don’t care!” she snapped. She looked around again, trying to calm herself down. “Where am I? Where did you take me?”

“Er…the Stellar Court,” she answered. “To meet with Queen Caelum? I thought she’d want to know I found – “

“Don’t even say it,” Twilight hissed. She fixed Beta with her stare again. “Take me home.”

“But we have to – “

“I. Don’t. Care.” For the briefest instant, Beta saw Alpha’s pupils narrow to slits; they returned to normal in less than a second, but that brief lapse chilled her to the core. “Take me home right now. I need to make breakfast for Spike – and Celestia! And the Elements! I don’t need to make breakfast for the Elements, but they can’t work without me! Equestria is defenseless!” Anxiously, Twilight almost started pacing, but hesitated; there wasn’t nearly enough space in the alcove for her to pace properly, not with Beta in it. Come to think of it, it was a bit cramped, wasn’t it? A pang of claustrophobia caused her to ruffle her wings uncomfortably, and she froze.

She rustled her wings again, listening to the rasp and rattle of metal on metal as golden feathers brushed against each other.

“What did you do to me?” she demanded. Her voice was deadly quiet.

“Nothing!” Beta protested. “I just shifted us here by making us stardust again – I had no control over what you were going to look like when we got here.”

“T-take me home,” Twilight pleaded. She suddenly was aware of how much taller she was; Beta was actually about two inches shorter than her. Unconsciously, she cringed, trying to make herself shorter. The feeling of claustrophobia intensified. “Take me back to Ponyville!”

“We have to meet with Queen – “

Buck this! she thought. Panic seizing her as she tried and failed to fight down a rising tide of claustrophobia, Twilight shoved past Beta, barely even noticing when their coats stuck to each other and the force of her flight ripped a patch of kelpie fur off the star. Beta’s surprised yelp of pain followed her as she dove through the curtain and skidded into a space larger than anything she’d ever seen before.

The illusion of staring into the night sky was only broken when she shifted her head and the columns resolved themselves, massive pillars five times as thick around as a pony was long and made entirely out of what looked like starfield. They extended upwards infinitely, so near as she could tell, and infinitely into the distance as well, vanishing eventually into a bluish-purple haze above streaked through with faint tints of other colors that she remembered was stardust. Breaking the illusion still further were the other beings that stared at her with surprised eyes, wolves and ponies and llamas and griffons and pegasi and alicorns – as mixed a crowd as any in Manehattan, all little more than glowing outlines surrounding brilliantly burning pinpricks of light. A strange feeling of calm replaced her panic, and for a moment she felt at peace.

Then, of course, the whispers started.

“It’s her!”

“I can’t believe Beta found her…”

“Is it – “

“Alpha Centauri!” somepony whispered. The dam burst open; they came closer, an assembly of awed stars. One in particular shoved its – her? – way to the front, a wolf as tall as Princess Luna with a glowing red pinprick at her heart. She came to a halt in front of her and looked up.

“Alpha?” she asked hopefully. “Is it really you?”

“I-I’m sorry!” Twilight stammered. “I-I-I don’t know who you’re speaking about!”

“Can you remember me?”

Wolfie. “I’m sorry!” she repeated, jerking forwards and pushing past the wolf. Wolfie. Whoever she was. The crowd closed in around her, everyone asking the same questions – “Can you remember me?” Ceti. “Are you Alpha?” Yes. “What’s my name?” Sirius.

She was through. Unsteady, she turned back to the wide-eyed crowd, every one of them with his or her eyes fixed on her. She cleared her throat, her mouth working silently as she tried to figure out what to say. “I-I’m not Alpha Centauri!” she managed eventually. “I’m sorry! I’m not – “

“Yes, she is,” Beta interrupted, stepping out of the alcove. The eyes of the crowd turned to her; she was smiling elatedly. “She is! I did a deep-memory search and everything! One hundred percent match! It’s Alpha!”

“I am not her!” she screeched. In a move that shocked everyone, not least of all herself, she beat her wings hard enough to deafen the crowd with a roar of thunder. She didn’t stop flapping until the assembly was out of sight, lost in the haze far below her, and she started gliding as quickly as she could manage into the forest of pillars. A sense of well-being warred with her desire to flee, blunting her fear, but she kept going, weaving between columns and flapping to keep herself aloft until it felt like her gold feathers had turned to lead, and a platform of stardust coalesced into black stone on a pillar in front of her. Her hooves barely brushed the edge before she simply collapsed against the cool stone and wept.

Time passed. There was no sun to tell her how much time had passed; no shadows moved. She stopped crying eventually and tried not to think about how unlikely it was at this point that she would ever see Ponyville or her friends again – hay, she didn’t even know where she was when she’d arrived, and now she was lost in what appeared to be a room of infinite height and area.

“…Alpha!”

Angrily, she peeled herself off the ground and jumped off the platform, powering away from the sound of Beta’s voice, regardless of how much more lost she would get. Pillars raced past again as she wove and bobbed through them, demonstrating speed that even Rainbow Dash would be hard-pressed to match, until eventually the pillars ended and she was flying through what seemed to be just a vast empty space choked with stardust to the point that she couldn’t see two feet in front of her. Beta’s voice had long since faded out of her hearing, and she banked into a circling pattern to see if she was still pursuing. After another few minutes, she still couldn’t hear anything – but she’d forgotten which way she’d come from. Frustrated, she picked a direction at random and starting flying.

The tower – there wasn’t a better name for it; a truly massive pillar with a smooth pale lavender surface – faded out of the fog like the stardust was actually congealing to form it as she watched. She flared her wings to avoid hitting it, and began to slowly bank around the outside of it, following its gently curving wall until an opening with a landing ledge presented itself. She took it, wincing at how her wings rattled and the sound echoed down the wide tunnel that lay before her – a much wider tunnel than it had looked from the air. Faced with no reason not to go in and an unidentifiable urge to proceed, she took a hesitant step inside, and found herself at the dead end of a black stone castle hallway, lit by staggered torches at head height along the walls. Now even more uncertain, Twilight started walking down the hallway.

The other end of the hall was ten minutes away by hoof. It opened into a throne room – a gold-trimmed blue carpet led from the door to a plain marble throne on a stepped dais in front of a large round window looking out into the depths of space. The space was lit by a sourceless soft-white luminance that shone off the smooth walls, which seemed to be made of the same stuff as the tower’s exterior – if she was even still in the tower.

Seated on the throne was an alicorn with a grey-blue coat and a mane like the heart of the galaxy. She wore no regalia; she was only about the size of Celestia. Her eyes were closed and her head pointing at the ground slightly to the left of the rug. As soon as Twilight took a step into the room, though, all doubt that this being was a ruler left her mind like it had never been there, as the alicorn opened her solid white eyes and smiled at her. When she spoke, her voice was a multitude, harmonizing with itself in impossible ways and reverberating through Twilight’s body.

“Welcome home, Alpha Centauri,” the alicorn said, her smile widening. “It is good to have one of my daughters back where she belongs.”

“I am not her!” Twilight snapped angrily. The alicorn rose from her throne and started trotting towards her, but she wouldn’t be dissuaded by some star. “I am not Alpha Centauri! Why is everyone calling me that? I’ve never heard of her, or this place, or Beta Centauri, or any of this before tonight! All I want – “ her voice cracked slightly “ – all I want is to go home.”

“You are her,” the alicorn chuckled, coming to a stop in front of Twilight and matching her furious gaze with suddenly normal eyes. “Of all my children, of all my subjects, out of all my stars, I could recognize you in an instant.”

“How? Magical signature?” she suggested acidly. “A ‘deep-memory scan’?”

The alicorn laughed. “No, Twilight Sparkle, through something much more certain than the clumsy methods your sister uses,” she answered wryly. “Out of all my stars, you are the only one who never bows.”

Author's Note

Now the adventure really begins, particularly for Rainbow Dash. Don't forget to thumbs-up if you liked it and haven't yet!

07/10/14 - Edited for spacing betwixt paragraphs as later chapters have.

Chapter 4: In the Starmaker's Court

Despite the presence of her wings, Twilight still shuddered and pulled away from the edge of the floor, a wave of nausea following the sense of vertigo that came from staring down an infinite wall into the depths of space. She and the alicorn were walking sedately down a long gallery, its left wall indented with alcoves containing perfect spheres of varicolored light, its right wall more a series of archways overlooking the stars of the night sky and an endless drop into the abyss. Twilight was balanced on the edge of wanting to jump out and try – ridiculously – to swim towards the stars and find a place for herself, and wanting to hug the opposite wall and stay well away from the impossible scene. The alicorn’s tower was filled with impossibilities – and she still wasn’t sure how they’d gotten to the gallery from the throne room. There hadn’t been a direct spatial connection, so far as she could tell.

“It is good to see you again,” the alicorn murmured, smiling as Twilight leaned over the edge of the floor again, curiosity demanding she get another look and…maybe…take a…step off…nope. “Even if you deny who you are.”

“I’m not denying who I am!” Twilight protested irritably, turning her attention back to the alicorn. “I am Twilight Sparkle, Bearer of the Element of Magic, and I need to get back home to Equestria!”

“Celestia can manage by herself for a while, I think,” she said. “She did as much with less than you by her side for a millennium.” She paused; tilted her head. “Speaking of, how is Luna? She is not one of mine, but I enjoyed the meeting we had, and I hope she has been getting along well.”

“She’s…fine, I think,” Twilight answered cautiously. “She’s still getting used to being back from the Moon. I helped her out on Nightmare Night this year, and we’ve been staying in contact with letters since then.”

“She is well?”

“About as well as you’d expect after a thousand years alone.”

The alicorn nodded. “Good, good…” Her voice trailed off as she stared off into space. Twilight had the impression that despite her apparent power and importance, she didn’t really have too much of an idea of what to say. “Your trip here was uneventful?”

“Well, aside from starting out as a unicorn and arriving as some kind of giant, sticky pegasus, yes,” she replied, extending a wing for emphasis. She didn’t take into account the balance shift that it caused and stumbled to the right, nearly toppling over the edge until she flapped wildly to right herself. The alicorn chuckled.

“You will get used to them again. You always did learn quickly,” she said. More uncertainly, “I am sorry if this is a delicate topic, but…how much do you remember, Alpha?”

“I’m not Alpha Centauri!”

“Twilight, then. How much can you remember?” She stopped in her tracks, blocked Twilight’s path with a foreleg, and locked eyes with her. “How much did Beta restore with her test?”

“Nothing!” she lied, a brief flicker of memory crossing her mind’s eye; a reddish winged-kelpie being and her on a hill, laughing and watching a trio of kelpie fillies try to lure a squirrel into the lake they were swimming in.

“You and I both know that isn’t true, Twilight,” the alicorn sighed. Her face fell. “Though, sadly, there remains the possibility that it is true, in a sense. I doubt much of note was restored. Can…can you remember my name?”

Queen – “Nope! No, I can’t,” she answered hurriedly. The alicorn nodded sadly.

“Perhaps it was too much to hope for. It has been nearly two thousand years, after all.” She stared out into space again. “How is Celestia? She has not been in touch with me since Luna was banished. Is she well?”

“She’s okay. More than okay, now that Luna’s back,” Twilight said. Almost unconsciously, she started leaning over the side of the gallery to get another peek at infinity. “When I was a filly in the Palace, she almost never smiled except when we were goofing off after a lesson. Now, almost every time I see her, she’s smiling.”

“It is good to have someone you care about return after a long absence,” the alicorn murmured sadly. Her next words were more neutral. “You seem to be quite interested in the side of my palace, Alph – Twilight.”

“I’ve never seen anything nearly so enormous!” she exclaimed, looking back at her host. “And the architecture! I’ve only ever seen pictures of 14th-century Maredinan artwork! The arabesques around the arches are beautiful, and the ceiling tiles – it’s amazing!”

“It is the view that most intrigues you, though.” The alicorn smiled. “I can tell. My stars always did enjoy the sight of their own patterns, even if participating in them was more fun.” Her smile turned mischievous. “Would you like to join them?”

“Join them?” Twilight repeated, confused. “Join who? The stars out there?” She swept a foreleg towards the slowly drifting currents of stars in the distance.

“Of course!” she laughed. “Who else?”

“But – they’re so far away!” Twilight pointed out. “They’re light-years away, at least, megaparsecs and megaparsecs away! Even if we left now, just to reach the closest one, it’d take us…hold on…” She paused to do a few quick calculations in her head, then shook it and gave up. “An absurdly long time at normal pegasus flight speeds.”

“There are two major flaws in your thinking,” the alicorn told her. “One – you assume that with me around, distance would be material, and two – you are thinking on the wrong scale.”

“What?”

By way of answer, the alicorn shoved Twilight into the abyss.

It was a calm day above the Everfree, thankfully. It made the flight out to the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters much easier than it would have been if there’d been a wild storm turning the sky into an ash-grey maze of wind gusts, rain squalls, and lightning bolts – which, in Dash’s opinion, would still have been better than trying to slog through the fern-y morass that was the Everfree on the surface. Now, though, it felt almost like she was gliding above the Whitetail Woods, or somewhere similarly tamed.

She touched down lightly on a puffy wisp of cumulus above the semi-ruined fortress. In the daylight, it didn’t look nearly as threatening or ominous as it had back when they’d first met and taken on Nightmare Moon; if anything, it just looked kind of sad – a few hole-filled walls held together more by vines than mortar, a keep decorated with broken glass that had been stained in a multitude of colors once but now had been re-stained by time into brown, an overgrown network of courtyards and subsidiary structures; its glory was long passed. Not helping matters was that Discord had turned it into his own private retreat.

Am I really going to go in there? she asked herself. It looks creepy, and past that it’s probably filled with all sorts of weird monsters and stuff that he’s been working on…plus, it’s kind of filthy…

She shuddered. Get out of my head, you creepy unicorn!

For an instant, she thought she caught Cloud Ferry grinning at her, out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned to get a better look she wasn’t there. For some reason, she was surprised.

She’s not real anymore. Just a memory, she comforted herself. Just a weird memory. She gritted her teeth. If she ever got her hooves on that space-pony, the freak would deeply regret messing with her head like that.

I’m not crazy, she told herself, jumping off the cloud and letting the breeze wash over her pinions as she drifted towards the ground. It was a slow descent, and she reveled in it, forgetting for a moment the brown saddle bag filled with food that she wore. The moment she knew how to get to this ‘Queen Caelum’ fellow, she was off, and damn the consequences! Twilight was in trouble, and she was going to save her.

Instead of an impressive, high-velocity entrance, she landed softly on the grassy courtyard in front of the main doors – a pair of ancient oak slabs edged in iron and carved with long since faded inscriptions. They were almost five times her height, up close; she hesitated slightly before putting a hoof to one to push it open. Do I really have to go into this…place?

Get out!, she thought savagely, throwing the whole of her body weight into making the door move. It swung open surprisingly easily, gliding inwards with barely a squeak and dumping her onto a freezing, slick floor quickly enough that she started sliding forward too. Scrambling to get her legs back beneath her, she realized the floor was actually made of ice. Looking around, it seemed the entire entrance hall was coated in a thick layer of the stuff, from the double rows of columns to either side, to the quartet of ice skates hanging on a hook next to the door. There didn’t seem to be any discernible purpose for it, so she assumed it was just something Discord did.

She made her way – carefully – down the center of the hall, ignoring the darkened archways on the walls to the left and right and aiming instead for the largest one, directly across from the front doors. Sunlight was streaming across the floor on the other side, in colors sunlight didn’t normally come in, but when she passed through and saw what was causing it, it wasn’t chaos magic – it was just an intact stained glass window, in the style of the windows in Canterlot Palace. It looked new, as did the red carpet that ran from the window’s wall down the length of the long hallway.

What is that a picture of? she wondered, looking up at the window. It looked sort of like it depicted the defeat of Discord, but only on the bottom part. At the top of the window it showed what looked like five ponies seated around a table, smiling, with Discord coiled around them – smiling as well. I don’t think this happened when he got out…

“Here’s to old friendships, Rainbow Dash,” Discord declared from above Dash. Startled, she glanced up and spotted the draconequus raising a martini glass in a toast towards the window, sitting in a chair on the vaulted ceiling. Whatever was in the glass proceeded to splash down onto her, soaking her mane completely and stinging in her eyes.

“Hey!” she yelped, frantically rubbing the stuff off her face. “What the buck was that for?”

“It was a toast!” he answered matter-of-factly, dropping down next to her and piling up like toothpaste squeezed out of a tube before arching backwards and vanishing into the floor. He popped out of the ground on her other side and offered her a towel. “Isn’t that how those things are supposed to go? You fill up a bunch of wine glasses with fluids, tie them off, and hurl them at each other so they pop open and soak everypony?”

“No, you cretin!” she dried herself off on the towel and glared daggers at him. “You’re supposed to touch your glass to somepony else’s and then drink.”

“And I suppose you’re going to tell me that you’re not supposed to drink out of water balloons, too?” he scoffed. “And I approve of the expansion in your vocabulary – you’ve done some preemptive learning, haven’t you?”

“What – no!” She sighed. “Look, can we just get this over with? Twilight’s in – “

“Yes, yes, yes, I get it,” he cut her off. He posed dramatically with a duplicate of Dash’s head held in one claw; his voice came out of the prop when he spoke again. “Twilight Sparkle is in terrible danger! Help me, Mister Discord, you’re my only hope to save her because I’m a tiny thick blue pegasus who doesn’t know magic and is too incredibly lazy to fly to Canterlot, before coming to you again, to warn the Princess that her beloved student is in a bind.” He gave her a withering look, matched by the head. “Honestly, Rainbow Dash, did it even occur to you to go pay them a visit in the interim? No, of course it didn’t, you’re the Element of Loyalty.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You have an incredibly single-tracked mind. Lulu was like you too when she wore the necklace.” He snorted and popped the head into his mouth. She tried not to cringe. “Well, you’re here, and I’d like to finish this up before Fluttershy comes by for her ice skating lessons. Follow me.”

“What are we going to – “ Discord vanished in a puff of smoke. “Great,” she grumbled.

Discord’s head popped out from an archway on the wall to the left of the window. “Well?”

She groaned irritably and galloped to catch up. She had the oddest feeling this was going to be a frustrating experience. When she reached the arch, she found herself staring down a second long hallway, lined with dozens upon dozens of potted plants that she’d never seen before in her life – flowers with blooms that looked like radishes, heads of neon orange lettuce, ferns made entirely out of butterflies; as she started down the hall, a few bushes with brown-and-white spotted leaves actually mooed at her.

“Do you like it?” Discord asked, his head popping out from behind the bushes. “A little bit of a side project I’ve been working on in my spare time. I doubt I’ll be able to outdo Poison Joke, but it gives me something to pass the time between menial tasks of international diplomacy and heroics.”

“What are they?” Rainbow Dash asked, pausing to examine a bulbous flower vine. She jumped back when the buds all along its length split open and started barking at her, and the whole plant started writhing in her direction.

“No! Heel, girls,” Discord ordered, calling an array of rolled-up newspapers into existence and whacking every bud simultaneously with them. The plant retreated, whining softly. “Not today.”

“So what are they?” she repeated, picking up her pace a bit.

“Oh, just a few botany experiments of mine. I always was a fan of Mendelian crossbreeding – but why stop with mere pea plants?” he chuckled. “Cows and bushes are an excellent match, in my opinion. Science has been lacking in vision since my absence, it seems.”

“Wait, you were doing this before you were frozen?” She reached the far archway and stepped into a winding stairwell. Discord appeared before her and started slithering up the central post. “Did you make those Zap Apples AJ grows? And the Poison Joke?”

“Both of those are Everfree Originals, I am afraid.” His head pushed through the bottom of the stairs above her and matched pace with her as she started to ascend. “It’s a bit of a game between the Forest and I, I suppose – it makes something, I try to make something better, inevitably fail, and then the Forest learns from what I did right and succeeds at improving upon it.”

“The Forest can think?” One more reason not to venture into the Everfree, she supposed.

“Perhaps. I created the cockatrice but had neither claw nor paw in the making of the manticore, so it can copy fairly well, at least.” He smiled and pulled his head back through the stairs. “Almost there, Rainbow Dash. I hope you came with your listening ears on – though I might have a spare pair lying around if you didn’t.”

At the top of the stairs was a round room, its center lower than the rim by two steps. One wall was entirely made of windows and offered a stunning view of the Everfree’s canopy, and the roof appeared to be congealed whipped cream. A hammock was suspended opposite the window, where Discord lazed comfortably with a pair of shades and a reflector. In the middle of the room, in the lowered area, there was some sort of weird pentacle design – an eight-rayed star encompassed by a circle, both made of a pale blue powder that glittered slightly in the sunlight and shone with violet iridescence that had an odd depth to it whenever the rays hit it at the right angle.

“I’m here,” she said, wriggling out of the saddlebag’s strap and letting it drop to the floor. “What do we have to do?”

“I suppose I might as well start with seeing how much you know, exactly. I can’t believe it will take long,” he began. He snapped his tail and the hammock was gone, replaced with a floating chalkboard; Discord wore a suit suited for a university lecturer and held a long wooden pointer, and stood next to the board. “Have you ever cast a spell, Rainbow Dash?”

She frowned at him. “Do I look like a unicorn to you?”

No, but you’ve got one living inside of –

Go away!

“What does that have to do with – ah, right. Times have changed,” he realized. “Nothing, then? Any spells? Cantrips? Cheap illusions? Mere tricks of legerdemaine?”

“No.”

“Hm. Well, this complicates matters.” A lesson plan appeared next to his head and burst into flames as he scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Not even any runic magic?”

“Do I look like a – “ she hesitated slightly before repeating herself. “An egghead to you? If that’s the only way to save Twilight, stop wasting my time and tell me how I can actually get to her!”

“Being a unicorn has very little to do with magic,” he eventually decided. “I do magic all the time, and have you ever seen any pointy bits on my head glowing when I do it?”

“No.”

“And, fortunately for you, what I had in mind requires very little in the way of skill, too,” he continued. With a pop, he teleported next to the circle in the center of the room. “The gist of it is that there are many forms of magic, and the one I’m about to teach you is as separate from unicorn magic as rocks are from ice cream. This lovely ring beside me here is what is commonly known as a ‘ritual circle’ amongst more advanced wizards – are you familiar with what a "circle" is, Rainbow Dash?”

“Can we hurry?”

“Fine, fine.” He sighed. “Youngsters are so unappreciative of the knowledge of their elders…” Dash rose in an impatient hover, and he continued. “Blah, blah, blah, anypony can make one if they have enough powdered phoenix beak on hoof. It lets you perform an astral projection, which is how you get to Caelum’s court. I literally cannot make it any more cursory than that, unless you want me to use baby talk while doing it.”

“So, what, I step into it and flap my wings?” she asked skeptically. The draconequus rolled his eyes.

“It’s a ritual. You meditate. You can do that on your own, I trust?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” With another pop, he was back in his hammock, looking as apathetic as ever. “Ta-ta!”

Dash looked at the circle uneasily. “So…how much food should I bring?”

“None,” he answered dismissively. “Astral projections necessitate traveling light – no food, no clothes, no jewelry, no body…”

“No body?”

“It will remain safely within the circle until your return, assuming you don’t do anything stupid.” He lifted his glasses and gave her a grave look. “Which brings me to my next major point: do not do anything stupid.”

“Do you really think a pony as awesome as me would have that problem?” She smirked.

“Honestly, yes. Emphatically so,” Discord sighed. “And so, remember this one simple rule, please – this one, simple, incredibly important rule: do not, under any circumstances, break your astral tether back to your body. Do that, and you will never find your way back again, you'll be effectively dead, and Fluttershy would likely use my pelt as a warm rug.”

She swallowed. “Uh…how do you break it?”

“Maintaining it is a mental task that requires concentration for long periods of time. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t feel nervous about it breaking, but, well…” He shrugged and finished simply, “Try not to break it please.”

“Sure,” she said, trying to feel as cocky as she sounded. Now that there was a genuine risk to her life involved, some of her bravado was fading – none of her resolve, but the outward awesomeness she projected was wilting slightly. She stepped into the circle, fought back her doubts, and did her best to do what she hadn’t done really since her black belt in the Still Way.

She meditated.

Am I still falling? she asked herself after nearly a minute had passed. Of course I’m still falling, it was an infinite drop! You don’t just reach the bottom of an infinite drop!

And yet, when she opened her eyes fully again, she discovered that the starry backdrop didn’t appear to be moving. She couldn’t feel any physiological warning bells sounding and telling her that she plummeting through infinity endlessly. Even the gallery she’d been pushed out of hadn’t moved. For all intents and purposes, she was standing stationary in mid-air. To her further surprise, what she could see of herself had faded to a faint violet outline – when she examined herself more closely, she realized the most visible part of her was now a cheerfully glowing pinprick of light where her heart should have been.

“What’s happening?” she managed to ask through a rising tide of panic. It was just now hitting her, with an endless drop staring her in the face and what looked – absurdly – almost like a star sitting happily in her chest, how incredibly out of her depth she was. This wasn’t a silly haunted forest she was facing with friends. This wasn’t some minor errand Celestia had sent her off on. This – she didn’t even know what this was! There weren’t books on being kidnapped by aliens because you were supposedly a star! There weren’t study guides for how to make it through a day spent in a non-Euclidean palace with the Queen – I don’t know her! - with a strange alicorn!

“Calm yourself, Alpha,” the alicorn chuckled, stepping off the edge of the gallery to join her. Where her body crossed the threshold, it vanished; Twilight gasped in surprise. “You are in no danger. Sometimes, the best way to learn something new is to throw yourself into it without reservations – or, to have someone push you into it.”

“What do I do?” she demanded. She tried to move, but only succeeded in flailing her slightly more visible legs around uselessly. “What do I do what do I do what do I do?”

“Perhaps forgetting what you think will work would be a good start?” she suggested.

Twilight swallowed and nodded, noting that her head and neck became more visible when she thought about them. She dismissed the realization that she could see her throat become more solid as not something she wanted to consider for the moment, and focused on making the rest of her body visible again. It came into view quickly, but disconcertingly it felt like she was just trying to sculpt water – it wasn’t her body, and she was looking at it from the outside, and whenever she stopped focusing on one part, it would just dissolve back into nothingness. Frustrated, she focused every ounce of mental strength she had onto the task, and succeeded in remaking a body for herself. It was about half the size of the original, sure, but it would work!

And then she was falling again.

She screamed and closed her eyes as she felt the sensation of the floor dropping out from beneath her, the surprise jolting her body back into uncreation. The lack of eyes let her see again, and once more she was stationary.

“Everything you thought you knew,” the alicorn reiterated, amused. “And perhaps you should do it soon, Alpha. You’ll embarrass yourself…”

“So?” Twilight demanded. “I just want to go home! How do I move again?”

Silence answered her. She groaned in frustration.

“Great,” she muttered. “Now how will I find the way out?”

Disturbingly, the gallery had vanished. She found herself floating in the midst of emptiness, the night sky in every direction. Angrily, she stared off into the dark, trying to figure out how she could move in some other direction than down forever. The ghostly outlines of her body flickered purple around her, fading as her mind was consumed with its dual tasks of trying to discover how to move with no body and trying not to remember how to, despite the loose memories from Beta’s intrusion attempting to force themselves into her awareness.

I’m not going to use you, she thought, addressing the memories and feeling silly almost immediately. You’re not mine, no matter what these ponies say, and I’m going to figure out whose you are after I get back to Equestria, and then I’ll return you.

...dance…

She blinked. What – nope! Nope, not listening.

Curiously, she watched the stars in the distance slowly drift, the constellations twisting and turning as she watched – which was ridiculous, really, stars took eons to move enough for optical astronomers to observe, it was probably just a trick of the light. She maintained that reasoning right up to the point a star broke off from Orion and sedately floated in her direction. Watching it get closer, she suddenly realized that it wasn’t just it; all the stars seemed closer. Every one of them, she could see moving in relation to the black background.

That doesn’t make any sense! her rational mind protested. Stars are light-years away! They can’t – I can’t watch them – what in Tartarus is going on?

“Hello!”

Startled, Twilight looked to the star that had wandered close. Had it just spoken to her?

“Hi!” it repeated. “I haven’t seen you around this volume before. What are you?”

“I’m…Twilight Sparkle,” she answered warily. At least it hadn’t called her Alpha yet.

“That’s an interesting name for a star,” it said. Its voice was feminine. “I am Meissa, from the Constellation of Orion.”

“I thought Meissa was a double star system?” Twilight frowned, thinking back to the astronomy manuals and star catalogues she’d read in anticipation of Rainbow Dash’s party.

“Properly, I’m Meissa C,” she amended reluctantly. “But I have everyone else call me Meissa, since I’m the only one of us who gets out much. The others all think they’re too ‘important’ to break pattern, and I’m ‘just’ an F-type, so they have me go out for menial stuff like finding new partners. Want to come over?”

“Um…”

“I mean, if you’re already in a pattern, sorry to interfere,” she added quickly. “But you looked a bit lonely out here. Don’t you even have a planet to play with?” Twilight was about to answer, but Meissa continued. “You’re awfully still, aren’t you? I’ve never met a star who didn’t move, even lonely stars. I mean, we’ve all got to keep moving together to keep the Wheel intact. Oh, Caelum! Is that it? Are you one of those weird rogue stars that like to just sit out there in the black?”

“No,” Twilight answered, before Meissa could talk over her. “I…I’m stuck.”

“What?”

“I can’t move,” she admitted. “I’m still kind of new at this.”

“Oh.” Meissa sounded satisfied for an instant. Then, “Oh! New star! New star! Come on, I’ll help you along – you’re going to love this!”

“I’m fine right where – “ Twilight tried to say, but she felt the strange sensation of space around her folding, almost like it did when she was about to teleport, and she began to move rapidly through space behind the other star.

No you aren’t, a voice in the back of her head chuckled. You’re not fine right there.

Who are you and what are you doing in my head?

I think you might be able to guess, the voice said. And if you’d just let yourself remember, you could probably move by yourself. It’ll be useful in a bit.

Who are –

New stuff, the voice cut her off. New stuff, new things to learn that nopony knew before. Yes or no?

Grr. Fine. She felt a click, for lack of a better word – something she’d known once, and forgotten, that had been sitting stubbornly at the tip of her tongue for years, finally slotting back into place. It was almost like unicorn magic, she decided, as she carefully pried herself free of Meissa’s grip and matched velocities with the other star. It was like bending space for a teleportation, but without using magic to do it – a completely alien concept that seemed almost perfectly natural after a moment.

“You’re a quick learner!” Meissa commented happily. “Good job! I hope the others let you in.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we’re a major constellation!” she explained proudly. “We take on new stars sometimes, but only the really good ones are able to stick around. Rigel says it’s so we maintain a certain standard of quality, but I think it’s just because most new stars are G’s and M’s and O-stars can get pretty elitist.” She snorted. “Fat old gasballs. Don’t tell them I said that!”

They reached the constellation surprisingly quickly, and were in the midst of it even faster. Twilight noted with curiosity how none of the stars seemed to be in their proper places; they were scattered almost at random, minor stars flowing rapidly in patterns and swinging around each other wildly while what she thought were the primary stars moved in a much slower, looser, almost waltz-like dance. She startled as the space around her was filled with excited chatter from the stars, even a few of the brilliant blue giants swinging closer in to get a better look at her, the newcomer.

“Look what Meissa found!” one chuckled.

“It’s adorable!” another laughed.

“Yellow star! Meissa found a yellow star!”

“Look how small it is!”

“Have you brought us a star with skill this time, Meissa?” an immense star asked, swinging in close. Twilight felt herself start to drift slightly in its direction, pulled by impressive gravity; backpedaling with her own gravitational field (she assumed that was what she was manipulating now) failed to achieve anything. It only got worse as more stars started to swing in close, clustering around the giant curiously. “Or is this just another one of your typical finds?”

“She’s a fast learner!” Meissa answered. “She’s new, but I think she – “

“She’s new?” the giant rumbled, amused. “She’s not new, not by a long shot. If anything, she’s older than I.”

“She said she was new,” Meissa grumbled. “She couldn’t move when I found her, at least.”

“Really,” the giant snorted skeptically. “Newcomer, is this – “

His voice cut off abruptly as Twilight lost control and slipped too far into his gravity well. With a scream trailing behind her, she arced down towards the brilliant surface of the blue-white star, gravity accelerating her into a decaying orbit faster than she could slow herself. She was going to die! I’m going to dieeeeee!!!

Not like that, the voice scolded. Space around Twilight shifted, altering her orbit into a survivable – though still terrifyingly fast – ellipse. She swung around the star, flying past perihelion and shooting straight at a smaller red dwarf star that had had the misfortune to be in the right place at the wrong time. Frantically, she diverted space again, looping widely around the red dwarf and doing a figure-eight around a double star and using their gravity to slingshot herself towards a tight cluster of violet-white dwarfs. They screamed along with her, though for a completely different reason; they sounded terrified. After a blur of flickering black and white and sharp tugs on every side of her, Twilight traced out a gentle curve away from them, laughing with exhilaration.

“Woo!” Meissa shouted. “That was amazing!”

“What in the heavens were you thinking?” the giant exclaimed, though he sounded as awed as he did angry. “What were – you – Caelum above, young star, did you just bend space itself?”

“I see no issue in allowing her to join us,” another blue star said.

“Nor I,” a third agreed.

“Unfortunately, I do object.”

The alicorn’s voice cut through space like a knife, despite its kind – almost apologetic – tone. Twilight slowed herself to a halt as she realized the infinite wall had reappeared, and the alicorn herself stood visible on the edge of the gallery floor. She was smiling slightly.

“Come, Twilight,” she said. “There are yet still matters to discuss.”

The stars fell silent. After a few seconds, Meissa exclaimed in awe, “You know the Queen?”

Hesitantly, Twilight pushed herself over the threshold again and ignored the star, trying hard not to wish she’d had longer – that had barely been a taste of being in a constellation again, and she hadn’t even been doing it properly! There were rules to follow, and mathematical laws governing positioning, and vectors and angles and ellipses to calculate on the fly, and –

Her body appeared around her again like it was simply being revealed by the light inside the gallery, and the odd sense of calm she’d felt before hit her again. She noticed with some consternation that it wasn’t her normal unicorn form that came back, but the body Beta had saddled her with; whatever the star had done didn’t seem to have been affected by her spell of incorporeality, however brief. Even so, she allowed herself to shake her feathers back into alignment, since they seemed to have been knocked wild somehow.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” the alicorn asked slyly.

“I…” Twilight sighed. “Yes, Caelum, that was fun. Probably more fun than I’ve had since I got to Ponyville outside of one of Pinkie’s parties. But that doesn’t mean I’m Alpha Centauri!”

“You remembered my name,” Caelum said softly. The harmonies in her voice settled together, and for the first time it sounded like she was speaking normally. Her voice was melodious yet commanding – even without the almost choral accompaniment. She grinned. “You remembered my name.”

“I – no! That’s Beta’s fault,” she protested. “I don’t know what memories she implanted in my head – “

“I find it unlikely one like yourself would remain ignorant on the topic of mental magic when she spent her whole life as a mage,” Caelum interrupted pointedly. “Can you recall the foremost rule of memory magic?”

“…it is impossible to make somepony remember something they haven’t already committed to memory with a spell,” Twilight muttered. “But that doesn’t change anything! A carefully crafted illusion, combined with a suppressive spell to make me forget they aren’t real, followed by an erasure spell and then a recall spell – “

“You do not believe this explanation yourself,” the alicorn observed. Frustrated, Twilight nodded. “Why, then, do you continue to deny the truth?”

“Because it doesn’t make any sense!” she shouted. More calmly, “It makes no sense! I’m Twilight Sparkle, Element of Magic and student of Princess Celestia, not Alpha Centauri, Queen of wherever – Domhan, or something like that! I was born in Canterlot! My parents have foal pictures of me! My dad took a picture of me the day I was born! There’s school records, and library fine receipts, and official portraits, and newspaper articles; it’s not like I just dropped out of the sky into Equestria one day!”

“I would guess that Inkwell Hooves had foal pictures as well,” Caelum pointed out. “Perhaps even Granny Willow. Portraits were certainly painted of Captain Honed Edge after the second battle of Canterlot.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Twilight demanded crossly.

“You are Twilight Sparkle, of Canterlot” Caelum explained. “And you are Inkwell Hooves, of Cloudsdale. And you are Granny Willow, of Everdell. And you are Honed Edge, of Equinox. And you are a dozen other ponies besides, for when a star dies, its soul is reincarnated as a mortal and lives a succession of new lives, accumulating experiences and magic until it is ready to take its place in my heavens once more. You are as much Alpha Centauri as you are Twilight Sparkle – and perhaps even more so.” She smiled. “I have noticed that, as a star gets closer and closer to returning, she begins to rediscover more and more of herself again.”

Twilight was quiet. “So what you're saying is that...I…I’ve been reincarnated.”

“Yes.”

“That’s ridiculous.” She glanced back into the space beyond the gallery. “I was one of those stars?”

“More accurately, you were one of the three stars of Centaurus,” Caelum corrected.

“Right. Centaurus is a triple star system,” Twilight murmured to herself. A fragment of memory flitted through her mind. “Where’s the third star? Proxima?”

“We do not speak of Proxima Centauri much,” Caelum answered quietly.

Twilight felt like she knew what the alicorn meant by that, somehow. Wordlessly, she nodded and continued watching the stars for a few minutes afterwards, processing what she’d learned. When she spoke again, it was to ask, “What about everypony back home? If I…will I get to see them anymore?”

“Beta managed to find time in a schedule designed for three but maintained by one to visit Equestria once a year, every year, for two millennia,” Caelum replied gently. “With both of you ruling Domhan, I imagine you will find plenty of break time. Beyond that, your friends are already on the cusp of starhood themselves; another lifetime, maybe two, they will have accrued enough power to be promoted and they will be able to join you.” She glanced out into space as well. “I have always thought a constellation was needed in the volume around Centaurus. Celestia is a stubborn loner, but perhaps if they were stars she already knew well…”

Twilight nodded. “I should probably apologize to Beta for the verbal abuse,” she resolved. “But she’s not entirely blameless just because she was maybe right! She kidnapped me from Equestria!”

“She was perhaps a bit premature,” Caelum conceded. “Though, after two thousand years of reigning alone, it is perhaps to be expected that she won’t take no for an answer.”

“Where is she?”

“Behind the pillar,” she answered with a smile. With a start, Twilight realized they’d moved – the gallery had become the endless maze of columns she’d first arrived in. It was uniform in all directions, almost claustrophobic after the immensity of space, and for the life of her she couldn’t figure out which way the vestibule she’d originally been teleported into was.

“How do you even navigate this place?” she muttered, trotting clockwise around the column with Caelum in close pursuit. “It’s worse than one of those mazes Discord likes to make outside the Library.”

“I am the Queen of Stars, Alpha,” she replied. “Distance bends to my command. In truth, there are likely places within my palace that have been trodden by neither star nor mortal – nor myself.”

Beta was sitting on the ground on the other side of the pillar. She was slumped over, defeated, her wings almost forming a cocoon around her as she stared listlessly off into the distance. Other stars faded in and out of the stardust mist, hovering uncertainly between approaching to comfort her and fleeing to spare her shame, but Alpha simply trotted right up. Beta was in one of her moods again. She rolled her eyes and cleared her throat noisily.

Beta leapt to her hooves and spun around, throwing herself at Alpha before she could react. “Alpha!” she squealed. Alpha blinked, startled, and the world shifted and Twilight smiled.

“So…I think I should offer you an apology,” she said. “Accusing you of mental illness was uncalled for. And running away may not have been my smartest move, either…” She chuckled self-consciously. “I found Caelum, in the end, though, and she’s explained the situation to me…”

Beta seemed to notice the Queen’s presence for the first time. Hastily, she pulled herself off of Twilight and dropped into a low bow to match the other stars nearby. Caelum sighed and shook her head, giving Twilight a look that asked, what can I do? Twilight snorted in amusement.

“So…are you ready to go home?” Beta asked, once she stood up again. “I need to get back as fast as possible before the safeties I have kick in, but I guess if you wanted you could stay here a while to recover your strength.”

“Safeties?” Twilight repeated, puzzled. Beta nodded.

“You don’t need to know about them yet!” she offered as an explanation. “And probably never will, since you’re back and they’re obsolete now, but I have to abide by them until you’re back on your throne. I kept it dusted, by the way, and your library’s still clean – “

“Maybe I can see them when we get back?”

Beta nodded again. “Right! Right, right, right. Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” she answered. She felt space fold around her again, and in an instant the swirling stardust filled in the hole where they’d been not a moment before.

Author's Note

Same drill - thumbs-up if you liked it, feedback on stuff you want to feedback on!

07/10/14 - Edited for spacing betwixt paragraphs as later chapters have. Last chapter I've done tonight due to spotty interwebs. I'll get to reformatting the rest soon.

Chapter 5: Antagonizing the Supreme Being

Rainbow Dash cracked an eye open after a few minutes of sitting perfectly still, irritated by her apparent lack of success in performing an astral projection. Discord was sipping lazily from a glass of lemonade in his hammock, sunglasses covering his eyes completely. Angrily, she stood up.

“It’s not working, Discord!” she shouted, to no response. He just kept sucking his drink through a crazy-straw that didn’t look like it confined its loops to a mere three dimensions of space and one of time. “Now what do I do?”

No answer. Furious now, she stormed over to her saddlebag and tried to pick it up, grumbling. When her hoof passed right through the cloth, she realized that she hadn’t failed – she was too amazing to fail when she put her mind to something! She’d succeeded! She’d done magic!

“Hah!” she laughed, spinning around to face the apathetic draconequus again – of course, he probably couldn’t see her now, could he? What she was about to say remained unsaid when she caught sight of her own body, still sitting placidly in the ring of phoenix beak dust. Curious, she walked around it, getting a good look at herself from every angle. There was some kind of golden thread connecting her projected form back to her physical form; she assumed that was the “astral tether” Discord had warned her about. She concentrated on it experimentally for a few moments, noting how it thickened and seemed to become more solid while she did so. It didn’t look to be in imminent danger of collapse when she wasn’t staring at it hard, though, so she let her attention lapse back to the almost-unconscious level it had been at before.

“Okay, I did the projection thing,” she told him, satisfied that she did indeed look as good from the outside as the inside. “What next?”

No response. He sipped from the lemonade again. Dash groaned irritably; of course he wasn’t answering – he couldn’t hear her at all, probably, or pinpoint her exact location. She was, effectively, a ghost. The image of Pinkie trying to exorcise her with music like she’d done for the trees in the Everfree brought a brief smile to her face.

“So,” she thought aloud. “How am I supposed to find Twilight now?”

“Perhaps you could ask,” Cloud Ferry suggested sweetly. Startled, Rainbow Dash whipped her head around and spotted the unicorn back near the door to the stairs, smiling. She wasn’t wearing a dress this time, and Dash could finally see her cutie mark – a pair of masks, a blue one laughing and a green one frowning. “After all, you do have a unicorn mage living in your head…”

“Go away!” Dash shouted. “I don’t need your help!”

“But Twilight Sparkle does,” Ferry retorted calmly. Her eyes narrowed. “Though perhaps I won’t help, if you’re intent on being so hostile. Do not presume to command your better, pegasus – you can’t get rid of me as easily here as in the physical world.”

“You’re just a bunch of memories!” Dash scoffed.

“But here, I am just as real as you.” She chuckled. “Time is wasting, Rainbow Dash. Does your friend need help, or not?”

She sighed in defeat. “Fine. How do I – “

“Ah-ah!” Cloud Ferry smirked. “Apologize first.”

“Why?”

“Do you want my help or not?”

“Fine,” she managed to spit out. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Dash wanted to kill her again just to wipe that condescending smirk off her face. The idea that she’d ever been this mare was almost nauseating.

“For being rude to you, I guess,” she finished quickly. “So, how do I find Twilight?”

If Cloud Ferry could have smirked again while still smirking, Rainbow Dash was fairly certain she’d have done it. “I don’t know.”

Discord picked that moment to yawn loudly and roll himself off the hammock, appearing next to Dash before he hit the floor and leaving a copy of himself behind on the ground. “As interesting as listening to you talk to yourself is, Rainbow Dash, I think it’s time I give you a few last important pointers on how to accomplish this mission.”

“I’m not talking to myself!” she protested, glancing away from Cloud Ferry for a second. “I’m trying to get this stupid unicorn to help me!”

“Who?”

Angrily, she looked back to where Cloud Ferry had been, but the unicorn mare had disappeared. Frustrated, she shook her head. “Never mind.”

Discord shrugged. “Very well then. Your madness is none of my business.”

“I’m not crazy!”

He patted her patronizingly on the head. “Of course you aren’t, Rainbow Dash. Now then, to complete your crash course in extremely advanced astral magic, it’s time to teach you how to navigate. It’s incredibly simple, really, even a neophyte like yourself should be able to grasp it: you simply imagine where you wish to go, and you appear there.”

She gave him a flat look. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” he confirmed. “Of course, you’ve never actually been to the Celestial Court, so that still presents a problem. I would just teach you how to scry and solve it like that, but time is evidently of the essence, so…”

Rainbow Dash’s delicate internal navigation sense – the innate ability of every pegasus to orient themselves, no matter what the circumstances were – went completely haywire as the world bent around them. The spatial displacement wreaked havoc on her inner ear, sent her stomach into a tailspin, and gave her a headache to rival the sensation of being gored repeatedly in the face by a particularly cruel and sadistic mammoth. When her vision cleared and she could tell which way was up again, she realized she’d fallen over and vomited.

Standing up and shaking herself a bit, hoping none of the green mess had gotten into her mane or coat, she froze in surprise as she found herself suddenly staring into the depths of space itself. Ordinarily, just that would have upset her navigation sense even further, but for now it still trying to reset, and so she was able to look long enough to pick out slight discrepancies in the illusion. Sure, it was almost perfect, at first glance, and probably could have fooled a unicorn or earth pony, but pegasi had better distance vision, and the parallax was just slightly off. She figured out why a second later – she wasn’t staring into space, she was staring into a field of columns!

Giant columns.

That were made of outer space.

She swallowed nervously and wondered exactly what she was getting herself into, when Discord’s voice sounded close to her ear. “Friendly reminders: don’t lose your tether, don’t anger the Queen of the Universe, and try not to do anything else stupid. Good luck!”

“Wait!” she said, but she was too late. He was gone, and she was alone, completely out of her depth, about to walk up to the purported Queen of the Universe and demand her friend back from an alien pony.

Gathering her courage, she buried her anxiety and picked a direction at random, and started walking.

Caelum’s palace – the Celestial Court, or whatever – was huge, Rainbow Dash thought with dismay as she walked down infinitely long aisles between rows of huge columns. When she looked at an angle along the grid of pillars, she could still be fooled for a second into thinking she staring at the sky, which didn’t help her to orient herself at all; when she walked in the empty spaces of the grid, she felt absolutely dwarfed by the place. Up high, multicolored fog choked the air, and when she tried to fly up to reach it she discovered that it was absurdly high – so far beyond her reach that it may as well have been the actual night sky from Ponyville. Close to the translucent, muted-purple ground, the fog was absent, and she had an excellent view of the endless halls she walked. The entire place seemed to be designed to make visitors feel absolutely, cosmically insignificant.

“Well,” Cloud Ferry murmured from behind Dash. “This is…rather impressive.” Rainbow Dash nodded mutely. “Perhaps we should…rethink this?”

She shook her head. “No. Twilight’s been kidnapped, and I’m not going to abandon her just because things get a little…big.”

“Enormous, I think, would be more accurate.” Ferry snorted. “You’re an idiot, following after her like this. What could you possibly feel for her that could compel this sort of irrationality?”

“She’s my friend!”

“Some more speculative ponies might think such unthinking devotion to another mare could be a sign of something less innocent,” she noted innocently.

“Look, you creep,” Dash growled, rounding on Cloud Ferry. “Just because you never had a friend in your entire sad life doesn’t mean I’m just as lonely and disloyal.”

“If you think this is loyalty, Rainbow Dash, then perhaps you are mad.” The unicorn shrugged. “I suppose it’s no concern of mine whether you prefer mares or stallions…after all, I’m just a memory.”

“She’s my friend,” Dash repeated. “Just my friend.”

“Of course, dear.”

“Sicko.” She picked up her pace to get away from Cloud Ferry. It seemed to work, as far as getting her to shut up; when Dash glanced back over her shoulder, she was gone.

Where does she even go? she thought. She rolled her eyes. As long as she isn’t talking to me, I’m fine.

She walked alone for what felt like another hour, noticing no appreciable changes in her surroundings. Everything was the same, it seemed; a giant, endless room filled with rows upon rows upon columns upon columns of columns. Only the presence of the spidery gold line trailing behind her gave her the courage to press on, knowing that with it she would never be completely lost.

Suddenly, she was in a throne room. She froze uncertainly, her hoof hovering just above the beginning of a gold-trimmed blue carpet that led up a series of steps to a gold throne, framed by a round window overlooking the depths of space. On the throne sat an alicorn with a kindly smile and an absolutely terrifying pair of solid white eyes that held Dash’s gaze like magnets. The alicorn blinked, and suddenly her eyes had pupils and magenta irises to match the pegasus’s own; for a moment, Rainbow Dash felt the absurd fear that her own eyes had been stolen.

“I thought I felt the presence of a mortal within the Celestial Court,” Queen Caelum said, standing from her throne and trotting down the steps towards Rainbow Dash. “While I do have other pressing matters at hoof, I believe I can spare some time to entertain a guest.” She frowned. “You are not a unicorn. I know the structure Celestia set up for your world, pegasus; how did you reach my court? I am curious.”

Dash shook herself out of her stupor. “That’s not important!” she said. “I’m looking for my friend.”

“Then we shall come back to the matter of your arrival here in a moment,” Caelum allowed. “I may be powerful, little pony, but I am neither omnipotent nor omniscient. If I can help you, I will – it is only just, after the effort it must have taken to get here.”

“Her name is Twilight Sparkle,” she told her. “She’s a unicorn a little taller than me, with a purple coat and a star for a cutie mark. Some crazy alien pony came and kidnapped her!”

“I do not know where she could be,” Caelum answered sadly. “I am sorry your trip has been in vain.”

“She’s lying,” Cloud Ferry declared, stepping out from behind the alicorn. “Did you see how she hesitated before answering? Sad, really, that a monarch can’t lie properly.”

“What?” Dash frowned at Cloud Ferry. “She didn’t hesitate.”

The unicorn sighed. “I would call you thick, but you wouldn’t understand what I meant by it immediately, and that takes a great deal of my enjoyment out of it. Yes, Rainbow Dash, she did hesitate, and she failed to look you in the eye when she answered, and her back hoof shifted subtly, and her heart rate increased, and her pupils dilated – how you missed all that, I can’t possibly fathom.”

“Who are you talking to?” Caelum asked warily. Rainbow Dash looked back to her.

“You’re lying,” she said, trying to ignore the fact that she was probably antagonizing the most powerful being in existence. “Where’s Twilight?”

“I cannot help you,” the alicorn said. “And that is the truth.”

“It is,” Cloud Ferry confirmed with a smirk. “Though, of course, being able to help you, and knowing where your friend is, are two completely separate things.”

“What did you do with her?” Dash demanded, hovering so she could look Caelum straight in the eyes. “What did you do with my friend?”

“I cannot help you,” Caelum insisted angrily. She turned away from Rainbow Dash, and the pegasus sensed space shifting around her. “I will ignore your insolence for now, mortal. I have, as I said, more pressing concerns to deal with.”

“Like Alpha Centauri?” Dash demanded. Cloud Ferry winced. Space flattened again as Caelum spun back around.

“How do you know of that name?”

“Perhaps it would be best not to tell her it was Discord?” Cloud Ferry suggested nervously.

“Why?” Dash asked.

“He isn’t here with us because he is extremely unwelcome here,” she explained patiently. “So linking yourself to him would be a very bad idea and will likely only anger her.”

“So what?” She frowned at Cloud Ferry. “Why are you even helping me, anyways?”

“Because if you antagonize her into a homicidal fury, dearest host,” she replied saccharinely, “we both are killed.”

She dropped back down to the ground. “Look, I’m no Applejack, but isn’t not telling her a lie, too?”

“Of course it is!” Ferry groaned. “Yes, it’s a lie, you idiot. That’s the point. If you told the truth –“

“Lying’s just going to make her more angry!”

“Not if she didn’t know you were lying.” The unicorn facehooved. “How did I ever reincarnate as somepony this inept?”

“Maybe you would have had friends if you’d told the truth more often.”

“You – is this the time for bickering?” Ferry spluttered. Rainbow Dash beat her wings and rose back to Caelum’s eye level by way of agreement, leaving the unicorn gaping up at her incredulously. “You’re going to tell her, aren’t you? You are.”

“You try my patience severely,” Caelum said, her voice strained. “I repeat: how do you know that name?”

“The alien pony called her that,” Dash answered. Ferry sighed loudly in relief. “Where is she? You know where she is!”

“And how do you know that?” the Queen asked.

“I’m the one asking the questions here!” She shoved her face close to the alicorn’s, but instead of forcing her to draw back like she’d expected, Caelum simply warped space and slammed Dash against the wall, her face contorted as if she’d smelled something particularly foul. The illusion of pupils in her eyes had been dispelled, and they were back to plain white globes as she advanced deliberately towards the pinned pegasus.

“Now you’ve done it,” Ferry moaned. “What in Equestria were you thinking? You’re mad, that’s the issue – you’re not inept, you’re just absolutely insane!”

“I’m not crazy!” she insisted, struggling against what felt like a mountain pressing down on her and holding her helplessly.

“I did not ask if you were,” Caelum growled. She stopped about ten feet from Rainbow Dash. “Though I find it likely that you, in fact, are. Phoenix beak dust – I should have noticed it the moment you entered my presence! It hangs like stardust around you. It is poisonous, of course, I hope you realize that. Your patron” – she put more hatred into that one word than Rainbow Dash had ever heard before from any one pony in her life – “sent you here to die, though he is rarely so wasteful for no purpose. What are you here for?”

“My friend!”

Caelum snorted. “You are working with Discord, pawn. He is known to me. I personally cast him out of the Court not three thousand years ago. Friendship is not in his vocabulary, and every move he makes has three ulterior motives. You are not here merely for your ‘friend’.”

“Yes, I – “ The pressure doubled; she couldn’t breathe!

“I have no patience for lies,” Caelum hissed.

“Hypocrite,” Cloud Ferry grumbled. “At least be honest about it, though perhaps that’s asking a bit too much.”

“I’m – not – “ The pressure increased again. She could feel bones straining. Blackness encroached on the edge of her vision. She managed to gasp one last word with the remainder of her air. “Twilight!”

Just when she was sure the alicorn intended to crush the life out of her, the pressure relented, and she was allowed to drop roughly to the floor. Space began to bend again.

“Perhaps you are here for her,” Caelum conceded. “But you are tainted by the draconequus’s touch. I will allow you to live. Get out of my sight.” Light began to lens around her as she prepared to leave. “I have a daughter and close friend who is trying to remember herself that needs me.”

Cloud Ferry’s eyes widened as she sensed what Dash planned to do. “No, don’t – “

With a furious shout, Rainbow Dash peeled herself off the floor and leapt at the alicorn, bringing all four of her hooves together and beating her wings as hard as she could to give every ounce of force she could manage to her attack. She slammed into the alicorn’s flank, spinning her around abruptly and knocking her to the floor. She banked sharply around and landed heavily on Caelum’s side, on her sensitive wing, eliciting a gasp of shocked pain from the being.

“Did you just assault the Queen of the Universe?” Cloud Ferry exclaimed incredulously. Rainbow Dash ignored her.

“Where is she?” the small pegasus demanded of the most powerful being in Creation. The last thing she saw was the alicorn’s eyes flaring blinding white like the detonation of a supernova, and then the world disintegrated.

Hold on to the tether!

Blackness. All-consuming, all-devouring, desolate, empty blackness.

She’d been ripped apart. She could feel it while it happened, couldn’t remember the pain – her mind was blocking it out, thank Celestia – but she still knew it had happened. And now all that she was was scattered across the void of space, her consciousness a tiny spark of a soul bereft of an immediate form and connected to a body only by a millennium-long golden astral tether that she didn’t have the strength to pull herself back along. She was dimly aware that, back in the castle in the Everfree, her body had fallen over, sprawling across the phoenix beak dust circle – Is it poisonous? I should probably get my face out of it, then – and Discord was examining it worriedly.

Her spark drifted aimlessly in space. She had to find Twilight; I have to find Twilight. Discord’s advice on navigation came to mind. Without anything else to try, she imagined Twilight – smashing into her Library occasionally to grab a Daring Do book – She’s never had to deal with any of this kind of stuff – adventures they’d been on with the rest of their friends; just bumping into her around Ponyville, really. She had to have a clear picture of her, so when she traveled – however that worked in astral projection – she’d come out next to her, or in the place she was. She hoped that appearing inside her wasn’t an option. That would be unpleasant for both of them.

The tether started to fade slightly. Panicking, Rainbow Dash tried to focus her attention on it again, and lost concentration on travelling; she tried to focus on travelling and the tether began to thin again. One or the other. She had to choose.

Buck it. I can’t get any more lost than I already am, she thought. She focused on the tether just enough to get it to solidify, then imagined herself next to Twilight and felt the universe shift around her. When she opened her eyes again – she had eyes again! – she found herself sitting on a hill on a moon. Barren reddish-grey wasteland spread out to the hilly near horizon before her, reflecting silvery light from a pair of suns that peeked around the shaded far side of a green-and-blue marble as a more ruddy hue. The planet was about half the size of the moon seen from Equestria, but it was large enough that she could see the shapes of seas and continents on its surface – a completely alien world from Equus, and yet she couldn’t see Twilight anywhere.

Wait, she thought. Two suns?

Evidently so – one yellow, one yellow-white. She could look at them without blinding herself somehow. Then, they were obscured by a rising, thin cloud of moon-dust, as an unfelt wind kicked up a twister around her. Sensing danger, she jumped to her hooves, but before she could make another move the ground below her turned to quicksand and sucked her down until only her head remained free. Claustrophobia hit her like a tidal wave.

The dust swirling around her stopped its frantic motion, and instead began lazily drifting in a counterclockwise direction. Whatever had trapped her seemed to be perfectly content to just let her stew. She struggled to free herself, but the analogy to quicksand held – the more she moved, the deeper she got herself stuck. Finally, she just gave up altogether and shouted instead, “Hey! What gives?”

It looked like an invisible pony had stepped through the dust barrier, the ‘wall’ deforming around her form as she darted forwards, and continuing its drift groundwards when she withdrew. “Intruder,” the shape whispered before it left.

“Hey!” she called after her – that voice had definitely been female. “I didn’t mean to be here! I was trying to find my friend!”

“She isn’t here,” the voice said again, the dust exposing another pony-shape. “You’re intruding.”

“Only because you won’t let me go!”

The ground beneath Dash’s hooves solidified and thrust upwards, hurling her out of the dust pit and sending her arcing gently down a hundred feet away, the low gravity meaning she didn’t even have to extend her wings to survive the fall. The dust kicked up by her landing whipped around and organized itself into the shape of what Dash thought looked like an earth pony mare with eyes like golden embers burning in her face.

“You are released. Go away. Do not visit Domhan, intruder. It is under my protection.” The dust form started drifting apart again.

“Wait!”

It resolidifed. “I have given you your freedom. I have ordered you to leave. Your reluctance tells me you were not being entirely honest.”

“I’m looking for my friend,” she repeated. “She’s a unicorn named Twilight Sparkle. A thing named Beta Centauri kidnapped her from my planet. Have you seen her?”

The form looked curious. “I have heard no such name. What is a unicorn?”

“It’s pony with a horn on her forehead,” Dash answered. The form seemed confused, and she sighed.

“What is a pony?”

“Like me, but without wings, and with a stubby horn sticking out of her head,” she explained. After a moment, she added, “And she’s purple.”

“That’s absurd.” The form frowned. “A kelpie cannot be purple. I have not seen a purple one in over ten thousand years of watching, at least.”

“Kelpie?” Dash repeated. “No, a pony! They look like me, I said.”

“You are a winged kelpie,” the form insisted. “I have seen those. That is the form the meddlers choose when they interact with my wards. A horned kelpie, I can accept; it is not too far from the realm of my experience. But kelpies cannot be purple.”

“Well, ponies can.”

“It seems to be a rather odd thing to make a distinction out of,” she mused. “Purple kelpies being ponies, and the rest not.”

“It’s not just that!” she clarified. “Some ponies have wings like me, or a horn so they can do magic, and some don’t have either.”

“What can those do?”

“Farm, mostly.”

The form frowned. “That seems a bit unfair. Flight or magic, or farming.”

“They do it really well!” she said. “My friend Applejack can harvest an entire apple orchard in just a few days.”

“Could a unicorn not do it in less time?”

“Well…” She shrugged. “Yeah. Twilight did it in like, ten seconds flat, give or take. But it’s still impressive. They’re good with physical manipulation stuff, too.”

The form nodded. “Then they are not kelpies.”

“Nope.”

“I have not seen one of these before,” she told her apologetically. “I apologize for my lack of aid. I will tell you if I see someone matching this description.”

“Thanks.” A connection fired off in Dash’s brain, and she hastily asked, “Have you seen any purple winged kelpies lately? A purple version of one of the – what did you call them? Meddlers?”

The form frowned and nodded slowly. “I have not seen one, but there have been rumors amongst the other meddlers. Would she be known by the same name?”

“I think so,” she answered. “Wait, no! I think Beta Centauri called her Alpha a few times, but I was kinda out of it when she came, so…”

“You know Beta Centauri?” the form asked, surprised. Dash nodded, and the other being grew suspicious. “Why do you wish to find her sister – Alpha Centauri, or Twilight Sparkle?”

“Because she’s not Alpha Centauri, she’s my friend, Twilight!” she answered angrily. “When I find her, I’m going to bring her back home.”

“And what of Beta?”

“When I find Beta,” she said slowly, “she is going to really, really regret messing around with my head.”

The form smiled. “I can sympathize. She meddles far more than is healthy for my wards, and the schedule she maintains excludes me from performing my duties on all but the deepest nights of winter. I will help you – and you will need it.”

“I can take care of this on my own!” she protested defensively. The form chuckled.

“You are no meddler,” she said. “You are a mortal – a pony, as you have explained. Beta Centauri is a star. You will not be able to stand up to her in a direct confrontation if both of you employ the fullest extent of your powers, because she can call upon the seething heart of a sun – and you can flap your feathers at her and maybe kick her a bit.”

Dash was silent. Her lack of response was all the agreement the form needed.

“I am Ghealach, the Dust Sentinel,” the form introduced herself formally. “I am this moon. I extend to you my aid, and mark you as my agent in the universe at large.”

The dust near Rainbow Dash’s hooves flowed up and encased her legs, allowing a cloud of the stuff to envelope her without difficulty. When it cleared, leaving her coughing and spluttering, she still felt like she was coated in the stuff. She had the awful suspicion her wings would never feel clean again, no matter how much she preened them. Ghealach still stood in front of her, much more substantial than a mere outline of dust – she looked more like a silver-grey earth pony mare, with a slenderer build and slightly longer legs and a much finer coat and most conspicuously of all, no cutie mark – and smiling brightly.

“I will be with you,” she continued, “until such time as we agree to separate. Together, Rainbow Dash” – she chuckled a little at the name – “we will accomplish great things.”

“Uh, thanks, I guess.” She shook herself, hoping some of the dust would come out. The feeling was fading a bit, but it was still there. “Now what?”

“The next move is yours, Rainbow Dash,” Ghealach answered simply. “That is for you to decide. I will aid you in any case.” She smirked. “Staring at a world I am prevented from visiting was boring, anyways.”

“Might I suggest a return home, to regroup?” Cloud Ferry offered. Dash whirled around in shock, and found the mare standing not ten feet away behind her, omnipresent smirk still gracing her face. “Discord, at least, deserves a bit of a tongue-lashing for attempting to poison us and get Queen Caelum to kill us.”

“I did not sense your arrival here,” Ghealach said sharply, glaring daggers at the unicorn. “Who is this?”

“This is Cloud Ferry,” Dash answered. She swallowed nervously. “Um…you can see her?”

“Of course,” the kelpie responded. “Should I be unable to?”

Cloud Ferry laughed. “It seems I may be a bit more than mere memories, Rainbow Dash. Maybe someday we’ll be rid of each other, hm?”

“I hope so,” she grumbled. “Let’s get home. At least in the physical world, I don’t have to deal with you following me around.”

“We shall see, dear,” Ferry sniffed. “We shall see.”

Ignoring her, Rainbow Dash found the tether with her mind again – it had changed colors now, a silver strand winding its way along the gold thread that shot up through the rarefied atmosphere of Ghealach’s moon and out into the depths of the heavens. It hardly took any concentration at all to slip back up along it now; her strength was back, somehow, and she suspected her new companion was the source of its renewal.

The world faded away, and for a brief instant she was lost in the blackness again.

She awoke with a rattling gasp of air that rasped against her dry throat, which terminated in a fit of coughing as air filled her lungs and pushed them past what they’d been used to for an indeterminate period of time. She seemed to be in a bed of some sort, tucked under blankets that had found the happy medium between tight and too loose, with a perfectly fluffed pillow under her head and a white rabbit staring straight into her eyes. Surprised, she recoiled and tried to turn the instinctive response into a stretch. How long was I out?

She looked around the room, shifting to get a view past Angel’s ears. The walls were wooden and sparse, devoid of decoration; the door was directly across the room from the bed she was in. A pair of windows off to her left let in cheerful morning sunlight, and the right wall was dominated by an almost-empty bookcase that only held three or four thick tomes that seemed to be on animal diseases and anatomy. She recognized the place, and sank back into the pillow, relaxing. This was Fluttershy’s house; the guest bedroom, if she was right.

“Hey, Angel,” she chuckled. “Crazy night, huh?”

The rabbit blinked at her, climbed down off the bed, and hopped over to the closed door. She saw the thing open briefly and close just as fast as he left. Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes and waited for Fluttershy’s inevitable arrival.

Author's Note

Please remember to upvote if you liked it! Thanks for the feedback so far!

Also, Cloud Ferry's list of tells is derived from a dimly-recalled list I read when I was twelve. It may not accurately reflect accurate ways to tell if a human is lying, much less a giant magical horse. I made the assumption no research has been done on the subject of telling if a giant magical horse is lying and improvised.

Chapter 6: A Way with Words

Back in her own bed again a day later, Rainbow Dash turned over in a state of semi-sleep, trying to ignore the almost inaudibly faint tapping coming from the front of her cloud-home. Snoring usually kept that kind of thing from bugging her, but she wasn’t fully asleep – really, she was only just now starting to get tired – and so she refrained from doing so in order to maximize her chances for a nap. The knocking continued, however, and eventually she decided ignoring visitors again would be a terrible idea; that was how this whole mess with Twilight had started, wasn’t it?

So, sleepily, she rolled off her bed and thumped onto the springy floor and rose to her hooves. “Just a sec!” she shouted. The knocking stopped.

She trudged into the spacious bathroom adjoining her bedroom, yawning widely, determined to go through at least part of her morning routine before opening the front door. She slipped a hairbrush onto a forehoof and started brushing the worst of the knots out of her mane – the wild mess it usually looked like was actually meticulously maintained, to keep it looking awesome and not lazy – and idly thought back to the conversation she’d had with Discord after Fluttershy had finished fussing over her.

“You sent me into a trap!” she’d accused. “And phoenix beak dust is poisonous, isn’t it?”

Discord had continued laughing for another solid minute before managing to say, “That was perfect Rainbow Dash! Absolutely marvelous!”

“What?”

“Assaulting the Queen of the Universe – and the talking to yourself – oh, that really threw her!” he chortled with glee. “You almost had me convinced there was somepony there giving you advice! That was incredible! We really have to pull pranks like this more often – say, there’s an international conference on climate control coming up in a few days that Celly’s forcing me to attend. I’m sure I can convince her to let me bring you, too – what do you think? Together, Rainbow Dash, we could rule the pranking galaxy!”

“A prank?” she shouted. “Is that all that was? Some kind of stupid prank?”

“A stupid prank?” he repeated, offended. “Why, my dear pegasus companion, that was no mere prank – that was art!”

“Twilight’s been kidnapped by some kind of freaky alien monster, and all you can think of is a chance to pull a bucking prank?”

“I believe I made my position on the Elements of Harmony quite clear initially, Rainbow Dash,” he said, wagging a finger at her. “And I am a draconequus of my word, if nothing else.”

“You didn’t make any sort of promise!”

“Exactly!”

She growled with irritation, hooves itching with the memory of how she’d knocked down a being a lot more powerful than this joker not a day ago. “And what about the phoenix beak dust, huh? That’s poisonous!”

“Only if you touch it,” he clarified, his voice becoming serious. “And a fine job of that you did! Honestly, flopping over into the ritual circle’s borders while a spell was in progress - the magical surge alone could have killed you! At the very least, your tether should have snapped like a neck in a hangman’s noose.” To emphasize his point, a miniature replica of himself appeared in the air next to his head, a noose around its neck. The miniature took a step as if walking off a cliff, fell, and jerked short with an unpleasantly loud crack.

“Well, excuse me!” she snapped. “I got blown up by Caelum because of your stupid prank!”

“No, that was your fault.” He summoned a hammock and glass of lemonade again. “Honestly, what possessed you to attempt to physically coerce a magical being responsible for the creation of the heavens into helping you?”

“She was lying to me about knowing where Twilight was!”

“Yes, and an excellent job of picking up on that you did,” he nodded. “At that point, I actually began to wonder if you might convince her. Then you did something stupid, as is your wont, and cured me of that cautious hope.”

“If you could see all of that, couldn’t you have helped at all?”

“If she’d had any inkling I was there watching, Rainbow Dash, we would not be having this conversation now,” he answered gravely. “We did not part on the best of terms. If only thinking you were working for me was enough to make her that surly, imagine what my actual presence would have caused!”

“What if – “

“There are no what-ifs about it,” he cut her off. “Caelum is a dead end now. I would suggest you try to find a new way to retrieve your friend – such as, perhaps, contacting the Princesses. Why you have yet to do that, I’m not sure, but it’s too late for you to do it now. Fluttershy and Spike have already colluded to warn them. They’ll actually be coming here tomorrow, if it’s any interest to you.” He sipped from the lemonade. “I think this flashback is done. You might want to answer the door soon-ish.”

“You really should,” Cloud Ferry agreed. “It’s rude to leave a guest waiting so long.”

With a cry of surprise, Rainbow Dash flew into the air and dug her hooves securely into the ceiling, turning as she did so to face Cloud Ferry. The unicorn was standing calmly in the door of the bathroom, watching her with dispassionate interest.

“So you do own a hairbrush,” she commented, smirking. “I had been wondering about that.”

“How are you in my house?” she demanded furiously, returning to the floor. “Get out!”

“You should probably lock your doors more often,” she chuckled. Another round of tapping at the door came. “Your guest’s a-waiting…”

“Get out of my way,” Dash grumbled, pushing past the unicorn. She trotted with undue haste through her house to the living room, where the knocking was loudest, and pulled open the door to her porch. “What?”

It was Fluttershy on the other side. Her hoof was raised to knock on the door again, but she lowered it quickly “Um…Princess Celestia wants to speak with you?”

Dash gave her a dead stare worthy of Twilight woken up early on a bad day. “Why?”

“Um…you were the only lead left, she said…and that maybe you knew something about why Twilight disappeared?”

She sighed. “Fine. Where is she?”

“She’s set up in Sugarcube Corner. I think she was having breakfast at one of the tables outside behind the bakery,” Fluttershy answered. “You should go speak with her right away – um, if you’re not doing anything else right now?”

“I’m not,” she confirmed. “I’ll go talk with her in a sec. I just need to finish getting ready.”

“Oh. Um, good.” She trotted back to the edge of the porch and hopped off, hovering in the air for a second and looking back. “I hope we can find Twilight soon.”

“I hope so, too, Flutters,” Dash sighed as her friend left. “I hope I do, too.”

The world flickered back into existence almost instantly for Twilight, it seemed. There was no shifting of space-time around her like a teleportation spell would have caused, no sensation of movement; just blackness, and then light. She and Beta arrived in a large, hemispherical chamber; the floor was tiled with hundreds of miniscule mosaics in blue and purple and red, illuminated by a shaft of sunlight streaming through an aperture at the apex of the roof. Streamers of moss hung from the ceiling almost to the floor, and channels cutting the room into four quarters flowed with softly burbling water that emptied into a deep basin in the heart of the chamber. It was peaceful.

“This is my personal garden,” Beta explained happily. “I come up here when I need rest or escape from court. It’s a nightmare” – she winced – “well, okay, maybe not that bad, but it’s still stressful. But now that you’re back, we can split duties – I’ll keep charge for a few months while you acclimate back to Domhan again, but you’ll sit in during Court and see how everything works – and that will make things more manageable. When we get some off time, I can show you around the cities so you can see how things have changed – and they’ve changed a lot, you’ll want to explore probably, you always were curious – oh, what should I show her first?”

“Maybe we could start with wherever I’ll be staying?” Twilight suggested. Beta giggled.

“Of course! Of course, of course, that’d be a great way to start.” A mischievous grin flashed across her face before she suddenly slammed herself against Twilight and dove for the pool in the center of the room. Twilight let out a cry of surprise and pain – it felt like somepony was trying to pluck every hair in her coat on her right side off with tweezers, all at once – and was yanked along with the other star. The moment they sank beneath the water, their coats came unstuck, allowing her to push frantically away and paddle for the surface.

Beta was laughing when her head breached the surface next to Twilight. “Your mane’s out, Alpha!”

Twilight ran a hoof over her head once she was sure she could breathe again. Sure enough, the flaming mane she’d gotten from her body shift had gone out, leaving behind what felt like a mixture of hair and seaweed that she could see Beta didn’t have. She was sure she looked absolutely ridiculous. “Yours is, too!”

“Yep!” Beta giggled. “Now, come on, Alpha, the castle’s down at the bottom of this shaft!”

“Wait!” she exclaimed, pausing Beta before she could submerge again. “How are we supposed to breathe? Why is your castle underwater?”

Beta looked confused. “Kelpies can breathe underwater. My idea, and it’s worked out wonderfully! The castle’s in a cave below here for protection from sea serpents.” She quickly added, “But those haven’t been a problem for almost three centuries!” when she saw Twilight’s worry.

“Kelpies can breathe underwater?” she repeated quizzically. Beta nodded. “How?”

“Gills!” she answered matter-of-factly. “Inside of your cheek and throat. Basically, just breathe normally.”

Nervously, Twilight watched her submerge. Dozens of scenarios for how this could go wrong flashed through her mind. Could a sun drown? If she drowned, would that actually kill her, or would she just become a star again? What if water got into her lungs? Would she be able to breathe on land again after that, or would she just suffocate – her lungs filled with too much water to permit oxygen to enter? Would –

Beta poked her head back up. “Alpha? Everything okay?”

“Yeah!” she answered hastily. “I’m just, uh…nervous.”

Beta nodded. “Right. You’ll be perfectly fine, don’t worry!”

She swallowed anxiously. She wanted to trust Beta on this - she could even feel ridges on the inside of her cheeks that she assumed were the gills - but the spectre of being trapped helplessly, struggling desperately to breathe, in a closed room or something held her in place. “Okay,” she replied anyways. Beta kept her head up, watching. Another minute passed as she tried to work up the nerve to take the plunge.

“Count of three?” Beta suggested. Twilight nodded gratefully. Count of three. Simple enough. “One…”

“Two…”

“Three!” Beta dived under. Twilight hesitated a second longer, tried to banish her fears from her mind, took a deep breath, and submerged herself as well. When she opened her eyes underwater, it felt almost like they were still closed – except she could see. Her mind grasped for an explanation for a moment before she recalled a passage from an old biology book – Amphibian Ancillary Anatomy – that she’d read as a filly.

Nictitating membranes, of course! she realized. At least I’ll be able to see.

“You’ve got a bubble, Alpha,” Beta observed; her voice should have sounded distorted, at the very least, Twilight thought, but it didn't; kelpies' ears must be adapted to water too, just like the rest of their bodies apparently were. Abruptly, Beta aimed a precise kick at her midsection, and a stream of bubbles spewed from her mouth as it drove out the breath she'd unconsciously been holding. Her mouth filled with water as she gasped reflexively – but something snapped shut over her trachea and kept the flood out before it could inundate her lungs, maintaining a watertight seal even when she opened her mouth again. She wouldn't drown! The brief burst of panic she’d felt melted into relief. Perfectly safe.

“I think I’m ready to go on,” she said sheepishly.

“Down we go, then!” Beta smiled and started swimming.

Twilight followed close after Beta as she descended, the water growing darker and darker as they got further and further from the shaft of sunlight that was its sole source of illumination and becoming a sort of dull shade of green. The shaft’s diameter remained constant up until the very end, when it suddenly seemed to balloon outwards, widening rapidly into a flooded atrium of some sort. Bright globes of yellow-white light were dotted at regular intervals on the walls, keeping the huge space lit with a cheerful glow. Beta – and by extension, Twilight – drifted all the way down to the base of the room, where more mosaics – well-maintained, not what she’d expected from an underwater building, but then, the kelpies seemed to be at least a partially subaquatic culture and would reasonably keep their underwater dwellings in good shape – decorated the floor.

“Oh! That’s what I’ll show you first!” Beta’s face lit up as she thought of something. “The observatory!”

“You have an observatory underwater?” Twilight asked incredulously. “Wouldn’t the intervening water layers interfere with accurate observation?”

“You’ll see!” Beta grinned knowingly, before kicking off from the floor and angling for an archway sunk into the wall near the base of the chamber, trailing small bubbles as air pockets in her coat escaped. “Come on – we’ll be entering one of the dry parts of the palace soon, so remember to get all the water out of your mouth before we surface, so you can breathe air.”

“Why are there dry parts of the Palace if kelpies can breathe underwater?”

Beta laughed. “We’re not just queens of kelpies, Alpha! There’s wolves and thunderbirds, too. They drown, unlike us down here, so we have to make accommodations.”

Twilight nodded thoughtfully. Like pegasi using cloudstone and buildings roads, she thought. Even if they don’t need them, unicorn and earth pony visitors would.

On the other side of the archway was a respectably long hall, dotted with other arches into other rooms – and even a few more circular openings in the roof and floor, to allow access to rooms above and below the hall. Kelpies poked their heads through as the two stars passed, servants and soldiers whispering curiously amongst themselves, speculating about the presence of a second being that looked like Beta Centauri. Twilight felt immediately self-conscious, though Beta seemed completely unaffected. Oddly, the thing she felt most self-conscious about was the fact that she had a mane still – would they believe that she was Alpha Centauri? There were several major differences between her and Beta, after all. Would they even realize she was a star?

When did them not believing become something to avoid? she asked herself, shaking her head slightly. This is crazy, but it fits the facts as I know them. No other alternative scenario has presented itself, at least.

They came to a four-way junction in the hall, turned left, and ascended a shaft that seemed to serve the same function as stairs in pony structures. They exited the shaft three floors up and made their way down another long corridor before emerging into a large dining hall crammed with tables – and those tables were crammed with kelpies in the livery of palace servants, and every one of them was staring straight at Twilight and Beta – but mostly Twilight. The whispering started up immediately, and didn’t abate once they’d successfully navigated the maze and exited out the other side.

“Heh. Shortcut.” Beta smiled apologetically. “You’ll have to get used to it again soon, anyways, so…”

“It’s fine,” Twilight sighed, glancing back at the open archway and noting mentally that she hadn’t seen a single door in the entire castle, nor a single window. The only illumination came from the magic lights. “I just wish they wouldn’t look at me like some sort of carnival freak.”

“Well, you haven’t been reintroduced,” Beta said. “It’s been two thousand years since you were a Queen here, so they won’t recognize you. Right now, you’re just a funny purple kelpie with gold wings.” She tilted her head quizzically. “Why did you stay purple, Alpha?”

“I’ve been purple my entire life,” she answered. “It just seemed natural.” She didn’t admit that it hadn’t occurred to her until now that she’d had any control over what she looked like after the spell.

Beta frowned, but they kept going. Down halls, up shafts, down other shafts, through rooms of servants and nobles – nobles who proceeded to follow them like floats in some kind of weird underwater parade – until eventually, they came to a drop down into a j-shaped tube.

“Here we are!” Beta declared. “On the other side of this is the throne room. We’ve got to go through it to get to the observatory. Remember to expel as much water as you can before breaching the surface, unless you like feeling like you’re drowning. I’ll go in first.”

Beta vanished down the hole. Feeling like she was stepping off a cliff, despite the water buoying her up, Twilight swam down after her, kicking off from the low point in the curve and forcing the water out of her mouth and throat before she breached the surface. The air was cold on her face as she pulled herself up the steps at the top, and she was shivering slightly once she was fully extricated from the water, but she refrained from shaking herself off – she wasn’t sure what the protocol for that was. Wouldn’t it be an amazing start to my return, she thought, if it began by spraying the upper nobility with water?

The walls of the throne room were carved from brown stone, and left unadorned save for the ubiquitous globes of light. It was longer than it was wide, extending maybe a hundred and fifty feet away from the trio of thrones Twilight stood behind, and twenty feet wide to either side of the thrones. At the far end of the room was a matching trio of tall windows that spilled wavering blue-tinted light across the gold-trimmed blue carpet that led up a set of steps to the dais. It was just as impressive as the throne room in Canterlot Palace, despite the lack of ornamentation, just for sheer size, and it was filled with dozens of nobles and functionaries – metal-feathered birds that looked like giant hawks as big as a pony, kelpies in a multitude of earth tones and brightly colored robes, even a few wolves, their ears pierced through with golden ornamentation and their fur dyed in odd patterns – and at the head of them all, Beta Centauri, mane re-lit and wings spread wide; Twilight could see why they’d made her queen – or at least, some part of her thought, what being a queen had made her.

“Kelpies, Thunderbirds, and wolves!” she shouted, drawing the attention of the inhabitants of the throne room instantly. “Subjects of the Queendom of Domhan! Many of you were aware of my repeated absences over these long years – my annual disappearance, that I’m sure most of your schedulers found very annoying to work around.” Some good-natured chuckling rose from the crowd. “I come before you today to announce both the purpose of these absences, and a glorious event in the history of our nation. You see, over the past two thousand years, during my absences, I could not be found because I was not on Domhan.”

She ignored the murmuring that arose from that statement, and pressed on, grinning widely. “I was searching neighboring worlds, under the rule of my compatriots – other stars, other queens and kings reigning over a thousand sunrises on a hundred different planets – for someone very dear to me, who was lost millennia ago – and who I have found again. Nobility of the highest order, today we have a second Queen once more!” Gasps of surprise. “I have found my sister. Alpha Centauri has returned to us!”

Beta looked over her shoulder and grinned at Twilight. Taking that as her signal, the star trotted forward around the thrones, still dripping wet. The nobles looked at her with a mixture of skepticism and curiosity. Beta may have been able to continue under that weight of doubt, but Twilight felt like she would be crushed under it. She could feel every eye on her as she stood there awkwardly, her wings twitching with discomfort despite her best efforts to force them to be still, while Beta finished triumphantly.

“Ladies and gentlebeings of the Court of the Suns, I present to you Alpha Centauri, Spirit of the First Sun and Co-Queen of Domhan!”

Twilight felt a sudden, wild spark of magic, latching onto her uncertainty and escaping her control, ignite her mane and tail again, the comfortable heat from their ignition helping to push back the cold and dispelling a bit of the fear. She straightened as, starting with the wolves that hung in packs near the front, and spreading quickly to the thunderbirds and regalia-adorned kelpies, the assembled nobility of a nation knelt before her.

Rainbow Dash circled high above Sugarcube Corner before gliding in for a landing, searching the nearby environs for any sign of her unicorn stalker. That she had to deal with Cloud Ferry in her head was bad enough; having to bump into her randomly in the real world throughout the day was intolerable, and she was pretty sure that word came directly from Ferry’s vocabulary, since she tended to avoid using what she deemed overly-long words. She searched for ten long minutes for her, and, finally satisfied there’d be no unwanted interruptions, let herself descend gently in towards the ground.

As Fluttershy had said, Princess Celestia was at a table set up behind the bakery, sipping from a cup of tea, with a crumb-scattered plate in front of her. What Fluttershy had not mentioned, though, was that Princess Luna was in attendance as well, and that all the rest of their friends were there too – minus Twilight of course. Dash landed nearby and completed her journey on foot, oddly enjoying the feel of the dirt underhoof. It was very different from how the dust on her moon had felt. She found herself digging a hoof into it idly, fascinated by how it stuck together and clumped under pressure, its moisture making it stick and form up into little ramparts.

“Uh, sugarcube?” Applejack prompted. Rainbow Dash blinked, then realized exactly what it was that she’d been doing and grinned sheepishly before taking the final few steps to the table they were seated at. She did her best to ignore the odd look Luna was giving her, and took her own seat.

“Fluttershy said you wanted to see me about what happened to Twilight?” she said. Celestia nodded.

“You can perhaps imagine my concern at learning a few days after the fact that my student seems to have vanished,” the Princess said, smiling gently. “And that the only other pony who might know her location was comatose in the Everfree Forest. Have you recovered well?”

“From the coma thing? Yeah, I guess. Still kinda out of it.” She didn’t mention that she felt almost uncomfortable in her own skin, and that Equestria’s gravity had felt abnormally, irritatingly heavy since her return – and she somehow thought that mentioning assaulting the Queen of the Universe would be a bad idea. Well, a bad idea without explanation following immediately. She could justify it! Sort of. “So what did you want to know?”

“Well. We can start with what – exactly – happened to my student.” She set the tea down and focused her full attention on Rainbow Dash. “And after that, we can discuss why I was not informed immediately that Twilight Sparkle – my most faithful student and friend – had vanished.”

“Ah still think this ain’t going to help,” Applejack mumbled.

“Nevertheless, farmpony, our sister has decided to pursue it as an avenue of investigation,” Luna sighed. “And so we must let arguments lay still for the moment, that we may move onto more fruitful leads. Such as the fact that the hill they were on seems to have combusted at – “

“Let her speak, Luna,” Celestia murmured. The other alicorn fell silent, but that didn't stop her from shooting Celestia an annoyed glare before focusing on the situation at hand. All eyes were on Rainbow Dash.

“Okay,” she started, collecting her thoughts. Hopefully, she wouldn't sound too crazy. Not that she was crazy, of course, but in a bad light, some of what she'd done could be seen as...less than rational. “Well, I’d gotten to the party kind of late…”

She recounted the events of three nights ago, starting with why she hadn’t arrived on time for the party – apologizing to them all for it, as well, which Pinkie accepted on all their behalves in good grace – and moved on to the sighting of the weird meteor that had actually drawn her out, which drew a renewed look of interest from Luna.

“I canceled the meteor shower for that night due to poor conditions, and I scheduled no lone meteors besides,” she muttered, disturbed. “This is impossible.”

“Hush,” Celestia urged her. “Continue, Rainbow Dash.”

She skipped over the argument she had with Twilight – it wasn’t important, anyways – and quickly reached the part where the alien space-pony – the kelpie – had slammed into the hill and blew it up. Her friends, especially Applejack, listened in increasing disbelief as she told them how the thing had announced itself as Beta Centauri and claimed Twilight was her sister.

“You’re joking,” Applejack interrupted flatly. “Are you sure you’re okay, Dash? You must've got hit in the head pretty hard to be out like that.”

“Quiet, dear,” Rarity shushed her, but it was evident from her tone that she was just as skeptical.

“Sister, is that not the same being – “ Luna started, but Celestia held up a hoof and quieted her.

“Go on, Rainbow Dash,” she ordered softly. “What happened next?”

“Oh, please!” Cloud Ferry snorted, stepping out from behind Celestia. “She doesn’t want to hear this, Rainbow Dash.”

“Buck off,” she snarled. Everypony else recoiled; Celestia looked shocked.

“Rainbow Dash!” Rarity snapped, aghast.

“None of them believe you, Rainbow Dash.” Cloud Ferry smirked. She bent close to Celestia’s ear and whispered loud enough that everyone had to have heard her, “She’s a madmare, Princess!”

“I’m not crazy!” she protested, jumping out of her chair and slamming her forehooves down on the table, causing everything on it to hop an inch into the air. “Just leave me alone for once!”

“Absolutely mad…” Ferry sang, teleporting over next to Applejack. “The mud pony’s right, for once. You’re making absolutely no sense, and haven’t since you started this whole madcap one-mare rescue mission. Honestly, what possessed you to go charging off into the unknown to rescue a unicorn that you’ve barely known three years?”

“Just because you never had a friend in your life - !”

“Whoa, there, RD,” Applejack cautioned. “Calm down!”

“I’m sick of you!” Dash snapped. “I haven’t had a single day without you messing with my head since that freak dug around inside my memories!”

“Um…Rainbow Dash?” Fluttershy whispered. “You’re – “

“You were even crazy before she did that,” Ferry chuckled. “Rude, unsocialized, filthy – “

“What?”

“ – bird-brained – “

With a wordless shout of rage, Rainbow Dash hurled herself across the table at the unicorn, or tried to – her weight flipped the thing, dumping her on the ground and narrowly missing Celestia’s chin. Cloud Ferry cackled with glee.

“ ‘Queenslayer’ they’ll start calling you!” she laughed. “That’s two royals you’ve almost killed!”

Dash picked herself up and leapt for Cloud Ferry again, dodging AJ’s attempt to tackle and restrain her. Cloud Ferry laughed and danced out of the way, letting the pegasus sail past her, teleported out of the way again when Dash came back for a second strike, and positioned herself in front of Celestia when she came back for a third go. This time, instead of skidding harmlessly across the grass like before, Rainbow Dash slammed directly into Celestia, sending them both sprawling and forcing Luna to dodge into the path of another customer who was trying to avoid the spontaneous outbreak of chaos, and then that customer panicked and jumped into another seated customer, knocking them both over as well. Cloud Ferry laughed even harder.

“Insane!” she sang. “Mad as a hatter! Crazy!”

“I’m not crazy!”

“Crazy, crazy!” she chanted. “Almost two royals at once! A menace! They’ll never believe you now, dear – maybe this time, you can be forced to see sense before you get us both killed!”

And then, in full view of Rainbow Dash, Cloud Ferry smirked and disappeared into thin air, leaving her alone to face the fury of two Princesses and four mortified friends. She looked around at the destruction she’d caused, and giggled nervously – it was perhaps the single most insane sound she’d ever produced.

“I’m not crazy,” she insisted weakly. Unconsciously, she dug a hoof into the dirt again, some part of her marveling at how odd it felt.

Yeah, she was forced to admit, finally. I’m going crazy.

Chapter 7: Complications

Slamming doors on cloud houses were not common things. Slamming, after all, generally required two solid objects to hit each other with great force – and clouds, with few exceptions, are not solid things. Nevertheless, when Rainbow Dash glided in to a landing on her house and shoved the custom-crafted front door closed behind her, it slammed in its frame like the real thing, thanks to a fine lattice of rare stormcloud cirrus woven through the fluffy cumulus exterior. Seething with emotions, she dropped head first into the nearest couch in her living room and groaned.

I’m going crazy, she repeated. There is a unicorn past life living in my head and making me hallucinate.

It was night outside. After the debacle with the Princesses, she’d fled fast and far, eating an early dinner alone in Cloudsdale so she could dodge her friends’ embarrassment. She was going crazy, and she’d proven it, right in front of all of them. No way in Tartarus would they believe her story now! Applejack already probably thought it was complete hogwash, and that was before she’d gone and destroyed the place. The simmering feeling of shame Dash felt over the whole thing only worsened when she considered that AJ hadn’t seen Cloud Ferry behind her, and probably believed herself to have been the target of Dash’s outburst – and Rainbow Dash hadn’t even bothered to apologize before running! She almost felt sick.

A shudder ran through her body. She really felt sick.

Still shaking, she pulled her face out of the vaporous cushions of her sofa and staggered towards one of the doorways in the room, off in a corner; beyond it was a short hallway with a window, and another door into her kitchen, where she had some old medicinal herbs Fluttershy had forgotten when she’d come to treat Tank for some kind of turtle disease a week or so prior. Medicine worked for any species, right?

Slightly dazed, she paused in front of the window and found herself staring out across the lights of Ponyville at night. She was reminded passingly of the pillars in the Celestial Court. Maybe her window was just like those things – maybe what the window was showing wasn’t Ponyville at all!

She noted how everything looked wrong in the feeble light cast by Luna’s moon. Nothing like her moon. Too silvery, not nearly enough red; it made everything look pale and washed out, not vibrant like hers did!

A wave of nausea forced her to lurch towards the kitchen again. Once inside, she stumbled towards some cabinets, throwing them open and knocking everything aside that wasn’t what she was looking for. Granted, she wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for, but it would help – of that she was certain!

She found the herbs Fluttershy had left and immediately ignored them. They wouldn’t be any help at all. Some of the spices she used for Gryphonian food were on a counter, those could be of use – treating the symptoms, at least, which was about all she could hope to do until she knew the pathology of whatever was making her feel bad. Did she have anything for nausea? Not to calm it, but to make it worse? Maybe she’d eaten something bad at the restaurant earlier. She’d need a mortar and pestle, probably, to mix whatever she found, at least, probably best to search for that before the ingredients. Blenders worked like a mortar and pestle, right?

How do I know what to do?

She ransacked another cabinet, tossing odd items of kitchenware out of her way in her mad search. A metal bowl would do for a mortar, but she didn’t have anything to grind things with – at least, she was fairly certain a whisk wouldn’t work. Nor would a blender, that had been a mistake, that would just slice things very small.

Where do you keep it?

She collapsed against a wall as the shaking worsened. You’re another one, she realized with a sinking feeling. You’re another one of those memory-things Beta dredged up!

You’re going to die without my help. Let me help!

She sank to the floor. No! All of you, just leave me alone!

You need help!

We all die if you do!

Help you!

Help us!

Go outside. That one was louder, more distinct, and more insistent. Go outside!

Why? So you can do some kind of creepy moon-magic? she demanded.

Get out under the night sky, the voice insisted. It sounded much more familiar than the other new ones. Go! I can do nothing while you are inside.

A brief compulsion brought her back to her hooves, and she immediately made a beeline for her observation deck – the stairs were down another short hallway across the kitchen from the first (she was suddenly very glad she’d put stairs in) but it felt like she was marching across a desert, harried by half-seen shapes forming and vanishing in the corner of her eye. By the time she reached the bottom step, she could barely keep herself standing. By the time she reached the top step, she was practically dragging herself on her stomach, and a dull, burning pain had spread through every limb and much of her chest; her wings felt like every feather was being plucked out, repeatedly – pins and needles worse than anything she’d felt before. With a gasp, she shoved open the cloud trap door at the top of the stairs and hauled herself out onto the smooth plane of stratus she’d sculpted into a stargazing deck. As soon as the starlight hit her, the pain began to fade – and with it, the glimpses of other ponies chasing her.

She lay on her back, trying to catch her breath as she stared up at the stars. Warmth slowly returned to her limbs as the strange combination of numbness and pain was driven out by whatever had helped her survive. Long minutes of stillness passed as she recovered, before she rolled shakily to her hooves once more – and found herself face to face with someone she’d never expected to see again.

“Ghealach!” she exclaimed, surprised. “What are you – how did you get here?” Suspicion seized her. “Or am I just hallucinating again?”

“You are not hallucinating,” Ghealach assured her. “I bonded you to me. Certain secondary effects are implicit in that relationship – such as the ability for instantaneous communication over effectively infinite distances. That is the only reason you remain alive right now.”

“I was going to die?” she repeated incredulously. “From what?”

“Phoenix beak dust is a powerful magical reagent, Rainbow Dash,” she explained. “It is favored – and used solely – for its ability to store an effectively infinite amount of magical energy, and release it quickly under the correct stimulus. It is this property that makes it useful in astral projections and other high-demand spells…and it is this property that makes it a deadly poison. It will spontaneously absorb energy from high concentrations of magic – such as yourself.”

“Is that what was just happening?”

“The final stages of it, yes,” she confirmed gravely. “It will leave you a desiccated husk, if not dead then as good as such. I have bolstered your aura with a flow of my own power – it should be enough to stave off your inevitable death, but the powder will kill you, given enough time.”

“Isn’t there any way to get rid of it?” she demanded, trying to calm herself down. I’m going to die, she thought. Discord’s stupid prank is going to kill me!

“You could undergo a full lung and digestive track transplant,” Ghealach answered drily. “The powder has the unfortunate tendency to bond permanently to strong magic sources, much like iron filings to a strong magnet. It will not let go of you until you possess little more than the environmental level magic – and for a living being, that means death. Permanent death” – her voice became grave – “for even the soul has magic in excess.”

“Great,” she muttered, swallowing. “Just bucking – oh what do you want?”

“This is your fault,” Cloud Ferry hissed. A look of surprise crossed her features, and she vanished like she’d never been there. Dash caught sight of a glow fading in Ghealach’s eyes.

“I have figured out why I could not detect her arrival on my moon,” she said, her eyes focused still on where Ferry had been. “She is not real.”

“Gee, really?”

“She is a phantom,” Ghealach continued. “A personality rebuilding itself from shreds restored by a memory scan. While this may not be significant to you yet, Rainbow Dash, it is reassuring to me; when we overthrow the meddlers, I will resume the watch over Domhan – but I cannot do that in good conscience if my abilities have been degraded by millennia of disuse.” She turned her attention to the pegasus. “You did not mention your instability to me when you agreed to this.”

“I didn’t know you’d be doing some kind of freaky mind-sharing thing with me!” Dash protested. “I just thought you were going to help me get my friend back!”

“You were mistaken. I do not give aid for free,” she said. “You will help me end Beta Centauri’s reign, and I will help you recover your stolen friend. As these goals seem to overlap, I will exact no further price.”

“But being able to mess around in my head, too – “

“Is a secondary effect implicit in bonding you to me,” she repeated irritably. “There is nothing to be done about it now. Get used to it.”

Dash groaned with annoyance and flopped over onto her back again, intending to calm herself down with a bit of stargazing. She tried to pick out familiar constellations – the lopsided ‘W’ of the Queen, the expanse of the Bull, the two lines of stars that made up the Fish; there weren’t many that she knew, since she was still new at the hobby, unlike Twilight who probably knew the name of every star and celebrated each one’s birthday and wedding anniversary. For some reason, Ghealach found that thought to be funny.

“Where is Twilight, anyways?” she mumbled. “Where are you, even?”

“I am around Domhan,” she answered patiently. “And Domhan is in the Centaurus system, under the protection of Beta Centauri.”

“And where’s that?”

“You cannot see it from here. You are too far north – although, south of this world’s equator, it would always be visible at night.” She turned to look behind them. “We are not alone.”

Dash rolled over again and turned to see what Ghealach was talking about – and let out another annoyed groan. “What, am I going to start hallucinating you, too?”

Luna didn’t laugh. “Our interrogation of thee was left uncompleted earlier, Rainbow Dash.”

“Yeah, because I flew away!” she retorted. “Don’t you have a country to rule or something?”

“Who is this?” Ghealach asked curiously. “I am sure I’ve never met her before, but she seems…uncannily familiar.”

“This is Princess Luna,” she answered. “She’s in charge of the moon and night and stuff.”

“Now that we are both aware of this fact, may we proceed to more pressing matters?” Luna asked wryly. “We have only a short break in our schedule tonight, after all.”

“Look, we both know I wasn’t talking to you!” Dash snapped. “Don’t try to pretend I’m not crazy. It only makes me feel less sane.”

“Very well,” she conceded. “Though, perhaps, we could do more than try to make thee feel sane…Madness, after all, is under our purview, both directly – through inheritance from Discord – and indirectly – as the mad live in a state closer to a waking dream than reality. We are the patron of lunatics – which, now that we think about it, may be where that unfortunate word derives its origin from…”

“How depressing,” Ghealach deadpanned.

“Don’t you – “ Cloud Ferry tried to rematerialize, but another quick spell from Ghealach kept her in check.

“I am forced to agree with the phantom, however,” she admitted. “Any interference by her may be enough to sever my flow of strength to you – which, I repeat, is the sole thing keeping you alive.”

“Right,” Dash agreed. She turned back to Luna. “No thanks. Somepony messing with my head is what caused this. I don’t think I’m ready to have somepony else digging around in my head again just yet.”

“You draw from the phantom’s diplomacy with surprising ease, when pressed,” Ghealach observed.

“Hey, I can be diplomatic when I want to!” Dash said. “You don’t get into the Wonderbolts Academy without a lot of brown-nosing.”

Luna frowned, but nodded reluctantly. “Very well. As thou art the Bearer of Loyalty, we will respect thy wish. The matter of who did this to thee, however, remains unresolved.”

“Just because I had one insane outburst, doesn’t mean what I told you was – “

“According to thy story, it was Beta Centauri who kidnapped our sister’s student,” Luna spoke over her. “And she did this because she believed Twilight to be her own sister. As this being burst into our throne room while we were holding court, and – we believe the colloquial term is – ‘fried’ half a dozen of our guards earlier that same night, thou canst perhaps imagine we would be interested in hearing this account in full. Thine own subsequent vanishing and reappearance, comatose, in Discord’s castle, face-down in a ritual circle of an unknown substance, we would also very much enjoy hearing explained, so far as it is pertinent to the previous issue.” Her horn flickered as she sculpted a seat out of Dash’s house. “So. Speak.”

She spoke. She recounted – again – what had happened at the party, skimming over that portion slightly since she knew Luna had already heard of it and once again skipping her argument with Twilight as unimportant. She then told how she’d gone to Discord for help, due to his proximity, and got him to teach her how to perform an astral projection – which garnered a cocked eyebrow from the alicorn. Dash pressed on anyways, going over how she’d gone to visit Caelum, but omitting her visit to Ghealach’s moon at Ghealach’s suggestion.

“I do not know why she is so familiar,” she explained. “And I have not waged a millennia-long war with another immortal and held my own despite her power by being incautious. Until I know why, I would prefer such information to go unshared.”

When the story ended, Luna nodded thoughtfully. “And Caelum lied to thee about Twilight’s whereabouts?”

“Yep.”

“Didst thou learn the truth from her?”

“Uh…no.”

“Wouldst thou care to explain why not?” Luna asked slowly. Dash smiled sheepishly.

“I…may have attacked her and made her rip me to shreds.”

Luna facehooved. “Thou…attacked her?”

“Yeah.”

“The Queen of the Heavens?”

“She was trying to stop me from finding Twilight!”

“Rainbow Dash, Loyalty is a valuable trait, and one we used to embody as well,” Luna started, her voice growing more severe with each word, “but even at the closest point in our relationship with the Element of Loyalty, we would have stopped short of attempting to beat an answer out of a being infinitely more powerful than us!”

“Did you ever have to try to do that to save a friend?” Dash demanded. Luna was silent. “Yeah, I didn’t think so. She was lying, I knew it, and I had to rescue Twilight. I still have to rescue Twilight! As soon as I can, I’m going to try another projection and go to Beta personally to get her back.”

“Thou wilt do nothing of the sort,” Luna growled. “Idiot! Dost thou not realize how close thou camest to bringing the wrath of the most powerful being in the universe down upon the rest of thy friends and family?”

“She was – “

“That makes no difference,” she cut her off. “Thy part in the solving of this problem is at an end. We will take care of this matter in a more…in a less potentially cataclysmic manner. If thy display with Caelum is any indicator, thou going to Domhan personally may be enough of an international incident to spark the first interstellar war Equus would ever experience!”

Rainbow Dash remained cowed into silence by the Princess’s fury as she continued. “And dost thou realize what thou hast done with thine astral projection, Bearer? If thou art telling the truth – and we have no reason to believe thou’rt not, unfortunately – thou didst use an illicit, poisonous substance to perform the ritual. This alone, without the international incident thou hast caused, would be enough to earn thee jail time if it were solely up to us – “

“I was trying to save – “ she protested, but Luna ignored her.

“ – but past that, it is a veritable miracle thou art still standing,” she pressed on. “Powdered phoenix beak is – “

“ – a potent magical poison, stores a lot of energy, could leave me drained of all magic and kills my soul,” Dash interrupted, finally managing to get a word in. “I know!”

“Thou art aware, of course, that thou art one-sixth of Equestria’s best defense against outside threats?” Luna asked. “That, if thou wert to die, we would be far more vulnerable to foes such as Sombra and Discord? And that thou hast essentially guaranteed thine own imminent death?”

“I – “

“Thou wilt be under guard,” she concluded. “Thou wilt be placed under house arrest until we are able to untangle this mess.”

“What?”

“Thou hast brought this upon thyself, with thine own actions.” Silently, a pair of bat-winged guards materialized from the night shadows and stood next to Luna. “Ensure the Bearer of Loyalty remains confined to her home. We will have a chirurgeon dispatched to see if anything can be done about the contamination.”

“This is ridiculous!” Rainbow Dash protested. “I’m the best chance Twilight’s got for getting home!”

“Art thou really?” the Princess asked sardonically.

“I can’t possibly do any worse than you or Princess Celestia!”

“Your temper will get you into trouble,” Ghealach warned. “She is unaware of my presence. You are not helpless. House arrest or not, I will not allow my agent to remain trapped and useless to me.”

Dash gritted her teeth in frustration, but she knew Ghealach was right. Arguing now would likely only worsen matters. “Fine.”

“Thou mayest have a point, though,” Luna grudgingly admitted. “Perhaps a messenger more neutral in Beta Centauri's eyes would be best. We shall dispatch Discord to negotiate – he hath proven himself to be reliable in matters of diplomacy.”

“Oh, so Discord’s completely fine, but me – “

“Discord is not the one who nearly destroyed Equestria most recently,” she pointed out. She blinked. “As odd as that may be to say.”

“This – “

“As much as we would enjoy debating the particulars of thine actions, Rainbow Dash, we have other matters to attend to this night.” She turned to the guards. “You will be relieved come morning. She is not to leave her house – are we understood?”

“Yes, Princess!” they confirmed.

Before Dash could say anything else, Luna turned back to her. “Thou seemest familiar,” she murmured, almost to herself. “But we cannot place why. Not familiar in that we have known each other before, but…” She frowned. “A doctor will be dispatched by our orders immediately. The matter of Twilight will be dealt with, worry not. Good night to thee.”

Rainbow Dash could only watch as the Princess beat her wings and rose into the midnight sky, and soon she was only visible by the occlusion of the stars as she moved. She was tempted to test the guards – to fly fast and far and see if they could stop her from leaving whenever she wanted, really – but one look at the pair, agile yet strong stallions both, with relaxed confidence and unconscious poise that hinted at lightning reflexes and years of training, was enough to cure her of that impulse.

Grumbling, she pulled open the trap door again and stormed down the stairs, slamming the thing behind her. Despite her foul mood, she grinned as she heard the pained yelp of one of the bat-winged ponies as his hoof was caught by the slamming storm-woven panel. Then, her grin faded as some fragment of her subconscious left in the wake of Beta’s “scan” – more like a spike driven through her own consciousness to crack it like an eggshell and let the white and yolk ooze out, really – corrected her. It’s a longma, the fragment insisted. Not a ‘bat-winged pony’!

Just leave me alone! she pleaded mentally. Why won’t any of you bucking phantoms just leave me alone?

The castle hallways had been uncomfortable after the scene in the throne room – not due to any change in dimensions or occupancy, but because word seemed to spread at lightning speed through the servants, and kelpies dropped into hurried bows and curtsies whenever Twilight passed them. Even guards, where there were any guards, nodded their heads in deference as she and Beta made their way through the dry portion of the castle towards the “observatory”. Windows had been more common, giving picturesque views of the castle coral gardens, but Twilight still hadn’t been prepared for the view that greeted her when she and her fellow queen entered the bubble-topped tower projecting out of the sea floor, and she saw the stars.

They weren’t really stars, she supposed, looking out through the unmarred glass and blue-green water at the glittering lights of a distant underwater city, but they came closer to matching her…their…the stars’ beauty on a moonless night. It was a metropolis, that was certain, on the scale of Canterlot. Maybe even larger. Lights spread like creeping vines in thin ribbons up rises in the seabed, hung from globes floating above the city, and covered the ground like kudzu. From their twinkling, she could make out the shapes of pyramids, towers, and squat houses; walls were outlined with shimmering golden luminance, encompassing the city and revealing the height they were at – she could see over the walls from this vantage point!

“Here we are!” Beta declared cheerfully as they entered, stepping quickly aside to let Twilight in through the door. “Maybe not what you were expecting, but I like it a lot more than watching everyone else dancing around up in the sky. Most of them don’t even have planets of their own – irresponsible gasballs.” She glanced upwards unconsciously. “Don’t tell them I said that, please.”

“You wouldn’t have said that back when I left,” Twilight murmured, trotting slowly closer to the bubble, fascinated by the sight of the city. She’d never seen a major population center from above before; she’d been too unadventurous as a filly to climb to the peak of the Canterhorn, and too heavy as a mare for most pegasi to carry into the sky for an aerial tour. Then, of course, she’d left, and Ponyville from above at night was…unimpressive, to put it gently. “You were jealous of them then, I think.”

“I’ve changed a lot,” Beta admitted. “For the better, though! All for the better.”

“What city is that?” she asked. Mentally, she tried to devise some sort of method to estimate the population by the number of lights she could count, but gave up once she realized the number of lights per building varied at random between structures. “It’s huge!”

“ ‘An Cathair’, everyone calls it,” she replied. She giggled. “Yep. ‘The City’. Original, huh? I didn’t name it, that was the founding family, back before we were Queens and Proxi…yep! They were original then, and they’re just as original now too! ‘New’ this, named-after-a-major-nearby-body-of-water that…”

“What happened to Proxi?” Alpha asked curiously. She glanced away from the city, and realized Beta seemed to be trying to hold back tears. Concerned, she stepped away from the window and enfolded her sister in a quick wing-hug. The feeling of feathers rasping against feathers was almost unfamiliar.

“Can we maybe not talk about it?” Beta pleaded. “This – this was supposed to be a happy day! I found you again, I brought you home again, I introduced you to the court and they seemed to like you…can't we talk about this some other time?”

“After you tell me what happened to her, sister.”

“She’s still up there,” Beta answered after a few seconds. “She’s still stuck up there and can never come back down.” Before Alpha could respond, she pressed on. “I saw the spell you used to defeat her, Alpha. You forgot a few runes.”

Twilight blinked and folded her wing back in. “I forgot a few – no! I can’t, I had that – she had that planned – “ With a frustrated groan, she pulled away, the residual moisture in her coat being enough to eliminate its super-glue-like properties, and started pacing. “She had that planned, down to the last second, the last rune! I can remember” – a vision of a ring of standing stones, new and freshly carved, flashed through her mind – “I can remember what it was supposed to look – no, I didn’t have enough time – “ Another groan, and she dropped onto her rump. “This – she was supposed to get loose almost – but I guess that’s probably for the best. I’m…I’m sorry, Beta. I – she didn’t know.”

“Are you okay?” she asked worriedly.

“I’m completely fine!” Twilight answered quickly – too quickly to be wholly believable. “I just – it’s weird, Beta. There’s me, and then there’s Alpha in here too, and sometimes the dominant personality switches between the two of us.” Irritated, she dropped her head against the side of the glass bubble, and tried to ignore how strange not having a horn to impede her progress was. “I’d say I was crazy, but I’ve been crazy before and it was nothing like this. The Equestrian Royal Psychological Society makes a living off of making distinctions between forms of insanity, though, maybe I should have actually read some of their ‘science’ publications. A working knowledge of psychology like I have in almost everything else might have been useful now.”

“You just need some time to adjust, that’s all!” Beta responded with a smile. “We’re going to go on a tour of the major cities on the surface soon, so everyone knows you’re back and the nobility can get to know you. I can postpone it…say, three days? So you can rest and try to figure that out. I’d offer more help, but – “

“But you can’t,” she finished sourly. “Thanks for nothing.”

“Maybe the tour will help take your mind off of it,” she suggested, trying to cheer Twilight up. “I kept a few of your old favorite spots preserved over the years – like that hill you always sat on to watch the sunrise! It’s in the middle of the biggest nature preserve on Domhan. Or the Coral Gardens – I’m not entirely sure what you were trying to do with those polyps in the pit, but I kept crossbreeding them like you were doing – “

“Did you record any of the results?”

“ – no,” she concluded sheepishly. “Should I have?”

Twilight sighed. “It would have made things easier for me, but I guess I can retrace the generations and derive some characteristics of past polyps from their current states…it’ll give me something to do, at least.” Something to distract me from the fact that I’m partially insane and further from home than any pony before me ever had the ability to be…

“Well, you have anything you request,” Beta said. “You’re a Queen again. They’ll do anything you ask them to – the servants, I mean. The nobility might need some more convincing, but that’s what the tour’s for! I’m sure they’ll like you.”

“I hope so.” She shuddered at the thought of playing politics with Domhani nobility – if they were anywhere near as insipient as Equestria’s nobility, she was sure the trip would be intolerable. Trying to ignore her feeling of dread, she returned her attention to the twinkling lights of the glowing city and pretended for a moment that she was back in Orion, waiting during a lull in the music of the spheres for her chance to rejoin the dance. The thought of reminiscing about Ponyville only occurred to her a moment later, and strangely, it seemed almost…unappealing.

Author's Note

One-day delay was due to rewriting a good portion of this chapter to be better - just "better" in general, more fully developed, more realistic, etcetera (it was Dash's conversation with Luna). Unfortunately, this will likely mean some delays from the daily schedule I've been keeping for future chapters, as I had a two-chapter buffer that I must now rewrite to reflect the the new story canon.

Thanks for reading so far, and once again thanks for the chapterly feedback!

Chapter 8: Diplomacy Fails Once More

“Nothing’s wrong with my eyes!” Rainbow Dash grimaced and held a hoof between her eyes and the annoyingly bright werelight the doctor – “chirurgeon” as Luna had called him, though he assured her that he did, in fact, possess a modern, relevant and generally accepted medical degree – insisted on shining into them. “Stop that!”

The light snapped off, blinking out of existence and finally giving her a moment’s rest. Reflex tests, thaumatoaural scans, blood tests, a urine test – she hadn’t had a free minute since the doctor had arrived with reinforcements from the Day Guard at dawn! It was noon now, and she was thoroughly sick of the repetitive and exhaustive battery. It didn’t help that Ghealach had not dematerialized at all during it, and even now stood in the far corner of her living room, watching with a cool gaze that revealed nothing about her thoughts.

“And would you say something, already?” she asked irritably, looking at the Dust Sentinel. The doctor glanced in that direction, before seeming to recall whatever briefing he’d been given on her “hallucinations” and returning his attention to the smooth, enchanted stone tablet that held long strings of numbers that were probably medically relevant somehow, even if Dash couldn’t interpret them. “You’ve just been staring at me all morning! Do you have a plan yet?”

“If I did, I would not be discussing it in the presence of this…pony,” she replied slowly. “When it must be executed, it must be executed quickly, and with a minimum of interference from your well-meaning jailers.”

“They already think I’m crazy.”

“But a plan of escape composed by a madmare is still a plan of escape,” she pointed out. “One does not run a lunatic asylum by ignoring the patients’ attempts to break out.”

She had a point. “When can you tell me, then?”

“Once you are alone, or nearly so,” she said. “I am allowing for the fact that you may have questions on the particulars that could reveal them to eavesdroppers, otherwise a direct mind-to-mind connection would be a secure enough medium for sharing it.”

“If this guy keeps testing me, we’re probably not going to get a better chance to talk.” She glared at the doctor for a moment. He tried to ignore her; it was obvious that he was uncomfortable. “I think Luna sent him to spy on me.”

“It is quite possible,” Ghealach agreed. “At the very least, she was considerate enough of your mental faculties not to send a psychoanalyst. Medical professionals used in espionage applications may be obvious, but it is difficult to get more blatant than that.”

The doctor cleared his throat. “Well, I think I’ve done just about enough here.”

“Great.” She rolled her eyes. “So, am I healthy enough to go try finding Twilight again?”

“If you were permitted by the Princess, I would say mostly,” he answered. “Your reflexes are within pegasus normals, your eyesight is normal, blood test doesn’t reveal anything imminently worrying. In terms of your aura, I did find something worrying there, as well as an anomaly in its composition…”

His horn flickered, and a blue sphere coalesced in the air next to him. Another pulse of magic, and the sphere updated – it became marbled silver and sky blue, swirls of grey intermingling and fading into streaks of blue, with a single large dimple deforming one side of it. Ribbons of white also were evident, flowing like milk in a globe of seawater. It was fascinating to watch, its surface constantly shifting and changing, and from the short period of time she observed it Rainbow Dash thought she noticed the proportion of silver increasing slightly.

“This is a representation of your aura,” the doctor explained. He held the tablet closer to his head for a second, his eyes tracking across the symbols, before making the dimple on the sphere deeper. “The worrying thing I found was this dimple. I believe I can easily link that to the reason I was called here – your magic is being drained by phoenix beak powder, am I correct?”

“She didn’t tell you before you came?”

He smiled wanly. “I was awoken at three AM by a pair of burly pegasi with bat wings, told the Princess had requisitioned my services to deal with the case of an insane and important pegasus in a discreet fashion, and shuttled here before I could have my morning coffee. I was given a short briefing on the way, and was half asleep for most of it.”

“Yeah, it’s that stuff – which I already knew.” She frowned at the sphere. “What’s that silver stuff?”

“That is the anomaly,” he answered. “Normally, in these representations, pegasus magic is shown in blue. Ideally, your aura would register nothing but pure blue – which is a gross oversimplification, as every individual’s magical signature is unique, and everypony’s aura is contaminated with trace amounts of foreign magic throughout the day that is subsequently purged by autonomic processes before it can – “

Dash yawned.

The doctor nodded sheepishly. “Anyways, I wouldn’t be too concerned with surface contamination of this kind – the white is unicorn magic, and could indicate something as simple as being magically manhandled by a unicorn recently; I’m not sure what the silver is, but it’s not black, so it is known to us – but, well…”

The sphere split in half, revealing that the marbling went deeper than the surface – far deeper. Tendrils of foreign magic stretched all the way from the exterior of the orb to its painfully blue core, suspended like ink dropped in clear water. She winced, sensing that this probably wasn’t a good thing.

“It’s deep contamination. Extremely deep,” he continued. “And the majority of it is by a spectrum of magic I don’t recognize. It isn’t too severe yet – otherwise, you’d actually be exhibiting symptoms of the contamination…which, the primary contaminant being unknown, are impossible to predict.”

Ghealach’s eyes lit up. “He is detecting my magical aid to you.”

“What kind of symptoms might happen?” Dash asked.

“Well, if it were a known spectrum, I could tell you, but…” He shrugged helplessly.

“If it was unicorn magic? You said some of that’s there.”

“Not nearly enough to be worrying,” he clarified, “but if it was the primary contaminant, rudimentary ability with telekinetic magic might be possible, as well as an impairment in flight ability.”

“Basically, it would turn me into a unicorn,” she summarized.

“A gross oversimplification, again, but in essence that is correct.” He chuckled unsurely. “I suppose we could figure out what the silver magic indicates by draining your native magic and letting the contaminant take over, but that might have some detrimental effects.”

The front door opened to admit Princess Luna and a pair of Day guards. She looked like she’d just eaten something particularly foul, but her face smoothed quickly. “Chirurgeon, thy report?”

“See for yourself, Princess,” he answered, dipping into a shallow bow. Luna trotted over to the aura representation, her eyes already widening in shock as she spotted the silver intrusions. She cast an appraising eye over Rainbow Dash before turning to the doctor again.

“Is her body holding out well against the powder’s effects?”

“If you hadn’t told me she was lethally poisoned, I would never have guessed it,” he said. “I did avoid physical contact as you had advised, though, despite my observations.”

“Good. Thou art dismissed. Guards – prithee, escort him home.”

The longma waited for the doctor to pack his small assortment of equipment – he’d known enough diagnostic spells that he could travel light – before ushering him towards the door. Luna waited until they’d shut it, and she was alone with Rainbow Dash – so she believed – before casting a visualizer spell herself and summoning a pair of orbs into existence. One sphere was Dash’s – silver and blue and white – but the other was both larger and of different colors, shimmering gold and silver in equal amounts. Dash assumed that one was Luna’s.

“We are no fool, Rainbow Dash,” Luna began. “No mortal pegasus could withstand Caelum’s fury alone. We had believed thine Element protected thee, but it seems thou hadst other help.”

“Does she always speak as if she were raised in the Anteastral era?” Ghealach asked.

“What?”

“From what I can glean from your memories, your equivalent would be the Classical Period,” she explained patiently.

“She was,” Dash answered simply. Ghealach nodded.

“Focus upon me,” Luna ordered sternly. Black shadows seemed to surround them until all that Dash could see was the alicorn and a thin strip of cloudy floor between them – and Ghealach, who remained unobscured by the darkness, smiling smugly; Luna showed no sign of noticing. “We know thou didst not seize on our own Moon for life. We would have felt it. And yet, thine aura is deeply laced with lunar magic – thou hast a link with a lunar body, somewhere, and thus we can conclude thou didst not return immediately home to Equestria after Caelum scattered thee.”

“Do not answer,” Ghealach countermanded. “She cannot know.”

“She’s Princess – “

“She. Cannot. Know,” she repeated, with unnecessary slowness. “There are too many unknowns centered around her for us.”

“Us?”

“You are bonded to me until such time as we agree to separate,” Ghealach reiterated. “You are an agent. An appendage. Yes, us.”

“An appendage – “

“Focus,” Luna hissed. “In what other matters didst thou involve thyself, knowingly or unknowingly?”

“Nothing!” she shouted. “I didn’t involve myself in any other matters. I woke up and someone healed me so I could get home. She answered a few questions about Twilight and where she was. That’s it!”

“I hope you aren’t trying to weasel out of your side of the deal,” Ghealach said warningly.

“I’m not! I never agreed to anything – you – “

“Silence,” she interrupted. “Do not acknowledge me. She will grow suspicious of your ‘insane ranting’ if it seems too much on topic.”

“Then stop – “

Luna closed her eyes and counted silently to ten.

The spirit of Chaos and Disharmony, on a diplomatic mission. Ridiculous!

Discord adjusted the cuff links on his vest and straightened slightly, ensuring that his head was firmly planted on the dirt and he was forming a perfect ninety degree angle with the ground outside the front door of Castle Cahair's surface portion. His shifting seemed to function as some sort of signal for the array of ballista-kelpies manning the walls above the gatehouse; a fusillade of clicks filled the air, as if he’d hurled that infernal rabbit of Fluttershy’s into a room full of mousetraps again, while the siege operators drew the strings of their weapons back by mechanical means. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have stood for such a hostile welcome, and would have probably magicked their scorpions into a different type of scorpion altogether – something that glowed in the dark and stung, probably – but now he was supposed to be “pleasant” or some such nonsense.

The nerve! he thought once more. Sending a spirit of Chaos on a diplomatic mission! And after Rainbow Dash did such a good job of explaining how it was all my fault she failed with Caelum, probably. Ridiculous!

Granted, it was not the first time he’d been sent on such a menial task. Old Sun-Butt had dispatched him to patch things up with a berserk Gryphonian warlord and a tribe of ornery zebras not last week, and by the time he’d been through with them they were a promising a cappella group with designs on the Inharness Musical Cup! Listeners had described their sound as “unique” and “horrendously discordant”, and yet despite the bright future they had ahead of them thanks to his help, he hadn’t been allowed to continue on with them.

He sighed. If the Elements of Boredom hadn’t been on-call as a stick big enough to not need a carrot to be dangled before him, he’d probably have just ignored Celly’s orders to return to Canterlot, and would have taken them to fame and fortune as the vanguard of a daring new musical style, but no. Instead of training singers, he was forced to re-forge his own ball and chain! Ridiculous! And yet, he had to admit, it was a masterful bit of vengeance on the part of Lulu…if she could pull it off. And since pulling it off depended entirely on the cooperation of the scheme’s victim in a knowledgeable way, Discord estimated its chance of success to be about equal to a snowball’s chance in a habanero-pepper-soufflé.

He yawned and checked his pocket sundial. Half past thirteen – as auspicious a time as any to negotiate with a deranged acquaintance for the return of the being she believed to be her sister. If only she’d open her door, they could conclude the inevitable shouting match before breakfast.

He spotted a new face appear on the battlements overhead, framed nicely by his legs and silhouetted by the low gray cloud cover. It looked like some kind of robotic chicken, frankly, the way its feathers glinted in the cloud-scattered daylight. A scar ran down the left side of its face, tracing a bald line from the top of its crested head to the tip of its beak and detouring through what had once been an eye.

“I am Thunderclaw Rookwind, of the Domhanane Royal Guard,” he introduced himself in a voice that sounded remarkably like gravel in a woodchipper. “State your name and business.”

“Mention to your illustrious sticky leader the Day of Candy-Striped Sun!” Discord called back up. “I believe she’ll know who I am.”

“Oh, she knows who you are,” Thunderclaw clarified. “I, however, do not.”

“Puzzling. With a voice like yours, I’d have expected you to be interviewing with me for a spot in the Halfbreed Howlers.” The bird cocked an eyebrow – its only eyebrow, really – at that.

“Primarily, I would like to know who it is I am about to order my artillerybeings to fill full of four-meter shafts of splintery metal-tipped wood,” he said. “I consider it rude to not know the name of the foe I order the death of. I have a photo album somewhere around here with pictures I took with every criminal put to death in the last three decades…all of them signed, too, even if some of the signatures aren’t particularly nice.”

“You seem to be a pleasant enough fellow to hang with, though I regrettably lack the time,” Discord replied diplomatically. “I am an envoy from the world of Equestria, here to meet with her gluelikeness, Beta Centauri of the dreary world of Domhan.”

“Do all the folk of your world have such an indecent manner of sitting?”

“Not typically, no. We are in the southern hemisphere, though.”

Thunderclaw patiently waited for an explanation. When none was forthcoming, he grunted and hopped away from the crenellations, with much rattling and banging. Discord had forgotten how noisy Domhan could be. “You may fire when ready, soldiers.”

“There is no need,” Beta Centauri said, pulling the front gate inwards and stepping outside. “I will deal with him myself.”

“Beta Centauri! It’s been a long time,” Discord boomed, teleporting behind her and draping an arm across her back. He steered her back towards the inside of the castle as he tried to continue speaking. “Three millennia? Four millennia? I’ve never been much of a ‘dates’ immortal – “

The world shifted, and he found himself inside a rather impressive throne room – or it would have been impressive, for a pony. He’d been there before, tasted all the walls, left poorly-drawn stick figures on all the columns; it had ceased to awe him even before he’d arrived the first time. Light left constantly fluctuating patterns across the floor at the end of the room across from the throne where Beta sat. He was directly in front of the star, still suspended upside-down in midair, though his lion arm remained draped gently around Beta’s shoulders.

“What do you want, Discord?” Beta asked wearily. Why, from the sound of her voice, Discord almost thought she wasn’t happy to see him! “I have important issues to deal with. Make this quick, please.”

“What, no time to catch up on history?” he retorted, disappointment practically dripping from his words, which is to say that none of it stuck to the words themselves and made them sound quite offended. “The Day of Candy-Striped Sun? Those hip-hop dancing lessons I gave Proxi and Alpha? I’m sure Alpha would have loved to see me again – we hit it off so well last time, after all!”

“Alpha doesn’t want anything to do with you!” she snapped, leaping to her hooves. “I thought she made that clear after that tangled mess of blunders and poor judgment that got you forcibly expelled from the Stellar Court!”

“It was all in good fun!” he protested. “Everyone enjoyed it right up to the end – which, I’ll admit, was probably poorly timed.”

“Poorly timed?” she repeated disbelievingly. “There is never a right time to try to get my younger sister into bed with you!”

“You say it as if it weren’t meant figuratively!”

“It certainly wasn’t figurative when you asked Caelum, too!”

“She’d seemed amenable,” he offered in way of defense.

“She – “

“I will admit, I was a bit of a wild child in those days.” In a flash of light, Discord was suddenly seated in an exceedingly comfortable recliner next to a roaring fireplace, a monocle over his eye, a top hat on his head and a cup of warm tea in his claw, which he sipped from distinguishedly (careful to not get any stuck in his drooping white walrus moustache). “But, dear Beta Centauri, I have reformed! I’ve given up my life of random escapades for a slightly less random life of random escapades, settled down with a mare – “

“Another?”

“ – and achieved a respectable position of trust and authority in the government.”

“Not my government!”

“Politicians are all the same,” he responded dismissively, his disembodied arm waving her protest away. “I’m so incredibly reformed, so deeply, thoroughly, and unrecognizably changed, the bureaucrats around Canterlot didn’t even realize my first day on the job was satire! I think some of them are still half-hoping I’ll arrive in a suit and tie and start filling out paperwork again.”

Beta rubbed at her temples, seemingly trying to ignore the fuzzy lion’s foreleg around her neck. “Why are you here, Discord? Why are you here, really?”

The chair vanished, and Discord was dressed in the uniform of a Canterlot constabulary officer – though he kept the top hat and monocle to add a touch of incongruent class to the ensemble. “I have been dispatched by her Majesty, her Grace, her exceeding Beauty, her ever-just Imperial – “

“Get on with it.”

“ – Princess Moony-Butt of Equestria, to retrieve the pony known as Twilight Sparkle, who hereafter shall be referred to as “Sparkle-Butt” – “

“Can we not?”

“ – from the terrible clutches of the Sticky Queens of Domhan,” he frowned thoughtfully at the empty thrones to Beta’s right and left, seeming to just now notice them. He amended, “Though there seems to be only one of those around. Should I wait?”

“You know precisely why there is only one of us here. Let’s get this over with,” Beta sighed. “I know of no such pony in my court or in my dungeons. There are, in fact, no ponies whatsoever on Domhan at all.”

“Beta, I am a master of governmental satire. Do not attempt to play legalese with me,” he said scornfully. “She is here on this world, and we of the Equestrian Diplomatic Corps – I’m fairly sure Celly made that up in a futile attempt to placate us – “

“Why the sudden shift to the royal ‘we’?”

“No, no – by ‘we’ I mean myself and my arm around your shoulders.” The arm saluted proudly. Discord conjured up a badge for it for its troubles. “I, personally, had reservations about his appointment, but even if he was a bit of an armful at first he pulls his own weight and more now, and I must admit him lending a hand at crucial moments is what allows me to create my best work.”

Beta’s hoof migrated from her temple to the bridge of her nose. “There is no one by the name of ‘Twilight Sparkle’ here in my castle.”

“Ah, but is there anyone by the name of Alpha Centauri here?”

Beta’s mane flared. “I believe I already said that Alpha doesn’t want anything to do with you!”

Discord teleported to the Queen’s side and rejoined his arm. “Come now, Beta, surely Alpha’s a big girl now and can make her own decisions on who she wants to see? If Twilight truly is her, then certainly a little time to visit with her old friends wouldn’t be enough to make her stay in Equestria now – not after tasting power and the perks of being a star once more?”

“It is too soon,” Beta countered. “She’s only just got here. Too much could go wrong by letting her return to Equestria.”

“I understand.” He nodded sagely. “You’re feeling a bit – overprotective, shall we say, of your older sister, especially after two thousand years of separation. You seem to have some kind of self-esteem issue and don’t think she would willingly choose Domhan over the life you kidnapped her from – or, more relevantly, you over said past life. You’re eager to restore a sense of normalcy that has been absent for too long, and is just now starting to return, hm?”

She sighed. “Perhaps you are right, Discord…which is a sentence I never believed I would say on a serious matter. She is my sister, and perhaps simple exposure will be enough to return her memory and cement her return - but she hasn't put down enough roots yet! In a year's time, maybe. I…I will consider it then, if Alpha is amenable. Tell Luna I will – “

She leaned back, and the air was filled with the ear-splitting sound of air escaping a whoopie cushion.

Rainbow Dash’s heated argument with herself, and Luna’s impatient waiting for it to end, were both interrupted by the sound of ripping air as space-time deformed violently. Trailing smoke, a large mass flew out of the heart of the spatial distortion and bowled them both over, pinning Luna to the wall and knocking Rainbow Dash aside like a bowling pin. Splayed out on the cloudy barrier, the shape was now easily recognizable as Discord, covered in soot and smelling faintly of sardines. Luna peeled him off the wall with magic, freeing herself and dropping him to the floor.

“Well?” she said. “Hast thou made any headway, Discord?”

The draconequus picked himself up off the floor. One horn was still on fire slightly; he pinched it out before opening his mouth and letting out a burst of smoke with a wheezing cough. Luna gave him an unamused look.

“Diplomacy,” Discord declared solemnly, smoke escaping his mouth with every word, “has failed us.” And then he crumbled away into a pile of black ash.

“What dost thou mean, ‘diplomacy has failed us’?” Luna demanded. “Thou didst seem most competent in defusing the border dispute Celestia had thou solvest within the last fortnight!”

A mouth formed itself out of the ash, accompanied by a pair of eyes and a miniature rendition of Canterlot Castle. “Well, this time it didn’t work. She’s being quite unreasonable, as my current condition indicates.”

“Thy current condition is of thine own choice and is as indicative of Beta’s mood as the price of antiquated mathematical equipment in Neighpon is of the weather within thy castle,” Luna deadpanned, though her shock still found room to edge around her cool exterior and make its presence known. “What has happened?”

“I presented your case reasonably and eloquently, and forsooth I was shot dead,” he answered brusquely. “I honestly cannot tell why her temper – and her mane, for that matter – flared up like that. Disgraceful really.”

“Yes. Truly.” She hummed thoughtfully.

“Can I give it a shot?” Rainbow Dash asked hopefully. “I knew Discord wouldn’t work out!”

“The issue is no longer of thy concern,” the alicorn replied irritably. “Thou art in no state to negotiate for the release of Twilight Sparkle.”

“The doctor said – “

“The chirurgeon was mistaken,” she interrupted. “And Beta will not be made more amenable to reason through aggression and harsh demands. We must consult with our sister on how to pursue this further – do not attempt to leave. The guards will remain.”

When the flash of light from her departure had faded, Dash glared angrily at Discord. “This is your fault, isn’t it?”

“Why, Rainbow Dash, what ever do you mean?” he asked innocently. “Are – are you suggesting I sabotaged the negotiations? Why would I do such a thing? I am, after all” – the ash flowed up and sculpted itself back into the draconequus’s familiar form, taking on the hue and texture of living flesh once more – “reformed!”

“You said it before! Since Twilight’s gone, you don’t have to do anything they say!”

“You actually listened?” he gasped. “Be cautious, Rainbow Dash – in your madness you are straying dangerously close to becoming decent.”

Dash made a sound of frustration. “You purposefully sabotaged it!”

“I’m quite certain I have no idea what you mean,” he yawned. “Beta Centauri’s reaction to a juvenile prank is nothing I could have affected.”

“It’s something you could have started!”

He shrugged. “Fair enough. Her thin skin, though, is absolutely not one of my problems. I have far loftier goals and concerns – such as how, exactly, you plan to make a fool of yourself this time.”

“What?”

“Perhaps I was mistaken,” he said. “But, if I were you – I’m not, or at least, not right now – and my friend was missing, and I knew where she was and how to get there, and I had already attempted to brutalize the mare responsible for the creation of the heavens to get her back, I wouldn’t hesitate to plan my escape and eventual rescue of said friend.” He grinned and shot down through the floor, vanishing in a puff of cloud save for his mouth, which seemed to have gotten stuck.

“Just a thought,” his mouth added slyly, before it too vanished. Rainbow Dash stared thoughtfully at his point of exit for a few moments before turning to Ghealach.

“So, do you have a plan yet, or am I going to have to come up with one?” she asked impatiently. Ghealach shook her head.

“There is no need for you to do that,” she answered. “Of course I have one ready. It does, of course, rely heavily on your ability to secure more ground phoenix beak.”

Dash sighed. “What do I have to do?”

Author's Note

Apologies for the delay, minor writer's block combined with major calculus test to extend the wait. I'm not incredibly ecstatic about this chapter, but I couldn't think of how to improve it too much and so published it with the working assumption that it was simply a case of procrastination. Edits possible (unlikely in absence of negative critical feedback), suggestions welcome.

Thanks for the favorites and such in the interim!

Chapter 10: Unexpected Exile

Her re-entry into the world was every bit as violent as her brief departure. Space-time folded to disgorge Rainbow Dash and the rest of the unpleasant contents of the bubble into a tree-rimmed glade, with enough force to carve a nice crater into the soft earth. She spat dirt out as she rose back to her hooves and shook her wings off. Overhead, the sky was tinged slightly with the fading colors of the sunset – she must have napped for longer than she’d planned earlier.

“I cannot teleport you closer to his castle,” Ghealach informed her coolly. She was standing a few feet away, her face expressionless.

“Let me guess,” Dash said. “Too much power?”

“Too much interference,” she corrected. “I do not know what is wrong with this place, this…forest, though I hesitate to name this horrific mess of knotted ley lines and warped energy such a familiar name as that, but it is like trying to move though a minefield blindfolded. To attempt to transport you any deeper would have the same chance of getting you to his castle as getting you to the surface of Celestia.”

“…What?”

“Your sun,” she explained patiently. “Celestia. Sol.”

“She is the sun?” she asked, confused. Ghealach nodded.

“I had thought you would be aware of this.” She shrugged. “It is of no consequence. Discord’s castle is less than a mile from this glade – which I chose due to what I anticipated would be the lack of anything larger than you that wanted to eat you.”

“Thanks.” She shivered at the thought of being deposited outside a manticore’s den. “Which way do I go?”

“West,” she answered. “Point yourself in the direction of the setting sun.”

“I know which way west is, thanks, Ghealach,” she grumbled, starting west at a pace slightly faster than a trot but just shy of a gallop, careful to avoid stepping on sticks as she crossed the field – she was far too exposed to even think about making noise. “Is there any chance of you losing contact with me?”

“If what you are asking is if there is a chance you may die from the powder, the answer is no,” she replied, to Dash’s relief. The ferns on the rim of the clearing rustled as she pushed through them; she had to contort herself a little to avoid breaking a dead branch on the other side, but she made it through quietly enough. Past the ferns were more ferns, and then more trees – gnarled and twisted and perforated by rotted holes, with roots that almost looked like they wanted to grab hold of her and yank her into the ground to be digested.

She froze as she blinked and it almost seemed like the shadows lunged at her. They returned to normal almost immediately, but it left her shaken.

I’m hallucinating that shadows are jumping at me, she thought. I guess that’s better than me jumping at shadows…heh.

She swallowed nervously and pressed on.

It was slow going, trying to slip through the Everfree Forest silently. The ground was littered with sticks and branches, covered by dead leaves in many places; she even had to watch out for roots, after stepping on one yielded an echoing report that must have woken up everything between her and Neighpon. The light slowly faded from the sky, surrendering to glittering stars that she caught sight of in snatches between clumps of leaves and dense weaves of branches, until the woods were almost pitch black. Somehow, despite the absence of light, she could see almost perfectly.

“How can I still see?” she asked quietly, pausing with her back to a thick tree she’d determined was free of any kind of potentially lethal insect or – stars help her – spiders. “Is this something you’re doing?”

“I would guess it is a result of the mixing of our auras,” she answered at a normal volume. Rainbow Dash winced slightly at the noise, even as she acknowledged intellectually that Ghealach was completely inaudible to anything in the real world. “Darkness and shadow are a part of me. They are no obstacle to my vision – keeping watch over the night would be impossible otherwise.”

“Anything else I should know about that might happen?”

“We shall deal with that if and when it becomes an issue,” she said. “I would think the widespread contamination and subversion of your aura by a hostile phantom would be a larger issue.”

“I can deal with Cloud Ferry,” she assured her. “I made a deal with her, and she kept up her end, at least.”

“I am going to assume I will not like what your end was,” Ghealach said warily.

“I promised her you would cancel whatever spell you used to hold her there.”

Ghealach visibly ground her teeth together. “You fool,” she hissed. “You have backed yourself into a corner and lit every exit on fire. If you do not abide by this deal, she may be strong enough to force it anyways and be thus enraged – and if you do abide by it, she is freed anyways and will no doubt cause further trouble in the future!”

“So the better idea is to just keep up my end of the bargain and set her free,” she pointed out. “I didn’t have a lot of choice, okay? I needed her cooperation!”

“We could have found a less damaging incentive, perhaps,” she persisted. She shook her head. “I will not free her.”

“So you’re going to just make her angry?”

“She will have to fight for every erg of aura she gains,” Ghealach declared. “I know she can hear me in there. I prevented her from interfering with your perceptions, but I could not isolate them from her entirely. She will not be freed by me.”

“Well, that’s just bucking great,” Dash grumbled. “Do you even care what this kind of stuff might do to my head? Having a phantom running around inside it can’t be good for me!”

“This situation is entirely your fault,” Ghealach said. “If you truly intended to keep your end of such a deleterious bargain, you are beyond help. Bonding you was a grave miscalculation on my part – which I do not intend to make again in the future.”

“If it was such a bad idea, why don’t we just separate now?” Dash snapped irritably. She realized exactly how stupid an idea that was an instant after the words left her mouth.

“Very well.” Ghealach spread her wings threateningly. “If you so wish, we shall go our separate ways. Me to my moon – and you to your grave.” The cold look in her eyes dared Dash to agree. For the first time, the fact that she was completely dependent on this being to live – completely, wholly reliant on her – sank in.

Silently, Dash continued on her trek, focusing on not breaking any sticks to distract herself from her irritable mood. She made good time – better than the first segment, at least – and before too long she was looking up at the crumbling ruins of Discord’s castle once again.

In the dark of night, the ruined parapets and shattered walls looked far more menacing than they had during the day. Threading her way through the outskirts of the ruins, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was walking through either an immense boneyard, where some manner of great beast came when its life dwindled away to die, or a nest of gigantic predators. The outermost walls of the castle were almost completely shrouded in greenery and vines, invisible from the air but annoying obstacles from the ground, and if they hadn’t been so worn down by time she doubted she could have gotten over or around them – her wings felt like lead at her sides. She was almost certain she wouldn’t be flying too much in the near future. Past that, she tried to avoid thinking about.

The ground between the outer and inner curtain walls was a chimeric mixture of earth and cobblestone, one seeming to merge seamlessly into the other at random intervals. At one point she’d have to step softly to avoid her hooves clicking on the hard rock; at another, she had to practically fight the ground to get her hooves back out so she could take another step. When she finally reached the inner courtyard, her earlier sense of uneasiness at her plan had been completely replaced by relief.

“What is your plan for navigating the interior?” Ghealach asked as they stood before the double-doors that led to the entrance hall. “It is the residence of the Lord of Chaos. Surely, you do not expect to navigate it by memory?”

“Discord has Fluttershy visit him a lot. He won’t change it too much when she’s gone – too much effort,” she answered confidently. “It’s not like too much can change on our route, either – it was just a room, two hallways, and a staircase. How bad could it get?”

“I do not believe you understand the implications of his position,” she replied. She seemed ready to go on, but Dash had enough and pushed open the front door – because that had, in fact, been her plan from the beginning. Walk in through the front door, find the powder, and run. Foolproof.

That assumption disintegrated the instant she could see through the doorway. Instead of the ice-encrusted space she had expected, instead even of the anticipated entry hall, she found a kitchen. The walls were covered with a wide array of pertinent items, and many that were less so – pots, pans, lobsters, lemons, firewood (nailed to the wall), a two-wheeled metal vehicle of some sort with pedals on the sides (likewise), a small tree – when she stepped inside and looked up, all she could see was blackness, far higher above than the castle was tall on the outside. She noticed that there didn’t appear to be a sink in the kitchen, and she guessed that if she flew up the room and checked on the walls, there wouldn’t be one there to be found either. Across the room from the door was a small, square window, open to admit a gentle breeze that stirred the curtains – and to allow brilliant daylight to flow through.

Almost dreading what she would find, Rainbow Dash walked over to the window and glanced through. It overlooked a wide, flat field of grass that extended to a distant, mountainous horizon - in other words, a completely impossible vista.

“Um…” She stepped back from the window. “What?”

“Exactly,” Ghealach responded. She’d stepped in behind Dash; the door slammed behind her, echoing oddly in the small space. On the inside, the doorway was much smaller. “Do you still believe this to be a sound approach?”

“Maybe I should’ve thought this out better,” she admitted reluctantly. She pulled open the door again. “We should head back…outside…”

On the other side of the door was a truly vast room, like a brown monochrome mock-up of Caelum’s hall. The only illumination in it came from the open door. Out in the darkness, she heard something creak.

Slamming the door shut, she retreated back into the kitchen. She could already feel her beleaguered navigational sense stirring itself in weak protest of this latest abuse it had to calibrate for. Shifting interior geometries? Multiply connected spaces? it seemed to ask. Are you serious?

Ghealach gave Rainbow Dash a look that managed to combine “I told you so” and “Now what?” into a single expression. “Our new course of action?”

“Well…” She shrugged. “Not much left to do but try and complete our objective now.”

“And how do you propose we do that?” she asked.

“We start opening doors.” There was one other door in the kitchen, on the left wall. It seemed as good a place to start as any.

How long had it been? Hours, maybe? Rainbow Dash had lost track of time as she and Ghealach wound through the seemingly endless hallways of Discord’s castle. Windows were common, true, but they did nothing to help her figure out how long she’d been exploring, as in one room’s windows might show a coldly sunny snowscape, and the next one over a tropical paradise at night. Some doors opened into places that by all rights should not have had any reason to have a door – the inside of a volcano, a clearing in the middle of some kind of pine forest, the narrow space between two walls in an old house. Some doors opened into impossibilities – one exited onto a street in Marexico, with fireworks exploding in the clear night above and multicolored lanterns strung between the squat adobe houses; another, onto the roof of a lighthouse perched on a cliff above a stormy sea, with the light of a grey dawn playing across the crashing waves. The castle seemed to have been designed and built by someone who'd once heard of rationality second-hoof from a friend and hadn't really liked the sound of it.

“This is insane!” she exclaimed, as she walked down a hallway that would have been better suited for a surrealist art museum than a castle. “How the buck are we supposed to find anything in this place? I can’t even find the way out!”

“He rules chaos like a mage rules her own magic. I am certain Discord is perhaps the sole being capable of navigating this mess,” Ghealach answered calmly.

“Can you teleport me out or something?” Dash asked. “There’s no way we’re still in the Everfree!”

“Unfortunately, that statement is either untrue or Discord’s magic is acting in an identical way,” she replied. “Though after a few hours of this, facing a starving beast of the wild may be preferable.”

She grunted in response, shoving open another door. Inside was a square metal room with a large stuffed teddy bear sitting placidly in the middle. It was devoid of any further decoration or exits. She slammed the door frustratedly and continued on.

“There’s no order to any of this!” she protested. “Nothing makes any sense!”

“There is a great deal of order, actually,” Ghealach said. “So far, none of the rooms we have entered have had varying charges of subatomic particles. None of them have had more than the expected four dimensions. None of them have inverted the phase-change temperatures of common chemical compounds. It is chaotic, true, but it is moderated.”

“He’s just toying with me, isn’t he?” she grumbled unhappily. Another door on her right; she shoved it open. Inside was another hallway of arbitrary length, with a vaulted ceiling and columns built into the walls every thirty feet, extending off into pitch blackness. She slammed it and chose to proceed along her lit hallway. “This is his idea of a joke, isn’t it? To let me wander around inside his castle until I starve to death.”

“Perhaps not. There have been doors opening into fruit orchards.”

“They’re probably poisoned or something.” A trapdoor lay in her path. Resignedly, she tugged it open and stuck her head through – and found herself looking up into the hallway of botany experiments from her first visit to the castle. She blinked in surprise.

“It would seem your method, mad as it was, has worked,” Ghealach observed. She was already down in the hall. She glanced down. “Perhaps it is because of its irrationality that it has achieved this degree of success.”

“Awesome!” she laughed, pulling herself up into the hall. “Okay, we’re close. The powder should still be in the pattern we need for a projection, right?”

“Unless he has moved it, yes. I believe our assumption was that he hasn’t.”

“There’s no way in Tartarus I’m trying to go back through all of that,” she declared. The very idea made her navigation sense uneasy. “And we forgot my saddlebags anyways. We’ll just have to perform the projection from in here.”

“This, unfortunately, is the optimal plan,” Ghealach sighed. “You seem to have a knack for forcing typically unthinkable courses of action.”

The plants, thankfully, were asleep – or whatever passed for that amongst plants. None of them stirred or made a sound as she passed them by and snuck up the stairs. At the top, the room beyond the door was mercifully the same. The pattern of powder at the center was unmarred except for a flattening where she’d fallen over into it the first time. Ghealach worked a quick spell through Dash, using microcurrents of wind to reshape the line in that area – and to Dash’s surprise, she could actually see the magic working; not in the sense of a visible glow, which went without saying, but something more. There were hazy suggestions of field-lines moving, glimpses of energy reshaping itself to the Dust Sentinel’s will, flickerings of something mysterious and all-encompassing hidden beneath the dull matter of the real world – something immaterial that squatted just out of her reach and laughed in her face.

“Your magic sense is enhanced,” Ghealach told her, “but not by much. I am attempting to chisel fine detail into a sponge, using a jet of water and looking through grime-caked goggles, from a great distance. It should suffice for our purposes though.”

“Great.” She hopped over the lines and sat in the center of the ritual circle. With her newly-sharpened magical sense, she could see wavering in the air around her, like heat haze, as the sheer amount of power coursing through the powder distorted…something. For the first time, she wished she’d poked through some of Twilight’s books on magical theory, so she could have a name to attach to what she was experiencing. Resigning herself to ignorance, at least temporarily, she closed her eyes and prepared to meditate.

With an echoing snap, the moonlit room was suddenly flooded with light. Her eyes snapped open – the walls were gone! Or they’d turned transparent at least. Whatever the cause, where they had once been now were three beings she had not banked on encountering.

“And here I was, expecting you to take my advice in the sense of running blindly off into the sunset to find a phoenix whose beak you could pulverize!” Discord chuckled from a hovering lawn chair. He was laying on it upside-down, with his legs crossed lazily on the back of it and his tail hanging down below it. “You surprise me, Rainbow Dash! This was a far more reasonable course of action than what I had anticipated. I had plot outlines and character sketches and skills sheets and maps and monster manuals – all useless now.” A sheaf of papers appeared over his head and exploded into multicolored confetti. “Well, you would have surprised me, if you hadn’t spent a while slamming doors in my castle – needlessly rude, you’ve probably bruised them. I’ll be dealing with complaints from the union for weeks. Past that it gave me plenty of time to call a few friends here to make things interesting.” He turned to one of his ‘friends’. “How was the punch, by the way? I squeezed the churchmice myself.”

On his left, Luna looked sick briefly. On his right, Celestia merely sighed.

“Rainbow Dash – “ she started, but Dash simply closed her eyes and tried to tune her out. Abruptly, she felt something like a glass dome slam down around her; her eyes snapped open again.

“She has placed an interdict around you,” Ghealach explained. Her voice betrayed a hint of irritation. “In your words, 'awesome'.”

“I’m trying to get Twilight back, Princess!” Dash snapped, glowering at Celestia. “Drop the spell and let me go!”

Luna shot Celestia a mildly surprised look. Celestia kept her eyes focused on Rainbow Dash. “As much as I want my student back, Rainbow Dash, you are in absolutely no state to retrieve her. Rescuing her and losing you would leave Equestria at just as great a risk as having you and not having her. And have you considered what impact your death while trying to save her might have on Twilight?”

“I’m not dying!” she protested.

“Thou art contaminated terminally by phoenix beak powder,” Luna interjected. “It has been confirmed medically. We are not sure what powers thou didst deal with in thy misadventure, nor are we sure how thou’rt seemingly unaffected by this poison, but the testimony of the chirurgeon is unequivocal. Thy aura is being drained at an unsustainable rate far in excess of thy natural ability to recharge it.”

“Without medical attention, my little pony, you would be dead in days at the most – irreversibly, permanently dead,” Celestia finished. “And that estimate is based on you not drawing upon your reserves for the duration. If you perform this ritual, you will be beyond help. For Twilight’s sake and your friends’ sakes, step out of the circle and let us help!”

“They discount my aid,” Ghealach said. “They think you to be without help of your own right now. All they could do for you to prolong your life would be what I am doing right now.”

“If I don’t go out there again, you’ll never get Twilight back!” Dash insisted. “Discord purposefully sabotaged the negotiations – “

“Me? Why, that’s preposterous!” he exclaimed innocently. Mock-innocently. Surely, they could hear the tone of mockery in his voice?

“ – and Beta won’t listen to anypony!” she pressed on. “She’s probably messing around with Twilight’s memories right now! She did it to me!”

“Beta Centauri is an old friend of mine,” Celestia countered. “She will listen to reason.”

“She hasn’t yet!”

“On this, we are in agreement with her, sister,” Luna admitted. “She did not seem to be a wholly sane individual in our meeting. A more proactive approach may be needed – though not one carried out by Rainbow Dash.”

“Why?”

“Dost thou really need to ask us that?” Luna asked disbelievingly. “Thou didst assault the Starmaker herself! Thou hast proven beyond a shadow of reasonable doubt that thou art not fit for diplomatic duties!”

“She was lying – “

“Diplomacy involves a great deal of that, or it did when we last were involved with it,” Luna cut her off. “Lies, half-truths, omissions, equivocation, prevarication – “

“And tact!” Discord added. “That’s a form of lying, I am lead to believe. I’m not a fan of it myself.”

“Step out of the circle, Rainbow Dash,” Celestia commanded. A note of pleading was present in her voice, but Dash still interpreted it as an order. She wondered idly why they simply didn’t try to physically remove her from the circle.

They’re afraid of it! she realized in a flash. It’s the powder! They’re afraid of being poisoned! If I don’t leave it…there’s nothing they can do.

“No,” she answered, stunning them all. “I’m getting my friend back. While you three keep interfering and slowing me down, Twilight’s trapped on Domhan – and I’m not going to let Beta turn her into some kind of alien freak like her just because you thought I wasn’t fit enough to help!”

She ignored whatever Celestia said next in favor of examining her surroundings – not with her eyes, but with her impressionist magic sense. If she focused hard enough, she could sharpen her perception – heat haze became a pattern of ripples, resolving in and out of clarity, and the dome – the interdict – became a blur around her, a hemisphere that distorted everything outside it. When her sense sharpened, she realized that it was a poorly-made thing; the blur became transparent, or almost so, in some regions of the interdict. There were flaws that could be exploited.

Ghealach snorted. “They are attempting to confine a pegasus – magically blind and magically invalid. Cloud Ferry may save us yet.”

“How do I get out?”

“Pick a flaw, focus on resolving it, and I shall open a tunnel through it for you.”

She looked around and tried to find the most transparent area of the dome that she could. It was almost directly above her – a spot so clear that she couldn’t detect any distortion through it. Perfect!

She focused on it to the exclusion of all else, doing her best to keep it sharply in focus – or as sharply in focus as something with blurry edges could ever get. As she watched, she felt an odd sense of tiredness – not physical exhaustion or even mental fatigue, but something else – and the clear spot evened out into a circle and began to widen.

“Project now,” Ghealach ordered. “I cannot hold it open for long.”

She shut her eyes tightly and forced herself to relax. Her mind emptied quickly, thankfully, and she felt her soul separate itself from her body. This time, though, the projection wasn’t unnoticeable – she saw the world recede below her as Ghealach yanked her up and out of the room, slipping through the tunnel with barely an inch to spare to either side of her spark. Blurriness appeared in her hybrid of magic sense and sight, trying to slam shut around her and confine her to Equestria, but this time she wasn’t helpless. Without calling on Ghealach, based purely on half-remembered instinct, she forced the planes of haze aside, knocking them roughly out of her way and splintering them back into the void.

Her magic answered to her and her alone now – she registered Ghealach’s noise of protest as she took control of the tunnel. The pressure on it was enormous, and it began to crack almost instantly – it had to hold up against the strength of an entire sun’s worth of magical effort! What Ghealach had told her back when they first bonded finally hit home. Without her help, there was no way she would be able to defeat Beta!

The battle took place in an instant before she was through. With an elated cry of triumph, she shot quickly up into a dark void. She had escaped her body – she was back in action! Nothing could stop her now!

The tunnel shattered. With the speed of a pair of scissors closing, the interdict resealed itself, twice as impermeable and twice as thick as before. Its edges closed like a guillotine around the silver-gold cord that stretched from Rainbow Dash to her body – around the impossibly thin, incredibly delicate astral tether. The feeling of the interdict irising shut around the cord was like having her head chopped off. The void echoed with a scream of pain. The tether stretched, thinned past impossibility, jerked taut –

Finally, with a blast of pain like nothing she’d ever felt before, it snapped.

Author's Note

Only one chapter it took. Thanks for the feedback and upvotes once more, folks!

Chapter 11: Dinner with Friends

The dining room of Uisceban Castle was enormous and opulent. While its high ceiling and windowed walls were built of the same stone as the rest of the building, tapestries in a multitude of colors, depicting what Twilight assumed were historical events of note, covered them. The center of the chamber was dominated by a long, polished cypress table, with cushioned benches alongside it like some form of immense, fancy picnic table. A pair of thrones sat at one end of the table. Those were for herself and Beta, according to the elaborate place cards set out at each spot.

Lighting was provided by the suns. There wasn’t an electric light to be found, though torch sconces did seem to be hammered into the walls – bare right now – for less clement days. The floor was decorated with a few wine-red carpets. The silverware seemed to be actual silver, as did the plates and wide-mouthed goblets. In short, everything about the room told her that she was dining well above her station today, even as some part of her acknowledged that this was probably, technically, below her new station. It was an impressive display, all the same.

And yet, she thought, it doesn’t match with the style of the buildings outside. It’s an anachronism – even Canterlot Palace gets updated occasionally. Maybe he can’t afford to update it? Or maybe he just likes the style?

There was small talk prior to being seated, minor issues of little importance to her yet. Every now and again, a noblemare or stallion would trot up to her, seem to gawk for a few seconds, and then ask her stance on some minutiae of policy – what do you think about the latest tariffs Lord Seasnake has imposed on traders in the Straits? What is your opinion on the arming of outlands settlers for self-defense? Have you had any involvement in the sentencing of my third cousin who was caught embezzling funds from the Mines? How is my third cousin who was caught embezzling funds in the mines? Is the prison where my third cousin who was caught embezzling funds from the mines being held one suited to incarcerating kelpies of his stature? Where is my –

“Lady – Coral Wave, was it?” she interrupted patiently. The brown-green kelpie in front of her blinked.

“Erm – yes, Queen Centauri. Alpha Centauri.”

“I don’t know who your third cousin who was caught embezzling funds from the mines is, nor why it’s any of my business,” she informed her shortly. “Asking repeatedly of how he’s doing, phrased differently, is not going to get you a better answer than ‘I don’t know’. Sorry.”

“Oh – it’s quite alright, dear,” she giggled. “It’s just – after all, he is my cousin, even if he’s gone a bit bad in the – what I mean to say is, I care about him deeply, and not solely about getting a cut of the proceeds as certain other members of the nobility might insinuate. We’ve known each other since we were foals, and – “

“Is she nattering on about her cousin still?” another noblemare asked loudly, trotting up and rolling her eyes. “He’s the worst of the bunch, I can tell you that. Artie was just trying to get his worth out of those tight-fisted miners, but Penny Pincher – “

“But Penny Pincher what?” the first demanded angrily. “I doubt you even know who Art Sands is, much less how guilty – “

“I’ll just take my leave then,” Twilight said, stepping backwards into the crowd. The two nobles didn’t even seem to notice.

“Of course I know Art Sands, he’s my third cousin once – “

“Oh please – “

“Madam Alpha!” a rough male’s voice growled. She drew up short as a black wolf in golden armor interposed himself in her path. He came up to her chest, just barely, and bore a number of bald scars across his face and exposed fur. If anything, it looked like the armor had been custom-made to show off his old battle wounds. “I had heard much of your return, but to see it with my own eyes – the stories do not give you justice.”

“Um…thanks?”

A second wolf joined him, no less scarred but much older, with a silver-tinted coat. “Longfang, get back with the pack. I am speaker here, it was ordained by the alpha.”

“But, dear Greyback, I am speaking with the Alpha!”

“Not in any official capacity – but of course, I’m sure you knew that, and weren’t about to beg her to intercede in our politics to make you – “

“Beg?”

“I have to be somewhere else,” Twilight excused herself. The wolves seemed to be on the edge of violence; she retreated with perhaps undue haste.

“Would you like a drink, my Qu – “ a servant started to ask as she passed.

“No thanks!” she replied hastily, and moved quickly off.

She wove easily through the crowd, slipping through the wide spaces between kelpies without any trouble. Fortunately for her, kelpie coats were extremely adhesive – and an implication of that appeared to be much greater bubbles of personal space. She wondered with an idle detachment what other effects that might have had on their society during her absence as she angled towards Beta, the one island of familiarity in a sea of strangers. She appeared to be deep in conversation with a thunderbird with a thick scar diagonally across his face.

“Alpha!” she exclaimed as she walked up. “This is the captain of the Royal Guard, Captain – “

“Thunderclaw Rookwind,” he answered in a gravelly voice and with a short bow. “Charmed.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Captain Rookwind,” she responded evenly. More hesitantly, she asked, “If it’s not too touchy of a subject, where did you get – “

“Saving a flockmate from a buggane,” he answered. His beak made smiling impossible, but Twilight could see a hint of one in his eyes…eye. “They are quite aggressive, in the Outlands.”

There was that word again – buggane. “What are they?” she asked curiously. Rookwind cocked an eyebrow; Beta winced.

“She has yet to regain many of her memories,” Beta hastily explained. “It will not be an impediment to our rule, she’s a fast learner – right, Alpha?” Twilight nodded.

“I did not mean to imply that it would be,” he assured her. “But if she is to rule as co-Queen, I would suggest filling her in on security threats before she makes a fool of herself before some of the more military-minded nobles.” The sound of a bell, crystal-clear and sharp, echoed through the hall and cut through the disparate conversations like a knife. Rookwind bowed again to them. “It would seem dinner has begun, my Queens. It was a pleasure speaking to you.”

“So, what is a buggane?” Twilight asked again as she followed Beta to their seats. “Are they from another nation? Are we at war?”

“They are giant, bipedal mole-like beasts with sharp claws and sensitive noses, that greatly enjoy making meals out of luckless pups and foals,” she answered, with some degree of bitterness. “They are honorless, debased things, that I regret making and regret having worked alongside even more, but the one thing I regret most of all is that not one of them stood by their sworn agreement to serve us when the War of Nightmares ended.”

“You and Proxi?”

“Yes.” She fell into a brooding silence.

The thrones were cushioned and comfortable, the fabric of the padding somehow not clinging to her coat when she shifted positions. They were built more for laying sideways, facing the table, than for sitting up straight, like chairs in Equestria. It was surprisingly comfortable, she found. Magic would allow her to lift and eat food with a minimum of motion.

Measured Speech made himself apparent again for the first time since they’d entered the dining hall, smiling self-confidently as he lifted a goblet into the air. He stood to Beta’s right, between her and Twilight, and cleared his throat.

“Noblemares and gentry of my humble home province of Uisceban, and perhaps even from more distant locales – and I am referring to one stallion in particular, the venerable and odd Lord Radiant Eye.” Chuckling; a pale ochre kelpie stallion with a combed-back brown mane inclined his head politely towards Speech. “Of course, in light of recent events, I would be apologizing to Radiant, had I not lost so much gold in our accursed betting pool - for tonight, mares and gentry, our Queen Alpha Centauri graces us once more with her presence!”

There was mild applause. Radiant Eye grinned, probably at the thought of how much money he’d made from her return; past that, there wasn’t an immense deal of outwards appreciation of that fact. They just need time to acclimatize, she reassured herself. Luna didn’t get much warmer a welcome than this after she came back. Everything will work out in the end.

Then again, some traitorous part of her mind reminded her, Luna was gone for a shorter time period, was demonized in her absence, and almost forgotten besides…

Shut up.

“But perhaps you are looking forward to addressing more…pressing concerns, no?” Speech continued warmly. “My cooking staff have been hard at work since early in the morning, preparing a worthy feast for such a gathering of distinguished individuals – two Queens, two Lords of the Realm, and an assemblage of barons and baronesses besides, after all, deserve only the finest!” The applause was much more enthusiastic this time, Radiant Eye excepting himself. She frowned at him, puzzled. Something about his name seemed familiar.

Her attention snapped back to Measured Speech once again when he tapped a silver spoon against the side of the goblet – it had to be enchanted somehow, a ringing of such volume couldn’t possibly come from tapping a spoon against a goblet – and the sound of a bell once again filled the hall. “And now, good guests of Castle Uisceban, I present to you – the first course!”

On cue, twin processions of servers marched in through the doors at either end of the hall, rolling large soup tureens in alongside them. They stopped midway down opposite sides of the room; servers with silver ladles nestled in the crooks of their forelegs drew soup from the pots and expertly deposited it in the goblets of the guests. Twilight examined the food once it was served to her with much delay – it seemed the diarchs and host were served last. The soup was some form of vegetable broth with chunks of carrot, cucumber, and radish in it. It tasted surprisingly good; all but the wolves finished theirs well before the next course – plates of warm crusty bread with some form of oil spread, and hard white cheese – came out. Beta seemed to particularly enjoy the cheese.

“Try it, it’s good!” she insisted. Twilight took a small bite of her piece and had to agree – it was initially a sharp, otherwise almost bland flavor, but it had a nutty aftertaste that encouraged her to finish off the rest of the block.

There was a lull in the meal after that, in which drinks were served and Measured Speech was at least as busy as his servants, flitting from guest to guest quickly and ensuring cups were topped off and conversations remained lively. Voices competed with the enticing smell of something savory being plated in the kitchens for control of the air. Then, outside, someone started setting off fireworks of some sort – the flashes of color were distractingly visible through the windows, accompanied by deep, rumbling bass reports that shook the castle.

“Idiot noisemakers,” Measured Speech cursed those responsible, to mutters of agreement from many other nobles. He directed a group of servants to draw the claret curtains closed across the windows, obstructing the sunset – the suns seemed content to run themselves without her or Beta’s personal guidance, for a day at least – and temporarily plunging the room into darkness. Lamps were brought out quickly, magical yellow globes that sat easily in the sconces Twilight had assumed were for torches, and conversation resumed, slightly more subdued, as if the speakers were disheartened that they were no longer the loudest beings in the vicinity.

“Ignorant urbanites,” a kelpie to Twilight’s right grumbled, sipping from a glass of wine. “Disturbers of the peace.”

Another boom shook the building; one of the attendant wolves flattened her ears and growled peevishly.

“It sounds,” Radiant Eye said, setting his own glass of wine down, “like they are having a great deal more fun than us.”

“Feel free to join them, Radiant,” a kelpie mare across the table smirked. “Maybe you can find a few new recruits for your secret society.”

“It is not now, and never was, a secret society,” he responded placidly. “I doubt if even calling it a society is accurate, consisting as it does of my family and my personal Guard.”

“Your personal guards whom I would very much like off our shared border,” a stallion interjected from the far end of the room. “Or do my own kelpies scare you?”

“We are of the same nation, Shattered Suns,” Radiant rebuked him gently. “Our old Queen may be back from the deepest past, but there are some things that really ought to stay behind there.”

Another firework detonating punctuated his sentence ominously. Measured Speech interrupted the discussion before it could become more heated by announcing the impending arrival of the third and main course. Cheering greeted his proclamation, but even more cheering greeted what was perhaps the greatest animal rights abuse Twilight had ever seen when it was wheeled out of the kitchen like a coffin on a trolley.

That the roasted creature on the platter, surrounded by greens and drizzled with purple sauce, had once been alive was unmistakable, yet she could see no stab wounds on it to suggest how it had been killed. Its hair was gone, leaving behind a crispy brown skin encrusted with dull green bits of herbs. She could imagine how it had been cooked – spitted, maybe, and turned over an open flame for several hours. That was how it had been done back before the War of Nightmares, and this deer had every appearance of having been prepared traditionally. She wondered how many fawns it had had to care for before whatever hunter that finally brought it down had found it. She wondered how it would taste.

“Is something wrong?” Beta asked concernedly.

“I think I may be about to ruin everything,” Twilight admitted, swallowing nervously. “Is there any sort of order of precedence for serving…this?”

“We have first pick, then the host, then anyone else,” she answered, confused. “Why is this a problem?”

“The finest pick of my own personal herd. I drowned it myself this morning,” Measured Speech declared proudly. A few kelpies clapped slowly; Rookwind nodded with approval.

“You are strong to have forced such a large specimen under,” the Thunderbird complimented him. “It will make a fine meal, that is certain!”

“Oh, I hope so, Captain,” he replied, beaming. “I had my finest chefs supervise its preparation, from the first moment of its disembowelment and cleaning to the last instant of its roasting. The herbs alone cost more than what a hunter earns in a year. I am assured by all involved in its preparation that it will be excellent – though perhaps we should leave that up to the judgment of our Queens?”

“Aye, it is customary,” Rookwind bobbed his head again. “Perhaps the guest of honor should have first pick?”

“I am in full agreement,” Measured Speech concurred. He turned and looked straight at Twilight. “It’s all yours, my Queen.”

The roast deer was set in the center of the table by the servers, facing towards Twilight. She felt physically ill looking into the spaces where its eyes had been – they hadn’t even bothered to remove the head! Was its brain still inside? Were its organs still in there? Oh, Caelum, they’d drowned it, hadn’t they? It had died with its lungs filling up with water, panicking and trying desperately to swim to the surface so it could get back to frolicking through the forest, or whatever deer did during the day. They’d –

“Alpha?” Beta prodded. She realized she’d zoned out slightly. She was shaking a little.

“Vegetarian,” she mumbled. “Pony for two thousand years. Animals can think. Dead animal I’m expected to eat.” Beta’s eyes widened in realization.

“Alpha will not be sharing in this course, Measured Speech,” she declared, to murmuring of surprise. “It’s not intended as a snub of you – she has simply lived in a vegetarian culture for two millennia.”

“Pardon?”

“I would love to explain the intricacies of a star’s life, but there isn’t enough time left in the night,” she responded wanly. “I am sure that such an intelligent congregation of beings as yourselves could find some other equally intellectually stimulating conversation.”

“Ah. Of course.” He nodded. “Shall I have the chef prepare something more…palatable, for you then?”

“No, thank you,” she answered. “I’m fine.” I’ve lost whatever appetite the first courses may have given me, she thought.

Measured Speech seemed to have found himself at a loss for words. After a brief pause, he shrugged and returned to the business of serving the rest - once he claimed a few thick portions of the creature's flank for his own enjoyment, of course. With magic, beak, and claw, they tore off strips of skin and the outer layers of meat; within an hour, the deer had been stripped down to the bone in some places. Rookwind claimed the head and had cracked the skull open to get at the brain – which had, in fact, been left in. With the face and its vacant eyes no longer staring at her, she felt almost like she could let her curiosity and hunger overpower her revulsion, but the image of the deer as a living thing haunted her mind, and her plate remained empty while everyone else’s were heaped with small bones and bits of gristle, though the wolves didn’t even leave that.

Biologically, she acknowledged, there was no reason she should have been unable to eat the dish, even as a pony. Equines were more than capable of digesting meat, especially ponies – hypothesized to be an adaptation that allowed ponies to rise to sapience while other variants eventually descended into extinction, in several evolutionary biology journals she’d read in Equestria. They just never did, anymore. There were occasional oddities, ponies who spent time amongst griffons usually, who would eat small amounts of meat with regularity, but typically not in public, and they were far from the norm, especially with several common prey animals being capable of language. She’d never eaten any meat for mainly that reason. And now, here she was, in a culture where eating meat was not only acceptable, killing what you ate was evidently a point of pride – and she was expected to participate.

“You have been staring in disgust at my plate for almost ten minutes, my Queen,” a kelpie noblestallion remarked around a mouthful of deer. “May I help you?”

“Show her a bit of respect, Glorious Star,” Radiant chastised him. “She is your Queen.”

“What kind of Queen won’t eat meat?” he asked. He swallowed finally. “Who knows what other kinds of odd notions a culture like that might have put into her head?”

“Everyone has eccentricities,” Rookwind rumbled. “Do I have to get out my photo album for you to peruse?”

“Er – no, that’s quite alright, Captain Rookwind,” Glorious muttered, returning his attention to his food. “Though admittedly, your hobby is a more extreme example of an eccentricity.”

“And perhaps, to our Queen, the concept of eating meat is just as unquieting?” Radiant suggested pointedly. “I have known monks in the Outlands who refuse to eat the flesh of a once-living thing as well. They become ill upon eating it, they have gone so long without it.”

“Are we to be ruled by some kind of Outlander religious cult?” a wolf growled unhappily.

“Silence, whelp,” the wolf she recalled as Greyback barked. “I am speaker in this place.”

“You know Brightclaw’s opinion of – “

“Brightclaw has chosen me as his speaker,” the elder wolf interrupted, his voice tense with dangerously fragile patience, “and not you, pup. You will abide by his decision or you will challenge me for right of tongues in the accepted way.”

“Not within this dining hall,” Beta sighed unhappily. “Obey your pack’s decision, please, for the sake of civility.”

“A pack cannot have two dire wolves claiming to be alpha at once!” the young wolf snarled. “This is the mind of Brightclaw!”

Without a sound, Greyback whipped around and locked his jaws closed around the younger wolf’s throat, too fast for the eye to follow. The insolent underling whimpered submissively with pain and fear, head caught at an uncomfortable angle and a hair’s breadth away from the reaper. Slowly – painfully slowly – Greyback loosened his hold and released him, filling his mouth with meat a moment later. “Your throat tastes of the disloyalty that tainted its words,” he growled. The other wolf remained silent this time.

“Is this truly what Brightclaw thinks?” Beta asked wearily. Reluctantly, Greyback nodded.

“The pup speaks truly, if without sanction,” he admitted. “A pack with two alphas quickly becomes two packs. He wished to know which pack to place his loyalty with.”

“We rule together,” Beta declared. There was iron in her voice – the point was not up for debate. “Anyone who desires otherwise, leave my presence.”

Wordlessly, every last noble at the table stood and filed out of the room. Perhaps not every noble, Twilight realized – Measured Speech remained behind at least. Radiant Eye did as well. Rookwind didn’t budge from his perch upon the bench; his only response was to peck at a strip of meat on the former plate of a neighbor. The doors slammed shut with a sound echoing with finality. Beta sighed.

“They’ll come around,” she assured them all. “I’m sure of it! How can they not come around? I mean, being a vegetarian in a culture of predators may be an obstacle to acceptance, sure, but they can overlook that. I know they can!”

“I fear you may be more than a little over-optimistic, my Queen,” Radiant responded sadly. “Many of them have too much invested in a monarchy to allow a diarchy to come to pass.”

“There will be resistance, surely – but even the most petulant of nobles will lose patience with trying to bring back what is gone forever after a few years, at most,” Measured Speech said reassuringly. “Everything will work out in the end. The end may simply be a bit further away than we had anticipated.”

“Damn the nobility,” Rookwind growled. “They have taken your lesson to heart, my Queen Beta. They will be as unchanging as a mountain and thrice harder to move out of your way.”

“I fear Rookwind has the right read of it,” Radiant sighed. “The wolves, especially, will not take well to this change. The common folk are far more fluid – from the sound earlier, I’d think they’d already declared today a national holiday.”

“What the peasantry think is immaterial,” Speech retorted dismissively. “It is the nobility we must focus on – the ones with power and the ones with clout. They are the beings most dangerous to Queen Alpha, and to you.”

“We are both beyond their reach,” Beta said.

“Your power in this world, however, is not,” he pointed out. “And it is built on the back of the nobility. To have them on your side would be to have Alpha accepted wholeheartedly by every segment of society.”

“By one segment, you mean,” Radiant corrected irritably. “You seem to forget that the nobles are a minority, and that the majority are just as opinionated.”

“Far less capable of obstructing her, though.”

“I’d say even more so, and for longer periods of time.”

“Enough,” Beta commanded gently. “I realize re-integrating her into the Queendom will be…difficult, but we cannot let petty arguments over the best approach divide us.”

“They were well enough divided already,” Rookwind interjected. Beta gave him a sharp look.

“We must work together for this to succeed with any measure of speed,” she insisted. “This will work. We’re going to be visiting Caisleanard next, Radiant – is everything prepared for us to arrive tomorrow?”

“Everything is present and accounted for, save myself,” he answered. “Will the venerable Lord Measured Speech deign to grace my humble home with his presence?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not.” He shrugged. “It seems I have a great deal of wrangling to do with my own vassals before I can honestly say my demesne is fully behind the Queens.”

“I will attend of course,” Rookwind proclaimed while ripping another strip of meat off the deer carcass. Nobody challenged the point.

“We’ll have to leave tonight, Alpha.” Beta turned to her, sitting up in her throne. “Caisleanard is several hours away by wing, on calm nights, and we’ll have to travel with our entourage – otherwise, we could be there instantly.”

“Flying is kind of nice, honestly,” she said. “I have a friend back on Equestria who takes any opportunity she can to be in the air. I think I can almost understand why now.” Still, she added silently, it’s boring compared to being in that constellation.

“It’s my preferred method of travel on Domhan,” Beta agreed, pleased. “Caisleanard is a beautiful region, too – it’ll be more than a pleasant flight, I hope.”

“I will have the Thunderbirds under my rule keep the sky calm for you,” Radiant told them, smiling. “If I could only take wing like them, I might have a better idea of what you talk about than my pitiful tower can give.”

“Pitiful,” Measured Speech snorted. “Opulent covers it better. How you afforded to build it mystifies me. Surely, your pastoral little town can’t provide that much in taxes?”

“Oh, I don’t tax them at all,” he replied. His enjoyment of Speech’s dumbfounded look was apparent.

“How do you afford to maintain a personal guard then?” he spluttered. “A noble household? That bloody tower?”

“A personally-owned crystal mine and an all-volunteer guard force motivated by the desire to not be taxed will do that for you.” He sipped from his goblet of wine. “Old money helps. We have been loyal servants of the crowns since before the War of Nightmares. It will be a true pleasure having you back within Caisleanard, Queen Alpha.”

A connection fired off in her mind, remnants of deep memories connecting with logic and inductive reasoning to force her to exclaim, “Eye!”

“How much wine did you have, exactly?” Beta asked.

“What? No, I didn’t have – that’s not important!” She turned to Radiant Eye. “Radiant Eye. I recognize that name!” Her brain scrambled to piece things together quickly enough to not make her look like a fool. “Eye, Eye…you’ve been servants of the crowns since before the War of Nightmares?”

“So I have said, my Queen.”

“What about during the War of Nightmares?”

“It was perhaps one of our most notable moments,” he answered with a hint of pride. “A dark time for our genealogy, true – only one living member after the first sack of Caisleanard – but she did great things and saved our family from extinction.”

“Yes, but her name!” Twilight insisted. “Eye, Eye, Eye…Watchful Eye?”

“I was wondering if you’d remember,” he responded with a slight grin. “That was, indeed, her name. Dozens of generations have passed since, but I am proud to claim descent from such a storied mare.”

“She was. A great mare, I mean.” Memories flickered through her mind half-formed, but they were enough; they were happy memories, at least, of a kelpie filly and later the best friend she’d had during the war. “Wasn’t the position of Captain of the Royal Guard hereditary?”

“We conceded it to Rookwind eyrie almost three hundred years past,” he answered. “Luminous Eye was no warrior. I am not a warrior. At this point, there is no one I would prefer to hold the post than Thunderclaw.”

“Your support is noted,” the thunderbird rumbled, pleased. “And I agree with your position.”

“Arrogant featherbag,” Speech chuckled.

“I always have more room in the album, Measured Speech.”

They laughed, even Alpha – though she wasn’t entirely certain what was so funny. Conversation wandered after that, jumping quickly from topic to topic and not lingering at all on any one. The servants opened the curtains later on to reveal a red moon rising high into the sky, but they remained a while longer even then. For the first time since she’d left Ponyville, she felt like she was among friends.

Author's Note

Meanwhile, on Domhan, with Twilight again, finally...

Chapter 12: Reawakening

In darkness, a glittering cyan speck of a soul floated, alone, stripped of its power, and hungry for more. It hung in the void like a snowflake, small and fragile but unique, a packet of magic containing the sum total of a mare. Silently, it drifted towards a lone, friendless star, and its inviting world clustered densely with uncountable other sparks, seeking companionship – but something stopped it; a string, an impossibly thin silver line extending out across the thaumato-physical plane into infinity, or to a substantially closer triumvirate of stars that something in its primitive memory insisted was important. Someone was there, someone important – someone she had to rescue!

Memory sparked and images danced like motes of light around the soul as it drifted in the void. There was someone it had to help, someone in need of rescue – a friend! And one of those three stars had stolen her! Even without the sudden aid of the strand, she would have tried to get there, in spite of the insistent howling of the hungry darkness and the alluring glow of the nearer world.

The strand began to pull faster. Void whipped past, blurring – empty space blurring – as she was yanked like a bobber on a light-years-long fishing line through the emptiness between stars, accelerating to exhilarating speeds that would have been deadly to a physical being, until she crossed the last parsec in the blink of an eye and flashed down towards a green and white and blue world hanging almost forlornly in the orbit of a yellow star. And then she missed that world and rammed into its crimson satellite.

And, with a startled gasp, Rainbow Dash woke up.

She shot up from the cracked depression her body had made in the red dust, coughing and hacking as her brain registered the extremely unpleasant feeling of dust choking her lungs and coating the inside of her throat. After a second or two, the feeling faded, and she collapsed sideways with a groan, completely sure the dust was still there.

What happened? She asked herself, staring off towards the abrupt and jagged horizon. Swallowing, she slowly rose to her hooves, drawing her wings back in tightly against her sides. Her feathers felt cool – almost cold, really – and entirely too stiff, but that could wait! Something important had happened that was hovering on the tip of her tongue, just waiting to be loosed into the world again if she could just remember what it was…

Exasperated with herself, she sat and looked up at the sky. Wherever she was, there wasn’t an atmosphere, which begged the question of how she could breathe, but that could wait too. Up above, instead of the warm sun she’d been expecting, unobscured by clouds, there was some kind of green and blue orb. She blinked in confusion as she tried to remember what happened.

Okay, I was trying to do an astral projection so I could get back to finding Twilight… She frowned. And then…Discord? Yeah, Discord appeared – and the Princesses, too! They said something, I ignored them…why am I here? Where is here?

“I would hope you would recall my moon,” Ghealach said. The dust swirled lazily up from the ground and coagulated into an equinoid form a few feet in front of Dash, completed portions gradually fading from rust-red to Ghealach’s usual palette until she was recreated perfectly. “There are precious few places you have been with red dust and no atmosphere.”

“So it worked?” she asked hopefully. She stood again and shook herself to get as much of the dust as she could out of her coat. “I did an astral projection again? We can get on with things?”

“For our purposes, yes, it worked,” she answered vaguely. “In the sky above you is the world of Domhan. This is where your friend is – and where Beta is. Uphold your portion of the bargain, and I shall uphold mine.”

“What do you mean, ‘for our purposes’?” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “That sounds an awful lot like equivocation.”

“Your interference with our – with my – magic had unintended consequences,” she bit out. “You are almost useless to me now. Almost – do not think this will excuse careless error in carrying out my plans.”

“What happened?”

“Death happened,” she replied simply. “Your tether was cut when you failed to hold open the tunnel I created for you. You were cast loose from your body – though corpse is a more apt term for it now – and hurled into the void. If I had not maintained a connection, however tenuous, with you, you would have been beyond help and would have proceeded either into your next reincarnation or into full starhood. I could not tell which at the time, and had no intention of risking my most valuable asset by allowing things to proceed normally. You either would have become infinitely more useful or completely worthless – and with the powder figured in, I gambled on preserving your soul in its current state rather than waiting.”

“I’m dead?” she gaped, dumbfounded. “Dead?”

“Your former body is,” she clarified patiently. “I have created a new form for you here, in much the same way as stars and other celestial bodies inspire forms for themselves. Your soul does not reside inside it – it is bound to me, close enough that extrication at this point can no longer be performed without severe damage to both of us.” She let that hang in the air for a moment, to sink in; Dash’s expression morphed from one of shock to one of anger as she parsed that.

“So we’re stuck together,” she summarized. “We’re stuck together permanently, you have complete power over my soul, I didn’t have any say in it whatsoever, because you didn’t want to lose an asset?”

“It was a rash decision on my part,” she admitted, “the reasoning behind which is not entirely clear, even to myself. I would place the blame on your influence through our bond.”

“So it’s my fault that I’m stuck like this, is that it?” she demanded furiously, wings snapping open with a metallic rattle. Startled, she whipped her head around to get a good look at herself. Surprisingly, her wings were metal now – like Beta’s, but her feathers were iridescent and glassy, clear, with waves and ripples of rainbow light playing across them as she turned her wings in the reflected light of Domhan. Her coat was more-or-less the same color, but her legs had lengthened subtly, and her tail seemed to have strands of what looked like seaweed or rivergrass running through it, dark green blades tangled with the rest of her rainbow hair. Worst of all, her cutie mark was completely gone.

“I took some liberty with your form to better suit what I needed,” Ghealach informed her coolly. “While I dislike the meddlers, the kelpies seem to respond favorably to them. By giving you a form similar to the stars, I hope they will react – if not with friendliness – then with less outright hostility to your appearance.”

“I don’t even get my own body?”

“Your existence is completely, wholly, entirely, fully dependent upon me,” she hissed, thrusting her face forward and forcing Dash to draw back. “Do you comprehend this, Rainbow Dash? I pulled you back from over the brink of death. It was not through altruism or attachment – you are useful. Nothing more, nothing less. This form maximizes your usefulness.” She smirked. “In your position, I would expect you to be grateful.”

“Grateful?” Dash snapped. “Grateful? For messing with my body and using necromancy?”

“It was not necromancy.”

“I don’t care!” she snapped, whirling away furiously and starting to pace. “All I wanted was to get Twilight back. All I want is to get my friend away from that – that – freak called Beta Centauri who thinks she’s her sister. I didn’t want to get involved in your own arguments and plots, I didn’t want to be resurrected so you could use me as some kind of goddess, and I really didn’t want to get fused onto you forever! I didn’t even think those would be risks!”

“You were thrown a curveball,” Ghealach responded simply. “Tantrumming will not help.”

“You got everything you wanted out of this,” she growled. “Don’t tell me what I can’t complain about.”

“I was bound to you for the rest of eternity,” she pointed out. “This is less than an ideal situation.”

She fell into a sullen silence then, sitting and contemplating the horizon for a few blissful moments of quiet. When she spoke again, her voice was more subdued.

“They think I’m dead,” she murmured. Ghealach nodded. “All of them think – Pinkie, and AJ and Rarity, and Fluttershy, and the Princesses and the rest of Ponyville – and Scootaloo – “

“This is correct.”

“And the Princesses think I’m dead because of them?” she asked. “And not because I messed up?”

“Most likely. I have not had the time or inclination to check.”

She nodded. “They – this is going to tear them all up, isn’t it? I mean, first Twilight’s gone, now I’m dead…”

“I am no expert, but a period of grieving would not be unreasonable to expect.”

She wondered if she’d gone too far this time, even inadvertently. She hadn’t considered the possibility of her death while trying to find Twilight; even when she was contaminated with the phoenix beak powder, it hadn’t been her foremost concern. Yeah, things had gotten scary when the stuff had almost killed her, but Ghealach had stepped in and it hadn’t been as much of an issue then – with her keeping the powder at bay, she thought she could rescue Twilight, get back to Equestria, and then allow herself to be put out of commission for a few weeks while the doctors sorted the situation out; she’d be cured, Twilight would be safe, and everypony could laugh about it and she could maybe share a few stories of her adventure. Now, though – now, in their eyes at least, she was actually genuinely dead – and the reality was almost as bad.

This is getting way out of hoof, she thought. If I finish this quickly, maybe I can get back before…

“Before what? They already think you’re dead,” Cloud Ferry asked. The dust ahead of Dash didn’t even stir as the phantom materialized – abruptly, and without warning. “Don’t even try to suppress me, moon-witch! She’s stuck onto you and so am I. Put me in a box like you did before and I’ll take my third of our power with me.”

“You are not making an excellent case for why I should even permit you to exist.” Ghealach frowned. “You realize, of course, that it is now within my power to eradicate you utterly?”

“Try it and let’s see how well dear darling Dashie’s mind holds up afterwards,” she replied saccharinely. “She’s doing so well already, after all, what with you having to suppress all the other personality fragments so they can’t become phantoms, the half-healed scars Beta left all over the place – it’s like navigating a warzone in here! – and now the guilt on top of that.”

“What other personality fragments?” Dash demanded. “What are you talking about? I thought it was just you!”

“Ha! Just me?” She laughed. “You’re keeping her in the dark about what you’re doing to help her in her own mind, Ghealach? Already taking up some of the pastimes of the ‘meddlers’ as you call them?”

“She did not need to know at the time.”

“And I bet it was for her own good, too,” she snorted. She turned back to Dash. “To answer your questions, O host, I am referring to the other proto-phantoms trying to pull themselves together in here, that your omnibenevolent ally has so effectively suppressed without your knowledge. There’s a pegasus with bat wings and an herbalist zebra tottering around in the dark corners of your mind, looking for enough hints to let them recall a few more shreds of their lives, and those are just the two who are furthest along.” She smirked. “Beta really did a number on you, dear. Given enough time, you could have every one of your past lives upgrading to phantomhood. If you think you have no peace now, well…”

“It is a non-issue,” Ghealach insisted. “I have them firmly under control.”

“You could’ve told me, at least,” Dash grumbled. Ferry laughed again.

“What kind of chess player tells their actions to their pawns?” she asked rhetorically. “That’s all you are in her eyes, dear – a pawn.”

“Enough!” Ghealach snapped, wings flaring angrily. Cloud Ferry’s form froze and shattered like a pane of glass, but she managed to whisper one final parting sentence before being sealed away again.

“I will remember our deal.”

Silence reigned once more. “Was she telling the truth?” Dash asked cautiously.

“I am, indeed, suppressing the nuclei of two more potential phantoms. The others are not yet coherent enough to pose credible threats in the near future.” She hesitated a beat. “If you so wish, I…I could cease blocking them.”

“What?”

“I have not been completely isolated for all of my existence,” she explained. “Mortals, or once-mortals, respond better when they are given a choice in matters, however illusory. I am assuming you are not yet mad enough to agree to this.”

“…Thanks, I guess,” she responded, “but I was actually asking about the second thing. Am I just a pawn, or are you going to hold your end of our bargain?”

“As I have said before, our goals are coincident. You accomplishing your goal is necessary to me accomplishing mine, and vice-versa.”

“But if they weren’t?” she pressed.

“They are. It is a non-issue,” she answered evenly. “Focus, instead, on how we may accomplish our shared aims. The unseating of a star from the rule of the world she nurtures is not an easy task.”

“How are we supposed to do it, then?”

“She must be broken,” Ghealach declared. “She must be so thoroughly defeated – killed, if possible – in such a way that she ceases to be a concern for an extend period of time, on the order of millennia or greater. Doing so is no easy task, but there are ways – “

“Woah, woah, woah – hold up!” Dash interrupted. “I don’t know a whole lot about astronomy, but wouldn’t killing a star make it explode or something? And wouldn’t that be, like, really bad for that planet up there?”

“It would be,” she confirmed, “if that is what actually happened. When – “

“So they don’t blow up when they die?” Dash frowned skeptically. “Twilight told me – “

“ – I speak of ‘killing’ a star, I am not referring to killing its body,” Ghealach finished irritably. “The astral body remains behind, unharmed, if you kill its soul – its avatar, its personality; sending that aspect of it into its next incarnation in the cycle has no effect on the physical star itself, or I would not have suggested such an incredibly suicidal and self-defeating plan.”

“So how do we do that?”

“Stars forms are almost impervious to physical attacks, capable of re-forming with sufficient rapidity to render such crude means wholly ineffective,” she explained. “In order to kill one – as Alpha Centauri was killed – “

“Twilight isn’t Alpha Centauri!”

“I never suggested that. There was, in fact, a meddler called Alpha Centauri who was the sister of Beta Centauri two millennia ago, as well as a third known as Proxima who I have since lost track of,” she growled. “It is difficult to mistake someone for someone who does not exist. May I continue?”

“Sorry. Yeah, go ahead.”

“In order to kill one, as Alpha Centauri was killed two millennia ago by Proxima Centauri, one needs to attack it with magic,” she continued patiently. “From my observations, I know you have very little aptitude for this.”

“I did an astral projection, didn’t I?” she protested. Ghealach snorted.

“As astral magic goes, projections are along the lines of cheap card tricks, or the illusions employed by stage performers,” she said dismissively. “You have not yet even scratched the surface of what the school is capable of, and as you are not an astral body, I think it highly unlikely you will be advancing in it soon.”

“I – “

“Mere teleportation – the simplest of gravitational manipulations – disables you,” she cut her off. “You barely survived your first projection and your second projection did kill you. You are like the proverbial street magician that finally managed a fireworks illusion and wanted to challenge the archmage to a duel.” Dash’s response was silence. “No, you do not have an aptitude for magic. It is fortunate for you that I have both an aptitude and several million years of practice. You need concern yourself primarily with the second portion of my plan: rebuilding a rapport with my wards.”

“That’s it? All I’ve gotta do is make friends?”

“In my name.” She nodded. “You will land in the portion of Domhan the locals call the “Outlands”. Heroic deeds are among the fastest ways of winning popularity. In the heartlands of the meddlers’ domain, opportunities for visible acts of heroism are few and far between. In the Outlands, however, things are far less tame and secure. There should be ample opportunities to insinuate yourself into the hearts of the locals. You will work your way towards the heartlands, of course – but if you become popular fast enough, in my name, it should draw Beta towards you like a large and aggressive moth to a flame.”

“And that’s good, I guess,” she replied questioningly. Something whispered in the back of her mind that forcing Beta’s hand and facing her on ground that she chose – as opposed to in a place where Beta could have laid any number of traps – was a sound strategy. She didn’t recognize the whisperer. “So, when do we start?”

“As soon as possible,” Ghealach answered. Her eyes sparked with power for an instant, distance no longer requiring her to call upon visible amounts of energy for something as simple as folding space. The fabric of the world bent around to envelope Rainbow Dash – and this time, for once, she almost managed to keep her stomach in check.

Almost.

The feeling of the cool predawn air rushing over her pinions was almost indescribable, Twilight thought as she and Beta soared over the grassy plains of northwestern Domhan – the nation, and not the world; her fellow Queen had made it clear that the two were, in fact, distinct, though Domhan was the only country she’d ever seen maps of in the atlases she’d read since her arrival. The plains threw up thermals even at this early hour, vast columns of warm air that her wings caught and let her rise as high as she wanted and more, sent up from the occasional geyser field or lake. Small stands of trees that greatly resembled the trees in Whitetail Wood back on Equus dotted the landscape, spreading lazily across hillsides and flatlands alike. The place was beautiful.

Every now and again, as she and Beta and Rookwind flew, she would spot a cluster of flickering lights or dark, boxy shapes; villages, populated by land-dwelling kelpies and wolves, though wolves tended to stick to nomadic lifestyles.

“They are a very proud and traditional people, the wolves,” Rookwind remarked as they passed over a much more tightly-grouped cluster of fires that she assumed was a wolf camp. “For two thousand years before the coming of the Queens, they lived by the fang, by the paw, and by the claw. In the two thousand years since your departure, they haven’t had much reason to change that.”

“Do they have any permanent settlements?” she asked curiously. “Any camps that stay up, even if the wolves living there change?” They almost sound like griffons, she thought. Landbound griffons.

“They come to trade in kelpie towns, but beyond that they keep to their wandering packs,” he replied. “It makes calling on their aid to put down buggane councils a royal pain, though in places where wolves roam my Guard does not have much trouble from bugganes.”

“Buggane councils?”

“They get it in their heads every once in a while that five of their brains working together might be marginally better than one alone,” Beta said drily. “It’s about as close as they get to any sort of civilization.”

“A bonfire, a cookpot, and four or five giant moles,” Rookwind added, chuckling. “And usually by the end of it the cookpot’s filled with one of their councilors.” Twilight winced.

“We’d let them be, since they take care of themselves well enough without our aid, but sometimes when one forms near a settlement the smell of Domhanane beings is more enticing than the odors of their fellows,” Beta continued. “Then, we have to break them up, before someone gets killed and eaten.”

They lapsed into silence, Twilight digesting the new information as the countryside slipped past beneath them. No, Domhan was not much like Equestria at all. In Equestria, in Canterlot and most of the rest of the country, the worst that could happen to a foal would be getting lost, or – in vanishingly rare instances – abduction for ransom. Here, they were considered a valid food source for monsters. Not even in Ponyville was that a problem, and Ponyville was on the edge of the greatest concentration of monsters and wild magic on the planet!

An hour passed as rolling hills gradually gave way to squat, thatched-roof hovels and muddy farmlands. A warm glow was growing on the eastern horizon, but it didn’t seem like the suns were ready to rise yet – if they even would on their own. Twilight’s doubts were vindicated when Beta signaled them to descend; they landed on a rocky outcrop atop one of the last hills to be found. The sunsglow on the horizon was competing with the lights of a city to the north; she assumed that was Caisleanard. Beta folded her wings and turned towards where the suns would first peek up into the sky.

“Are we raising the suns?” she asked, trying to keep her eagerness out of her voice. She was a star, wasn’t she? She’d get to raise the suns – or at least her sun. Just like Celestia! For the first time since she’d learned the basic tenets of magical theory and discovered a mere unicorn lacked the power to bring the morning alone, she felt like she could realize her fillyhood dream.

And then she felt the world shift below her subtly – too subtly for anyone but a star, with a star’s attunement to gravitational fields, to detect – and the top rim of Beta Centauri poked above the horizon.

Of course, she realized, not without disappointment. It’s not the suns that move – it’s the planet. Of course.

“I think I’ll be taking care of the raising of the suns for the foreseeable future,” Beta declared, smiling slightly at Twilight – apologetically, though not completely so. “You’ve been gone a while, and you’re a bit out of practice – I don’t think giving you a chance to disturb the planet’s rotational period would be a good idea for now.”

“It’s fine,” she assured her after a moment of silence. “That makes sense, I guess. I’ll have to do it again soon, though, if I ever want to get back into the flow of things.”

“Right,” she giggled. “Soon, soon. Right. Not today, though.” She settled her wings back into their resting positions and took a seat to observe the sunrise she’d set in motion. “We should probably wait here for our entourage to catch up. I think we might have left them in the dust.”

“The last I saw of the vanguard wolfpack was back near the bridge,” Rookwind rumbled. “They may be some hours yet.”

“It should be fine. Lord Radiant Eye can’t possibly be home yet anyways – he can’t teleport, after all.” Twilight shot a look at Beta. “Kelpies can’t teleport, can they?”

“Radiant can,” she replied evenly. “One of many tricks his family has kept to itself in the intervening years. House Eye has secrets none of the other noble bloodlines even suspect. Its constituents still surprise me every once in a while.” She snorted. “Not that the other houses don’t have secrets, too. Measured Speech’s mother, for example, managed the most comprehensive smuggling operation in Domhanane history right under the Royal Guards’ noses.”

“I set her straight,” Rookwind growled. Then, his face wrinkled in what could have been a grin had he not had a beak. “Dismantled her empire in three days. The look on her face was absolutely priceless.”

“You arrested her?” Twilight asked curiously. The thunderbird nodded.

“And executed her,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “Horrible things she was smuggling. Only punishment she left herself with. A pity.”

Twilight swallowed and focused on the rising suns, trying to ignore the sudden queasiness he felt. Another…disconcerting…difference from Equestria; these people seemed to be rather cavalier about ending lives, for food or for punishment. She tried to steer herself away from the thought that, at some point, she might be forced into a situation where she would have to order an execution. Of course, in steering her thoughts away from that, she made it the only thing they seemed to want to drive towards. Of course she’d have to order an execution at some point – she was an immortal now, wasn’t she? An immortal ruler? Unless she passed all judicial duties to deputies or to Beta, it was guaranteed that she would have to execute someone at some point! And passing on roast deer might be acceptable after a fashion, but what would they think if she refused to order the execution of someone they thought deserved it?

I will avoid a situation like that at all costs, she resolved. Even if that means deputizing servants to deal with it for me. I will not order someone’s death, no matter what they did.

“Alpha?” Beta prodded her gently with a hoof, snapping her out of her thoughts. She shook her head and looked at her sister.

“Sorry.” Alpha smiled. “My mind wandered off a little there. What were we talking about?”

“Nothing. We were mainly waiting for you to return to yourself,” Rookwind replied.

“We should probably fly back and find our entourage again,” Beta decided. “It wouldn’t do to arrive in Caisleanard without all our various servants and hangers-on.”

“Will Radiant be able to feed them all?” Alpha asked worriedly.

“Of course!” Beta laughed. “And if he couldn’t, he’d still do his best to make it look like he could, as a point of prestige. The nobles have this funny system among themselves – layers and layers of protocols that I still don’t get, even after two thousand years of having to work around them – and they’d be willing to thoroughly bankrupt themselves to give us a ‘worthy’ reception when we choose to visit their castles.”

“Just because they’d be willing to doesn’t mean that we should encourage them,” she said. “Do you help them finance the feasts, at least?”

“Can’t. That’d be as bad as bankrupting yourself, taking royal aid to feed royal guests, according to their protocol.” She shrugged. “Radiant’s better than most of them, but this time I think he’ll try his hardest to make a good impression – House Eye has always prided itself on its loyalty to the old regime – you, me, and Proxi – and now you’re coming personally to stay with them for a night. Plus, some of the other major nobility of the Heartlands will be coming over, with their retinues – granted, theirs are smaller; basically, if I haven’t missed my guess, he’s going to be going all out, to prove himself to you, raise his standing amongst the rest of the nobility, and vindicate his way of running things. His peasants don’t pay taxes, after all. If he can provide just as well as the others for us, without any tax income, he might finally get them to be quiet about his eccentricity. And I’ve probably missed or forgotten a few other minor and major goals.” She shrugged again. “Politics. What can you do?”

Alpha frowned. She couldn’t recall Princess Celestia ever having to deal with something like this – but then, most times she’d been in Court, she’d been young and had her nose crammed into a book about feudal politics, as opposed to observing them unfold in front of her. “Would it be possible to ask him not to bother?”

“Bad idea,” Rookwind answered swiftly. “The other nobles would take that as a sign of disfavor. Radiant would have to be officially insulted by the suggestion, no matter how much easier that would make things financially, to save face. Other ladies and lords would see it as an opening to prove their own wealth by hosting you, and you’d have to accept or risk insulting them as well. Radiant would probably be actually insulted by you accepting their invitations and not his, and so on, and so forth.”

“When was this system even instituted?” she asked exasperatedly. “I think I liked it better back before I died.”

“Oh, I tried to keep it like that!” Beta said, grinning. “I think I succeeded fairly well, with a few modifications. You ruled over them by a network of friends, right? I just made that official.” She giggled. “Things…may have gone downhill from there…”

“I didn’t rule over them through my friends.” Alpha frowned. “I made friends with them and they gave me a rough idea of what everyone wanted, and then I gave it to them.”

Beta’s grin faded. “Really?”

“Did it really seem like I ruled them with friends?” she asked, thoughtful. Fragments of memory flicked through her head; names and faces, not associated but familiar, rose unbidden from the morass of her deep memories – everything was so muddled, nothing from then was clear, all she could remember was from the frighteningly brief period of twenty years before –

Startled, Twilight shook her head. The parade of images lost a bit of its impact – she didn’t feel like she should know the owners of those faces, or the faces to those names – but it didn’t stop, not completely; if anything, it sped up, and it didn’t stop until the features of what must have been a thousand kelpies, wolves, and thunderbirds had all burnt themselves back into her immediate memory. Somehow, she had the horrible feeling that each and every one of them was long dead. For an instant, she felt horribly alone.

I have friends back on Equus, she reminded herself. I have Princess Celestia, and I still have Beta. I might be Alpha Centauri, but I’m Twilight Sparkle, too. I’m not alone.

“I think I can see them – cresting that hill, over there,” Rookwind said, his wing rattling as he gestured towards a ridge back the way they’d come. Their retinue snaked down the near side of hill, shaded in profile by the rising suns, winding quickly down the grassy slope – they’d abandoned the road entirely in favor of a straight-line approach, it seemed – and between isolated trees; she smiled. It could take some getting used to, traveling with so many companions at once, but it wouldn’t be too hard, certainly. Especially if more memories reconnected. In time, things might even become familiar, despite the gulf of time between her death and her return.

Besides, she thought, as Rookwind and Beta took to the air once more and she followed, if things get too uncomfortable, I can always visit Ponyville again – maybe even Caelum. Her smile widened as she remembered the constellation she’d briefly been a part of; dancing through gravity wells like that had been enough to give her a taste for adrenaline to match Rainbow Dash’s. Maybe I can convince Princess Celestia to join a constellation with me. And when everypony else finally joins us – oh, but I’ll have to bring Spike here, I can’t leave him behind…

The cool morning air washing over her wings again slowly settled her mind, and she turned her thoughts back to politics and Domhan. Caisleanard was only a few hours away, after all – and if Radiant Eye really was as loyal to her as he professed, she didn’t want to make a mess of things through absent-mindedness.

Of course, even if I were paying attention, I might still mess something up, she thought sourly. I guess I’ll just have to rely on Beta a little longer, and hope for the best.

Author's Note

Terribly sorry for the long delay - truly, terribly sorry; schoolwork kept me occupied (I hate writing nonfiction on non-political subjects, and so my writing gland was sad for several days).

Thanks to all the folks who read, favorited and liked in the between-time! Feedback, as always, is appreciated.

Chapter 13: Bow to Me!

Whether it was because of her new not-quite-natural form and its inherent abilities, or just from simple acclimatization – however difficult getting used to emptying your stomach every other day should be – Rainbow Dash got over her usual post-teleportation nausea quickly. Ghealach had dumped her in a forest somewhere, it seemed; it almost looked familiar. Curving ferns fought with tangled brambles in a decent imitation of the Everfree Forest’s bracken near the ground; ivy crawled up gnarled tree trunks, its leafy tendrils prying loose slabs of rough bark and sending them to join the dense cover of dead leaves on the ground. Somewhere out in the woods, a bird chirped merrily. Sunslight streamed through gaps in the canopy, giving everything faintly doubled shadows. It was peaceful, even if the alien lighting did give the place an unsettlingly odd cast.

“Okay,” she said, addressing what seemed to be empty woodlands. The bird paused momentarily, as if it thought she might be talking to it, before continuing its warbling song. “I’m down on Domhan. Which way’s the nearest village and how do I help them?”

“North of your current location is the village, three miles distant. I felt a good buffer may have been advisable when I teleported you down, given how your reaction to teleportation is typically unflattering,” Ghealach replied, appearing in Dash’s field of vision. She didn’t even jump this time; she’d gotten used to her popping in and out of existence whenever she pleased. “As for how you can help, that is for you to discover – which is to say, I do not know. I am not omniscient. I have made this clear before.”

“Yeah, but I thought you might have spies or something on the ground here,” she tried to justify herself. “You’ve been planning this a while, so – “

“I have direct, personal access to this world once, perhaps twice every year,” she interrupted, with some degree of bitterness. “I am forgotten in the ridiculously over-complicated shuffle Beta puts her playthings through. The long-winter solstice, when Domhan is transitioning between Proxima Centauri and the closer binary and is practically without sunlight for three days, and occasionally the short-winter solstice, are the only times when the suns are gone long enough for me to fulfill my duties.”

“You’ve had direct, personal access to this place once a year for how long?”

“Kelpies’ lives are short,” she explained curtly. “Wolves, shorter, and while Thunderbirds may outlive them both, they fall far, far short of the lifespan of a moon, which” – she smiled – “is effectively infinite, even omitting the cycle of reincarnations for a moment. Any allies I make or spies I recruit die well before they can be of any use to me.”

Giving her navigational sense a chance to orient, Rainbow Dash turned northwards and began walking. She had wings, of course – she could fly – but she decided that if she was supposed to make friends and meet beings, walking might give her a better chance. Without thinking, she extended her mind outside of her head and brushed aside a fern in her path – and immediately, she recoiled mentally from the seething pool of energy that she’d bumped into, head-first. It was vast, immense, endless – attached to her head somehow, hungry for something that she could give it and insistent on escaping into the world now that she knew about it. Her head started to buzz as her vision lost focus and she broke out in a cold sweat. Whatever it was, it felt dangerous, lethally dangerous, but she couldn’t stop herself from reaching for it again.

“How did you find that?” Ghealach demanded peevishly. Something like a wet blanket dropped around Dash’s mind, and she lost track of where the energy was; the buzzing gradually faded away. “I am the one who will handle the magic. Focus on your task, and I will focus on mine.”

“That was magic?” she asked curiously. If that was magic – and that hunger was for it to be used – then she thought that she could finally understand why Twilight buried her nose in all those dusty spell books all day. If just touching it had been like that… “Seriously?”

“Yes. That was magic – more specifically, my personal reserve of magic,” she answered reluctantly. “Power is not something we will lack for most purposes, especially since I no longer need to maintain your life functions.”

“Aren’t you keeping this body going?” She shoved bodily through the ferns, disappointed for a moment that she couldn’t use magic to get them out of the way. There were more ferns on the other side – surprise, surprise. “Doesn’t that take some energy?”

“A minimal amount. You have only rudimentary imitations of bodily organs at this point – as you are composed entirely of moondust, I saw no need to give you a circulatory system. Economy will be paramount for a few days at least so I can recover what I expended to keep you alive.”

“I don’t have a heart?”

“It will not negatively impact you in any way, if that is what you are concerned about,” Ghealach told her. “In fact, I would consider it a benefit. You can neither bleed to death nor be suffocated, starve or die of thirst; you are composed of lunar dust and magic, with your soul safely ensconced up here with myself. Effectively, you are unkillable.”

She hopped through another path of ferns and yelped as the frog of her hoof landed on a sharp stick.

“You can still feel pain, though,” Ghealach admitted. “Pain serves useful functions.”

“Like what?”

“Encouraging you not to get damaged,” she answered simply.

Forcing her way through the forest was a challenge on hoof. Ferns and low-hanging branches conspired to make her keep her eyes pointed downwards, just to avoid being poked or whacked in the face. Unsettling cracking and snapping and rustling would set her nerves on edge for long minutes until the origin was revealed to be a squirrel or a rabbit or a particularly large beetle or something, and she’d laugh and continue on her journey north. The journey was hard, though the forest was more forgiving, and the suns were already well past their zenith by the time she encountered another being capable of speech who didn’t live inside her head or on a distant celestial body.

The triumph through Caisleanard played out almost identically to Uisceban, with only minor variations – the composition of the crowd and the architectural style of the buildings among them, as Twilight noted. When the chaotic jostling and jockeying for position that occurred concurrent with the roar of the crowd subsided, she could see notable differences from the almost downtrodden inhabitants of their first stop. The Caisleanardanes were dressed in brighter colors, richer fabrics, and less tattered clothes; they were cleaner, healthier-looking, and she couldn’t see a single urchin or pickpocket among them. She supposed that could just be a result of the criminals here being better at their jobs than the Uiscebani, but she somehow doubted it. Uisceban had had the look and feel of a throwback to the Preclassical Era of Equus, with stone-and-wood structures lining its wide streets; Caisleanard felt like a modern Equestrian city.

She noticed the architecture after a delay, but not much of one. It wasn’t modern in the sense that Manehattan was modern, all gleaming steel and mirrored glass and concrete, but it was definitely further along the timeline than Uisceban had been. Brown brick was a popular construction material, and glass was plentiful, if not present in vast sheets that made the buildings look more like oversized body mirrors than residences or businesses. No, they did not look like that at all – they were much more subdued, but just as clean and in just as good repair as the skyscrapers of Manehattan. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to make them all the same height, too, which made the city look almost like a vast brown plateau when they’d first flown in – a wall-ringed plateau with a great castle at its heart.

The roads were winding in Caisleanard; that was another difference she picked up on after a half-hour of trotting calmly next to Beta along those avenues. There was no picturesque direct line from the outskirts to the fortress; navigating the town was like navigating a maze. Some part of her that had been reawakened thought back to Caisleanard in the War of the Nightmares – thatched roofs, wood walls, tree-lined lanes between all major landmarks…deep pits belching giant mole-like monsters like smoke, echoing screams, a deep and all-permeating sense of failure, crimson firelight and the mingling laughter of three beings she’d once called sisters, and friend.

Focus on the present, she admonished herself. Beta is here and they love her. They love me. None of them are nearly half old enough to remember that. It’s probably been forgotten completely already.

“Everything okay, Alpha?” Beta asked concernedly from her right. “You looked like you fazed out for a second there.”

“I’m fine,” she answered. “Just…memories.”

“From when?”

“The War of Nightmares,” she replied. Beta was silent. “I have to ask, though…”

“What could you possibly want to know about then?” she demanded. “If you want to know why we razed Caisleanard, or why we fed half the population to our bugganes, or why we salted the fields and poisoned the aquifer so nothing could grow around the hill for almost a thousand years, or why we even attacked in the first place when it was such a worthless, underpopulated excuse for a town that could hardly scrape together enough tax money to appease its mayor – well, I don’t know. It’s a blank. All of it – it’s just a Caelum-damned blank!”

“Calm down, Beta,” she said. “I can’t remember that – or, I couldn’t.” She grimaced as a memory of just those events tried to force its way to the surface of her mind. “What I was asking about was the third person laughing.”

“What?”

“I remembered Caisleanard burning,” Alpha clarified. “There were bugganes coming up out of the ground, and I could hear you and Proxima laughing. But there was someone else…”

She was quiet for a few moments as they continued on their way down the street, the roar of the crowd preventing things from going completely silent. For a second, Alpha thought her sister was just going to let the matter go. Then, she spoke again.

“I’m not sure,” she answered slowly. “I can’t remember much of burning…of that night. It’s all a haze of red, broken up by periods of black. But if what I do remember is any indication…that might have been Proxi’s pet. Folasciathán.”

“Who is…who is that?” she asked, skipping over the difficult word. She might have been able to speak the language once, but that had been in a different body, with a millennium of muscle memory behind her tongue.

“Someone who left us long ago,” Beta answered. “He’s best forgotten now. He won’t be coming back anytime soon. I took care of that, at least.” She forced a smile and waved to the crowd; the cheering crescendoed. “There are more important things to focus on right now – like Radiant Eye’s coming feast, or visiting with the people of Caisleanard, or even our next stop in Frond – Lady Risen Star there has assured me that it will be a feast to remember!”

“If I keep eating like this, Beta, I might explode,” she chuckled, playing along and secretly resolving to do an intensive search on the word “Folasciathán” as soon as possible. For whatever reason – overprotectiveness, maybe? – she doesn’t seem to be willing to tell the whole truth, she thought. I’ll have to find it on my own. I can’t rely on her for information forever, in any case. I’m supposed to be a Queen.

The rest of the slow walk was uneventful. The guards kept the crowds in line, though overall the crowd was manageable. The people adored them, as they had in Uisceban. There wasn’t any sort of large open space near the center of the city; no parade ground or park. The houses merely ended, running right up to the edge of a wide moat that surrounded a green, grassy hill, upon which perched the imposing grey-walled fortress that House Eye had ruled from for almost five hundred years. They had to wait at the gatehouse on the near side of the moat, as immense oaken sections were lowered carefully into place, straining against iron chains almost as thick around as Alpha was, with reverberating thunks that she could feel even through the stone floor of the gatehouse.

“Caisleanard has always been a martial city,” Beta murmured as they began to cross the drawbridge – the largest Alpha had ever seen, in over a billion years of existence. “They rebuilt it when the land was habitable again, with the intent that it should never be taken like that again. The foundations of the city – the entire city – are reinforced and designed to be impenetrable to buggane claws. The walls are tall enough to make climbing them a chore. I’m not entirely sure who Visionary Eye was planning to defend against, but I’m sure he had his reasons.”

“Do nobles ever have wars with each other?” Alpha asked curiously. They hadn’t back on Equus, but on Domhan…

“Never. I put an end to that after the first abortive effort,” she answered proudly. Then, she snorted. “If the first pretext was any indication, if I hadn’t done that, things would be bloody, horrific chaos by now. What kind of kelpie drives herself into an equicidal rage over the want of a single horseshoe?”

Halfway across the bridge to the invitingly lush island and its almost incongruous blemish, a Thunderbird guard landed heavily before them with a brassy rattle. She snapped off a crisp salute with one wing before delivering her message.

“Lord Radiant and Lady Keen request the pleasure of the Queens’ company in the west gallery,” she declared.

Twilight winced as the memory of another thunderbird delivering a much less banal report flashed through her head. “Thank you…”

“Private,” Beta finished fluidly. “We shall, of course, pay them a visit. Convey them my thanks once more for their hospitality – the people of Caisleanard are as welcoming as always.”

“And my thanks, too!” Twilight chimed in, trying to cover for her prior lapse.

The thunderbird bowed before taking wing again and allowing them to proceed on their way.

It was with what could be called an excess of snapping, crashing, cracking, and crunching that Rainbow Dash stumbled into the latest clearing in the forest, cursing to herself and itching in a thousand places from a thousand different tiny cuts that the brambles had left all over her. Burrs clung stubbornly to her fetlocks; her mane was similarly adorned, as for whatever reason there were evidently vines here that had seeds like that. And those vines liked to give passers-by head hugs. She wasn’t sweating, and for once probably would have welcomed that.

“I think you forgot something important, Ghealach,” she grumbled angrily, shaking herself like a dog – or like a wolf – to try to dislodge the sticks and stones that steadfastly held onto her coat like poison ivy runners. She gritted her teeth as she caught sight of a strand of leaves on her flank and realized that a few of those had stuck onto her coat, too. “Why won’t any of this bucking stuff come off?”

“It is because kelpies were adapted to hunt by drowning things,” Ghealach answered simply. She was completely clean, of course, being a figment of Dash’s imagination manipulated by a moon a few million miles away. “Their coats are adhesive. Only water can dislodge that detritus.”

“What, and you couldn’t have told me this before I marched all through the bucking forest?”

“It did not seem pertinent at the time.”

“It didn’t seem pert – “ She was interrupted by a dead branch with particularly bad timing that felt it was a good time to break off its parent tree and practice bungee-jumping with a vine as a cord. It dropped down onto Dash’s head like an anvil, sticking fast and jerking her down with it. “Oh, get off me!” she snarled, and with a pulse of wild magic she ripped the thing off her face and hurled it into the woods again, its leafy tether trailing behind it like a kite tail. For good measure, she set that on fire before relinquishing control of her magic to Ghealach again. She didn’t even notice that she thought of it as her magic, already.

“I have come up with a third reason why you are ill-suited for magic,” Ghealach observed wryly. “You are far too calm and even-tempered.”

“Where’s the village?” she demanded, ignoring the slight. “It can’t be too far from here.”

“Less than a quarter of a – “ Ghealach paused and looked past Dash. “You have an observer. Several observers.”

“Oh, great,” Dash grumbled. She addressed the clearing at large, and whoever – whatever – was hiding, watching her. “I know you’re there! I’m not going to hurt any of you if you come out right now.”

“Incredibly diplomatic,” Ghealach sighed, “though less than intelligent. I suppose I should expect that by now.”

“And why wasn’t it intelligent?”

“You have essentially threatened a force of an unknown size, of unknown composition, while completely alone.”

“I’m immortal though, right? It’s not like they can kill me,” Dash reminded her. She shouted again, “I mean it! Come out!”

“They can still incapacitate or inflict a great deal of pain,” Ghealach pointed out. “And if any are magic users, they can kill you. And I will order you, just in case, to not repeat that. The situation is already potentially bad enough.”

With a quiet rustle of leaves, a wolf that matched Rainbow Dash for size, even in her new form, with a pure-white coat and a multitude of scars criss-crossing his body lumbered out of the underbrush across the clearing from Dash. Five other wolves, slightly smaller, stepped out as well, taking up positions around the edge of the grassy area. A low growl from behind her told her that a seventh wolf was hidden behind her – she hadn’t even heard it approach!

“Can wolves – “ she started, but Ghealach interrupted.

“Do not even hint that anything can harm you,” she said. “Now that you have announced yourself as invincible, act like it. But, no, wolves are as magically impotent as asteroids. You are safe from death here, though not from severe pain. Trot lightly.”

“I am Streamwalker South-Born, of the Great Pack of the Far Eastern Hunting Grounds,” the white wolf growled. He sat and gave Dash an appraising look. “This pack has been pursuing you since your materialization some miles from here. Speak, interloper, and tell us why you have interrupted our hunt.”

“Why I interrupted your – you just said you followed me!” she protested.

“Irrelevant,” Streamwalker declared. “Answer with your intentions or my pack will share your meat amongst themselves.”

“You can’t kill me,” she scoffed. “Stop threatening me, or I’ll – uh – “ Buck, Ghealach has control of my magic.

With a snort of amusement, Cloud Ferry stepped out from behind the white wolf, smirking. “Well, first contact is certainly going well.”

“Your input is neither needed nor desired, phantom,” Ghealach told her, a warning tone in her voice. “Be gone.”

“Or what? You’ll try to lock me away again?” She laughed. “You royally messed up this time, O Moon-Spirit. I’m just as critical as you and Dashie here in keeping our collective mind intact. I also have just as much interest in keeping our collective body intact as you, though Rainbow Dash seems bound and determined to test the limits of our indestructability.”

“Hey, she told me to act like I was invincible!”

“So it’s only the knowledge of your own mortality that keeps you from being so hostile normally?” Ferry asked. “Interesting.”

“She seems to be insane,” one of the other wolves commented. Streamwalker grunted in agreement.

“I am in full concurrence,” Cloud Ferry added.

“Things were going fine before you showed up again!”

“Fine? Really?” She snorted again. “Rainbow Dash, if that was what you called acting, you obviously have never, ever seen anything that would approach matching the definition.”

“You think you can do better?”

“Of course! Allow me to demonstrate...”

And with an extremely disconcerting feeling of being shoved aside, Rainbow Dash found herself looking at herself from the outside. Ghealach looked absolutely shocked.

Her body suddenly straightened from the slightly relaxed stance it had been in before. Her eyes sparked with something approaching righteous fury, and with a thunderous roar her wings snapped open to their fullest extent. Dash could remember Princess Celestia once looking similar, but after she felt a pulse of stolen magic silently clear a path in the canopy and let a ray of sunslight play across her body’s iridescent feathers, sending rainbow patterns shimmering across the trees and ground, her appearance drove that memory from her mind. She’d been a winged kelpie-thing before; now, she looked like a deity.

“I am Ghealach, the Dust Sentinel, Guardian of the Domhanane Night and spirit of the Red Moon,” her body proclaimed, her voice layering on top of itself in impossible ways, mimicking as closely as possible the sound of Caelum’s own celestial roar. “I am Rainbow Dash, Bearer of the Element of Loyalty and Empress of the Open Sky! And I am Cloud Ferry, the Three-Fold One, the Weaver of Webs and the Dancer of Faces! How dare you speak to me so insolently, you overgrown worm. Your threats mean as much to me as the protests of the microbes my hooves crush beneath me! You, your pack, and your Great-Pack are lucky I am merciful, or for your insults I would have erased you so thoroughly, so totally, that not even Caelum Star-Maker herself would recall the instants of your grandsires’ conceptions! Now, bow to me!”

The wolves slowly began to take steps back, backs arched subtly, tails between their legs. Not one of them made a sound. Even Ghealach was silent, watching Cloud Ferry in Dash’s body, evaluating the display, her face expressionless.

Ferry summoned more magic and lit her eyes ablaze with violet fire; she lunged forward, closing the distance between herself and Streamwalker in a heartbeat. “Bow to me!”

With a terrified yelp, Streamwalker bowed. The other wolves froze in their tracks; Ferry turned to glare at each one of them in turn. The first two bowed the moment her eyes found them; the rest quickly dropped submissively, without further prompting, and she smiled grimly.

“Where is the nearest village?” she demanded of them. Streamwalker cleared his throat.

“A mile north of here,” he answered quickly.

“Take me there,” she ordered. “Immediately.”

The white wolf rose slowly, as did the rest of the pack. “Yes, great one. Of course!”

The wolves gathered and formed into a wedge, leaving space in the middle for Dash’s body. Whatever they had been out and about for before, none of them seemed to be complaining about the sudden change of plans. Cloud Ferry made their body step into its rightful place, and with a sudden jolt, Dash felt herself reconnect with it.

“And that,” Ferry declared, her figmentary form materializing in Dash’s vision again, “is how you act. Invincibility does not translate into belligerence. Invincibility translates into godhood.” Dash remained silent for fear that speaking again would cause the wolves to second-guess their sudden devotion to her will.

“It seems to have worked, in any case,” Ghealach answered instead. She sounded thoughtful. “Your…possession, is perhaps the word I am searching for, was unanticipated, but if it causes things to move faster, I cannot complain.”

“You’re damn right you can’t complain!” Cloud Ferry grinned, skipping straight past the self-satisfied smirk Dash had expected. “I didn’t get this cutie mark because I’m mediocre in front of a crowd.”

“How did you do that?” Ghealach asked curiously. The phantom sniffed dismissively.

“Figure it out yourself, dustball,” she retorted smugly, turning away from Ghealach and cantering to the front of the pack. Somehow, even though the wolves were following Streamwalker, Cloud Ferry still made it seem like they were there to attend to her and her alone, and Dash felt an odd twinge of envy.

Author's Note

Alternate Chapter Title: First Dominoes

Apologies for the interval between chapters, once again. Midterm week is this week for me, so I won't be able to have another chapter up during it, but hopefully I'll be able to get a few solid updates in over the coming Christmas vacation. Thanks to all the people who read and upvoted this story in the interim! Comments, thumbs, etc. are always appreciated.

Chapter 14: Hearts and Minds

The west gallery was built in a loggia style that reminded Twilight a great deal of the hall where she’d first spoken with Caelum. It opened up onto a beautiful grassy courtyard, a green space extending down to a smaller lake – there was a lake, a pond, on an island in a moat; she found that to be surprising – that provided a welcome contrast to the stark greys common in the castle itself. Blues were common as well there, in the form of fountains trickling down the walls into stone basins, and from stone basins into channels that ran around the perimeter of the halls and the chambers connected to the halls, and from the channels down small drains to be recycled again. It was a common feature in the homes of wealthy land-dwelling kelpies, Beta told her; the basins were useful in getting the accrued detritus of daily life to come free, and the constant sound of running water was both calming and reassuring to kelpies, as when she and Beta and Proxi had designed them, they’d made sure they’d always stay close to water so they wouldn’t starve to death.

Radiant and Keen Eye were waiting for them at a round wooden table in an apse of the loggia, standing side by side and chatting amiably as they waited. Twilight could see them from a distance, through the straight, no-nonsense columns; Keen Eye was wearing a dress of some sort, made of a diaphanous blue-green fabric that failed to cling to her despite the natural stickiness of kelpie coats, and had a small conch shell dangling from one ear. Her mane was short, though the seagrass strands in it remained long, giving Twilight the impression that she was wearing some kind of shellfish salad on her head. The effect, somehow, managed to come off as not ridiculous. Radiant Eye, on the other hand, was simply covered in dozens of earth-tone pebbles.

“I hope they didn’t imply anything by summoning us,” Beta murmured as they prepared to round the corner to the final stretch before the apse. “Normally, when we’re invited to the home of a noble family the hosts will meet us in front, like Measured Speech did. Sending a messenger to request our presence – “

“Maybe it’s part of their politics?” Twilight interrupted. “To show their power, or reinforce the image of their power in the eyes of the rest of the nobility. Our position is unassailable, but us playing along with their wishes might imply that they have a closer relationship with us than the rest of the nobility.”

“I thought you weren’t versed in the politics of nobility?” Beta smiled.

“I…may have spent a large amount of time reading about noble etiquette, back when I was a filly,” she admitted. “I did live in Princess Celestia’s court, after all. Dealing with nobles was a daily thing, even if I was never involved in their plans.” She grimaced. “Even if I didn’t know if I was involved in their plans.”

Beta shrugged. “Saves me time in familiarizing you with the new system.” She giggled. “And here I thought it might have been too new for you to take in all at once!”

“What do you mean, too new?”

“Well…I have made an effort to keep things…recognizable, for when you return,” Beta explained slowly. “So” – they were at the apse now; she interrupted herself – “but Radiant Eye will love to lecture you on what I’ve done, I’m sure. Good morning to you both, Radiant Eye and Keen Eye.”

“Ah! You’re here!” Radiant exclaimed, startled. “I’m sorry, my Queens, I didn’t hear you approach.”

Keen rolled her eyes. “If you hadn’t managed to keep things running smoothly in spite of the interference of other houses, Radiant, I’d call you shamefully unobservant.” She dipped into a shallow curtsy to Beta. “Nice to have you over again. I’ll try to hide as many of the keys to the sub-treasuries as I can.”

Beta smiled. “I think it’s the main treasury you should worry about.”

“But where would I get money for my dresses if the main treasury key were to somehow find its way to the bottom of the moat?”

“My dear, I think you may be forgetting the more important of our two arrivals,” Radiant interjected coolly, bowing to Twilight as he did so. “Welcome to Caisleanard, Queen Alpha. I’m sure tonight will be a night to remember!”

“And tomorrow night, too!” Keen added, curtsying again – deeper than she had to Beta. “Though that will be it, I’m afraid, as I’ve dumped all the keys to the sub-treasuries in my usual place, so we can only drain the majority of our wealth on two nights of feasting, instead of all of it on several.”

“Frugal as always, Keen,” Beta remarked, amused.

“My mother always did say I have a keen eye for finance,” she replied with a smile.

“Her voice dripped with sarcasm then, too,” Radiant chuckled. Keen bumped him abruptly and knocked him sideways into the table, and they both laughed.

“I must admit, I’m curious as to why you sent for us instead of meeting us at the gatehouse, like Measured Speech,” Beta said. Her eyes flickered with magic as she pulled one of the four chairs beneath the table out. “One could almost see it as…disrespectful.”

“It’s perfectly fine, Beta,” Twilight interjected before Radiant or Keen could even open their mouths. “It’s probably better that we meet here anyways. The courtyard is nice – and besides, they sacrificed the opportunity to be seen with us in public, so it's not like their decision lacked tradeoffs.”

“Not much of a sacrifice,” Keen Eye commented. Radiant nodded in agreement, pulling his own chair out.

“Caisleanard is peopled by heretics, malcontents, agitators, and social revolutionaries,” he explained. “The other nobles like to send them here to try to make my little system collapse, but in many cases they’re giving them exactly what they’d always wanted anyways – freedom from taxes, a political climate conducive to debate and reform, an opportunity to be left alone in peace, and all in a region much safer and freer of monsters than the Outlands. They end up becoming much more productive and valuable citizens than they would be otherwise.” He smiled. “Caisleanard, and my lands in general, are an immense penal reform colony in effect.”

“They seemed happy enough to welcome us earlier,” Twilight said.

“Everyone loves the Queens, even if they hate their policies,” Keen responded. “And in any case, we haven’t heard a great deal of policy from you, Queen Alpha. You’ve only just returned. I imagine a great deal of the celebrations that greet your return are fueled by the downtrodden projecting their hopes for the future onto you.”

“I’m sure it’s for reasons much less political than that.” Beta’s voice held a hint of admonishment in it. Keen seemed affronted.

“She’s a grown mare, Beta Centauri, and I’m almost completely certain she’ll be an excellent Queen without your protectiveness and guidance,” she spat. “And if she can’t manage that, then she shouldn’t be a Queen at all!”

“Dear – “

“Don’t you ‘dear’ me, Radiant Eye!” she retorted, rounding on him. “If I know Beta – and I do! – then I know she’ll try to keep things as they always were, and I also know that that is no way to rule a country! Technology kept almost stagnant for two millennia – social hierarchies preserved well past when they ought to have collapsed under the weight of their own ridiculous inefficiency – “

“I agree completely,” Radiant interrupted. Keen spluttered to a halt after a few seconds, before yanking her own chair out from under the table and sitting heavily on it. Twilight was the last one standing. She quickly pulled her own seat out and took it.

“You intend to discuss this now, then,” Beta stated. It sounded like she’d been dreading this moment for years. “Before the feast?”

“It’s a much better time for it, I feel,” he answered with a nod. “That way, the idle chatter of the party can help close any rifts this opens up. Additionally, I doubt I could have restrained my wife for much longer than I already did.”

“That was restraining her?”

“I could have allowed her to slip into her usual vox populi mode,” he pointed out. “Then we’d all still be here when the feast began, and there’s no way in the seven hells that I’m allowing Measured Speech to host a feast in my own home.”

“What do you mean, technology kept stagnant?” Twilight asked.

“If our benevolent Queen here hadn’t been interfering, who knows what we’d have by now?” Keen grumbled. “Machines to let kelpies and wolves fly? Devices to control the weather? Spells to keep homes safe at night? She’s been actively hostile to anything that would push technology past what we had fifteen hundred years ago.”

“Her intentions were the best, Keen,” Radiant said. “Even if her actions have been…detrimental. She intended to keep Domhan at a state that Alpha could easily recognize on her return – “

“Don’t feed me the party line again, Radiant! I know her excuses!” Keen Eye stood abruptly, slammed her forehooves down on the table, and glared at Beta. “I’d accept that if she’d started immediately after Alpha died the first time, but she didn’t! She let five hundred years pass! Haven’t you learned about how quickly things changed in those years? We went from semi-nomadic herds and packs and flocks to cities in only two hundred, and then thaumaturgy and science started advancing in leaps and bounds from then on – “

“And why, Keen Eye, do you think I really did this?” Beta asked tiredly. From her demeanor, Twilight could tell she wasn’t expecting a real answer. An accusation of arbitrary tyranny, perhaps? Twilight had the impression that this was something they’d discussed in excruciating detail before, without satisfactory conclusion.

Keen smiled like a wolf sighting her prey. “You were afraid, Beta. You saw things changing, the world shifting faster than you knew what to do with it, and you were terrified that society would start to change with it, and you’d lose your seat at the top of the heap. You feared the collapse of the nobility under their own weight, and the revolution that would follow and knock you back off your throne and into powerless semi-religious obscurity!”

Beta’s eyes lit up with fury. Her mane flared as she, too, stood, and locked gazes with the smaller kelpie. “How dare you!”

“That’s how I see things,” Keen sniffed. She sat back down nonchalantly as Beta remained standing. Alpha watched her sister warily, dim images stringing themselves together in her mind and painting a scene of the distant past when she’d seen Beta in a similar rage. Leaves blocking her vision as she watched from a bush, Watchful and her subordinates scattered around the clearing edge as they watched the debacle happening within…a Nightmarish shadow of her sister looming darkly over a scarred and black-furred wolf, eyes glowing with orange tongues of flame, mane a firestorm in miniature…the wolf said something, an excuse, and with an unearthly screech of hatred Beta had called upon dark magic powerful enough to warp the thaumato-physical plane of the clearing permanently, and erased the wolf from existence. With a start, she was back in the apse, with Beta in a killing mood and Keen Eye blissfully unaware of how close she’d just pushed Beta Centauri to her breaking point.

“As if I’m some kind of power-hungry tyrant!”

“Fifteen hundred years, Beta Centauri,” Keen repeated, “and not one breakthrough. We’re still using fire for light and heating, for heaven’s sake!”

“Beta,” Alpha said warningly. Beta closed her eyes and slowly sat back down again, her mane returning to its usual intensity. Alpha tried to hide her relief.

“Perhaps this topic wasn’t a good idea,” Radiant admitted reluctantly. “I should have remembered how Keen gets when discussing it, at least. A bit more tact might have been appropriate.”

“Blunt truth gets things done fastest,” Keen said.

“What you nearly got done was forcing me to plan your funeral,” the noble grumbled. “I apologize, my Queens. I’m sure Beta knew about Keen’s usual…directness, but I’m just as sure that this came as something of a surprise to you, Alpha.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” she replied, thinking back to her first night in Ponyville and a certain pegasus’s wild accusations of espionage. “I’ve known some ponies who can be like that as well. I’m used to it.”

“In any case, I welcome you both to Caisleanard,” he continued, a note of relief in his voice. “The castle grounds are completely safe, for both of you, regardless of the people’s opinion of you Beta. Feel free to wander before dinner; exploration of this ancient fortification is more rewarding than guided tours, I feel. It’s how my father introduced me to its various design quirks.”

“How old is it?” Twilight asked curiously. Canterlot Palace was over five hundred years old; Castle Caisleanard seemed to be in at least as good repair.

“It’s been around since the city was rebuilt – portions of it are even older, in fact,” he responded.

“Almost a thousand years old,” Keen clarified. “And several sections of the keep are nearly two thousand – they predate most other cities on Domhan.”

“That’s amazing!” she exclaimed. “How has it remained standing so long? Were the fortifications put to use in the intervening time?”

“Several times, mainly during periods when Buggane councils were numerous,” Beta answered. “I helped defend the city then.”

“The bastards are much less numerous now, thankfully,” Radiant noted. “The Outlands are mainly where they’re a threat. Around these parts, the wolves and guards keep them in check, and stop them forming altogether most of the time.”

“Unfortunately, there are preparations to be made for the coming feast,” Keen prompted. Radiant nodded in agreement.

“I would love to continue, my Queens, but there are things to get done that need our supervision. As I said, feel free to wander the grounds and enjoy the castle.” Radiant smiled. “I felt a bit of unstructured free time might be welcome after the hecticness of the tour.”

“It’s very welcome. Thank you, Radiant.” Beta smiled back as they left. They rounded the corner quickly, walking side by side and vanishing through an ivy-framed doorway soon after. Things were quiet then except for the slight rustling of the wind in the trees.

“So,” Twilight started. “What’s the itinerary for – “

“I think I’ll be spending some time alone, Alpha, if that’s okay with you.” Beta stood from her seat and gave Twilight a smile as well, far more wan than the one she’d graced the Eyes with. “I’ll be in the eastern tower if I’m needed. You can take care of whatever comes up in the meantime?”

“I guess,” she replied uncertainly. What kind of things would I be expected to deal with?

“Thanks.” Without another word, Beta too left. When the door slammed shut behind her – a different door than the one Radiant and Keen had gone through, across the courtyard from it – Twilight was completely alone.

Deciding to investigate the garden a bit, she left the apse as well, trotting down the steps at its front and into the unblocked sunslight. The sky was clear of any clouds, and overhead she could see her star and Beta’s star – Alpha Centauri a yellow ember, shining steadily, distant but much closer than any star at night; Beta Centauri, an orange disk that reminded her of Celestia’s own sun back home. Proxima was nowhere to be seen. She realized she felt sad about that, more sad than she felt about leaving Equestria, and far more sad about it than she felt disturbed by the fact that she could stare directly at both suns and not be blinded, or that she had wings made of metal feathers like the semi-mythical stymphalian birds near Arneighdia, or that she no longer had a horn – that she had a coat more adhesive than most forms of nonmagical glue, canine teeth that she could feel every time she moved her tongue, like twin knives embedded in her gums, a mane made of fire and seaweed, and about a dozen other minor alterations and differences that set her apart from the unicorn she used to be, physically if not mentally.

I’m not going home anytime soon, am I? she asked herself, still staring up at the suns. Nopony back home would ever believe me. I’d probably terrify them just with my appearance! I doubt even Rarity could do anything with my mane, and she’d probably just get stuck on me anyways. She chuckled at the mental image of Rarity attempting to help her look less alien and ending up glued onto her, but her spurt of good humor faded soon after – and made way for a spot of slight concern. Wait a second! I’m a star, aren’t I? Can’t I just change what I look like whenever I want to? This body isn’t even technically real! I could just change back to what I used to look like if I visit Ponyville again…I could just change back right now! Why wasn't that my first posited course of action? Don't I want to?

She nodded to herself at that idea. She could shift back, even if it was just for a moment. Nobody was around to be scared or confused or revolted or whatever reason Beta would likely propose for why she shouldn't. All she had to do was figure out how to shift. And, possibly just as importantly, if she even wanted to.

Maybe if I try to dissociate myself from my body, she thought unenthusiastically, the idea prompted by yet another half-formed memory from the distant past. They were almost a constant background when she was in a familiar place – fragments coalescing, whirling around, linking together like snowflakes in a turbulent blizzard, rising like snowflakes on updrafts of mnemonic triggers. Caisleanard was a blessed relief from that background; everything was new, or at least too new to trigger anything. Idly, she made a mental note to avoid the oldest sections of the castle, to keep the memories in check.

She took a seat on the warm flagstone semicircle that extended from the apse to the bushes and trees of the courtyard, and closed her eyes. No, she didn’t have to dissociate herself from her body – she had to remember that the winged-kelpie form she wore wasn’t her body. Somewhere overhead, millions of miles away, blazing like a bonfire in the heart of the void…that was her body now. Alpha Centauri, the primary star of the Centauri system. That was her. Maybe that's why I'm so reluctant to shift back. It's not my body anymore, and I know it.

There wasn’t a feeling of motion when it finally happened. She didn’t feel a tugging, a release by gravity as she escaped it, air rushing by as she pulled free of the atmosphere. One second, there were warm flagstones beneath her, and the sound of chirping birds in her ears, and the feeling of a slight breeze; the next…it was almost impossible to describe.

In an instant, she recognized her experience in Caelum’s hall for what it had been: a simulacrum. An approximation. Dull. As amazing as being in that constellation had been, it had been a cheap thrill. Her perceptions of gravity had been hazy and blurred or simply absent. Her manipulations of space, as impressively precise as they had been, had been the clumsy, fumbling jerking of a leg that had fallen asleep for a long time.

She could see everything. Or, she couldn’t see see anything, but it was there – everything her light touched, everything beneath her rays, everywhere her light had reached out into the distant extremes of the universe, she was aware of. And the rest of it – she’d never known she was missing so much! Impossible colors in streamers light-years wide, flowing around each other in beautiful, impossible ways, slipping through dimensions she’d never thought could exist – space-time itself, taut around her, practically vibrating from the slow dance she was caught up in with her sisters – her worlds, hurtling through space at ridiculous speeds exceeded only by the rate at which she was moving, careening around in the great galactic dance she’d been born into – the experiences just kept coming! Gravity, light, magic, electromagnetism, unification forces, space-time; they all fell into place, giving her a comprehension of the universe that mortals had struggled for, for eons, and hadn’t achieved, not through lack of intelligence or any inherent inferiority of the mind, but because they’d simply lacked anything approaching the tools the stars naturally possessed. And yet, even with all that vast ability, even with such an all-encompassing perception, there was still something beyond her comprehension – and, according to her memories, beyond the comprehension of anyone, Caelum included.

It was there, faintly, across all spectrums. A faint shivering in space, a slight inconsistency in time, an almost-imperceptible wavering of gravity; a wave of unidentifiable photons in a strange frequency, a faint hum of electricity where nothing existed to conduct it. Harmonious unities between objects separated by incomprehensible distances. Symmetries invisible to beings with lesser senses. Unrelated coincidences, to mortals, if they could be detected at all by them. Obviously related, obviously in tune, obviously synchronized in the perceptions of stars. Music, of a sort, appreciable only by the spheres of the heavens, but not understandable, though she’d tried for millions of years. Fascinating, hypnotic music.

For a while, she forgot about Domhan and Equestria, about the feast and being a unicorn again and whether she wanted that or not, and spun quietly away in space, in the heart of a vast web of interconnections and frighteningly familiar impressions, listening to the silent music of the spheres.

“So, what were you hunting, anyways?” Rainbow Dash asked Streamwalker, as the wolves led her through the forest. They’d been walking for a short time – more than a few minutes, shorter than an hour; the suns weren’t visible through the thick canopy, so she was having trouble determining what time it was precisely. Ghealach might know, but she refused to ask her; they were bound together forever, but that didn't mean she had to rely on her for everything! “Deer or something?”

“Bugganes,” the white wolf growled back. The barely-contained fury in his voice caused Dash to subtly change pace to let the space between them grow a bit. “Pup-eaters.”

“A council of them has formed nearby,” one of the other wolves added. “They have taken our pups.”

“We know their location,” Streamwalker said. “We know the layout of their campsite. We know where to strike to kill them.”

“And we know there are too many,” a third wolf finished morosely.

“They would cut us down in moments,” Streamwalker confirmed gravely. “Our only hope is to pick them off one by one, but for once they seem to have a tactical thinker among them! Never are they alone, never do they travel in groups of less than three; they stay belowground always, except to burst forth and ravage a homestead or butcher a herd of deer!”

“It is disturbing,” the second wolf muttered. “One would almost think they had a greater mind than a mere buggane at their head.”

“Hold up a sec,” she interjected. The wolves halted instantly; she sighed. “No, keep walking. But what’s a buggane?”

A few of the wolves shared surprised glances between themselves, furtively, probably hoping she wouldn’t notice. Cloud Ferry snorted, at the head of the formation next to Streamwalker – the only wolf who was unfazed by the question.

“They are savage beasts,” he answered darkly. He glanced back; there was hatred in his eyes. Dash hoped it wasn’t directed at her. “Great, black-furred, bipedal monsters of the darkest past, allies of Nightmares and brutes almost entirely devoid of self-control. They destroy by their nature and prey on civilized beings for food. And they have our pups!”

“I sense an opportunity here…” Cloud Ferry sang. She smirked. “Or, an opportunity if you want to remain Ghealach’s faithful little pawn.”

The forest gave way abruptly to flat farmlands, brown tracts of dark earth bare of growth – harvest season must have already come and passed. The wolves spread out more, widening the space between them but retaining the wedge formation that had brought them through the woods. A tight cluster of wooden houses was visible in the distance, two or three more miles away. It was still daylight out, not past noon – she could see the suns again! Never before had she thought she’d be so happy to see two suns in the sky. Her muscles relaxed from a state of tension she hadn’t even noticed in the forest. If she wasn’t one in any other area, mentally at least she remained a pegasus – and pegasi did not like being confined. Even by trees.

The final approach to the first bit of civilization she’d seen on Domhan passed quickly. Without the grasping, thorny underbrush hindering them, Streamwalker’s wolves fell into an easy lope that ate up the distance in under twenty minutes. To her surprise, she found that she could match it just as easily.

The village seemed almost deserted when they entered it – “entered” being defined, in Dash’s mind, by them passing the first house on the outer edge. There were no walls to tell where the village ended and the wilderness began, which struck her as odd if there really was such a big threat from these “bugganes”. Any doubt she had about bugganes being a threat, however, vanished when they reached the center of the village.

When they came to a halt in what she guessed had once been the village green, an open space surrounded by wood-and-stone shacks with thatched roofs, they came to a halt before a massive hole in the ground. It was a shaft, a vertical shaft, wide enough for nine of her, pressed flank to flank, to fall down into. At the bottom of the shaft, it curved sharply and became a horizontal tunnel. Huge gashes in the dirt on the surface gave her an even better idea of the size of whatever had come through that pit. The wolves ignored it like it wasn’t even there; Rainbow Dash stared at it, transfixed, for what felt like hours.

The buildings around the green weren’t looking any better than the green itself, she discovered once she could tear her eyes away from that gigantic pit. Roofs were torn apart, chimneys shattered, exposed beams of wood splintered and crushed in half, doors snapped like dry twigs and hanging loosely in their forcibly widened frames; it was a disaster area. When Streamwalker let out a low, mournful howl, it didn’t do much to improve the situation.

Geez, she though. This looks bad.

The survivors peeked out of their ruined homes slowly, almost reluctantly, at the sound of Streamwalker’s voice. Well, with the exception of one – a kelpie, she guessed, equinoid, with a brown coat covered in small stones, and a mane that looked kind of like Rarity had taken it upon herself to design a fashionable seaweed wig, pushed his way out of his damaged door like he was being chased by the legions of Tartarus, his coat gluing him onto the top half of his mauled door. His momentum carried him swinging around into his wall. Dash winced. He didn’t seem to notice, and just peeled himself off – painfully – and galloped over to greet them, detouring around the hole.

“Stream – Streamwalker!” he panted when he skidded to a halt in front of them. “What news?”

“There are too many,” the white wolf replied, his voice heavy with regret. His words carried across the field; a few sobs echoed out, but they were quickly suppressed. “I am sorry, Grass.”

“Did you find where they are, at least?” Grass asked desperately. “Did you see them? Are they safe?”

“I did find them,” Streamwalker said. “And they are alive – for now. I know not what has happened in my pack’s absence.”

“Suns above, Streamwalker, you must have some good news!” Grass snapped. His eyes were wild – the look of a father who’d lost everything. “Anything at all! What about her?” He jabbed a hoof in Dash’s direction.

“Should I field this one?” Cloud Ferry asked. Her face was a mask of indifference, but something about her eyes betrayed it as an act.

“I can do this,” Dash answered testily. Streamwalker spoke before her, though.

“The stars have answered our pleas,” he declared. “We found her in the forest on our return. She is one of the great ones. With her help, we can rally the rest of the nearby packs – perhaps even those of other great-packs – and within a week – “

“No!” Grass shouted. “There isn’t time for that! Our children will be dead within a week, Streamwalker! Don’t you understand that, you worthless mutt?”

“I understand it,” he growled softly. “I understand it better than I hope you will ever have to.”

Grass swallowed visibly; his mouth worked silently for a moment before he turned abruptly to face Rainbow Dash. “Y-you! Great one! Please, you must help us!”

“There are too many for even a great one to take on alone,” Streamwalker said. “They would overwhelm her, and our chance at rescuing them will be – “

“We have no time!” Grass interrupted. “Please – great one – I beg – I pray of you, please – save our foals! My daughter, Rose Field, a-a-and the Stepping Stones’ colt, Troubled Waters, a-and – “

“If we rally the packs, we can eradicate this council once and – “

“There isn’t time!”

“There are too many of them for us alone to take down, and they know it! Why else would they be in such an exposed location?”

The boldest plans are the safest.

“I can do it.”

The kelpie and the wolf stared at her silently. She shifted her wings nervously, the momentary certainty she’d felt vanishing in an instant. What do I mean, I can do it? That hole’s like ten times as big as me! How many of them are there? They’ll rip me apart! And even if it doesn’t kill me, it’ll still hurt just as much as if they were actually killing me!

Take them by surprise. Get the foals and get out before they see you. Aerial advantage.

“How?” Streamwalker asked warily.

“Don’t question her!” Grass scolded him. “If she says she can do it, she can do it! The suns are mighty!”

“She’s not from the suns, Grass Field!” Streamwalker retorted. “She is Ghealach, spirit of the Red Moon, not from the suns! The suns might have a chance, but the Moon?”

“I can do it,” she insisted, against her own better judgment. I’m crazy, she thought. I’m completely insane. I mean, I guess I haven’t really been sane for a while now – I have arguments with hallucinations of a crazy past life and a moon talks to me whenever she wants – but this doesn’t even make complete sense to me! “Bugganes can’t fly, right? I can. If I know where they are, I can fly in and grab the foals and fly out before they even notice I’m there!”

“See? See!” Grass laughed relievedly. “See? She can do it! Praise to the Moon! Thank the Suns! Praise to whatever sent her to us, if she can save our children!”

“If she can, yes,” Streamwalker murmured. “They have made their camp to the southwest, in the caves of a rock spire that has yet to be named. It should be obvious from the sky. A smaller spire lies to its immediate east; that is where they hold their food.”

“Our foals are not food!”

“Prisoners, then,” he growled. “Future food. Whatever you wish to call them, they are there, or were when my pack was.” He looked back to Rainbow Dash. “Whenever you are ready, great one.”

“Time is of the essence!” Grass chimed in. She nodded.

“I’ll go now,” she decided. “Which way did you say, again?”

“Southwest. They’re in a spire of granite that juts out of the forest. It should be easily detectable from above the trees. It’s already glaringly obvious from below.” He paused. “Stars watch over you, great one. Bring them home.”

“Don’t worry! I’ll be back before nighttime, you’ll see.” With a cocky grin and a roaring beat of her wings, Rainbow Dash hurled herself into the air. It had been a while since she’d used her wings, even if they were noisy and scattered the sunslight like prisms now, and she couldn’t help but keep grinning as she ascended until the villagers were like ants below her, and finally until they fell out of sight as she hit a thermal and started gliding in the direction of the bugganes’ council.

Author's Note

Merry Christmas to all who read this tale tonight! Once again, thanks for the views, likes, favorites, and comments. More of all are always welcome, especially comments, whether they contain criticisms, witticisms, praise, or questions. Depending on how proof-reading goes, I might even have another chapter up tomorrow as a Christmas gift for you all. Enjoy!

Chapter 15: Trouble with Bugganes

Streamwalker had been right. The spire was obvious from the air – a massive shaft of rock sticking straight up out of the ground like some kind of oversized termite nest, dull grey and rough, with a round top and sheer sides dotted with dozens of cave mouths. More than half of them glowed with the cheerful light of campfires.

“This is intriguing,” Ghealach commented, as Dash circled around the place at a great distance, something inside her suggesting that her wings might make her very visible to the monsters and she should keep a healthy buffer between the spire and herself to maintain the element of surprise. “Buggane councils rarely fortify themselves in such a defensive location as this. In what time I have been able to guard the night here over the years, I have only observed them to excavate caves near population centers.”

“Streamwalker did say it was like they had someone smart leading them,” Dash pointed out. “Maybe they’re trying out something new.”

“You gravely overestimate their collective intelligence, Rainbow Dash,” Ghealach chuckled. “Alone, I could envision a single buggane perhaps being pressured into a new tactic as a matter of survival. But in groups? In groups, bugganes are more driven by instinct than intellect – more so than usual. They are more akin to beasts than thinking beings.”

“Maybe they just got smarter.”

“Also impossible. The most brilliant buggane, if put in a council, would be no better than the rest of them. Their self-control is almost entirely stripped when together.”

“Well, maybe it’s not a council, then!” she snapped frustratedly. “Something’s different, if that’s how councils usually work! Streamwalker said they traveled in groups, and they didn’t start attacking each other then! Maybe all the ones who eat their friends are dead now?”

Ghealach was quiet for a few blessed moments. “I hope you are wrong, Rainbow Dash. If that were true, it would be a grave threat not only to my coming reign, but also to my wards.”

She ignored the smug assuredness of future victory implicit in those words in favor of observing the buggane base further. Streamwalker had said there was a smaller spire near the main one where they kept their prisoners, but she couldn’t – oh, no, there it was, on the opposite side of the spire; it came into view as she continued her orbit of the place. It was definitely smaller – the top of it barely peeked above the leafy surface of the canopy – but past that, it was almost identical to the larger inselberg. It looked much more assailable as well.

“Am I going to be able to use magic during this?” she asked Ghealach. The Dust Sentinel nodded.

“If necessary, I will supply it,” she said. “But you will not be blasting your way in. If you had any delusions that you would summon rays of focused moonlight down from the heavens to smite open this rock, I will shatter them now.”

“Great,” she grumbled. “Define ‘necessary’.”

“When I deem it so.”

“Can you at least change my wings to make them less shiny?”

“As doing that would require you to not be in the air – unless you enjoy plummeting a thousand feet to certain excruciating pain below as your wings disappear – I will deny that request, as well.”

Just bucking great, she thought sourly, flaring her wings and making a sharp turn to begin her approach to the buggane base. I’m going in with wings that glitter like some kind of fancy dress from Rarity, I have to take on a base full of giant monsters without any magic, and none of those foals can probably fly, so I’ll have to escape with them on hoof. Why did I agree to this, again?

We do the impossible because it’s a challenge.

The air over the trees near the spire was deathly still, empty of helpful thermals, like whatever monsters lived inside had killed it first when they moved in. Thankfully, it was all descent from where she’d been; all she had to do was extend her wings and glide, spiraling down towards the top of the smaller spire silently, her metallic feathers for once not making a sound. She couldn’t see any of the bugganes outside of the spire; hay, she couldn’t see any inside, either. They seemed to be avoiding the cave mouths. There weren’t even any guards posted.

“Bugganes have eyes sensitive to light,” Ghealach informed her as she landed. “They stay underground during the day, for the most part. At night, they will occasionally emerge to hunt on the surface.”

“I guess that explains why there aren’t any guards,” she responded.

“They may also have killed and eaten each other by now.”

“Awesome.”

The smaller spire was maybe sixty feet in height, and thirty in diameter. It was roughly circular, though uneven, and flatter where a cave mouth punctured it. Dash hopped down from the top to a ledge about halfway down the spire, wincing as her wings rattled and pulling them tighter against her sides in an attempt to muffle them. There was a particularly large cave mouth down near the base; it seemed to have been artificially widened. She figured that was her best bet for finding where the foals were.

Noisily again – she was really starting to hate her wings – she dropped the rest of the way, landing near the cave entrance. The hole was almost pitch black, or at least it logically should have been, but she could somehow still see perfectly in it. Through it, down a short tunnel with walls scored and scratched by giant claws, she could see a larger open space that must have taken up the entire base of the spire. In the center of it was a large rock bowl - a cauldron perhaps, roughly hewn, and surrounded by logs and and dry grass and branches. They weren’t lit yet. She prepared to step into the cave and start searching for the foals…and then something huge stepped into her view.

At first, she thought there had to be some kind of magnifying glass stuck over the opposite end of the tunnel. Star-nosed moles didn’t get that large – the biggest one she’d ever seen was a particularly well-fed specimen that Fluttershy had insisted was “adorable” and “sweet”, but that she’d honestly found kind of creepy. That mole had been less than a foot in length. This thing was nine feet tall and walked on its stocky hind legs, leaving its massive claws free to swing at its sides. Its face, if it could be called that, was dominated by twenty or so fleshy, pink things, tentacles or something similar she guessed, that waved around in the air as it swung its head back and forth, back and forth, slowly and deliberately. Below that cluster of tentacles sat a gaping maw filled with needle-sharp teeth that glistened in the meager amount of light that made it through the tunnel. She couldn't see any eyes. She assumed that the tentacles got in the way. A short, ratlike tail trailed behind it, twitching as it dragged over the rough stone floor, and the whole creature was covered in short, bristly black fur.

This was a really, really bad decision, was the only thought that managed to form in her head. Really, really, really bad.

It looks slow. Agility is a weapon like anything else.

Hesitantly, she took a step into the tunnel, determined not to let fear stop her. There were foals in there, after all – fillies and colts and wolf pups, probably just as terrified as she was, if not more so. She couldn’t just turn around and leave!

Another step. She prayed her wings wouldn’t rattle. The buggane stopped in its tracks, turning its head slowly in an arc, its face-tentacles waving frantically. She tried to ignore the feeling of revulsion and took another few steps in rapid succession, slipping along the wall of the tunnel and pressing herself against the side of the cave. The buggane made a snuffling sound, snorted once, and kept about its business, which appeared to be related to an overturned stone bowl on the opposite side of the cave. Dash was about to take another step, towards the cauldron now, but then the buggane lifted the bowl and a filly screamed.

She watched, frozen, as a kelpie filly with a blue-grey coat and a long seaweed mane screamed and bolted for the open cave mouth. The buggane bellowed in response – a squealing, grating sound that somehow reverberated like a roar through the cave – and slammed a claw down around the filly. She kept screaming as the beast slipped its other claw under her and lifted her off the ground. Rainbow Dash tensed; if that thing wanted to eat that filly right now, she was going to make sure it regretted that decision for the rest of its days!

Instead, the buggane dropped the panicked filly into the steep-sided cauldron. It then stuck its face into the cauldron and bellowed again, eliciting a chorus of new screams, male and female, from its depths. It turned away again, making more snuffling noises – was it laughing? That alone was almost enough to make her leap into action – that thing deserved the flank-kicking she was about to put on it! – when something inside her stopped her at the sight of several more overturned bowls along the wall.

Wait for it to put all of them in the pot. Then attack.

Instead, she slipped along the perimeter of the cave, detouring around stalagmites the buggane had left for some reason, to get in a better position to launch her attack. Ideally, she had to be on the same side of the cave as the buggane, to minimize the chance of it detecting her before she could land a blow. Where would the best place to hit it be? Those tentacles looked kind of sensitive…

The buggane finished dumping foals and pups into the cauldron just as Rainbow Dash made it to the same side of the cave as it. Before she could start her attack, though, it shuffled away for a low stone shelf carved into the cave wall near the mouth. She watched it, following silently, sticking to the wall, ready to jump if it seemed to be going for some kind of fire-starter. Instead, it looked like it was just going for a deer. A deer skin. She fought down revulsion again at the sight of the thing – a carefully hollowed out doe, its ribcage left in still, apparently to maintain its structure – as the buggane gently lifted it and brought it over to the cauldron, where it poured the contents – some kind of clear, syrupy fluid with flecks of green leaves suspended in it – all over the foals inside. Then, it put it back, and lumbered towards the cave mouth. When it was out of sight and out of the cave, she jumped onto the rim of the cauldron with a noisy assist from her wings and looked down at twenty or so mixed foals and cubs, all covered with whatever sauce the buggane had used, and all of them huddled terrifiedly together in the middle.

“Hey!” she whispered. “Up here!”

“The buggane!” one of the pups screeched, but a kelpie filly stuffed her hoof in his mouth.

“Who are you?” she whispered back.

“Rainbow Dash,” she answered quickly, before Ghealach could interfere. “And a few other ponies, too. I’m here to get you out!” They started cheering; she shushed them quickly, glancing towards the cave mouth. “Stay quiet! I’m going to try to knock the cauldron over so you can get out. As soon as it tips over, run towards the cave mouth, okay?”

“Which way is that?” one asked.

“Just go towards the light,” another answered.

“Hold on a sec, and get ready to run!” she warned them. Then she caught sight of the buggane returning, and whispered, “Wait, it’s back. I’ll take care of it first.”

The buggane had rolled with it a large rock, she realized. Before she could do anything, it had rolled the stone in front of the cave mouth. A few shafts of light made it around it – it wasn’t a perfect fit – but it was enough. With that boulder there, there was no way she could escape! The buggane seemed to realize this. She could hear the sound of its snuffling laughter as it shuffled closer.

“Keeps in smell,” it rumbled, to her shock – they could talk? “Keeps in noisy thief-birds!”

Buck.

With a squealing roar, the buggane leaped with startling speed towards the cauldron. Dash hurled herself out of the way. It caught itself on the cauldron rim, squealed again, and swung its claws wildly around, sweeping through the air where she’d been. Then, it stopped, standing with its back to the cauldron, sweeping its head back and forth and letting its face-tentacles wave around in the air.

“Boss says no more games with noisy thief-birds,” it grumbled as it searched for her. She kept completely still. “Too much food get away in games. Make move, thief-bird…”

Deciding to risk a bit of maneuvering to get around behind it, Dash quietly stepped along the cave wall. Somehow, though, it spotted her, and with a third ear-splitting squeal it lunged for where she was! Her wings crashed as she made an assisted leap out of harm’s way and the buggane hit the wall, giving her an opportunity to strike for the back of its head. Its flailing arms forced her to catch herself in mid-air and retreat again. With an errant blow, the beast sent a spray of rock shards and dust off from the wall – she did not want to get hit by that thing!

“Speedy noisy thief-bird,” it growled, picking itself up again and standing still once more. “Cook you too. Thief-bird chicks delicious. Grown ones must be too.”

Dash waited for another opportunity to strike, but if it kept anticipating her like that, they’d be at this for hours, and she’d promised the return of the foals by sundown! Probably a brash claim, in retrospect, but it had been made, and by Celestia, she’d stick to it.

How does it keep spotting me when it doesn’t even have any eyes? she wondered, waiting to pounce on the first sign of weakness. The answer hit her a second later as she remembered her experience with Fluttershy's mole. The tentacles! It can feel when I move!

“Come here, little noisy thief-bird,” the buggane rumbled, shuffling away from the wall and swinging its claws around lazily. “Plenty of room in my pot…”

The buggane was getting closer and closer to her with each step of its spindly-toed feet. She’d have to move soon, before it hit her with a swipe of its claws. Abruptly, she leapt behind the cauldron, dodging the buggane’s lunge but putting herself in a bad position to exploit its stumble as it scrambled to its feet again.

I have to stop it from sensing my movements somehow, she thought, looking around the cave frantically for some way to do that – making sure to only move her eyes. There wasn’t a great deal to work with – numerous stone bowls scattered around the floor, that deer, the cauldron itself, a few stalagmites…but where there are stalagmites, there’s usually a stalactite or two, too! She risked a glance towards the ceiling, dodging another attack from the buggane when it came, but she’d seen enough – there were stalactites, good-sized ones all over the place. Now, if she could just find a way to knock one down onto the buggane…

“Where is you…” the buggane muttered. It was shuffling closer to the scattered stone bowls – well in front of Dash. If the buggane got between her and the bowls, she could hit it from behind and cause it stumble over them – and while it was on the ground, she could knock one of the stalactites off by flying into it, dropping it onto the monster! Perfect! She settled lower, into the perfect position to pounce on the buggane’s back when the time came, and instead brought the beast’s wrath down on her prematurely. She leapt out of the way – again – as the buggane crashed through a nearby stalagmite and mauled the floor where she’d been standing. Her dodge took her into the center of the bowl-scattered area, and she smiled as she realized she was now in the perfect position to implement her plan.

She deliberately jumped across the rest of the bowls, drawing the buggane after her again. With a surprised shriek, the monster stumbled and tripped over the cookware and sprawled onto its stomach. Before it could get up, Rainbow Dash beat her wings and hurled herself at the stalactite she’d spotted over the area and rammed into it with as much force as she could muster. The extra mass added by her feathers’ composition helped, and it only took a single blow to dislodge it. The buggane, trying to stand again, had the slab of stone land squarely on its fleshy nose – and let out a scream of pain so piercing it almost deafened her.

While it was occupied, she dropped back to the ground and threw herself against the cauldron. The wood surrounding it helped prop it up; angrily, she skidded around it and bucked the firewood away from the opposite side. Then she returned – the buggane was still screaming and trying to free itself – and tried again. This time, the cauldron toppled, spilling the foals and pups out. She didn’t give them time to orient themselves.

“Get together and run!” she ordered. A quick glance back at the buggane told her that it was still out of the fight, at least for another minute or so. “I’ll get the boulder out of the way! When we’re outside, run for the trees – I’ll make sure none of these things try to follow you!”

As they stumbled around in the darkness, she positioned herself at the end of the short tunnel to the cave mouth, stretching her wings and gauging how much force she’d need to apply to break the boulder. It had looked pretty thick when the buggane had pulled it into place. She was certain she didn’t have the physical strength or mass to break through normally.

“Some magic right now would be really helpful, Ghealach!” she shouted, readying herself to break through the boulder.

“Why would you want her help?” Cloud Ferry asked, smirking. She materialized just to Dash’s left. “I’m the actress. I know how to make an exit.”

“Either of you, just bucking help, before that thing gets up!” she snapped. She could feel her magic come back – flooding in like electrified water bursting through a dam. If she hadn’t been expecting it, she probably would have been swept away by it, but in her current frame of mind it was nothing more than a tool to get herself and the foals to safety. Without hesitation, she flapped her wings as hard as she could and flew at the boulder, orienting herself so her hooves would all hit dead center, with as much magic as she could muster behind them to amplify the force. When she hit, with a thunderous crack that drowned out the buggane’s agonized squeals for a brief second, the boulder didn’t just roll away or crack – it exploded, in a flash of red magic, fragments of it flying out in all directions and seeming to freeze in mid-air for an instant as the light reflected off them like shards of a mirror. A wave of nausea hit her almost immediately, but she suppressed the urge to vomit as best she could – they had to get away!

The foals wasted no time in bolting. She was still recovering from the expenditure of magic when they galloped and ran around her and shot off towards the treeline. She followed as quickly as she could, galloping after them without a second look at the spires – that explosion had blown whatever stealth she’d still had, there had to be bugganes after them – and soon caught up with them.

They paused for breath in a clearing after a few minutes, several of the kelpies flopping over onto the grass, the wolf pups panting heavily and somehow managing to favor the kelpie foals with looks of disdain at the same time, as if to say, really? You can’t even run for ten minutes without falling over? Rainbow Dash didn’t let herself sit down for a rest – physically, she didn’t need one – but she did stand still for a few seconds, trying to get the nausea left in the magic’s wake under control.

“Okay,” she said, after letting the foals catch their breath. “I’m not sure how far away your village is from here on foot – I kind of flew here – and I’m not sure what kind of obstacles are in the way. Do any of you know the way back from the ground?”

“I do,” one of the wolf pups – white-furred; he almost looked like Streamwalker – raised a paw. “My father takes me out with his pack sometimes. I’ve been out here before.”

“Good. You can lead us back,” she said. “Okay, when everyone – “

She fell silent as she felt the ground beneath her shudder. She leapt forwards as the area she’d been standing on suddenly collapsed, dropping out as a buggane shrieked and hauled itself out of its tunnel and onto solid ground. The foals started panicking again, with the exception of the white wolf pup, who – fairly uselessly – bared his teeth and growled at the monster. The buggane didn’t seem to care. Thinking quickly, Dash reached for her magic again – she needed an attack spell of some kind, something guaranteed to stop the thing, to stun it long enough for them to get away – lightning worked!

With another wave of nausea as she expended entirely too much magic on a single action, Rainbow Dash called into existence a bolt of lightning. It speared down into the buggane from the blue open sky, like a blazing white river of electricity, pulsing and writhing as the buggane howled. She could have sworn she saw the thing’s skeleton through the blinding glare.

The bolt lasted far longer than a bolt had any right to; she could record its duration in seconds. When it finally dissipated, and it finally stopped torturing the buggane, the monster simply collapsed, all life gone from its limbs. It toppled over forward, causing the ground to shiver under the impact, and lay still. Absolutely, perfectly still. Had she killed it?

“Let’s go,” she urged the foals. “Come on, before another one shows up!”

“Follow me!” the white pup declared. They fell in behind him silently, the foals every now and again shooting furtive looks back at the buggane. The pups all seemed unimpressed. Dash followed a moment after the rest of them had vanished into the underbrush, watching the buggane for signs of life. Surely, one lightning bolt hadn’t been enough to kill it? Pegasi survived strikes like that all the time! The smell of charred hair and flesh coming from it was a mark against it still being alive, as was its perfect stillness – not even its chest was moving; did bugganes need to breathe? – but it couldn’t have died! She’d never killed anything before! She’d never even wanted to kill anything before - not to the point where if it had happened, she'd have been happy.

She tried to let the monotony of their trek through the forest drive her conflicted emotions from her mind. It wouldn’t have been nearly as bad if she didn’t acknowledge, on some level at least, that she had, actually, wanted it dead, both for what it was going to do to the foals and just for what it was. And she’d wanted to be the one to kill it.

Author's Note

I'm really sorry for the delay - I could have had this up on the day after Christmas, but there used to be a second portion on this chapter pertaining to Twilight and Beta. I spent a few days trying to hammer that out before deciding that that portion wasn't action-y enough to make sense stuck on to this. So, there's the next chapter, once I finish editing that and ensuring I can fit it into The Plan.

Past that, thanks for reading and upvoting and commenting, everyone! Feedback kindles a fuzzy warm light in the space where my heart used to be.

Chapter 16: Shock Therapy

The suns had set without incident, Domhan still turned, and the feast had passed uneventfully. She'd been able to return to the tower and spend another few hours in solitude, planning and thinking. So why was she such a wreck still?

Beta couldn't shake the odd impression that she was actually pacing when she left the round room at the top of Caisleanard's observatory tower – that she was really just making long, repetitive laps around the ancient castle while lost in thought, assuring herself that the beacon of permanence that was the castle remained exactly that, and nothing was trying to pull it out from under her like Keen Eye seemed to enjoy doing with everything else. What had she ever done to deserve that mare's ire? She was doing it all for them!

I like her, Caelum help me, but why can't she see things my way? she thought, as she stalked down the steps of the tower's spiral staircase yet again. She's intractable, and a destabilizing influence. Everything I've tried to do during my rule, she's a threat to, and therefore a threat to my subjects. If I liked her less, I'd...

There was a window-slit on the western wall of the hall leading to the tower stairs, some distance from the actual stairs themselves. It let the mingling lights of her suns – no, of her sun and Alpha's sun – spill out across the black-and-white checkered floor of the corridor. She realized she'd been staring out it for some time.

I'd what? she asked herself. Kill her? Have her executed? Arrest her? Jail her? Exile her? Petrify her? I'd what? She sighed and resumed walking. She always thought best when moving anyways. When pacing. Preferably at a measured pace. Can't move too quickly. Act rashly, and all is lost. Act overcautiously, and opportunities are missed. Proxima, why couldn't I stop you?

And there it came, rounding its head on her like an ancient blood-winged dragon asleep in his great hollow mountain. She marveled for a moment at how quickly she'd looped back to that this time, even as a part of her took the impact of the bitter accusation. Her fault, her fault, all her fault. One more refrain to sustain her through the eons. Proxima was gone, Alpha had been gone. All because she'd been too overcautious, and because she'd acted too rashly. Errors in judgment she could never allow herself to forget. Balance was where the wisest way of governance lay.

I'm rambling, she thought. Focus. Think about what to do with Keen Eye, and what to do with Alpha now that she's back.

But she couldn't. The night was young, and it was all she could do to keep herself from being distracted by the friends she'd forsaken in the night sky.

She was out on the battlements, the city spread before her as the suns dipped at last below the horizon. She watched, transfixed, self-control slipping and mind wandering, as a red pinprick now rose from the west – stood stock-still as the star Proxima crested the distant mountains and took up its own vigil in the sky. No moon tonight. There was no constancy with the moon. Tonight, just Proxima's coldly burning fury, to keep the bugganes in their cursed holes. Star light, star bright, red star in the sky tonight – the children's rhyme that had come about under her rule to mean a night of safety; it flitted through her mind as she watched.

I provide for them better than you ever could, Ghealach, she thought, watching her lonely sister rise. Despite your meddling.

She was in the darkened courtyard now, sniffing the air lightly. Was that stardust she smelled? A faint aroma of ozone, a hint of hydrogen, a faint whiff of smoke, a haze of dissociated ions...that was stardust alright. Enough for two. What guests would she have tonight? Wolf 359, with her constant reassurances and offers of companionship, as if she couldn't do it alone? Was Celestia here personally now to try to drag Alpha back to that morass she called a planet? Night sky and all its denizens, would they never let her have peace?

She was at the window slit again, ready to complete her cycle. The faint ruddy light of Proxima, almost identical to the faint ruddy light of Ghealach, gave the world a bloody tint. Blood like the wings of another mistake. Two thousand years between her and then, and five billion stretching from before then to the birth of the stars themselves, and still it was impossible to forget. She turned away from the window and started trotting towards the stairs again, hooves clicking on the tile, ready to absorb herself in clockwork and glass and jealousy of distant former friends again. The observatory was instability – change – she really shouldn't let it stand, it would only encourage further bad behavior – but politics remained constant. She needed Radiant Eye's support. He wanted his observatory. To get what she wanted, she had to let him have what he wanted. Politics.

She paused before the door into the round room at the top of the tower. There was laughter inside, and talking. Familiar voices. Was that...Alpha?

“...but the resonances were all wrong in that model, the math didn't add up - “

“I believe Arcturus already determined that several million years ago. It's good to know things haven't changed much since then.”

“I need to recover more memories! Retreading old experiments won't get me anywhere,” Alpha sighed exasperatedly. “I could swear I read something along the lines of this alternate theory in a book back on Equestria – Cloud Carver's Cosmic Conundrums maybe – no, no, though he did mention the song – Starswirl's Stellar String Sextet?”

“How were they even aware of the song?” Wolfie asked, frowning. She sat with her back to the door, her reddish bulk blocking Beta's view of the interior of the room. “They were mortals, correct?”

“Correct, but mnemonic triggers I experienced while in my stellar body - “ Alpha broke off abruptly. “Beta! There you are. I came up here almost an hour ago to interview you on a matter of scientific interest, and I couldn't find you. Where did you go?”

“Walking,” she answered noncommittally. She glared at Wolf. “When did she get here?”

“I found her up in her star,” Wolf answered with a grin that could best be described as wolfish. “I said hello, and here we are. How have you been, Beta Centauri?”

“Fine enough without your presence,” she answered. She turned to Alpha. “Why is she down here on my planet? Explain.”

“On our planet,” Alpha corrected her, frowning. “If I'm supposed to be a Queen again – not a subordinate one, but a co-Queen, like before I was killed, which is what you seem to want – I think I should have just as much say over who can come down to Domhan as you. And I decided Wolfie should come down. After all, we were friends, and it's been a few millennia. She has just as much right to see me as you do.”

“You've proven yourself to make bad calls on who to let visit in the past,” she grumbled. “Remember Discord?”

“No, I don't, or at least not in the context you're implying.” Alpha's frown deepened. “What happened with Discord?”

“Another memory I'm almost glad you don't have back...”

“Almost?” Wolf snorted. “You'd tell her what happened if it was almost.”

“It's best that she recovers them on her own. It seems to be working well enough.”

“She didn't remember anything about the bugganes, according to what I got out of Rookwind,” Wolf pointed out. “That seems to be a rather large gap in her memory, and an important one, if she's going to be a queen again.”

“I've already asked Rookwind to prepare me a full briefing on all security threats to the Queendom, major and minor, listed in order of decreasing importance, by tomorrow,” Alpha said. “I've also dispatched a few servants to the older portions of the castle, where the library is, to find as much information on Domhan as they can – encyclopedias, travel guides, biological theses, anything that could help me get up to speed. I need to know as much as I can if I'm going to be a Queen again.” She left out the part Beta knew was there anyways – because Beta isn't going to tell me any of it. Because Beta is a petty tyrant who can't stand to share power. Because Beta has worked for two thousand years to rule a nation built for three, by herself, and obviously put herself through all that stress, aggravation, and pain for her own selfish desire for power to be sated.

Don't let Keen Eye get to you, she warned herself. She'll come around eventually.

But kelpie parents often named their children with near prophetic precision. She'd been born Keen Eye, her named hadn't changed with marriage, and she had a keen eye for weaknesses and vulnerabilities born into her to match a wolf. Was Beta terrified of change? No, of course not – she got that wrong. But did she want to share power again?

Of course I do. Even as a Nightmare I was willing to.

But if she hadn't realized what she was doing there, at that ring of standing stones, would she have been content to do that forever? When Proxi inevitably demanded she step down, would she be content to let her power slip away...or would there have been another War of Nightmares to outdo the first?

“There are none,” she said, confusing Alpha visibly.

“What?” her sister asked.

“There are no encyclopedias,” she replied. “No encyclopedias, no travel guides, no biological theses. No spell books. No doctoral papers on physics. The peasants can barely read, much less write. The nobles never saw much need for it either. You might find some atlases, but that's all. Tax records are the only places where you'll find centralized info on imports, exports, local production, and population figures. Centralized compendiums of general knowledge, though, you won't.”

“Why?”

“Someone tried to make books cheaper and more widespread with a machine once, but I quashed that fast,” she explained. “Any stability I might have been able to establish would have been swept away by that invention. It would have led to chaos.” You were terrified that society would start to change with it. “The whole social order would have collapsed like a house of cards without a bottom tier.” You feared the collapse of the nobility under their own weight. “It would have been too much of a change, too fast. You'd be too far in over your head to ever catch up when you returned.” The revolution would follow and knock you back off your throne and into powerless, semi-religious obscurity! “I did it to make things simpler for you!”

“Nobody is accusing you of anything,” Wolf murmured. “Why are you being so defensive?”

“Calm down, Beta,” Alpha admonished her. “You're among friends.”

“I know that,” she retorted irritably. Did they really think she didn't recognize that? “I know that!”

“Then get control of yourself and let's try to stop shouting.” Wolf grimaced. “You're hurting my ears.”

“I didn't invite you down here!” she snapped. “I don't need your meddling.”

“She's an old friend, Beta,” Alpha sighed, rubbing a hoof over her face. “And I invited her down here. We're co-Queens, remember?”

“Not yet!” she blurted out, and almost instantly regretted it. Wolf cocked an eyebrow at her. Alpha appeared to be surprised. “You're not my equal again – I mean, we're not co-Queens again because - “ She shook her head. “I need more time to think. Good night.” She turned to leave.

“Why?” Alpha asked. She had her surprise under control, and her voice sounded concerned, but Beta was probably imagining things.

“You don't have your memories back fully yet!” she rationalized, whirling back around to face Alpha. “You have all the memories and experience of a barely-mature horned kelpie thing from Celestia's world! That's barely enough for you to run a storefront, much less a country! I have over four billion years of memories running around in my head” - and it's still not enough to drown out one mistake - “and two thousand years of experience in running Domhan. I can forgive the lack of experience, but you need those memories back before I can, in good conscience, give you equal authority to me again!”

“If I'm not going to be a Queen again until I get my memories back,” Alpha asked quietly, “what is the point of this tour?” Beta realized with a start that any trace of her sister's latest life had abruptly disappeared from her eyes. They had age behind them now, if not experience.

“I – to familiarize the nobles with - “ She ran out of explanation. “I need more time to think.”

“Wouldn't a tour to help me recover my memories make more sense?” her sister suggested.

“Sure, of course!” Beta exclaimed sweetly. She'd called upon her magic, and reached through that to a much darker place in her soul, before she even realized what she was planning. “Let's start right now!”

With a flash of darkness and a feeling like she'd just been dunked in slime, Beta had teleported herself and Alpha out of the observatory tower. Their surroundings shifted from bronze and brass and clockwork to dark trees, soft grass, and thorny vines. They were in a clearing in a forest, on the top of a hill. Through the curtain of dead vines that hung from the gnarled trees, a sea of treetops was visible, barely, extending to a distant horizon. A cold wind rushed past them and stirred the dead leaves that littered the ground. They were facing each other from opposite sides of an upright stone slab, badly weathered by age; Beta knew what was on the side facing Alpha.

“You always liked spending time up here. She did, too,” she said. She realized after she said it that her voice had had a hard edge to it, much harder than intended. Too late to turn back now. “I made sure to bury her here when the end came. I was alone. I don't think I ever told her family where I buried her. I made sure Proxima wasn't overhead that night; if she could have, I think she might have wanted to be here when she was buried, and to force her to watch from a distance would have been almost as cruel as what you did. Proxi always was fond of her. You made sure she could never be here.”

Alpha was completely, utterly silent. Her eyes were fixed on the slab.

“Maybe it'll trigger some useful memories,” Beta finished, her voice softening. After a few moments of silence, she cleared her throat. “I...I think I should be alone for a while.”

She teleported away again. Alpha remained behind, silently. One of the oldest kelpie burial customs was a silent vigil by loved ones over the grave of the deceased; she remembered that much now, at least. She slowly sat down, still facing the tombstone. After two thousand years of absence, she thought it was about time to finish Watchful Eye's funeral.

That day, it began to rain.

Rainbow Dash found herself bringing up the rear of a column of kelpie fillies and colts as they trudged through the waterlogged forest towards home – she'd never actually gotten the name of the village. If that white wolf pup hadn't been with them, she doubted she would have been able to find the place again. Thankfully, he seemed to know where he was going, only occasionally stopping by a tree or a bush to sniff for a while. Such breaks were always followed by a sharp change in course, but her directional sense told her they weren't going around in circles, so she let him keep point. The other wolf pups had conferred with him for a brief time before spreading out and taking positions along the sides of their column. They marched like that for hours, and the whole time she kept looking over her shoulder, certain they were still being followed, but nothing ever materialized behind them, and nothing ever burrowed beneath them. They were safe, but that safety had come at the price of another living thing.

It's a buggane, she reminded herself. It's a monster! It was going to roast these foals alive and eat them! I had to kill it!

You had to stun it, she would counter. You could've cut that lightning bolt off before it died!

No, I couldn't have! I didn't know how! Hay, I didn't even mean for it to be that powerful in the first place!

Beings die in battle. It would have had no qualms about killing you.

There it was – that voice again. She frowned as they wound their way through the dripping trees. It was starting to distinguish itself in her mind – she knew it was somepony else's voice, but she didn't know whose it was. Which, of course, meant it was probably another past life come back to haunt her. Cloud Ferry had said their were two of them, gathering themselves back together – a zebra and a bat-pony. She wondered which one was coming to the surface now.

Call me crazy, but I don't think it's the zebra, she thought, grimacing. She hopped over a log, glanced back over her shoulder again, and continued along her way. It's not rhyming nearly enough.

The rain shower refused to abate as they entered more familiar parts of the forest. It came down as a light, foggy mist, the drops almost seeming to hang in the air, hesitating on their way to the ground to create a greyish haze that choked the air and soaked her coat. As if as a sort of consolation prize, nothing stuck to her, but it was miserable all the same. Mud clung to her hooves – naturally, not due to any weird property of her coat – whenever she had the misfortune to step in a puddle. Fat drops of water would drip from the tree branches and plink off her snout and mane and ears and annoy her to no end. Add that to the fact that she couldn't see five feet in front of her thanks to the trees, and her natural claustrophobia, and the walk through the forest became a living hell. Worse still, it was a hell she had to endure, because flying up above the canopy and getting some space would mean leaving the children to the mercy of the forest – and as brave as the wolf pups were, she had no doubt that if the bugganes found them again, they'd be squashed like insects.

When they came to the edge of the woods, where trees gave way to a muddy morass of fallow farmland, she let out an audible sigh of relief, eliciting a few giggles from the fillies. Home free! Let the bugganes find them now – they were within screaming distance of the village, and Streamwalker's wolf pack! She rose into a low hover, her wings sounding like rolling thunder at a great distance as she matched pace with the white pup at the column head, whose tail was wagging and altogether looked very pleased with himself.

“Good job getting us back!” she told him, which only made him even more pleased.

“Thank you, great one,” he replied. “My father will be very happy.”

“He better be. We'd still be lost in the woods if it weren't for you, squirt,” she chuckled. “Hey, who is your dad, anyways?”

“A great pack father!” he declared proudly. He hopped over a wide mud puddle, fell short of the far rim, and shook himself to get the mud off – earning a peeved, “hey, watch the feathers!” from Dash – before continuing. “He's killed eight bugganes alone, twenty with the help of my brothers and sisters, and defeated an alpha of a city-pack in a duel when he was only two years mature!”

“Does this 'great pack father' have a name?”

“He always told me that deeds are more important than words,” the pup said, “but he does. His name is Streamwalker.”

“I would have thought it was obvious, considering his coat color,” Cloud Ferry remarked from behind Dash. Irritated, she flipped over so she was flying backwards and faced the phantom unicorn, who – despite her incorporealness – was stepping carefully around mud puddles anyways.

“White could be a common coat color with wolves!” she retorted defensively. “It's like what Twilight says sometimes – something about correlation and causation I think.”

“But a stolen pup, with a white coat, from a town where a wolf with a white coat apparently knows the inhabitants – that didn't send up flags?” Ferry pressed. Dash shook her head; she sighed. “You're hopeless.”

“Because I don't jump to conclusions?”

“Because you fail to pick up on obvious hints!” Distracted, Cloud Ferry stepped in a mud puddle. Dash laughed. Ferry frowned and continued walking, completely unsullied. “How you managed to navigate the world before I came back baffles me.”

“I was doing it better than you, at least, if you look at how many friends I had!”

“This again?” Cloud Ferry groaned. “Neither of us are qualified to judge based on that, because neither of us knows how many friends I had.”

“Too few to remember?”

“Let us see how well you remember your life after a few hundred years of dissolution,” she hissed. And then she vanished and left Dash in welcome silence, at least in her own head.

They entered the village, and the place was silent except for the constant rain. The foals noticed the state their homes were in soon enough; she could see them cringe as the ruined houses of the village center came into view. Tears glistened in the eyes of a few; they mixed with the rainwater and were indistinguishable from that when they escaped their eyes, if they did. She couldn't tell. After being minutes away from being dinner, she couldn't think seeing their homes damaged a bit would be enough to make them cry. But, in a few cases, at least, it came close.

Despite the rain, when she led her bedraggled procession of foals and pups onto the village, Grass Field and Streamwalker were waiting for them. Many of the other kelpies were clustered around a house at the far end of the field, pushing stones back into place and propping the doorframe up – repairing the place. Those among them who were parents came running the instant they saw them return. Grass Field, who had been in deep conversation with Streamwalker, came galloping as well. The white wolf merely sat stoically and watched the reunions happen.

Rainbow Dash beat her wings and rose above the foals, giving the parents space. She glided over to Streamwalker and took a seat herself, ignoring the dampness of the grass.

“Told you I'd get them back before sundown,” she said, giving him a cocky grin. Streamwalker snorted.

“You can barely tell it remains in the sky,” he responded. “I see the pups are unharmed. Good. Their mothers would have had my ribs for - “

The white wolf pup squeezed out of the tangle of tearful parents and foals, shook himself dry futilely, and dashed over to where they sat. Streamwalker laughed as the pup skidded into him, and gave him a nuzzle.

“I made sure the kelpies were safe on our return!” the pup proclaimed proudly. “Shorttail, Dirtfoot, and Liontooth helped, but I led the way and took us around the major dangers you warned me about, father!”

“We'd have been lost if it wasn't for him,” Dash confirmed. “He did a great job finding his way through there. I probably would have just had us wandering around in circles.”

“The great one saved us,” the pup added. “The bugganes were too many for me to save us myself. I think she is crazy, though. She talks to herself.”

Streamwalker chuckled. “Windshear, she may be crazy, but she got you out of the bugganes' cookpot. I would follow her into the seven hells if she asked me to.”

“Mission accomplished,” Cloud Ferry whispered in Dash's ear. “Though I somehow doubt Ghealach will let us rest on our laurels. So many villages, after all...you have to win their loyalty. Perhaps we should begin counting sand grains? I'm sure we'll have that finished by the time we've visited every village on this Celestia-forsaken chunk of rock!”

“We can't leave here yet,” she replied, ignoring Ferry's sarcasm. “Those bugganes are still there. They could try to attack again at any time! And something that buggane in the cave said is still bugging me.”

“Crazy,” Windshear, the white pup, commented with a nod.

“It spoke?” Streamwalker asked. He gave Dash his full attention, a grave look on his face. “Bugganes are fools when it comes to secrets. Did it betray anything of value in eradicating this group?”

“Not directly,” she answered. “But it did mention something about a boss giving it orders.”

“Every primitive tribe has a chieftain,” Cloud Ferry said dismissively. “It's nothing to throw yourself back into mortal danger over.”

“There is something different about this council,” Streamwalker murmured thoughtfully. He turned away from Dash. “There is obviously a greater mind overseeing them. Their caution in their movements is uncharacteristic, and now a reference to a single leader rather than a loose association of individuals with equal power...how many fires lit did you spot in the cave mouths?”

“Uh, forty, maybe?” She shrugged. “I didn't count. There were a lot, though.”

“Forty fires?” He sounded shocked. “More than I would have guessed from a perspective on the forest floor. They are either lighting more fires to disguise their numbers – which has its own worrying implications – or this council is large, far larger than anything I have experience with.” He stood up. “I will go and rally my pack. We shall den here for the time being, to protect the village and provide a secure base from which to strike at these bugganes. Can I count on your help, great one?”

“No,” Cloud Ferry answered.

“I'll do whatever I can,” Dash replied instead. Streamwalker nodded.

“Windshear, stay here with the rest of the pups. I trust you to keep them within the village and not exploring,” he told the pup. To Dash, as he began to lope for the farmlands around the village, and the forest beyond, he said, “My pack has denned an hour or so from here. I will gather them and return by star's height tonight. We shall plan a scouting expedition to investigate these bugganes then.”

“I'll be here,” she said. To make sure those monsters don't try to steal the kids again, she thought.

“I have the impression that stance will be unpopular with Ghealach,” Cloud Ferry remarked. She smirked. “This should be an interesting argument to witness.”

“She can try to make me go find another village all she wants,” Dash said defiantly. “Unless it has Twilight in it, I'm staying here and making sure those bugganes get taken care of before I go.”

“And that, Rainbow Dash, is a stance unpopular with me,” Ferry retorted. “Having two-thirds of your own mind turned against you at once is not a good way to stay mentally stable.”

“I'm already crazy. How much worse can it get?”

Author's Note

Another chapter! While I'd normally exhort you all to upvote and comment, this time I'd like to point out that I have neither prereader nor editor and while I proofread before I publish, I don't catch everything (or even some of the more obvious things - looking at you, sentence-with-no-predicate that until today lived in Chapter 11). Pointing out errors only helps me, and there may be a few more errors in future chapters, as I've had to switch from Word to Open Office and autocorrect and red underlines, once my faithful allies in the fight against wonderful errors like "Chparte" (Chapter) and "baanan" (banana), are now working only sporadically for some reason.

So, to recap, pointing out errors = helpful. Enjoy!

Chapter 17: Memories of Proxima

She was dreaming, and she knew it, but it was a dream she didn't want to end. So it didn't. Not immediately, anyways.

It took place in a garden of some sort, or a forest probably as she remembered the time period, on the shores of a small lake. She could see across the crystal blue water to the other side, which was covered in dense trees like the side she rested on. The feeling of dirt under her hooves, water soaking her coat and mane, sand stuck to the side of her neck where she'd rested it on the shoreline while floating idly in the lake – it all felt exactly like real life. The suns sent crazed patterns filtering through the forest canopy, the mixed shadows of the leaves from her star and Beta. That matched up with reality perfectly. Really, there wasn't any indication that it was dream, and logically then she shouldn't recognize it for what it was. She hadn't recognized that disturbing night with Discord as a dream, after all, why should this much more realistic illusion be easier to see through?

“This was really a terrible idea,” Proxima muttered, surfacing from underwater and spitting out a mouthful of algae-tinted lakewater. “I'm still confused why we made this a feature.”

“The algae in the ponds is to replenish oxygen,” she answered. “I thought we hammered that out back before we made Domhan?”

“I wasn't referring to the – okay, well maybe a little.” She sighed. “We could have been much more imaginative. I mean, didn't you take this concept wholesale from Tia's world? And then the trees – also from her planet, whatever she called it - “

“Equestria.”

“Equestria, yes. Even the kelpies are modeled after things on her planet. We could have gotten so much more imaginative with them!” she continued. “Creatures with wheels, maybe – nobody's done that before. Bipeds, even! Maybe stick a few tentacles on for fun, and make them able to dig. And for oxygen replenishment – why did it have to be something that tastes nasty?”

“Kelpies aren't really supposed to swim in lakes like this. We made it taste nasty to them so they wouldn't try to and suffocate.” She stood up and shook herself, sending a spray of water droplets in all directions. She let her mane reignite after that. “We all agreed on this, didn't we?”

“We should have made another test world,” Proxima grumbled. She hauled herself out of the water and shook herself dry as well, primarily succeeding in transferring all the water from her red coat to Twilight's yellow one. They laughed, but Proxima's smile quickly faded. “Domhan is a wash. Nothing here is our design. We just tweaked Celestia's ideas a bit.”

“Not everything here is from Celestia's world,” she pointed out. “She doesn't have wolves or thunderbirds there.”

“No, but she has pegasi and – what did she call them? 'Earth ponies'?” She snorted. “What does that name even refer to? Dirt ponies, would have been better. And in any case, we stole wolves from Wolfie. We even named them after her.”

“So what do you expect us to do? Wipe them out and start over?”

“Replace them,” she said. “Do something new. Make another planet.”

“We're stretched thin enough trying to just rule one,” she chuckled. “All three of us together couldn't rule two planets.”

“Eta Carinae does it!”

“And everyone who knows him is mystified by how he manages it.”

Proxima growled frustratedly and loped off into the forest. Twilight followed close behind her. The woods were pretty at midday; certainly prettier than when it was just Proxima in the sky, though she made other areas beautiful as well. The Glass Desert far to the west, for one, was stunning when the red sun was in the ascendant. Few wolves, and fewer thunderbirds and kelpies, ever ventured that far out though. A pity.

“Ruling Domhan is dull,” Proxima complained, after a few minutes of listening to leaves crunch under their hooves. “I can't even take a break on friends' worlds. They're too similar.”

“How is it dull?” Twilight asked, surprised. “Have you ever spent any time with the wolves? Gone hunting for deer with the kelpies? Try 'overseeing' a thunderbird cloud eyrie some time – the updrafts there are almost like being in a globular cluster!”

“We've never been in one of those.”

She smiled sheepishly. “I have.”

Proxima paused and gave Twilight a look as she calmly loped past her and took the lead. She sighed when she started moving again, galloping briefly to catch up. “Caelum?”

“We visited Messier together last month,” she admitted. “I'm still not sure how her simulator works – what spells she uses to make it so realistic – but I'm getting closer to understanding it!”

“Hmph. You could have at least invited me.” She sounded disappointed more than anything, though there was a touch of jealousy just beneath the surface. Imperceptible to beings who hadn't known her so long, but to Twilight it was obvious. Anything less than obvious after several billion years would be absurd. “That might have been fun. I've heard some interesting things about that place. Did you at least learn anything else about the Song?”

They both knew what she was talking about. “It's almost the same there as it is here.”

“Almost?”

“The pitch is a little higher, and the tempo's a bit faster,” she explained. Excitement tried to bubble up into her voice – so many theories that could be disproved, so many that could be confirmed! - but she managed to keep it even. Nothing had been proven yet, after all. “I can't quantify it yet. It may have just been the effects of the simulator – I'd have to go there myself to check it out.” She growled, imitating Proxi's sound of irritation. “I almost envy the wandering stars. They can go visit it.”

“You'd get lonely too fast,” Proxi chuckled. “No matter how awkward you are in socializing down here, you'd go crazy if you didn't have anyone to bounce theories off.”

“Hence 'almost'.”

They fell silent again. For a few hours, all that they could hear was the wind stirring the leaves above them, the rustle of their little creations living their lives in the undergrowth, and their own footsteps. Eventually, though, they approached a village – the things were springing up like mushrooms as the semi-nomadic land kelpies began to settle down and farm. Smoke tinged the air – slash-and-burn agriculture was popular, and this village seemed to be keeping up with the fad.

“Village coming up.” Proxi snorted to try to clear her nostrils of the acrid scent. Burning wood...however much kelpies might like that, it always smelled like bad accidents and inadvertently torched sacred groves more than progress to them both.

“Try to disguise your disdain for them,” Alpha said, glancing back and giving her sister a quick grin to take the edge off her words. “I think it drives them away from you.”

Proxima gave her a grin with a set of teeth that would make a wolf proud. “But Alpha – if I don't drive them away from me, why would they ever choose to crowd around you?”

The dream shifted, as dreams tend to do. Instead of a village, she entered a cave as they turned around the last stand of trees between them and the houses, with Beta by her side and not Proxima. The interior was almost pitch-black, but she could see almost perfectly, both thanks to her mane illuminating the space and her own abilities as a star. Stalagmites thrust upwards from the floor in a veritable forest of rock, and the high ceiling was festooned with enough stalactites to match the floor's covering. She could see the faint gleam of exposed gemstones embedded in the walls and roof. All in all, it seemed like the perfect place for dragons to live.

“Are you sure she's in here?” Beta asked, looking around at the toothlike spires dispassionately. “Why would she avoid us for weeks on end just to spend time in a cave?”

“I don't think the cave is the reason, Beta,” she responded absent-mindedly, pressing forward into the thicket. So many stalagmites – was this their work or something more natural? Could stalagmites like this form unaided? She'd have to investigate that at some point. “I think it's what's in here that's the reason.”

“Rocks? Gems? Darkness?”

“Dragons, sister. I think they're the only thing living on Domhan that she doesn't disdain.”

Beta followed her silently as they wove through the stalagmites. Many of them bore pits where gems had been pried from, and scrapes, shallow furrows carved by tiny claws, a sure sign of hatchlings. Broken bits of glassy diamonds and gleaming opals could occasionally be seen glinting in the light of their manes, the remnants of dragon feasting. Many patches of stone were warmer than the rest – almost hot to the touch. Dragonfire for sure, recent, if it came from immature mouths, or days old if from something of a more imposing size. And if those patches weren't indication enough, a few stalagmites were even melted into new shapes, given rounded appearances and the look of desert rock stacks by dragon flames and dragon tongues. Probably one dragon in particular, if Proxi was being predictable.

They didn't see any actual dragons until they reached the very back of the cave. The back wall, slick with moisture and covered with pits and ledges, was also covered with juveniles. Unlike their wingless hatchling forms, their wings had come in long since; they hadn't yet reached their adult size, but the largest was still almost five times her length and three times her height. It made the uninterested – and even hostile in a few cases – looks they gave her and Beta seem a great deal more threatening.

“Where is she?” Beta asked nervously. Alpha didn't need to ask why she was nervous. Dragons could breathe fire from birth – magical fire.

“She's here,” she affirmed. She turned to the wall of dragons and amplified her voice as Caelum had taught her. “Would the dragon who is Proxima Centauri in disguise please come down?”

Proxi's cackling laughter echoed through the cave as one of the larger juveniles detached from the wall and did a nimble barrel roll, the tips of her wings slipping between stalactites with only the slimmest of spaces between them. The other dragons roared their approval, an echoing cacophony that earned a rustle of Beta's wings as she took a step back slightly. Alpha stood her ground as the form of the red dragon melted away like watercolors, and Proxima landed lightly before her.

“Welcome to the cave, sisters,” she greeted them with a grin. “Did you enjoy the display?”

“You seemed to, at least,” Alpha chuckled. “I'm glad the dragons seem so accepting of you.”

“They don't have much choice since their clutch-king swore loyalty to me personally,” Proxima replied. She seemed exceptionally pleased. Alpha decided that achievement had to be significant in some way, if only because it sounded like she'd managed to get one of these notoriously fickle creatures to hold to a promise. “He's been a great help in getting the rest of them to abide with my presence. He's also been forthcoming on questions I've had about dragons in general – did you know our new stepmother flew through the void personally to start a colony here?”

“What?” Beta frowned at her, and it didn't take a sibling to tell that she was thoroughly confused. “What do you mean, our new stepmother?”

“The way a dragon thinks of loyalty, it is something shared between family, and not with anyone else.” She grinned again. “The clutch-king adopted me as his sister, and through me both of you!”

Alpha groaned. “Proxi...”

“The dragons will be loyal to us now?” Beta asked. Alpha wished she could shift gears that quickly – from confusion to considering the political implications of this in less than an instant! A great deal of Beta's nervousness seemed to have fallen away as well with the knowledge that these dragons would probably not kill her. Probably. “All of them?”

“There's only one lineage present on Domhan for now,” Proxima answered. “The lineage of Taistealaí, at least, will stay loyal to us. If any other dragons come by to colonize Domhan, we would have to forge similar ties to their lineages.”

“Can we get these dragons to stop raiding the new hill forts?”

“These dragons are only juveniles.” Proxima snorted, amused at Beta's ignorance. “They aren't the problem. And the problem has already been resolved. It was Taistealaí herself who was building a hoard, mainly to feed these guys as hatchlings. Now that they've grown, she's decided to burrow down to the core and make Domhan a bit more friendly towards her brood.”

“Define 'more friendly',” Beta ordered warily. Alpha had the feeling neither of them would like Proxima's answer.

“Punch a few volcanoes through the crust,” Proxi clarified, nonchalantly confirming Alpha's suspicion. “Churn up the mantle a little. Basically, get gemstones and edible rock closer to the surface.”

“Volcanoes?” Beta snapped. Her voice echoed around the cave, calling the juveniles to startled attention. That had been loud – almost the volume Caelum used! She closed her eyes, her face twitching in fury. Alpha heard her count to ten under her breath before continuing in an almost imperceptibly less angry tone. “Volcanoes? And you let her? There's a reason we didn't add any of those in the first place, Proxi!”

“No stars want volcanoes on their planets,” she retorted pointedly. “Dragons are the ones who put them there. Besides, it's not like she's going to make any supervolcanoes, or worse, volcano fields. Taistealaí isn't an excessive dragon. She's getting on in years, too. She won't have time for more than five or six before she goes to sleep.”

“As long as nobody dies from it, she can stay,” Alpha decided. What's done is done; might as well make the most of it, she thought. Beta gave her a look of shock. “What? This is unexpected and interesting. I've never had an opportunity to interact with dragons before, much less examine the effects they have on the environment. If nobody dies, why should we treat it as a problem when there are so many more?”

“Alpha, Domhan is a planet with thinking beings living on it!” Beta exclaimed with barely, as in not at all, checked fury. “It's a home for thousands, not some kind of test tube. And I know how this will end – volcanoes are a bad idea! Don't you remember when we visited Celestia's little coterie of planets? That lava-coated, poisonous little fireball she has? All its volcanoes?”

“Was that her first or second planet?” She frowned, trying to remember the place Beta was speaking about. “Both of those were pretty hot.”

“The first one can hardly be considered a planet,” Beta scoffed. “I mean the second one. The one that's covered in fire?”

“Oh! I remember that one.” She frowned. Admittedly, that world did paint a rather grim picture for Domhan's future if the analogy was perfect, but one data point does not a trend determine. “We should be fine, I think. Besides, if I remember correctly none of its volcanoes are actually active. They weren't when we visited anyways. Perhaps its atmosphere has simply always been like that?”

“It's a nonissue anyways, Beta,” Proxima chimed in. “Taistealaí is barely strong enough at this point to burrow to the core. One volcano is all we'd get, if that.”

“She was strong enough to fly through space!”

“That hardly requires any effort at all.” She rolled her eyes. “Try taking a break from your hill forts to fly up there sometime, maybe. All she had to do was push and coast for a few eons.”

“You should spend more time with the hill forts than buzzing around the exosphere and licking stalagmites,” Beta retorted. “We're supposed to be Queens.”

“That was your decision, sister,” she hissed. “Not mine. I actually voted against it. Recall?”

“Perhaps in front of the dragons is not the best time for this argument?” Alpha suggested, spreading her wings and urging her sisters in the direction of the cave mouth with them. “We can debate each others' style of rule later. Until then, Beta, remember that her 'buzzing around' just got us the allegiance of the dragons, and Proxi, her hill forts are exactly what we'd been hoping for from them, Queens or not.”

“They're still duller than cave dirt,” Proxima grumbled.

“You probably have more experience with that than me, Proxima,” Beta fired back.

“Later.”

With a yawn, Alpha rejoined the waking world, and for the briefest of instants felt the absence of her sisters at her sides. The kelpie nomads of old slept side-by-side to keep the cold of winter at bay. With the breeze taking a turn for the chilly and the feeling of grass beneath her, it took a moment for her to realize those days were gone forever. They weren't camped outside a dragon cave with a band of peddlers, and Proxima was beyond her reach.

Like Watchful is.

She rose reluctantly to a standing position, ignoring the detritus clinging to her for an instant as she looked down on the grave of her most faithful subject. Was this what Celestia had to go through with each of her students before her? Remaining alive and eternal, able to make new friends and move on, while every year another few acquaintances abandoned their bodies and jumped to new ones, out of her reach?

I wonder where she is now, she thought. It's been a while, and Domhan is a magical place. Maybe she's become a star now. In our Wheel? In another? She snorted. Maybe she's in Messier, playing tag with the rest of them. I hope the lessons I gave her in that will be useful then. Well, the lessons Proxima and I gave her.

It was almost morning. She'd cleared the hilltop of vines before falling asleep, and she could see the grey light of dawn warming the sky in the east, spilling out across the treetops. The trees were higher now; there were fewer clearings, and their canopies seemed thicker. Two thousand years of uninterrupted growing time between her last Beltane and now showed. Truthfully, she was shocked it had been uninterrupted. The kelpies had been advancing so quickly – this old growth was perfect for fuel. When had things changed? When Proxima had fallen? When Beta had? When she'd been careless and locked Proxima up for eternity? Caelum, how could she have made such a terrible mistake?

I want my sister back, she thought sadly. How could I have been so incautious? She would have been free a thousand years ago if I'd just double-checked my circle! And if she'd just been imprisoned again, at least there might've been a chance I could get to her. If I could find a way to get my friends and the Elements here, she'd be purged of her Nightmare in no time flat!

She called upon her magic, bending space in preparation for a teleportation – but she frowned and paused, thinking about where she wanted to go. Back to Caisleanard? To more feasts, with more vapid and squabbling nobles? She doubted she had the patience for a second night. Beta enjoyed that kind of politicking – also, that kind of feasting; she'd had the most say in designing edible things back when they made the place and Alpha wouldn't be surprised if the feasts had been her brainchild – so let her deal with it. They were co-Queens, whatever she said. Dealing with nobles would just have to be her responsibility. The fun parts, though – she was okay with taking care of scientific and thaumaturgical matters. Yes, if she was going to have to endure being Queen over this mess Beta had made, she might as well take charge of the interesting things.

Starting with finding out how badly, exactly, she'd messed up on her ring.

She completed the spell. The chilly wind morphed into a solid wall of driving, frigid wind, bearing with it enough snow to bury a schoolhouse. Her mane was put out in an instant. If the circle of standing stones wasn't yet a circle of fallen-over stones, it would be smothered in approximately – she thought wryly – a few kilometers of snow.

With another burst of magic, she re-lit her mane and stoked it to white-hot, incinerating whatever seaweed had persevered on her head and tail in an instant and completely vaporizing any snow that hit her. That wasn't enough. More magic turned her blazing head and flank into the bases of fiery whips, flashing around her with blinding speed and making her the heart of a sphere of incandescent plasma, hotter than the surface of her sun. The snow never stood a chance. It didn't boil off into a gas; it vanished. Frost-coated pine trees touched by her mane became bombs, their sap flash-boiling and sending bursts of burning splinters out. Then, just as suddenly, she let the fires die down. Her circle was still there, cleaned of moss and the discoloring of ages. The snow returned almost reluctantly, a few brave flakes ignoring the desperate pleas of their compatriots and drifting hesitantly in her direction again.

Okay, she thought, observing her ancient handiwork. Six stones. I suppose that makes sense.

She trotted into the center of the circle, hoping for a flash of memory that would tell her what she'd done to banish Proxima. A glimpse of the theory behind it, a fragment of her casting the enchantments...anything. But nothing came. She was just a clueless star in the center of an ancient monument. She might as well have not built it, for all she knew about it.

“There has to be some clue to how I did this!” she muttered, trotting over to the nearest stone and examining closely, pushing her magic sense to its limits as she tried to grasp exactly how she'd bound and channeled enough power to inadvertently seal Proxima Centauri away for two millennia. There was magic in the stone, definitely – a startlingly dense, tangled mess of intricately knotted spell-lines and energy flows, deep in its core, like a coven of fiendish old mares had taken it upon itself to knit a sock with Equestria's entire annual yield of colored yarn. There were loose ends, extending off towards the other stones, and anchoring the thing to the ground and – she assumed – some sort of ley line deep beneath, but for the life of her she couldn't remember how she'd done it!

“Nothing,” she growled, whipping around and teleporting over to the stone opposite the one she'd been examining. She paused, watching, as the spill from that spell was caught by the lines, and flowed along them; she could have sworn the air around the stones iridesced slightly, a rainbow aura almost too faint to be noticed, but it was there. The next stone was just the same as the first stone – more magically dense than any three potent artifacts in Equestria, and just as incomprehensible. She teleported again, picking one of the remaining four at random, and appeared before it in a burst of annoyance-fueled light.

Nothing.

She whirled around again, determined to find something in the stones to help, but a thin layer of ice was already re-forming on the stone base of the circle, and she lost her footing, spun around three times, and felt her hooves slip out from under her and deposit her unceremoniously on the cold rock. She was about to stand up again when she realized that there was no ley line beneath the ring – the loose spell-lines were connected with more spells in the ground!

She probed at the mess below her, woven into the ground itself. It was wild and hastily made, devoid of any measures to shield sensitive passersby from its potency, and she tasted metal just from brushing her aura against it, but it was recognizably hers, down to the style of shortcuts she occasionally used to simplify overly-complex spells. And it was beautiful.

Excited, she rose to her hooves again and unconsciously began to follow the spell-lines as she probed them. Portions of the weave looked like something Starswirl the Bearded might have designed – she could recognize snippets of it, and there were whole sections that hazily resembled some of his unfinished work on the Elements of Harmony – other bits that looked like Clover the Clever's work on emotion-based warding magic, though emphasizing the warding over the emotional energy source – other names slotted themselves in as her mind traced out the oddly familiar pattern. Elm the Eldritch, Marelin the Great, Hippus the Heavy-Hoofed, Elderberry the Energetic, Willow the Wizened; kelpie shamen like Pangur Ban the Aloof and Whitewood the Warm – she knew this spellwork! It was like the greatest magical minds of an age had convened and collaborated to build a ritual circle under her guidance. She'd copied spells from geniuses, kludged them together with her own spellcraft, smoothed over the rough patches, and the result had been almost elegant – and its effectiveness had never been in doubt.

She stopped pacing as she realized something. She giggled, then chuckled, and finally broke into full-body laughter as she took in the pattern as a whole. The stones, the pentacle in the ground – it was her cutie mark! If that didn't tell her that she made this, nothing would.

Finally, she could see where she'd gone wrong.

It was a little thing, as most magical errors she'd made since hatching Spike could be attributed to; in a snarl of spell-lines that must have been made in a great hurry, she'd malformed one of the runes governing the spell's duration. It had been a frustration for ritualist mages over the centuries that the magical symbols for progressively larger numbers approached being identical to the magical symbol for infinity. Novices often made mistakes in spells of longer durations precisely because of it. Whole lectures in Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns had been devoted toward drilling the difference between infinity and arbitrarily large numbers into students' heads. The difference between a thousand and infinity wasn't too small – not compared to, say, three-hundred fifteen billion seconds, which would have been an acceptable equivalent – but in a rush, it was a simple mistake to make. One rune, one insignificant typo, had doomed her sister to an eternity trapped inside her own body.

I can fix this now! she thought. I know how I did it, I can figure out how to reverse it easily enough. If I can get my friends and the Elements here, once Proxima is free again, I can purge her and start reintegrating her into Domhanane society – this is perfect!

She smiled gleefully. She had a plan – she could fix this! A trip to Equestria wouldn't take too much effort, it was just a particularly long-distance teleportation after all. And if Proxima was freed from her Nightmare because of it, there was no effort Alpha would consider excessive. All would be set right again soon; that, and the promise of seeing her friends again, was all the impetus she needed to gather up as much magic as she could hold, to the point where not only her eyes, but her entire form was coursing with light, and warp space for the trip to Equestria. No, not warp space – she ripped right through it. Who needed space anyways? All it did was get in the way! No, no – space was the way! And now there was less of it! Ingenious!

When the mouth of the wormhole sealed shut again behind her, her ever-so-slightly mad giggle was still audible in the clearing of the standing stones.

Author's Note

So little time, so much to write...

Thanks for the favorites and thumbs and comments once again. Feedback is always appreciated!

One last thing, a question: should I or should I not have an empty space between paragraphs? A few of you have asked for it, and the fine pre-reader from EQD suggested it too. Any preferences in that direction?

Chapter 18: A Slight Snag

It was late at night in Ponyville, and the Golden Oaks Library was quite dark. Well, except for a ceiling lamp shaped like a banana peel that stood proudly at attention projecting out of the floor of the main room. Or was that the ceiling? A wall? Discord could frankly say he didn't care. Gravity was something one played bridge with on weekends, not some kind of fundamental force that had to be obeyed at all times. It didn't even have a carrier particle he had to contend with for control of things! It was practically asking to be twisted around to his whims!

The draconequus himself sat comfortably in a plush corduroy armchair next to the lamp, weighing carefully his choices of literature for the night. Daring Do and the Feather of the Phoenix, or the much more substantial Complete Compendium of Cacti? He recalled an old adage he'd come to appreciate particularly well since that dusty old manual he'd eaten when they'd first made the grievous error of releasing him for “reform” gave him indigestion for a week; some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. Obviously, that particular word salad had not been among the ones amenable to digestion. But would Complete Compendium be like that, or would he just have to douse it in sauce? And would it be ketchup or some form of fruit preserve? Ah, decisions, decisions...

A flash of light came from above him and drew his attention to the floor of the library. There, standing upside-down above him, was a being he was quite sure he'd never, ever seen before...except maybe since his freeing from a prison of stone a year or so back. And then his second freeing, mere months before! Just the pony who could help, too.

“Twilight Sparkle!” he chuckled, teleporting her before him. She blinked disorientedly – her inner ear was probably trying to reason things out. He thought of a particularly bad bit of wordplay and smiled as he snapped his fingers and attempted to cast a transmogrification spell on her. “You are just the bookworm I wanted to see. Tell me, O devourer of good books, which of these tomes should I – oh, sun and moon, you figured that one out, didn't you.”

Twilight Sparkle – was she Twilight Sparkle? She seemed to have had her model swapped – looked down upon Discord the Small Green Inchworm Bedecked in a Scholar's Cap and giggled. “I've been expecting something like this for months, Discord. The whole Library has been properly enchanted against ponies casting magic on me. Though I think you might have noticed that and deactivated some of my decoys.”

“I'm sure I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about, Twilight,” he replied, reverting to his typical form and dusting himself off. “Things around here have been far too hectic for me to even consider breaking into your home and place of employment, disabling thirty-seven separate and diabolically devised security spells that all seemed to inexplicably be activated by my presence alone, sampling your finest vintage – the oh-eighty-seven Starswirls were particularly fine, salty but with a delicate hint of oak and a delightful aftertaste - “ He broke off, puzzled. “You seem to be taking that news rather well in stride.”

“I imagine they tasted like raspberries as well,” she added smugly, smiling.

“Why?” Now he was puzzled – had she tried to eat them before?They had tasted mainly like that, but – oh. Oh, she had played him for the fool, hadn't she?

“Illusory magical duplicates usually do.”

“There may have been a hint of raspberry as well...” he admitted grudgingly. “I have underestimated you, you conniving little warlock. I must ask – is this room even real, or do you have a pair of pills you'd like to offer me?”

“As much as I'd like to continue, Discord, there are more pressing concerns occupying my mind.” With a flash of light in her eyes, she flipped the room over and grit her teeth visibly as a shower of books plummeted from the shelves. “I should never make assumptions when you're around.”

“What assumption did you make?” he asked. His chair, of course, had remained firmly in place. If gravity was going to throw a fit like that, he saw no reason to give it more ammunition by releasing his seat into its tender book-hating grasp.

“That my inner ear was off because of a gravity differential between Domhan and Equestria.” She sighed, and reverted the room to its prior state. Even more books tumbled off the shelves, though most were caught in her aura and returned to their proper places. The ones on the ground followed suit. “What was I – right, more pressing concerns. What did you mean by 'hectic', by the way? Have any new threats come up that would require the Elements of Harmony?”

“None that Sun-Butt has seen fit to inform me of.” He took a testing bite out of Complete Compendium and chewed, considering the flavor and whether it would be worth a few weeks of indigestion for. Raspberries – bah! “And if one had, Equestria would essentially be unrecognizable at this point, considering every villain requiring their deployment has had excessively grandiose, half-baked and ultimately self-destructive schemes that would impact the whole world, with one exception.”

“You?”

“Actually, I was referring to an old pal of mine called Floral Infinity,” he replied. “I think she still has that old manor in her fragrant and incredibly evil clutches. Somepony should really get around to unleashing the rainbow of friendship upon her soon – it's occupied Equestrian soil after all, and she could try to conquer her neighbor's house at any time with her villainous army of tulips. I appreciate the vote of confidence, though. I'll remember that if I ever try to restore eternal chaos to the world again.”

“You mean it's not guaranteed?”

“It's predictable by now.” He licked the bitten-off corner of the book, regenerating it instantly. “I don't do predictable. Not on large scales, at least.”

“What about - “ She shook her head. “No, darnit! Now I have memories of you as a friend – of course now they come back – and it's making this conversation far more distracting than it should be.”

“Funny. I don't have any memories of the sort at all.” He burped and scratched under his lion arm – probably fleas again. He idly wondered what would happen to them. The last batch had become vegans and lived in a homeless shelter now.

“Getting kicked out of Caelum's court? Drunkenly promising her a night of passion and bad puns?”

He hid his surprise fairly well, he thought. Only one of his limbs went bald, and only with a sound like an elderly stallion's wheezing death rattle. The fur drifted gently to the ground in a cloud, followed by a brigade of parachute-equipped fleas. “So it wasn't a mistake. Interesting. Which name would you prefer now? Twilight Sparkle? Alpha Centauri? Your Supreme Royal Stickiness and Sparkle-Butt are options too. Or would you prefer something with numbers in it?”

“Twilight is fine,” she answered. With a frown, she added, “or Alpha, I suppose. Either works.”

“Twilight Centauri, perhaps? Alpha Sparkle?”

“Just Twilight,” she sighed. “I shouldn't have given you a choice.”

“I prefer Alpha Sparkle, actually. I think I'll go with that.”

“Just Twilight,” she affirmed, “and that's that. Are my friends all in town? Do they have access to the Elements of Harmony?” She turned towards the stairs. “If they're not here, I'll need Spike. Why he didn't stop you from coming in, I - “

“Oh, he's been living with Fluttershy since your sudden and inexplicable vanishment.” He waved his paw dismissively. “I'm curious as to what will result from it. If he starts wearing dog collars as a teenager, you'll know who to blame, at least.”

“Right. She wouldn't let him live here alone while I was away.” She spun back around. “So they're all here? Elements with them?”

“Well, all but one.”

“Who is - “ She chuckled. “Right, of course. Rainbow Dash had to go back to the Academy, didn't she?”

“I believe a one out of two is considered to be a failing grade by academic authorities in this day and age.”

Twilight frowned. “Where is she, then?”

In a burst of light, Discord was clad in formal attire and floating, and gravely lifted his hat off and placed it over his heart. “The Great Beyond, I'm afraid, dear Alpha Sparkle. Our fine feathered friend of the bluer persuasion has left our skies for greener ones in a burst of magical glory.”

She gave him an unamused look. “You're joking.”

“Oh, how I wish I was, old and dear passing acquaintance of mine!” he moaned in a quavering voice. Behind him a few duplicates of himself appeared, dabbing at their eyes with white handkerchiefs and wearing black dresses, weeping and wailing as a soft background to his announcement. “But through her own thickheadedness and obstinacy, Rainbow Dash had dabbled in magics far beyond her ken, heedless of the advice of her elders, and severed her soul from her body in a most lethal manner! Lo, how her cold, dead body lay sprawled before my eyes and the eyes of the aggrievéd princesses, in my very home which she had so unlawfully violated! It was not three days ago we laid her still form to rest in the equally blue and lifeless ground, surrounded by the crowds of her mourners – which was mainly Scootaloo and her friends, none of us actually knew where her parents live so we couldn't reach them. We should probably inform them some time.” He blew his nose. “Where was I? Ah, the funeral! Yes, it was attended by several dozen copies of Scootaloo, to fill out the ranks of the mourners a little and give her a grander sending-off to the great floating pasture in the sky. Fluttershy, as I predicted when Dash first came to me with her mad scheme, was utterly distraught; Applejack was weeping and giving herself character depth above and beyond the call of duty; Rarity sewed the death shroud herself and was there, crying, as her creation was lowered into the ground – and if you'd believe it, she didn't faint at all! Even Pinkie Pie seemed serious. The wake was serious and well-provisioned since Pinkie drowned her sorrows in her baking and leavened the cupcakes with her own tears - “

“I don't believe you.”

The chorus of the damned behind him fell silent immediately and gave her annoyed looks. Discord's attire vanished along with them in another burst of light. “What do you mean, 'I don't believe you'?”

“You're lying,” she said simply. “You're creating a falsehood as some kind of prank in incredibly poor taste. You've done it before.”

“When?”

“Caelum's hall?”

“Oh, very well, you have me there,” he sighed. He snapped his fingers and they teleported to the Ponyville Graveyard, directly in front of Dash's headstone. He even dispelled the modifications he'd made to it. Regardless of whether or not a dunce cap improved the aesthetic of the grave, he didn't think Twilight would appreciate it much at all. Unfortunate connotations were the truest enemy of the avant-garde artist that he was. “Look. In the living flesh.”

Twilight looked at the gravestone and was quiet for a while. Discord assumed she was probing it carefully with her magic senses, and probably her gravimetric and electroweak senses if she'd really come back into her powers as a star in full. If it was free of magic, had mass, and was actually newly placed, she might believe him. Of course, Alpha had always been a doubter. Though it occurred to him just now to ask himself why he even cared if she believed him or not. Rainbow Dash was dead as a doornail. Twilight could come home or stay on Domhan or fling herself miserably into the distant reaches of the universe, and he'd still be completely, wonderfully free.

“How did she die?” she asked quietly. He frowned at the lack of grief or misery or anything approaching the socially acceptable reaction of a friend who'd lost another. She sounded almost...distant. Like a portion of her wasn't entirely here.

“She was attempting an astral projection while being interdicted,” he answered, giving her a curious look. “What was most surprising was that she succeeded to the point where a mishap was possible, though she was a bit off her rocker by the end, and interdictions rely on predictions, and a lunatic is difficult to predict.”

“She'd have had to separate herself from her body for anything dangerous to happen,” Twilight – no, Alpha Centauri murmured. “Someone had to teach her how to do that.”

“Erm – well...” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “She was insistent.”

“You taught a pegasus without any prior training how to perform what is one of the single most dangerous spells possible for someone without prior training to perform,” Alpha summed up. “Why?”

“Well, she was trying to rescue you,” he answered. “I stopped her from doing anything really dangerous like charging in in an attempt to single-handedly erase kelpiekind from the face of Domhan for the crime of kidnapping you.”

“How?”

“I sent her to Caelum, of course.”

“Funny. She never mentioned it to me,” she murmured. “How did it go?”

“Well, she somehow managed to botch that,” he admitted. “She may have been attacked by Caelum for consorting with me...and then fought back.”

Alpha groaned. “Rainbow Dash...”

“And then she fell over into the extremely toxic material I'd had on paw to make a rudimentary ritual circle from,” he continued. He put on a pair of spectacles and summoned a scroll of parchment into existence. “One second, let me find my place...”

Twilight facehoofed. “There's a list?”

“Rainbow Dash, shall we say, was not cut out for interstellar adventures.” He cleared his throat and unraveled the scroll. “To recap: she made a crater several tens of feet long leading up to Fluttershy's door, bullied me into teaching her forbidden magic, assaulted the Queen of the Universe – Tia was very impressed by that one – received aid from a power or powers unknown, defied house arrest by somehow teleporting into the Everfree Forest, broke into my castle, defied the Princesses yet again and tried to astrally project to foundational-powers-know-where to find you, slipped through their interdict – their interdict with the power of two alicorns behind it – long enough to be harmed, and then was killed when her tether was severed quite by accident.” The scroll snapped shut and vanished in a puff of smoke. He crushed the spectacles and tossed them behind him, where they bounced off somepony else's grave and exploded in a small mushroom cloud. “Oh, and she tried to assault the Princesses and insulted all her friends while she was at it. I think that roughly outlines the story of how she died.”

“Power or powers unknown,” Alpha murmured thoughtfully. She looked at Dash's grave again for a long few minutes of silence. Was she mourning? Thinking? Plotting his imminent demise? Devising some fiendish spell of necromancy to call Rainbow Dash's corpse back from the grave to inflict 'awesomeness' once more upon the living? Had she fallen asleep with her eyes open? He couldn't tell. Her face was that expressionless. It was the expressionless he'd most often seen after pushing a joke too far. She was either about to snap and throw a tantrum...or do something they would both severely regret.

Then she returned her attention to Discord and her face looked like it was carved in heaven-stone, unreadable and unchanging. Even the expressionlessness was gone, were that physically possible. “That's a major unknown in this situation. I'm assuming her attempted assault of Celestia and Luna happened after her first projection and contact with this power?”

“You would be correct, actually. The rest was in chronological order.”

“Rainbow Dash can be a bit...aggressive, sometimes, but that sounds extreme even for her,” she said to herself, the mask breaking and her features betraying thoughtfulness, finally. He'd almost been worried there for a second! “I'm missing something...unless you aren't telling me everything, Discord.”

“I have told the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” he scoffed, affronted. “Cross my heart, hope to fly, and that third part of your ridiculous oath that involves baked goods.”

“Hm,” she hummed doubtfully. Nevertheless, her eyes flickered as she summoned magic and opened a wormhole. A wavering image of an underwater throne room formed in the air behind her, as if seen through a thin ornamental waterfall. She looked back as she prepared to leave again. “If she really is dead, Discord, I will hold you accountable. You taught her how to perform an astral projection, and you enabled her to perform one. If she is possessed, seriously injured, or actually dead – permanently dead, since she would be a loose soul without any kind of protection – I will come for you.” For a brief instant, her pupils were slits in orbs of colored glass sunken into angular, almost sinister features, and Discord felt like he was staring into the heart of a black hole, lethal radiation exposure and all. She smiled. She giggled a little. Softly. “If that happens, Discord, I hope you won't be squatting in Fluttershy's little cottage. You'll need to find somewhere much stronger to make things interesting at all.”

“Wait!” he said, frowning. “Are you – are you actually just leaving? Leaving dramatically? Why, I'd be almost proud if I weren't so puzzled!” An abacus appeared in the air next to his head, the beads shifting back and forth at random. “It doesn't add up! What about the power of friendship? Your dear old mentor? Surely, you can't just leave them without even saying goodbye! Why, Celestia's teeth could start to fall out any day now! You'll miss her getting fitted for her first dentures!”

“I'll pay a social visit later,” she answered absently, stepping through the portal. She sat down and gave him an appraising look – not in any kind of friendly way, either. It was the look of an alpha wolf sizing up its prey, and it actually came close to unnerving him. “There...there's a mistake I need to fix first. Without Rainbow Dash, they're useless to me. I'll keep them out of harm's way for now.” The wormhole began to narrow, then jerked to a halt. That look was back – not the look of a wolf, but the look of a black hole like the kind young stars saw in their nightmares. “And, Discord...”

“I assume this will be about my browsing in your library?”

“If I were you, I'd hope – for my own sake – that Rainbow Dash somehow survived.” She grinned. He noticed how uncannily wolflike her teeth were now. Kelpielike? They were both carnivores, he supposed. “I might even try to make myself useful and search for her. Or, Discord – I'd run.” That giggle again – more of a chuckle, really. “I'd run until I couldn't find anywhere else to run to, and then I'd keep running, because I'm starting to remember some of my spells from the War of Nightmares.”

“Erm...”

“Until we see each other again, Dissy.” The wormhole began to narrow again. “I hope you pick somewhere fun to hide...”

The wormhole closed, the wound in space healing and sealing like it had never been there at all. He floated somberly in silence for a few moments. That...she had sounded serious. Deadly serious. And 'dangerously off-kilter” was not a description he'd ever found apt for her before, as Twilight or Alpha Centauri. Something had changed, that was certain – however thick the skein of Twilight's personality was still, it had had a hole punched straight through it to something much less friendly and forgiving. He felt a faint tingle of genuine concern. No, worry. It was something that wouldn't hesitate to challenge a foundational power like himself, however insane the idea might be...and might even win. Getting mixed up in this business with Rainbow Dash had been a bad mistake, however enjoyable mucking about in interstellar politics again had been.

In a puff of smoke, he was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and had a large weather-beaten suitcase in either hand, with a fishing rod clutched in his tail; a pair of sunglasses perched atop the raffia hat that now crowned his head. He almost shivered, and a fuzzy sweater popped into existence around him. Great Lights, she really was Alpha Centauri! Shivering! Fear! Nobody before or since had ever been able to make him feel like that, not even Caelum herself!

Perhaps it's time for a short vacation from this orderly little mudball, he thought, trying to distract himself. A thousand years in one place is a bit much, after all. Indeed it was! He had to move on, pull up his nascent roots and find a new set of creatures to bother. Ah, but what about Fluttershy? Much as he hated to admit it, the little yellow flap-flap had been growing on him. The rabbit, though...he could live without the rabbit. Whoever had first pulled that misnamed little rodent out of a hat had made a grave miscalculation. Was the rabbit enough of a justification to prop up his illusion that he would flee Equestria uncoerced?

The answer, of course, was an ominously dramatic nope.

I wonder what the fishing's like in Andromeda this time of year, he thought. That's far enough, right? Perhaps the Tadpole Galaxy? Am I willing to tolerate that many amphibians for an indefinite time period? Oh, boiled mushrooms, it would be an indefinite time period, wouldn't it? She was a star now. That meant immortality, persistent grudges, and bad gas. Not a combination that lent itself well to forgiveness. She wouldn't forget this little promise. Perhaps he should put more distance between himself and her. Abell, out in Horologium, maybe. Markarian was nice and isolated. Zee-eight?

He had the sneaking suspicion that, if Rainbow Dash actually was dead irreversibly, even there wouldn't be far enough away.

Author's Note

Yeah, now that I've seen the chapters with spaces in between paragraphs, I kinda like it better. I'll change the past chapters when I get a free day, it'll give me a chance to error-hunt and see if I can improve past chapters. I remember a few I wasn't too happy with, though not specifically why...hm...

Thanks once more for reading, upvoting, and commenting! I love the amount of feedback I've gotten so far, especially on the spacing question. Hope you like the new chapter!

Ah, and to clarify on the destinations Discord considered: this Z8, this Abell out in Horologium, Markarian 845 out in the Great Void, and this photogenic fellow is the Tadpole Galaxy referenced. I hope you've heard of Andromeda but here's a pic anyways because galaxies are beautiful things.

Chapter 20: The Speaker for the Flames

The buggane spire was just as Dash remembered it, even from the ground. It was slightly more...imposing, yes, but that was to be expected when one ran with a pack of wolves instead of flying at cruising altitude towards the thing. It was night now, past midnight; the suns would be up in a few more hours. For some reason – Ghealach insisted it was because the planet spun more slowly, but everypony knew the idea of the world spinning was ridiculous – nights were longer on Domhan. That gave them plenty of time to observe the buggane council's fortress during its hours of peak activity. As Ghealach interrupted her thoughts again to inform her of, that was a profoundly odd word combination.

“Buggane councils do not fortify themselves,” she scoffed from Dash's left. “Bugganes cannot grasp the concept of fortification. Half the reason councils even dig holes for themselves is by accidentally knocking aside dirt during rainstorms. If they have picked a particularly defensible site, it is likely because they ran into it and got lost inside.”

“This council's different then,” she snapped – again. Prejudice was something she was familiar with – Zebras generally not being welcomed in Equestria, though they weren't legally discriminated against – but this was ridiculous. Couldn't she see that something strange was going on here? “I don't even think they are a council. If there's just one boss, maybe there's a hierarchy or something and they're actually able to think?”

“A plausible theory,” one of Streamwalker's wolves – Brightshine? Leaper? Telling wolves apart was hard – muttered. “Perhaps you would like to suggest it to the pack?”

“Show more respect, Burrfang,” Streamwalker growled softly. Dash grimaced; she hadn't even been close! “She is a great one.”

“She is insane, Streamwalker!” Burrfang protested. “Haven't you heard her talking to herself on the way here? It's like she is arguing with two voices in her head!”

“She is insane but effective and trustworthy, and has powers far beyond us that are useful,” the white wolf countered. “So, show respect. If she is so mad, what makes you think provoking her would be a good thing?”

“I still would not have her at my back in a fight,” the other wolf grumbled. “Who knows what she would do then?”

“Silence – buggane picket!” another wolf snapped from ahead. The pack, which had been creeping stealthily along in the brush on the edge of the clearing around the spire, halted immediately.

“Absurd,” Ghealach snorted. “Bugganes do not - “

Even Ghealach fell silent as Dash spotted something through the fronds of the fern she was hidden below – a pair of hulking bugganes, black fur making them only visible in silhouette from the firelight emanating from a cave mouth on the spire's base, lumbering methodically around the perimeter of the clearing, swiping their massive claws through the bushes as they passed and grumbling amongst themselves. As they grew closer, she could start to make out what they were saying.

“Boss is dumb,” the lead buggane rumbled slowly, as it swiped its claws through a patch of ferns. “Food escaped. Lost one chasing.”

“Cook nose-blind too,” the other added. It seemed to be along mainly as insurance; the leader checked the bushes, and the second followed behind to jump in in case of trouble.

“Boss not working,” the leader summed up, sounding pleased that his companion agreed. “Should have more bosses.”

“Boss hear that and send you away,” the second differed. “Bad to be sent away. Not come back in time.”

“Time,” the leader spat. He suddenly lunged at a bunch of ferns, roaring and swinging his claws around wildly. A nearby sapling was decapitated and the ferns would probably take a good time to recover, but the clump had been empty; was it hoping to scare something out? Whatever its reason, the second buggane chortled at the sight of the broken tree.

“Got tree good, huh,” the leader rumbled happily. “Tree knows boss.”

“Boss knows boss,” the second said, and ducked an offhanded swing from the leader. “Oi!”

“Don't badmouth boss,” the leader admonished it. “Boss send you away.”

They were past then; their low voices became inaudible over the resurgent chirping of crickets and other associated insects. Ghealach, for once, was speechless.

“They cannot hold an opinion in their heads for more than thirty seconds,” she spluttered at long last, “and yet they have a central leadership?”

“Who's being absurd now huh?” Dash whispered, giving a very Cloud Ferry-like smirk. “I think that proves they've got a boss of some kind, doesn't it?”

“It does, great one,” Streamwalker agreed, “and it seems their boss has them held together by either fear or some form of promise.”

“They are certainly structured differently from anything I've seen yet,” Burrfang growled thoughtfully. “We should advance and infiltrate the spire itself. We will learn nothing else from lurking in the bushes.”

“To enter that spire would be to commit suicide,” Streamwalker responded curtly. “We stay out here.”

“Whoever their boss is, I don't think he's coming out anytime soon,” Dash pointed out. “Someone should go in.” Not too many; a single squad would do, or whatever equivalent unit these wolves have. “Not a whole lot, maybe just one.”

“The great one speaks sense,” Burrfang concurred, nodding. “I volunteer to enter.”

“If anypony goes in, it should be me,” Dash countered. “I'm the invincible one here.”

“Why didn't you exterminate this council when you came here first, then?” Burrfang asked.

“I can still get hurt,” she clarified. “But bugganes can't kill me. Just...break every bone in my body and smear me all over...the...ground...” This doesn't sound like a good idea anymore, she realized, wincing at the thought of that happening. How long would that take to recover from?

“Maybe a bit of pain will help you see things my way.” Cloud Ferry chuckled. “It's good to know you have some form of survival instinct, however often you ignore it.”

“So long as they do not attack you with magic, I will allow this plan to go forward,” Ghealach said reluctantly.

“Can bugganes use magic?” Dash asked.

“No,” one of the other wolves answered. “Even their supposed 'shamen' merely wave sticks around and call it healing.”

“I would have laughed at that idea a moment ago,” Ghealach replied with an uncertain frown. “Now, though...be cautious.”

“Right. Any way to help me get in there undetected?”

She felt a faint tingle as magic crawled its way across her skin like a wave of ants, making her coat hairs stand on end and eliciting a shiver from her as the odd sensation intensified. When the feeling had passed, she heard a surprised gasp from the wolves. She looked down at herself – and couldn't see anything. More accurately, she couldn't see her body.

“You are invisible,” Ghealach declared. “I can do nothing about the disturbance of the air that motion will cause and the bugganes will detect, but without confirmation from their eyes, the beasts might be confused enough to buy you time. Against kelpies, this would guarantee you undetectability. In this situation...” She shrugged. “If faced with bugganes, remain motionless.”

“I can smell her yet,” Burrfang grumbled.

“It will be helpful, though not a perfect disguise,” Streamwalker said, nodding thoughtfully. “Very well. We shall continue to patrol the edge of the clearing, great one. Give us some signal when you emerge.”

“I'm going now,” she declared. The ferns rustled as she pushed through them...and promptly tripped over a root sticking out of the ground, because she couldn't see where she was putting her foot. “Ow.”

“An auspicious start,” Burrfang muttered under his breath. Streamwalker growled softly in warning.

“Let's see you try to walk normally when you can't see your own feet!” Dash snapped at him. Streamwalker jerked his head, indicating to the others to move to a new position, quickly. She winced as she realized how loud she'd been. Stars, she could hear the bugganes coming back!

“Wind mask your scent and guide you, great one,” one of the other wolves whispered as she brushed past Rainbow Dash – and winced as her own fur got caught on Dash's kelpie coat and she had to yank herself free. “You will need that first blessing, I think.”

They are coming, the new voice in Dash's head warned her, and without further delay she galloped towards the rock spire, angling towards one of the round cave mouths that spilled warm light across the short grass of the clearing. She could hear the bugganes debating what they smelled behind from somewhere behind her - “moon smell” one growled worryingly – and eager to get away from the monsters she only stopped galloping when her hooves hit stone and a single echoing clop sounded down the length of the curving tunnel.

“I almost hope you're caught,” Cloud Ferry said with a smirk. “Being ground into a chunky sauce might help some sense stick to your insides. In addition to the sharp rocks and grit, of course.”

“Silence,” Ghealach commanded, giving Cloud Ferry a surprisingly severe look. “If you incite her to reply, it will be painful for all of us.”

“You can feel when I get hurt?” Dash whispered. She started moving again, slowly, and careful to make sure her hooves made as little noise as possible on the brown rock. Geez, sneaking with hooves on a hard surface is hard.

“Faintly,” Ghealach replied.

“Like it happened to me,” Cloud Ferry grudgingly admitted at the same time.

We have leverage with them, the third voice murmured in the back of her mind. Remember that. They have a weakness. There may be others.

Who are you? Dash thought back, as she cautiously rounded the bend in the tunnel. It opened into a vault-like juncture between it and three other tunnels, pitch-black, which naturally meant she could see perfectly fine. Two of the tunnels curved out of sight; the third sloped steeply upwards. Working on a hunch, she started trotting towards the third.

Thy reserve, the voice answered. Somehow, Dash knew that she and she alone could hear this one.

“You are working on the erroneous assumption that a buggane leader would want the highest point of his tower as a base,” Ghealach said, as Dash reached the mouth of the center tunnel.

“And you're an expert on buggane leaders now, huh?” Dash whispered back. Cloud Ferry snorted, amused, but didn't say anything.

“They are subterranean beasts,” Ghealach replied coolly. “Why would the most prestigious among them want to be furthest from the ground?”

Conditioning leaves its mark on everypony, the voice whispered. If these 'bugganes' were conditioned to take the high ground, and after their leaders left they ritualized their conditioning...

“I've got a hunch.”

“As sound a method of determining our course of action as any.” Ghealach sighed and shook her head.

The tunnel doubled back on itself after forty feet, still sloping gently upwards, and then doubled back again, and again, and again, until Dash's mental map painted the thing as a corkscrewing, primitive staircase. Other tunnels branched off now and then, and through a few of those she caught sight of the fires the bugganes maintained. Sometimes, there would even be a buggane or two squatting around them, like immense shaggy boulders, their face-tentacles waving around in the air. There was a breeze, thankfully – blowing inwards, towards Rainbow Dash. They wouldn't be able to smell her.

She began to notice differences between the bugganes as she climbed. Size differences only, at first – this buggane would be bigger than that buggane, that third would be bulkier than a fourth – but eventually she began to pick out more specific things. One buggane, stooped over particularly severely, had silvery streaks in its fur. Another was missing a face-tentacle, possessing only twenty-one instead of the usual tweny-two. Another had a thin pink scar marring one arm, running from the shoulder down to the wrist and winding lazily around its elbow. As she noticed differences, she realized with a sinking feeling that there were a lot of differences - and thus, a lot of differing creatures.

“How many bugganes are there, even?” she muttered quietly, as she passed the mouth of an interior cave where three or four of the beings were heaped together in a big pile, apparently asleep and not clawing out each others' throats. “There's got to be at least forty!”

“It seems, if anything, Streamwalker's estimate was lowballing it,” Ghealach agreed. “This is a vast assembly of bugganes. I have not seen the like since...”

“Since when?”

“I approve of the dramatic pause,” Cloud Ferry said, smiling. A genuine smile – that was rare from her. And it was directed at Ghealach. Dash was immediately suspicious of this apparent camaraderie, but she held herself in check.

“...since the War of Nightmares,” Ghealach finished quietly. “This is...unexpected. With the chaos inspired by a large-scale buggane uprising, toppling Beta Centauri could be made far simpler. This could change many things.”

“I don't know a whole lot about ruling a country,” Dash hissed, “but I kinda doubt a good ruler thinks like that.”

“You invalidated your opinion before you even rendered it, Rainbow Dash,” she responded. There was a distant, calculating look in her eyes. What was she planning? Hay, even Cloud Ferry looked concerned. Unfortunately, Ghealach didn't deign to let them in on her thoughts, and Dash was prevented from asking by reaching the top of the corkscrew ascent.

Warm yellow light spilled out from the tall archway, obviously widened by whoever lived beyond it – deep furrows were cut into the rock around its rim, and crushed and powdered stone littered the ground in front of it. Careful to not step on any of the sharp shards, Dash slipped through the archway and along the wall, staying well away from the large bonfire that sat in the center of the chamber. They were at the top of the rock spire, and the roof of the chamber was crumbling, leaving open great gaps that she could see the stars through. Numerous small boulders were scattered throughout the space, casting dancing shadows as the fire shifted and twisted. She clambered on top of a larger rock, as far from the fire as possible, careful to hold her wings still so her feathers wouldn't rattle, and from her new vantage point she could see four bugganes – one with a blood-crusted nose, hunched over almost nervously between two larger, burlier specimens, and then a buggane that had to be old, so old its fur had gone completely white, hunched over with a staff on the opposite side of the fire from the trio.

“A shaman,” Ghealach surmised. “Likely a particularly canny one, as well, if he has managed to rally so many of his own kind to his cause – whatever that cause is.”

“Is that the same buggane whose nose you crushed in your daring escape?” Cloud Ferry asked. They all knew the answer; of course it was. And now it looked like it was about to be judged by its 'boss'. Dash winced at the thought that her escape might have killed two living, thinking beings, instead of just one. Would they execute this one? Stars, she'd only ever heard about executions as a rumor back home – something the griffons did for really bad criminals, the murderers and the rapists, and even then only once in a while. She didn't have any doubt, though, that bugganes would be capable of executing one of their own.

Be thou silent and listen, the voice urged her. We are scouts, not assassins. Observe and report.

“This is an exceptional - “ Ghealach started, but Dash silenced her with a glare. Maybe she could pick up some of her intent. They were bound together, after all. Dash needn't have bothered – the bugganes stood in silence for another ten minutes, the crushed-nose one fidgeting more and more as time passed, until finally the white buggane surprised Rainbow Dash by straightening to his full height and lumbering easily around the bonfire, staff in claw, like some kind of ambulatory giant pear covered in fuzzy white mold. It stopped before Crushed-Nose, growling softly, a noise a that reverberated throughout the cave, as its face-tentacles waved frantically around.

“Cook.” The white buggane practically spat the word out, causing Crushed-Nose to cringe away from it. It turned around and looked into the fire, slamming the worn but of its staff – which looked like it was just an uprooted sapling, minus the branches – into the ground with enough force to make the logs of the bonfire shift. They crackled as they grated against each other, sending a burst of sparks soaring up with the smoke to vanish through one of the holes in the roof. One log even popped free entirely, rolling roughly down the sloped bonfire and coming to a rest against one of the boulders towards Rainbow Dash, out of her sight.

“Noisy thief-bird stole food,” Crushed-Nose grumbled, almost sullenly. It took an involuntary half-step back when the white buggane turned back around, but the white one didn't have anything to say for the moment. Instead, it shuffled heavily towards the evidently still-burning rogue log – Dash could see the smoke curling up from the opposite side of the boulder – and bent over to grab it. Then, with a mighty heave and a loud roar that made her stiffen involuntarily, it hurled the log into the bonfire.

The fire flared brilliant white and burst out in a shockwave of light. The buggane's roar hung in the air, reinforcing itself and growing louder and louder until with a feeling like a thunderclap racing through her, Dash felt the air split and the roar dropped in pitch, becoming something terrifying and altogether different – the bass, feral bellow of an adult dragon.

Crushed-Nose was kneeling now, shaking with fear. The two guard bugganes had stepped back and removed themselves from the clear zone around the bonfire, and now stood with their backs against two larger boulders, waiting patiently it seemed for their leader's command. The white buggane itself, its fur singed soot-black by the fiery blast, loomed over Crushed-Nose, breathing heavily. It let out a low, slow growl that sent shivers down Dash's spine. Sweet Celestia, what did it do?

“That was...unexpected,” Ghealach murmured. “I can see how it managed to bind these others to it. I would not have suspected a buggane shaman of actually possessing ability with magic, but it seems that tonight is full of surprises.”

“It's not acting,” Cloud Ferry said. “I can see the magical field around it. That isn't a voice-changer spell. It almost looks like - “

“Is that an astral projection cord?” Dash whispered, spotting the brilliant crimson line that exited the buggane's head and plunged into the heart of the blinding white flames.

“Very, very interesting.” Ghealach frowned thoughtfully.

“Tell me what you saw, buggane,” the white buggane ordered, its voice altered beyond recognition. It was sonorous, harsh, and laced with the self-assured arrogance of a being with unchallenged power. It was deep, echoing, and above all else, furious. Crushed-Nose quailed beneath its weight. “What, exactly, raided your 'kitchen'?”

“Thief-bird!” the buggane cook wailed – actually wailed, thoroughly cowed into submission. If it could bow any deeper, Dash was sure it would have made an effort to grovel at the white buggane's feet. “Noisy four-foot thief bird! Made sky rain rocks! Stole food!”

“Noisy, four-footed thief-bird,” the white buggane rumbled thoughtfully. Then, almost to itself – impossible with the way the voice carried – it chuckled. “Sister dear, what are you trying now...”

The white buggane grabbed Crushed-Nose's head with both claws, bending it up to stare into its own fiery, slit-pupiled eyes. “You lost a buggane to this...thief-bird, Speaker, did you not?”

The white buggane shuddered and nodded. The voice echoed out of its mouth again. “Cook. Know this is the only reason I allow you to survive this failure. Your kind are expendable and numerous, but gathering you takes time. Fail me again, and you will be expelled. Do you understand?”

By way of response, Crushed-Nose simply nodded and moaned. The white buggane – the Speaker – nodded again, jerkily, as if it had trouble controlling the movement.

“Keep them in line, Speaker for the Flames,” the dragon's voice said again. “Prepare them. There is not much time left.”

And with that, the flames faded slowly back to their cheerful yellows, oranges, and reds. The Speaker for the Flames sagged and collapsed to its knees. Before, she would have been reminded of a landslide or an avalanche perhaps; now, it just looked drained, a cast-off husk tossed to the floor. Crushed-Nose didn't move from its kneeling position. It just kept shaking uncontrollably, either from relief or residual fear – Rainbow Dash wasn't entirely sure which.

We are outmatched, the new voice whispered slowly. We must retreat and regroup, and determine how to face this new threat.

How do you think I should get out of here? she asked it.

The gaps in the ceiling, the voice answered.

Silently, with as much stealth as wings of glass-clear iridescent metal would allow, Rainbow Dash flapped and rose into the air. So exhausted were the bugganes from their ordeal that they didn't even glance in her direction as she passed above – and if they had, her invisibility would have protected her for long enough to slip out of the smoke-hole above the bonfire and into the dark night beyond.

Author's Note

Sorry about the delay, and thank you to all the new folks who've read and favorited it in the meantime! I've actually had this chapter done for a while, but I usually like to get an additional chapter written before posting - that way I know if I need to change the chapter before publishing. I've had some difficulty with the next chapter, but I decided this one was finalized and, well - here it is! Enjoy!

Interlude: Ignorance

The Royal Palace in Canterlot had been quiet of late. It felt like a dense fog had settled over the place, choking the life out of smiles and smothering happiness in the crib. Or maybe something less...poetic. The guards, the courtiers, even the tourists could sense that their Princess was very, very unhappy. Luna had noticed it too, of course – she'd have to be a monumentally terrible sister to not pick up on it. That, or be Tia of a thousand years prior.

The Princess of the Night trotted pensively through the halls, having abandoned her throne and her court for a bit to get a bit of thinking in edgewise. More bickering, more whining, more pleading; she grimaced. Had she known having a genuine court would be like this, all those centuries ago, she might have reveled in her solitude instead of giving in to the Nightmare.

She came to a stop in a vaulted atrium with tall windows arrayed in an arc along the curved wall to her left. Moonlight spilled over the polished marble floor. Stars, distant and fixed, glinted in the night sky. Luna allowed herself a small smile; this was why she enjoyed the night more than the day. Beauty and blissful silence. On really good nights, she could almost fool herself into believing she was the only mare in the world.

Not so tonight. She snorted irritably as she heard hoofsteps approaching behind her.

What now? she thought. More nattering about the funding for an observatory on some stars-forsaken hilltop in the North? Perhaps somepony is hoping for a grant to open a nighttime croissant-making business?

She braced herself for some functionary's idiot droning...but it never came. She felt a wing brush against her side as the newcomer passed close by, and to her shock she realized that it was Celestia!

“Sister?” Luna said, cocking her head puzzledly as Celestia continued trotting mindlessly forward. Was she...sleepwalking? “Art thou well?”

Celestia came to a stop in front of one of the windows. She gave no sign of having heard. She gave no sign, really, that she was in fact something other than a reanimated corpse. The first analogy to spring to Luna's mind was that of a puppet with its strings cut.

Quietly and fluidly, so as not to accidentally awaken her if she were sleepwalking, Luna stepped up alongside her sister. Once she did, she saw that Celestia's eyes were open – red and puffy, as well. She seemed to have been crying. Luna felt uncertain – she'd never been what one might call "incredible" at consolation, or even "halfway-decent". She still felt like she should say something, though.

Perhaps it would be best to allow her to speak first, she decided.

They stood together in silence for long minutes, Luna watching Celestia with concern, and Celestia simply staring off into the night sky. The way she'd been walking, mechanically and aimlessly, suggested to Luna that she'd been doing this for a while now – long enough for it to become routine, at least.

Crickets chirped lazily somewhere outside the window, hidden in the low shrubberies that squatted under it. With a minor twinge of effort, Luna diverted a small bit of debris out in orbit and sent it streaking down through the atmosphere – a shooting star traced its way across the night sky. Celestia's lips twitched in the first stirrings of a smile.

“Thank you, Luna,” she said quietly. “I fear it might not be enough this time, though.”

Quiet. Then, slowly, from Luna: “It is thy student, is it not?”

“Partially,” Celestia answered. She sighed regretfully and dropped her head. “I should have seen it coming.”

Luna frowned. “How?” she asked. Was Twilight prone to disappearing?

“Beta did not seem well when she was here,” elaborated Celestia. “She was on edge, desperate! I should never have let her go.”

“That cannot be the only thing troubling thee, Tia.”

Celestia nodded reluctantly. “Two days ago, I murdered a pony I knew intimately, one of my student's best friends – out of carelessness.”

“Surely, thou canst not assume the blame for that,” said Luna gently. “She was insane, as well as in possession of unexpected ability and strength with magic. Too much was unknown. Thou canst not be held responsible.”

“It was reflex, Luna,” Celestia whispered. “She was slipping out of my grasp, and I tightened it without thinking. There are ways to prevent a pony from escaping an interdict, safe ways – but I acted like a foal without a year's experience with magic, and I killed her.”

“She was insane - “

“And I knew that!” Celestia snapped, rounding on Luna before bringing herself up short. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Luna forced herself to relax as well. The last time she'd seen Celestia lose her temper – forget herself long enough for her mask to slip and the burning face of the sun she was to show – wasn't even when she had fought Nightmare Moon. It had been several years before that – when Discord betrayed them all and tried to turn loose his full chaotic power on Equestria, and Celestia had simply gone berserk. The aftermath of that first clash was still around, if Luna recalled correctly – they called it the Glass Desert, and it was still unbearably hot in the modern age.

Celestia regained control of herself enough to trust herself with speaking again. She turned away from Luna. “I knew she was mentally damaged. She had every hallmark of being the victim of a poorly-performed deep memory scan. The erratic behavior, the conversations with herself, the apparent personality shift...”

“I noticed no such shift,” Luna said.

“She attacked us, Luna. Don't you remember?”

“I am certain she was being goaded.” Luna thought back to the brief period when she'd had Rainbow Dash in captivity – the chirurgeon (Doctor, she reminded herself, they call themselves doctors now.) and the aura analysis he'd given the pegasus, as well as her own field examination. The swirls of silver and the odd feeling of familiarity. “I do not believe her state was the result of a deep memory scan. Not wholly.”

“What do you think caused it then, Luna?”

“Her aura was marbled silver,” she explained. Celestia's eyes widened slightly, though she didn't look back at Luna. “Perhaps it was even mainly silver.”

“And what,” said Celestia, “does her possession of lunar magic have to do with her insanity?”

“Form follows function, sister – surely, you recall that rule of auras?” Celestia nodded. “The function of lunar magic, first and foremost, is the manipulation and empowerment of dreams. It gives shape to emotion and permanence to thought beyond that which a normal mind can. A pony whose magic is mainly lunar in origin then takes on some aspects of myself - such as the ability to give reality to a dream.”

“And?”

“I have...experienced the effect I think she suffered from before,” Luna continued. “A thousand years ago. Surely, thou canst remember how I acted in the days and months immediately prior to my fall?”

Celestia shifted uncomfortably; caught between staring out the window at the moon – Luna – and at Luna herself, she chose instead to avert her gaze off towards the decorative molding around the base of the walls, somewhere off to their right. “Luna, you know I was horrifically neglectful of you then. I can't remember that. In all likelihood I never noticed it.”

Luna inclined her head, accepting what she understood as an implicit apology. After a pause to collect her thoughts, she said, “To my few courtiers, I was understood to be...erratic. In their eyes, I spoke to shadows and would often whisper to myself unintelligibly. I was...confronted on the issue more than once.” Painful memories welled up; she grimaced. That had not been a happy time. She continued, nevertheless. “In one incident, I was goaded into lashing out at one of my guards.”

“I recall that, vaguely,” Celestia murmured. “I believe that was the first I knew of your grievances, actually.”

After a beat of silence, Celestia asked: “What do you mean, 'in their eyes'?”

“In mine, I spoke not to myself, but to the Nightmare.”

Some slight stirring in the air caused a cooler pocket to wash over Luna's back; she could hear a door slam somewhere in the depths of the palace. If she had been more superstitious, maybe, she would have thought it an effect of mentioning the Nightmare – her Nightmare – by name, but that was ridiculous. That figment had been shredded and obliterated utterly by the Elements of Harmony.

“It had begun in my dreams, yet for some reason unknown to me it persisted,” she went on, more quietly – evidently, other ponies were still awake this late, and she was still more than a little uncomfortable discussing the matter of her corruption with ponies other than Celestia. “Eventually, it grew strong enough to appear to me during my waking hours, and only progressed from there. It took months, but in the end it grew strong enough, and real enough, to overpower me in a moment of weakness.”

“And you think this somehow was happening to Rainbow Dash?”

“I know not how her aura became so tainted, but in light of that I believe Rainbow Dash was victimized by some combination of memory and magic. I have not encountered something identical before, but relived memories are different from dreams only superficially. Perhaps some fragmented memory left behind used that magic to strengthen itself and torment her.”

“Knowing that doesn't excuse the fact that I killed her.”

“Not knowing all the variables is in all likelihood why she died. Thou couldst not accurately predict her escape efforts because thou wert ignorant of her affliction!” Luna winced at how harsh that sounded. “We both were, sister. Now that we are aware of a possible cause, we may be able to handle events such as this better in the future - but in that situation, her death was unavoidable.”

“I put her in that situation, Luna.”

“In ignorance!”

Celestia sighed and turned away fully, and began heading for one of the archways out of the atrium – there were two of them, one into the hallway they'd both come from and one opening into a darker chamber, perhaps a disused banquet hall. “Ignorance does not excuse the crime anymore, Luna. That was done away with centuries ago. All too often, it was the fault of the criminal for remaining ignorant and acting anyways.”

She left. Luna could hear her hooves clopping against the marble floors as she walked deeper into the maze of corridors and halls that filled the palace, until the sound of a door closing cut them off.

Luna returned her attention to the night sky she'd been admiring before. Celestia had always been stubborn, but perhaps she had a point – perhaps they shouldn't have acted so rashly to detain Rainbow Dash. She sighed – in the heat of the moment, the best courses of action were rarely as easy to see as they were after the fact. Had they stalled, she would have escaped to meddle in interstellar affairs some more; they hadn't stalled, and now she was dead. There had to have been a middle path that would have left the pegasus contained yet alive. She just couldn't think of it yet.

Stars glittered overhead. The moon traced its nightly course. The dawn came eventually, grey and sad. Through it all, Luna stood observing it as a silent sentinel.

Four light-years away, alive and intact (for a certain definition of either), Rainbow Dash dreamed.

Author's Note

I AM RETURNED.

Sorry about the absurd gap between chapters, folks. Crunch time in senior year, registering for college, traveling around a bit, and then a few other projects (another quartet of fanfics to join the literal hundreds I have moldering away in the pile...accursed muse) diverted my attention - it's been a busy year! I still know where the tale's going and how I'm going to get there, more or less, so we're still on track for finishing, hopefully before summer ends.

Short chapter this time. Kind of a stalling tactic, really. One of those irritating points where I know what to write but not how to write it has come up in Dash's dream.

Thanks to all those who've read so far. Likes and comments as always are always appreciated, critical or praising or simply discussing!

Chapter 21: The Empty Theatre

She was soaring on wings of skin, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

Open night air stretched out to distant horizons on all sides. Trees whipped past far below her on the ground. A white moon shone in the sky above her. She was back on Equestria, she realized – but she definitely wasn't a pegasus, if her wings were anything to go by. Somehow, they didn't seem as odd now should have. Even her new form on Domhan had feathers. These wings had fingers.

She eventually came in for landing on a snow-capped mountain peak. Clouds hid the world below her, and the moon was
starting to set in the sky behind her. Morning would be coming soon. But when the eastern sky started to light up with warm colors, it wasn't the sun that came up – it was Ghealach's moon.

What the hay?

The red moon rose into the sky at an accelerated pace, chewing up the distance between it and its apex. Finally, it came to an abrupt halt directly overhead. Rainbow Dash's eyes followed it all the way there; she took a step backwards in an attempt to keep it in view.

She was wearing a gown of some sort, she realized with a start. The instant her hoof had hit the ground again, her surroundings had changed without warning. Glossy brown walls rose up to arched ceilings on both sides. The rocky ground had flattened and smoothed itself, turning itself black and gaining depth it seemed, with little silvery flecks suspended within it and catching the annoyingly bright dying light of Equestria's sun as it poured in through the tall windows to her right. Her gown seemed to flow into the floor; it was black and seemingly star-flecked, with an odd depth to it – looking at it was like staring into the darkness of space. It matched her apparently deep violet coat well.

What?

She found herself walking forwards, her hoofsteps sounding hollow as they echoed down the long hallway. She turned and came to a halt at a gap in the wall – not a doorway or archway, but a place where the wall terminated in a flanged column and resumed after a few feet. Through it she could see a dim hemispherical chamber. There was a staircase down into it. With an odd twinge of trepidation, she stepped forward and stopped again at the top of the stairs. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness quickly, and far better than she would have expected.

“And here she is – the lady of the hour!” a stallion's deep voice boomed jovially. At the base of the stairs, she realized, were four ponies – four ponies with bat wings, tufted ears, dark coats and catlike eyes, three stallions and a mare. The stallion who had spoken had a grey-streaked mane and a wide grin on.

“And what a lady,” one of the other stallions – the youngest by far it seemed, slightly younger than Dash was normally, though she had the odd feeling that she was a bit younger herself in this fragmented dream.

“Eight years of flight training – not that she needed it, of course! - and just as many of tactics, logistics, hoof-to-hoof combat and whatever else they teach at that Academy...all finished now!” the first stallion said. He chuckled. “Ah, if I had a drink I'd be toasting her right now.”

Dash – or whoever she was at the moment – laughed self-consciously. “Thou'rt embarrassing me, father.”

“It's his job,” said the third stallion, smiling faintly. “Though my wife and I put Barnard through the wringer rather more privately.”

The mare shot a meaningful look at the first stallion. “I had advised Regulus as much earlier, but he seemed intent on making a spectacle of himself.”

“Bah, 'tis a bit of harmless fun.” Regulus stepped back from the staircase, as did the mare. “Enjoy thyself at the Graduation Ball, Midnight. Stars know thou'st earned it!”

“And we will expect thee home at a reasonable hour,” the mare added, to Regulus's apparent surprise. She whacked him with her wing, though, and he nodded sternly.

“Yes, of course. A reasonable hour.” He smiled again. “I assume thou'rt old enough to determine that on thine own.”

“Regulus!”

“What? She has a commission, dearest! Thou dost expect me to give her a curfew?”

The mare sighed, but reluctantly conceded the point. “Please be home before sunup, Midnight. Things have been a bit...rocky, as of late, with the folk of Canterlot.”

“If she is unable to keep herself safe, I swear to thee I will do so for her,” the young stallion – Dash assumed he was Barnard, and the name oddly enough seemed to fit – told the mare.

“Between the two of them, I sincerely doubt any ruffians will be able to best them,” the third stallion observed, “even should they both be wine-sodden and asleep.”

“Shall we depart then, Midnight?” Barnard asked her. She nodded and descended the steps carefully, trying not to trip in her gown – flying down would have been mucheasier, but she dimly recalled some etiquette lesson in the distant past where it had been drilled into her severely that flying while wearing a dress was not okay. She would be frustratingly landbound for the night, then.

I don't remember any of this. Whose memory is this? Cloud Ferry's?

Barnard walked alongside her, escorting her to the door. He opened it for them, and they stepped through – but when Dash drew up short in the unexpected vast space, she was alone.

Thin mist twisted through the vast grey room. She couldn't see any walls, but there was a ceiling, featureless and flat about ten feet above her. She glanced back; the door she'd walked through was gone, just like Barnard, but unlike her gown, which strangely remained on her. There were no landmarks of any sort at all for as far as the eye could see.

Nervously, she started walking again, trotting straight ahead into the mist. She could see shapes taking form in the fog, vaguely familiar ones and completely alien ones – spheres that might be planets or moons, crumbling ancient castles, the indistinct outlines of ponies. Weird oval-shaped masks and black dragons. She became absorbed in watching them, idly trying to pick out something more than slightly familiar. Walking forwards didn't take much concentration after all. There wasn't much to trip over.

And then she tripped over a gigantic, furry black log.

“What the hay?” she grumbled, standing up again. The log seemed to have sprouted out of the floor as she walked over it. Curious, she examined it, circling the mass it was attached to – and after a few moments, she jumped back in surprise. That was the buggane she'd killed!

She could smell charred meat in the air again. She could feel grass under her hooves. She could feel the electric buzzing of magic in her head. Then, all those were wiped away as the buggane dissolved into ash and that ash formed into the body of a bat-winged pony with a horrifyingly familiar face.

She smelled sweat and blood and smoke and all the myriad other scents that choked the air in battle. She could feel how sore her wings and every other muscle were. Her right foreleg was throbbing where an arrow had bounced off her armor and dented it. She could feel a crushing sense of loss, and a hatred that she never, ever wanted to experience again, as she stood over her husband's corpse.

Whose memories are these?

She ran. She bolted off into the mist again and didn't look back. She burst through whirling memories as she galloped silently, the size of the space eating the sound of her hoofsteps and leaving nothing behind to replace it. Gradually, the re-experienced – or experienced-for-the-first-time – or remembered experience – stars, she hated this reincarnation thing – emotions and sensations faded. She returned to a normal pace. The mist closed in and thickened. As long as it didn't throw up any nasty surprises like that again, she was fine with it.

After an eternity or a few minutes more of walking, she spotted a tall rectangular shape ahead of her. It seemed far more solid than the rest of the shapes she'd seen so far, and that drew her curiosity and suspicion – the buggane had been pretty solid, too, after all. She came to a stop and watched it for a while. Eventually, she worked up the nerve to approach it.

Despite the dense fog, she realized it was a tall mirror. It wasn't reflecting much in the portions she could see through the fog – there wasn't much to reflect. Just dark grey infinity. Down near the base, the fog grew much thicker, seeming like an almost solid white mass. Dash stopped directly in front of that fog bank and stuck her head into it, hoping to see her reflection in the mirror in a dream-driven compulsion.

The fog abruptly cleared away and she found herself staring straight into the golden, catlike eyes of a bat pony.

With a startled yelp, she beat her wings and launched herself backwards, and slammed into somepony else who had done the same thing. They cracked skulls and stumbled in opposite directions again, the new pony – definitely a mare – cursing loudly, Dash holding the back of her head and thus unable to prevent herself from slamming face-first into the mirror. With a loud crash, quickly matched by one from behind her in the other mare's direction, the mirror shattered, showering Dash with glass shards that melted quickly into cold water. Her mane was soaked, but she was completely okay with that, because when it plastered down over her eyes she could see that it was rainbow again.

“What the heck was that?” she griped, pushing her mane back out of her eyes so she could see whoever it was that she'd bumped into. She checked her wings while she was at it; they had feathers again. Normal blue pegasus feathers. They actually looked a bit drab to her now.

The other pony had a deep violet coat and tufted ears. She had batlike wings and a ragged mane the color of her coat, but with a paler streak or two running through it. On her flanks were emblazoned the image of a golden crescent moon and smaller four-point star. She was sitting down, and also completely soaked, but Dash assumed she wasn't always like that. She could tell from the other pony's ears that she was a bat pony; when she turned around, Dash decided she was probably the same bat pony that had been in the mirror, because her eyes were golden.

“I would ask the same thing of you,” the bat pony replied. She stood up and shook herself off, sending water flying in every direction, including onto Dash. “Normally, I am alone in this place. I haven't seen you before though.”

“I'm Rainbow Dash.”

“Midnight Streak.”

“Uh...” Well, that answers the question of whose memories those were, Dash thought.

Midnight gave her an odd look. “Your name is familiar to me, but I can't place it. Are you...” She shook her head. “Luna's light, I can barely remember my own name, let alone faces and the names of others. You are simply another hallucinatory phantom anyways, I assume, although you are the first who has seemed even vaguely familiar to me.”

“You've seen more?” That is the absolute last thing I need right now!

“Yes, though not for very long. There was a striped pony who stuck around longest, but he has since disappeared, along with an egotistical actress. I will allow the source of these hallucinations credit, though – it is creative. Creative enough that I occasionally dream of seeing a strange world through somepony else's eyes.” She laughed self-consciously, which Dash observed sounded very different when she wasn't the pony making the sound. “I'm not even sure why I'm telling you this.”

“Uh...is the name 'Barnard' familiar to you?”

Midnight froze. “What do you know about Barnard?” she asked slowly.

“He was your husband?” That sounded much less certain than she'd wanted it to. “He was your husband.”

Silence. Midnight simply stared at her stonily. After a few moments, she ordered hoarsely: “Leave me.”

“Yeah. Sure,” Dash responded. She looked around at the misty space. “How do I do that, exactly?”

“Be somewhere else. I don't know the mechanism,” Midnight answered. “Leave me. Now.”

“I don't - “

“Leave!”

“I'm leaving, I'm leaving!” She cringed back a step at the sudden hardening of Midnight's eyes. Golden eyes with catlike pupils could be very good at expressing anger. She spun away and trotted off into the mist. “Sheesh.”

She glanced back after a few steps, though. The fog closed around Midnight like the jaws of some forgotten beast, leaving only her silhouette visible to Dash. After a taking a few more steps – because Midnight was plainly still glaring after her – even that silhouette dissolved away. A few more, and she found herself trotting across crimson moondust.

I always have to end up here, don't I, she thought to herself unhappily. Every bucking time.

Every night, her dreams would end with her on the red moon. After a few more steps, she simply sat down and resolved to wait the dream out.

She awoke that morning still feeling tired, but that didn't stop her from helping the wolves break camp. A buggane had left the spire in the dead of night, it seemed – one of Streamwalker's scouts, a she-wolf barely grown out of being a pup named Greenwatch, had spotted the beast as it departed, heading north. After some debate, Streamwalker had decided he would lead a portion of the pack in pursuit, and the Great One would come with them to put some eyes in the sky over the buggane. To Dash's slight irritation, Burrfang volunteered for the pursuit, and was accepted, and less annoyingly so was Greenwatch; she didn't know or recognize the other volunteers.

They chased the buggane for a whole day as it clobbered its way through the dense vegetation. It left an alley behind itself for them to follow. Eventually it met up with another two bugganes, and the three dug a rudimentary shelter – Ghealach helpfully opined that all, or almost all, buggane shelters could be described like that. Streamwalker commanded his pack to make camp, posted Greenwatch to spy on the bugganes, and they rested.

It felt like the instant she closed her eyes that night she fell asleep. Dash dreamed of the Castle of the Royal Sisters, as it had been before Discord remodeled, even before it had fallen into ruin. She appeared in the main hall of the structure, and the space was decorated for some kind of event. Long black tapestries adorned the walls between the windows. The floor seemed to have some kind of spell on it, making it appear to not be there at all – walking through the hall would be like walking on top of a bottomless, star-studded abyss. Through the west windows, she could see the moon – and through the east, Ghealach's moon.

Sitting before the throne at the far end of the chamber was a bat pony. Dash felt sure she knew who it was.

Silence dragged on – unnatural silence. Not even crickets chirping outside disturbed it. Rainbow Dash decided to approach Midnight. Her hoofsteps echoed around the hall as she trotted closer, but Midnight showed no sign of noticing her. Finally, she came to a halt right behind Midnight, but was prevented from speaking when Midnight herself spoke.

“I have an answer now, Rainbow Dash,” said Midnight, not even turning to face her. Her head was hung low. “He was my husband. Barnard was my husband for ten years.”

Definitely her memories, Dash thought. Midnight continued speaking.

“That's it,” she said defeatedly. “That's all I remember. He was my husband for ten years. I can't remember when we met, and I can't remember how it ended. I can't remember how his voice sounded and I can't remember his birthday, or our anniversary, or anything – anything at all – about him as a pony. Except maybe that he was a longma” She chuckled bitterly. “I'm not even sure about that. He was my husband for ten years, and all I get when I try to remember him is a blank. Void.”

“I'm sorry.” What were you supposed to say to the ghost of yourself from a thousand years ago who'd just realized she'd lost everything?

“I've forgotten so much I don't even know what I've lost anymore,” she went on. “I remember my lessons from the Shadowbolt Academy. I can remember a few dozen battles from Luna's Revolt. I can remember some vague snippets of my foalhood – I guess that's all anypony can remember – and I can remember my own name. Things keep coming back to me slowly, but I know by now that it's not a lot. I want to know why – but maybe trying to ask a hallucination is a sign of insanity.”

“Yeah, I know how that feels.”

“Dost thou know why?”

How do I break the news gently? She wondered. “Well...yeah. Not in a lot of detail about the causes, but I know why.”

“Really?” She sounded surprised.

“You're...kinda me from the past. A long, long time in the past. You're me from a past life.”

“Rainbow Dash...” Midnight murmured. She straightened and stood up, turning to face Dash. “Thou'rt the pony I keep dreaming of. The one those other two keep talking about! And I am...” The excitement of realization drained from her voice and was replaced by confusion. “I am...thee from a past life?”

“Long story short, a pony – uh, kelpie - “ What would Beta Centauri be counted as? "Star" might be misinterpreted or just confuse her further. “ - hybrid thing messed around with my mind and pulled up a lot of memories. And I guess somehow, some of those memories stuck together and kind of resurrected some of my past lives a bit, and the ones that got stronger I guess stuck around and the other ones re-dissolved.” She shrugged. “There's probably something more complicated behind all that. What I know for sure is that at least two of you are still here, maybe three – Cloud Ferry, you, and maybe a zebra.”

“A zebra?”

“You don't know what a zebra is?”

“I am not a well-traveled mare.”

“Thing like a pony? Black-and-white striped coat?” Dash gave her a disbelieving look when she shook her head. “Really?”

Midnight turned around. “Thou sayest I am thee of a past life?” she asked, abruptly changing the topic.

“Yeah.”

“Then thou art not a phantom.”

“Nope.”

“Thou art the one I have been advising, then? The pony whose eyes I could see through and who could somehow hear and respond to my thoughts?”

“I...guess?” Dash replied uncertainly. “Somepony was giving me advice, at least.”

“That was almost certainly me.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “I may...have voids in my memory over important parts of my life, but I remain myself. I will not allow myself to wallow in misery. Not when there are things to be done.” She opened her eyes again and locked them with Dash's, liquid gold on magenta. “There is something important thou shouldst be made aware of. Two other...phantoms, I suppose; beings like myself...have been plotting against thee.”

“Who?” I can guess at least one, but who the buck is the other? How many phantoms are there even running around in here?

“A pegasus called Cloud Ferry and what I assume is an earth pony who calls herself Ghealach.”

“Ghealach?” Dash exclaimed. “What the – why is she involved in this? She's already got me by the throat basically!”

“I'm not certain. They are not, however, what you might call 'discreet' in their discussions,” Midnight answered. “They seem to meet nightly. Perhaps eavesdropping on them might be wise.”

“Definitely. Lead the way, Midnight.” Cloud Ferry is going to really regret this. I'll find a way to make her.

“Truthfully, I'm not sure how to navigate this place,” she admitted. “I have only heard a few of their discussions by stumbling in on them. I don't have any idea on where they could be now.”

Dash grit her teeth. So Cloud Ferry and Ghealach are planning something and I can't even find out what?

She beat her wings and rose into a hover as she mulled over the situation. Eventually, recalling a magazine article on lucid dreaming she'd read once as well as Discord's admittedly suspect lessons on astral projection, she decided she'd try to change her dream so that she and Midnight were in the same place as Cloud Ferry and Ghealach. It couldn't be too hard – she already knew she was dreaming, so controlling it was supposed to be easy after that, and astral projection would inform how she changed it. She dropped back down to floor.

“Stand close to me,” she ordered Midnight. The longma didn't look like she understood why, but she obeyed anyways and stepped closer to Dash. For her part, Rainbow Dash closed her eyes and tried to focus on finding Cloud Ferry. She knew she'd succeeded when Midnight gasped in surprise. She opened her eyes, but it wasn't Cloud Ferry that she saw.

They were in some sort of atrium now, with a high domed ceiling and a glossy black-flecked brown stone floor. A bladelike column seemed to rise out of the floor on one side of the atrium, swelling at the base to house a ticket stand, flanked by pairs of double doors on the left and right, and fused with the wall at the back. On the opposite wall, glass doors let out onto a cobblestone street. Above both pairs of doors by the stand, Dash could see signs lit up with magical marquee lights, happily proclaiming, “Muse of Fire – Now Showing! The Bard's Finest Work Live on Stage!”

“This happened last time, too,” Dash grumbled.

“What?”

“I tried to find Twilight like that, and I didn't get to her, either. Well, not directly, at least.” She sighed and started trotting towards the doors into the theatre. “Come on. Cloud Ferry will probably be on stage or something.”

Midnight fell in behind her, and they crossed the atrium without incident. In front of the door, though, Dash noticed a glass container filled with a stack of pamphlets. Curious, she glanced at the cover of the top one; in bold block letters, it was printed with, “Act the First: In Which Our Hero Faces Great Temptation”.

“That appears promising,” Midnight observed wryly.

“Yeah. Let's get a good seat to watch the show from.”

They slipped in the door quietly, and found themselves in the upper tier of seating of a theatre that was very familiar to Rainbow Dash – it had to be the same one she'd convinced Cloud Ferry to help her escape house arrest on Equestria in. The seats ended abruptly a third of the way to the stage, and a railing rose up just ahead of that last row. They were on a balcony.

“Off to one side, in the closest row on the balcony, I would suggest,” Midnight whispered. The theatre seemed deserted and was very dark, but Dash agreed that caution would be best and whispered her agreement as well.

“Sounds good. Think we can hear them from here?”

“Almost certainly. Theatres are designed for their actors to be heard, after all.”

They slinked quietly through the rows of seating and took their positions. Then, they waited. Moments slipped into minutes and the lull dragged on without a sign of Cloud Ferry on the stage or in the theatre. Midnight kept her head on a swivel, always looking around, checking behind them and off to their sides to ensure nopony could sneak up on them.

Finally, after what felt like an hour, a lone spotlight snapped on and bathed center stage in light, revealing Cloud Ferry sitting alone, chin up and looking down her nose at the empty theatre, as haughty as a queen and as still as a statue. Her horn shimmered, and the spotlight began to gradually dim until it barely cast enough illumination on the scene to distinguish the lit area from the unlit.

“You told me you wanted to meet me, Ghealach!” Cloud Ferry snapped impatiently, her voice echoing across the room. “That tonight would be somehow important. So where are you now at this late hour? I'm waiting!”

Silence fell again. After a few seconds, the sound of hoofsteps and faint thunder echoed through the room as Ghealach trotted up the center aisle of the theatre and stood before the raised stage, winged and tall and glowing faintly red. She'd manipulated her height so as to be able to look Cloud Ferry in the eye without having to step onto the stage herself. Up close, she probably would have been very imposing. Cloud Ferry didn't bat an eyelash.

“Must you be so melodramatic, Cloud Ferry?” Ghealach asked as she stepped out from backstage. Cloud Ferry whirled around in surprise; the giant version of Ghealach crumbled away to ash and moondust. “I am not even late.”

“I am an actress, Ghealach. It's what I do,” Cloud Ferry replied testily. She tossed her head, shaking her mane out of her face. “And you are indeed late. Didn't you check the clock as you came in?”

“We are both aware it is a dream. Time is immaterial anyways.” Ghealach circled around to Ferry's left and came to a halt. “You seem to have a full house tonight.”

“Empty,” Ferry spat bitterly. She whirled back around to glare at the rows upon rows of empty seats, but thankfully didn't think to check the balcony. “Every night the same thing. There used to be so many figments shifting around in here that I couldn't trot three steps without tripping on a fragment of my life. Now there's hardly more than me and that thestral freak. No audience, either way. Phillistines! Plebeians!”

“Thestral freak...” Midnight repeated angrily in a low voice.

“Later,” Dash whispered.

“A pity,” Ghealach replied, and she actually managed to sound as if she meant it. Cloud Ferry barked a laugh.

“A pity? You've never come to a performance, either,” she said pointedly, glaring at Ghealach now. “All you ever come to do is compliment me on how I dealt with the wolves, and rub in how powerless I really am, even with a third of my dearest host's magic potential at my horntip. Day in and day out, that's it.”

“Yet you still permit me to come.”

“You dusty witch, if I put every blockade I know around my section of her mind, you'd still worm your way in somehow. The only reason you're here tonight is because you claimed it was important – so speak! What's so critical that you had to see me?”

“Perhaps you should calm down.”

“And what, act pretty again?” Ferry retorted, her voice practically dripping with disgust. “I have a spoon around here somewhere, I assume. Would you like some sugar with your tea, perhaps?”

“There is no need to be so hostile.”

“You patronizing pockmarked red potato of a moon, I have every reason to be so hostile,” she hissed, thrusting her face at Ghealach's as she took a heavy step closer. “Every word you speak, and every plan you make, puts Rainbow Dash and through her, me, in more and more danger. She isn't responsible enough to be used as a tool! Every step of the way, she has demonstrated the self-preservation sense of a three-year-old foal! You are the root cause of half the self-destructiveness of that madmare, and of all of her recent opportunities for throwing herself into situations that will most likely kill her. It is a miracle she has not been injured severely yet – or come up against a creature with magical ability, which could bypass that 'immortality' you bestowed on her and kill us directly!”

“Silence, Cloud Ferry!” Ghealach roared, her voice suddenly resonating with power. “I - “

“Silence yourself, Ghealach!” Ferry roared right back, taking on the sound and volume she'd used to address Streamwalker at their first encounter. With a sudden flare of light, she doubled in size and sprouted brilliant crystal wings, extending them fully so they caught the renewed light of the spotlight. Her horn was crystal; her mane and tail were crystal as well. She shone like the gleaming blade of an unsheathed knife. “I am not some peon to be commanded, and not some tool to be used and cast aside – both of which I know you see nearly everyone as, kelpie, wolf, thunderbird or pony! In this place, I am at least as powerful as you. Do not presume to order me to be silent.”

Midnight seemed suitably impressed. Dash just yawned instead – boring. Nothing new to her.

“Please be silent and listen, then,” Ghealach said, settling her wings into more comfortable positions and filling the air with the tinny sound of rattling metal. “I have a deal to - “

“A deal?” Cloud Ferry exclaimed disbelievingly. She laughed. “Did you hear nothing, O Dust Sentinel? I am not a tool. I will not be assisting you except when it assists myself – by getting Rainbow Dash off of Domhan and back to Equestria where neither of us will be under the realistic threat of being killed and eaten!”

“Such an empty theatre,” Ghealach murmured softly. “A pity, such an actress playing for so few, when she could instead be playing on a much more popular stage...”

Suspicious yet undeniably intrigued silence from Cloud Ferry. Dash could see curiosity and greed and longing warring with her resolve even from the balcony.

“You are absolutely correct, Cloud Ferry,” Ghealach continued. “Rainbow Dash is a madmare. She is erratic and unpredictable. Her soul, though, is bound to me, making her – unfortunately – the most reliable tool that I have. It would be far better to have a more stable mind in charge. Thanks to Beta's meddling, I may pick from three.”

“I am not a - “

“Yes, you are,” Ghealach interrupted, her calm tone cutting Ferry's voice off despite the disparity in volume. “Rainbow Dash's soul – your soul, the longma's soul – is bound irrevocably to me. Rainbow Dash will not escape my influence, even after her work is completed – she is too inexperienced with magic to ever divine a way of escape. You, however, are smarter. You might very well be able to, given time.”

“You consider this a benefit?”

“I am willing to sacrifice a very useful tool in the long term to guarantee its reliability in a time of crisis,” she replied. “Now will soon be a time of crisis. The bugganes reuniting under a strong leader, Alpha Centauri's reforms introducing key instability into the Domhanane political structure and placing stress on Beta Centauri, growing social unrest...there will be a chaos unseen since the War of Nightmares. I must make the most of it to take my rightful place as guardian of the night again and secure it against all comers, and I no longer trust that the mind of Rainbow Dash is the most useful mind to have acting on my behalf. Your acting and your seeming lack of troublesome attachment to causes like a village's buggane issues make you ideal in my eyes for the job. I only need your acceptance, and you can have the world stage back to act on.”

Dead silence. Pure, complete silence. After a wait of an eternity, Cloud Ferry shrank back down to her usual size and shook her head.

“I will not be your tool,” she repeated with finality. Ghealach nodded.

“You know where to find me when you change your mind,” said Ghealach. Without another word, her avatar crumbled away into a pile of red dust. Some errant gust of wind toppled it, and Cloud Ferry scattered it more thoroughly in a spat of anger.

While she was thus distracted, Rainbow Dash and Midnight Streak slipped silently out the theatre's exit, and vanished into the waiting night outside.

Author's Note

Well this didn't turn out at all like how I originally planned it, mechanism-wise. Same plot goals achieved, but very different from the original plan.

I've also gone back and edited the prologue and chapters 1-4, adding in the spaces between paragraphs like the later chapters have. In the process I had to re-read the initial dream bit in chapter one and it was painful for me to read that. The subplot that was initially going to be foreshadowing has been thoroughly abandoned, and so unless some gigantic public outcry emerges in support of it I'll be editing the content of it.

Anywho, remember to like, favorite and comment if you enjoyed, those of you who haven't already!

Chapter 22: The Hollow Mountain

“They are heading for the mountain,” said Burrfang as the pack loped swiftly through the woods, staying in the underbrush to either side of the wide road the bugganes had cut through the thin trees. He was at the front of their formation; Streamwalker was close behind him, with Rainbow Dash and Greenwatch following just after Streamwalker. Two other wolves – a male and a female, Longclaw and White-Eye – came after them, and the seventh member of their merry band, a wolf called Lameleg who managed somehow to limp as fast as Dash could run, brought up the rear.

Dash glanced up from the forest floor at the sound of Burrfang's voice, her eyes unconsciously drawn to the mountain he spoke of. They'd all known where the bugganes were heading since at least a week ago. There was nothing else of note in the direction they were heading. Just the thing she'd started thinking of as The Mountain.

It was tall and isolated, but what made it stand out more even than it being the tallest thing for about a hundred miles in all directions was the constant, thin plume of smoke that rose from its jagged top. It had to be a volcano. There was no way it was anything else. But why would bugganes be running towards a volcano?

“They are heading in the mountain's direction,” Lameleg muttered. “This does not mean the mountain is their destination.”

“And where else would they be going?” Burrfang growled back. “There's nothing beyond that mountain for a thousand miles. Do you think they're simply wandering off into the wilderness to die, Lameleg?”

“I think we should send the Great One out to scout again,” he replied. “They may have changed direction again.”

“To throw us off their scent?” Burrfang chuckled. “They are bugganes.”

“I am not so inclined to dismiss the thinking of bugganes as I once was,” said Streamwalker before Lameleg could respond again. “Burrfang, be silent. You as well, Lameleg.”

“Afraid they will hear us, Streamwalker?” Burrfang asked under his breath.

In three great bounds, Streamwalker had caught up to Burrfang and swatted him across the side of his face with a heavy blow from his forepaw. The blow knocked Burrfang's head into the trunk of a tree he was passing, and he yelped in pain. Everyone else came up short, backing quickly away from the two wolves – even Rainbow Dash.

“Do you want to lead this pack, Burrfang?” asked Streamwalker. His voice was almost a growl – a savage, threatening growl, not just a tone of irritation. He set a paw on Burrfang's neck before the other wolf could rise to his feet again, and pressed down. “Before you answer, ask another question. Do you think you could defeat me in a duel right now, with my claw on your throat and my teeth inches from your ear? Would it be worth trying?”

“No, alpha.”

“You are hot-headed but capable of wisdom, it seems.” Streamwalker lifted his paw and let Burrfang scramble back to his feet. “Be silent. Not another word unless it is related to our mission.” He turned to glare at Lameleg. “Nothing from you, either.”

Lameleg arched his back slightly and tucked his tail between his legs. “Yes, alpha.”

Streamwalker nodded and addressed the rest of them. “I know we have been pursuing these bugganes for almost a week. We are tired from the chase and hungry. None of that will be helped by turning on each other. There will be no arguments, and no fights. Am I understood?”

A chorus of “Yes, alpha,” from the rest of the wolves, and the same submissive display that Lameleg had put on. Satisfied, Streamwalker began trotting ahead again. “Burrfang, back to point,” he growled. “Longclaw, hang further back with Lameleg. Keep an eye out for ambushes. Remember that we are facing bugganes. Keep alert for things moving beneath the ground.”

There was no argument, and the pack started moving forwards again. Rainbow Dash put a bit more distance between herself and Streamwalker. He couldn't – and wouldn't – harm her, but something about the alpha wolf put the part of her that was still a pony on edge. Maybe it was just the fact that he was a wolf.

“He can maintain control of his pack, but he seems to be rather less capable at maintaining order,” Midnight remarked, materializing alongside Rainbow Dash. “Burrfang doesn't appear to be a team player. His presence on this mission is a mistake.”

“Maybe,” Dash whispered, trying not to let the wolves hear – that would utterly destroy anything Streamwalker had just accomplished, hearing their physical deity debating their leader's weaknesses. “Streamwalker has to have a good reason for bringing him.”

“I can't see one,” said Midnight. “Nepotism?”

“I don't think their packs work like that.”

Midnight laughed. “Everyone has a little nepotism in their governments, unless they don't have families. Ponies do it all the time. I bet wolves have the same attitude about it.”

“They don't like it?”

“They discourage it but don't correct it when it happens,” she said. Her eyes got a faraway look. “I...I think it's happened to me. I remember being promoted oddly fast once I was out of the Academy, when my grandsire was the head of the Guard...”

“I don't think they're related,” said Dash. She looked more closely at the two wolves – white-furred Streamwalker and the much darker Burrfang. She couldn't pick out any similarities in appearance between them. “They don't look alike at least. I guess they could be, maybe?”

“Perhaps Burrfang merely has useful skills. Were I to lead a squad, I wouldn't allow personal opinion of a highly skilled flier to interfere with getting them into my squad.” Midnight's face turned thoughtful. “I suppose Streamwalker is competent enough at keeping him in check. If Burrfang is useful, perhaps the lack of order is a tradeoff he was willing to make.”

Rainbow Dash went silent after that too as they drew closer to the mountain in pursuit of the buggane. It definitely did look like the mole-beast had the mountain as its destination, and Dash's certainty only increased the longer they trotted without a serious change in direction. The trees grew less thick, the ground rockier, the burnt ruins of long-dead oaks littering the ground more and more numerous – and still the buggane kept its path.

They paused near an easily-scalable outcrop of rock and let Lameleg – surprisingly a nimble climber despite the limp he moved with – scramble up to the top of it to get a better look at the buggane. The trees – living ones at least – were long behind them now, and Dash's wings made her too great a liability to use for scouting. Even a buggane would be able to spot the sun glinting off her shining feathers if she took to the skies now. Ordinarily, she could have asked Ghealach to release a bit of magic for an invisibility spell, but Ghealach was worryingly silent, and worryingly absent. Now that Dash thought about, she realized Cloud Ferry was gone as well.

Why does that bother me so much? She wondered. Who knows when they'll show up again? I should enjoy the quiet while I've got it!

But she couldn't. Something in the back of her mind – she really, really hoped it wasn't another phantom – refused to let her let the matter slide. They had to be planning something, plotting against her somehow. But what could they do?

“There is a cave mouth ahead,” Lameleg declared when he slid back down the white boulder. “The buggane has vanished into it - just one, its companions seem to have left it. There's smoke seeping out of it too, but I can't get a good whiff of it. Everything smells like smoke here.”

“Is this another buggane encampment?” White-Eye wondered aloud. He didn't sound exactly thrilled by the prospect. “How many of these are there?”

“It can't be,” Burrfang growled. “There can't be enough bugganes in this forest to fill a rock spire and a mountain! There wouldn't be a pup left by its mother's side from here to Caisleanard for their want of food!”

“If it isn't an encampment, then what could it be?” Streamwalker asked.

“Maybe these bugganes went rogue,” Longclaw suggested. “Perhaps they simply abandoned their brethren to find a new cave, and we've been chasing after crows for the last few days!”

“Well, there's one sure way to find out,” Greenwatch said uncertainly. She glanced at Dash as if she was looking for backup. “We'll have to send someone in after it.”

“Sending one alone into that mountain is foolishness,” said White-Eye. “The great one might have escaped the spire with her hide intact, but I don't like the look of this mountain. One wolf, or one great one, would be suicide.”

“I agree with White-Eye,” Midnight said. “Something about that mountain seems familiar to me. I cannot place my hoof on exactly what, though. Whatever it is, it's dangerous.”

“A group will follow it in,” decided Streamwalker. “Great one, it would honor me if you were to accompany me inside.”

“Sure.”

Streamclaw nodded and almost visibly relaxed. “Burrfang, Greenwatch, you will come too. White-Eye, Longclaw, and Lameleg, remain out here. If we have not emerged by tomorrow morning, return to the pack and – and inform them they will have to select a new alpha.”

The three wolves told to stay outside inclined their heads in acquiescence, as did Greenwatch, but Burrfang growled irritatedly. “I suppose you have a reason for asking me to accompany you inside?” he asked gruffly.

“For ordering you, Burrfang – there will be no debate,” Streamwalker responded, with a dangerous glint in his eye. “And there is a reason. I do not trust you not to leave early and proclaim yourself alpha in my absence.”

“I - “ Burrfang started, but Streamwalker whirled fluidly away to face the mountain and began loping towards it, snarling back over his shoulder.

“Burrfang, Greenwatch – with me now!” he snapped. “Great one, if it pleases you.”

Rainbow Dash fell in behind Burrfang and Greenwatch as they approached the cave entrance, picking their way up the rocky slope towards the steaming maw of the mountain. The larger rocks, chalky and white like the mountainside itself, almost reminded her of bones. Streamwalker hesitated in front of the entrance – his snout wrinkled, and Rainbow Dash had to guess that the repulsive sulfurous stench wafting out of the darkness must have hit him at least three times as hard as it hit her. He pushed onwards though, stepping into the tunnel and into the shadow and vanishing around a corner soon after, with Greenwatch in tow. Burrfang took a bit longer, though; he eyed Dash warily as each waited for the other to enter.

“You first,” said Rainbow Dash, sweeping a wing out towards the cave impatiently.

“I would rather have a pup at my back than a “great one” whose best friends seemingly share her head with her,” Burrfang sneered. “A pup at least I could be sure would die before abandoning me. You...however much Streamwalker is taken with you, I still don't trust you.”

“Yeah, but you're still going in before me.”

Burrfang started to growl at her, but a louder growl echoed back down the tunnel. Streamwalker, of course. Defeated but still defiant, Burrfang whirled away from her and loped into the cave. With only a beat more of hesitation, Rainbow Dash followed him in and left the daylight behind.

Twisting, claw-scored tunnels. Stone chips grating underhoof. The faint, tinny echo of a roar returning to her whenever her feathers rattled around a bit. The omnipresent smell of sulfur, and the omnipresent sound of water trickling, faintly, somewhere in the dark of the cave.

Not that the dark affected Rainbow Dash particularly much. She could see everything as if it was bathed in soft white illumination, like a magelight. Or like moonlight. Streamwalker and the wolves bit hold of each other's tail and then Streamwalker himself took hold of Dash's tail, and she led them all through the darkness. Sometimes the tunnel would go up, sometimes the tunnel would go down. Sometimes, for long stretches, it was flat and level. Sometimes the tunnel widened into something almost approaching a cave, but it never narrowed to less than the width of a particularly portly buggane.

“This doesn't look like a natural cave,” Dash observed after a while. “It kinda looks like the bugganes dug it all out, or maybe widened one that was already here.”

Streamwalker made a muffled noise that could be anything from agreement to annoyance.

“Oh, right. You guys can't see, can you...” She turned to Midnight, walking alongside her. “Hey, do you think you could get some of my magic away from Ghealach and Cloud Ferry for me to do a magelight spell or something?”

“I was a longma when I was alive,” Midnight answered simply.

“Right. I guess you wouldn't know how to do any magic then.”

Burrfang made a sound. Then he yelped as Greenwatch kicked him, which quickly turned to a growl, which was even more quickly cut off by Streamwalker jerking his head around to growl at him, which made Rainbow Dash let out a pained yelp of her own.

“Hey! Not while you've got my tail in your mouth!”

Streamwalker spat it out for a moment. “Apologies, great one.”

“Yeah, yeah. Could you all just try not to kill each other when you're biting my tail?”

She took their silence as acceptance of that condition, and they continued on down the winding tunnel.

Long minutes passed, and the tunnel began to gradually widen, the walls pulling back and the ceiling raising until they were no longer in a tunnel – they were in an underground canyon almost, a vast snaking cavern that curved and doubled back on itself. The wolves relievedly spat out the tails they'd been biting; large crystals, gleaming and glowing with a red light, studded the walls, allowing them to see. Or at least, to see well enough to avoid stepping over the edge of a cliff.

They all drew up short as they reached the abrupt drop-off down to the cavern's true floor. Some two hundred feet below it lay, broken and torn like some gigantic beast had come in ages past and tried to dig through it. Crystals were plentiful down there – as was whatever caused the smell. Rainbow Dash almost gagged, and the wolves retreated from the edge, as an updraft brought a potent upwelling of sulfur fumes and something else – metal perhaps; metal and lamp oil – to assault their noses.

“The floor up here continues around the walls of the cave,” Greenwatch observed, whispering. “The buggane must have continued along the ledges.”

“There is a slope on the other side,” Burrfang pointed out. “It could have descended to the cavern floor.”

“It is brighter down there,” Streamwalker said in a low voice. “Burrfang, Greenwatch, we three will search the cavern floor. Great one, as you can see better in the dark, search the ledges.”

“I'm on it.”

They split ways, the wolves going left and Rainbow Dash going right. She didn't fly, though that would have been faster – in an enclosed space, the sound her wings would make would be impossible to miss even for a buggane. Instead, she held her wings tightly against her sides and did her best to move silently, following the ledges down the snaking cavern.

After another few minutes, though, she froze in her tracks.

Something exhaled. It was loud, deep, and unmistakably the sound of something very large breathing out. The cavern walls and the ledge she was on vibrated under the force, though no dust was shaken loose from the ceiling that she could see, so she supposed that put an upper limit on the breather's size. Unless, of course, it had been there long enough that its breathing had knocked down all the dust.

More nervously, she kept walking. Rocks crunched under her hooves, when they didn't hit solid stone and emit a muted clop. She couldn't stop herself from wondering what, exactly, was living down in the cavern – and why the buggane had walked so many miles to pay it a visit. How big could a buggane get, really? Was it their king that lived down here, older and bigger by far than all the rest? Did bugganes even have a king? Nobody who was familiar with them would likely admit to even the possibility of that – but then, they'd all been shocked by the genuine buggane mage, and the size of the council she'd found, and the fact that they had grasped the concept of central leadership at all. A lot was unknown about bugganes it seemed.

A brilliant flash of light and an echoing thunderclap startled her out of her reverie. She jumped back with a shocked shout, wings spasming and catapulting her backwards with a rattling crash of metal. She landed on her back, looking up at the crystal-studded cavern ceiling – and at the tempestuous face of an infuriated Ghealach.

“Where are you?” Ghealach demanded as Dash sprung back to her feet. “I turn my attention elsewhere for less than half a day and you somehow manage to vanish from my perception of this world. Where are you? What cavern?”

“You just blew my cover!” Dash snapped angrily, refusing to be cowed. “There's something huge living down here that I have to sneak around and you just made me make the loudest sound short of a Sonic Rainboom I've ever heard!”

“Where are you?” Ghealach pressed. She stationed herself directly in Dash's path, obstructing the ledge.

“What, you really can't see me?”

“It is only thanks to our soul bond that I could contact you,” Ghealach confirmed. “I see everything my stolen light hits on this world, down into the deepest caves and the strangest depths of the ocean. And, somehow, in my absence you have managed to slip out of my direct perception. I will ask one more time: where are you?”

“In a cave with Streamwalker and the others,” she answered, dropping the volume of her voice. “We're trying to find that buggane we've been chasing. I think it's just up ahead.”

“And this “something huge” you so descriptively told me of?”

“I don't know yet,” Dash admitted. “But whatever it is, it's up ahead too.”

“There is but one course of action available to you, then,” said Ghealach. “Leave.”

“What?”

“Turn around and leave this cave, wherever you are,” she clarified slowly. “There is something very large, unknown, and likely very powerful ahead, and it is obstructing my sight somehow. I will not allow my sole agent on Domhan to die of her own stupidity in persisting with a buggane hunt that does nothing to further my own aims.”

“Like hay I will!”

“Perhaps a different tack would be more effective. Ask yourself this, Rainbow Dash: does this even further your own goals? Will this place you closer to your friend? Will this aid in the defeat of Beta Centauri?”

“That's your goal.”

“And it should be yours as well!” Ghealach snapped. “Without Beta Centauri's downfall, your friend – who has done nothing to prove to Beta that she is not, in fact, the long-lost Alpha Centauri, and has seemed actually to conform to the role quite well – will not be allowed to return to Equestria. And without Beta Centauri's defeat, I will not allow you to return either.”

Focus on your mission, Midnight whispered in the back of Rainbow Dash's mind. And, reluctantly, Dash bit back an angry outcry.

“Get out of my way,” she said to Ghealach, and Ghealach frowned, surprised.

“What?”

“Get out of my way,” Dash repeated, re-settling her wings and forcing them to lay flat against her sides. She straightened and did her best to look the Dust Sentinel in the eye. “I've got a buggane to catch, and I'm not abandoning Streamwalker, Burrfang and Greenwatch down here. I'm the only one who can see in the dark enough to lead them back out. If I leave now they'll be stuck here.”

“You do not have much choice in the matter.”

She is incorporeal, Midnight pointed out. She is not capable of physically obstructing you.

And so by way of response to Ghealach, Rainbow Dash simply took a step forwards and walked through her. And then she kept walking along the ledge. Ghealach reappeared in front of her again, but she ignored her.

“Stop,” Ghealach ordered. Rainbow Dash walked through her again. “Do you have anything in your mind that even approximates a survival instinct? This should have been a decision you made yourself!”

Dash turn a corner and found, surprise surprise, Ghealach blocking her way again. Now, though, any trace of emotion had been wiped from Ghealach's features. She fixed Dash with a glare as cold as space itself and said coolly, “If you take one more step forwards, you will regret it.”

Midnight stepped around Rainbow Dash and trotted forward a few steps unhurriedly, passing right through Ghealach – who showed no signs of acknowledging her at all. Dash followed her after a beat of hesitation, memories of the empty theatre rising up to remind her that Ghealach, in fact, could maybe make good on that threat. But with Midnight helping her, she thought, she would easily be able to match Ghealach and Cloud Ferry – had Cloud Ferry even changed her mind. And so, in defiance of Ghealach again, she kept walking. From behind, she heard an angry hiss.

“You have been warned,” said Ghealach. Finally, she vanished, and Rainbow Dash turned the corner into the largest segment of cavern yet – and froze on the spot.

Author's Note

*Fanfic exits bleedout state* "No...not like this!"

I am really, really sorry about the long delay. That was cruel. I'm not going to make excuses. Instead, as a Christmas present, here's a new chapter, with another one guaranteed tomorrow on Christmas Day. Story's going into the endgame now, and then I'll see about improving earlier chapters.

Feedback is always appreciated from readers new and old, especially in comments :) Have a merry Christmas Eve, everyone (yes, atheists and non-Christians too can have those), and I hope you enjoy the new chapter!

Chapter 23: Folasciathán

Rainbow Dash had dealt with dragons before. Hay, she'd flown right up to one and kicked its snout. She had faced down the possessed (or corrupted, nobody had ever told her which) escapee goddess of the moon. She had fought Changelings in Canterlot with almost no warning. She had survived Discord. And since embarking on her quest to rescue Twilight, she had also had her mind ransacked by what she guessed was the functional equivalent of a kelpie Celestia, as well as somehow survived attacking Caelum the Star-Maker.

None of those beings, however powerful, had quite the same impact on first sight as the dragon she found herself staring down on now.

The dragon – she guessed it was maybe male, but she wasn't a dragonologist and truthfully on bad days she would've had difficulty determing Spike's gender if she hadn't known him so long – was asleep. Possibly. At the very least it was laying down and coiled up, one gigantic wing covering its long tail, its long neck curved around so its head faced the direction Dash had come from. It was, at least, almost five times the size of the dragon she'd dealt with back on Equestria. It put Spike's greed form to shame in size. How it had managed to worm its way into the mountain, she hadn't a clue.

In the ruddy light of the crystal-studded walls, the dragon's scales gleamed red – red like someone had dipped it into a vat of blood, red like fire devouring a city, red like the distant glow of the star Proxima Centauri. Its wings were red; its claws were red, darker red like dried blood. But when one of its great eyes opened slightly, she could see that its eyes were the color of molten gold.

She didn't even notice the buggane standing in front of the dragon until it took a frightened step backwards as the huge beast shifted slightly in its repose. Her target! The whole reason she was in the cave! Somehow, she managed to fight her fear and awe down and lower herself to the floor, to minimize the chance of it noticing her. She had to find out why that buggane was here!

“Leave,” Ghealach whispered urgently. “Leave now.”

Rainbow Dash was silent, listening instead for the sound of the buggane's voice. The odd acoustics of the cave made it hard to pick out words, but she definitely could understand what was being said.

“Big one,” the buggane addressed the dragon, with something as close to reverence as a buggane could produce. “Speaker send me to talk with you.”

The cave shivered as the dragon exhaled again. Its eye re-opened slightly – just enough to fix the buggane with an irritated glare. “Why couldn't your Speaker contact me himself?” it asked languidly, with an unmistakably male voice.

That's the same voice from the buggane camp! Dash realized with a start.

“Speaker tired from shaman work.”

The dragon hummed, a slow bass rumble that shook the cave again. Its voice, when it came again, was as relaxed as before. Dash guess that, maybe, it had been sleeping for a while and had just now woken up.

“Of course he is,” said the dragon. “What is so urgent that a messenger was sent directly to my resting place?”

“Speaker think noisy thief-bird was more than just noisy thief-bird.”

“Is that it?” the dragon rumbled angrily, tiredness vanishing like water hurled into the heart of a star. His body shifted again, wings pulling in, tail slithering along the floor, legs pushing the whole bulk of the beast around to face the buggane better. Terrified, the buggane waddled back a few steps.

“Leave now, Rainbow Dash,” Ghealach whispered, even more urgently – and was that fear Dash heard in her voice? “This is your final chance. Run.”

“Not yet,” Dash whispered back, not even glancing away from the scene unfolding below.

“Is that it?” the dragon rumbled again. “Did I not make this same deduction while I was in direct contact with his mind? Did I not already determine that your Thunderbird was, in fact, one of my sisters? Did your Speaker forget that – or did you forget the real message on your way here?”

“No!”

The dragon lifted its head off the cavern floor and arched its neck so it was looking down on the buggane with half-open eyes. “Then why did your Speaker send you to deliver a message he knew I already knew?”

“Speaker thinks thief-bird was Killer!”

“Killer?” The dragon growled. “I have no time for your simplistic superstitions and race-memories. Killer was killed.”

“Killer came back! New bugganes come from kelpie places and say so!”

“Killer came back. How very...interesting.” The dragon slowly lowered its head again. “Alpha Centauri, back from the dead. Perhaps I will have a challenge after all, if your Speaker's guess proves accurate.”

“Leave!” Ghealach hissed again. “If you do not leave now, you will die.”

“It hasn't seen me yet,” Dash whispered back, “and I can't leave without Streamwalker and the rest!”

The dragon chuckled then, low and dangerous. It rose suddenly, standing up and contorting its neck and tail in a luxurious stretch, pulling its wings in and finally shaking itself like a dog. Then it raised its head up and gave a toothy grin.

“I smell dust,” it said, chuckling again. “Dust, and steel, and kelpie sweat. Be on your finest behavior, buggane – we seem to have an important guest with us. Don't we, Ghealach?”

“Run!” Ghealach roared.

Leaping to her feet in a clamor of metal and hoof-on-rock, Rainbow Dash ran – just as a wash of magical fire consumed the section of ledge she'd just been crouching on. She beat her wings and hurled herself forwards into open space, abandoning all caution as adrenaline took over and another blast of fire singed her tail. The roaring laughter of the dragon chased her down the cavern – and so did the sound of the beast crashing through a wall of rock as it started its pursuit.

“I can smell you still, old enemy of mine!” the dragon laughed. “It's been a long two thousand years, Ghealach – but I can still remember the taste of your puppets!”

Ghealach appeared next to Rainbow Dash again as the former pegasus swooped around another bend in the cavern – and another cascade of rocks behind them alerted her that the dragon was still coming. Ghealach did not look pleased.

“You somehow managed to find the sleeping place of the dragon Folasciathán,” she announced coldly. “And, in disobeying me, you have awakened him and alerted him to my activity on Domhan. You are proving to be an exceedingly unreliable tool, Rainbow Dash.”

“Who is - “ Dash gave up trying to pronounce the dragon's name; it sounded something like 'FolashyaTHON” - “that?”

“A dragon, and an ally of Proxima Centauri,” Ghealach answered. “And if my guess is true, the leader of the newly-organized bugganes. In which case it would appear that I was not the only one planning to exploit the current instability.”

The cavern ahead of Dash lit flame-red as Folasciathán emitted another gout of fire, but she dodged around another bend and it splashed uselessly against the wall behind her – which then exploded in a cloud of dust and falling rocks and glinting crystals and red scales as the dragon hurled himself through it with a feral snarl. Rainbow Dash beat her wings even more strongly to put more distance between herself and him – but she still only just escaped incineration and true death as another blast of dragonfire scorched the cave wall ahead of her. She couldn't help but laugh as another column shot past her and she did a loop around it – it was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. She'd never felt anything like it.

“Have you abandoned the last shreds of your sanity?” Ghealach demanded, less than amused. “This fire will kill you!”

“Only if he can hit me first!”

Folasciathán laughed. “Or is this not another puppet, Ghealach? Have you chosen a champion perhaps, as my adoptive sisters once did? Ha! You, who prided yourself on being so different from them – have the years made you just another 'meddler'?”

Ghealach snorted in irritation. The dragon went on.

“And who do I have the pleasure of killing today?” he asked, before sending another blast of flame after her. “Who might it be that wandered into my lair?”

“Catch me and I might tell you!” Folasciathán answered with an amused roar.

Another blast of fire forced Dash to dive low, but this blast followed her in a sustained column as Folasciathán managed to slide his bulk around the turn behind her. She spiralled out of the way of it, letting the fire trace a blazing line across the ground where it stuck like napalm. Another blast forced her even lower, until she was practically running. The next turn came up, and she leapt at the wall and then leapt off that around the bend as Folasciathán slammed into the same wall, almost breaking through it, and snapping at Rainbow Dash's tail as she rounded the corner in full. He roared again, almost deafening her in the enclosed space, and missed with an almost point-blank gout of flames as she pulled off a perfect double-Immelmann turn and almost kicked the dragon's nose.

“You are a more skilled flier than most thunderbirds I have killed,” Folasciathán said. “And almost artful as well. It is a shame the Sentinel has claimed you for her own. I would have enjoyed facing you when I moved on Beta Centauri.”

“The tunnel to the surface is three turns ahead,” Ghealach told Rainbow Dash. “You may yet escape.”

“Not without Streamwalker.”

“Loyalty is admirable, but this is quite literally suicidal,” Cloud Ferry declared as she materialized next to Ghealach – without wings, which didn't seem to impact her ability to stay aloft at all. “You called, Ghealach?”

Rainbow Dash flew faster, diving and rolling around the next turn and snapping her wings back out to swoop low over the cavern floor, trying to spot Streamwalker and the wolves. She knew that she couldn't fly off with them – she didn't have any way to carry all three, even if her wings were strong enough – but if she could deploy a bit of magic, she could turn them all invisible and slip out while Folasciathán searched for them. Or – the idea hit her like a lightning bolt – she could just teleport out with them! Perfect!

She spotted them then, Streamwalker and Burrfang and Greenwatch, huddled together defensively in a trench in the cavern floor. She circled above them once and prepared to dive down.

“Ghealach, I need magic!” she shouted. “I'm going to grab them all and then you teleport us out!”

“The dragon is blocking me, Rainbow Dash,” Ghealach replied. “Teleportation is beyond your meagre skill. I could send the magic, but I would have to wield it as well – which whatever spell he is using will not allow me to do.”

“What about that soul-bound thing?”

“The mind and its skills are separate from the soul. Leave them.”

“I can't leave them here! That dragon will kill them!”

“If you attempt to flee with them on foot, it will kill you,” Cloud Ferry pointed out. “We have to go!”

Folasciathán laughed as he clawed his way into their segment of the cavern, squeezing his bulk through the narrow corner. “A wonderful bit of practice this has been, Ghealach, but centuries ago we warned you not to interfere. I am afraid I cannot allow your champion to live,” he declared with feral glee.

“Leave, Rainbow Dash! Abandon them and fly!” Cloud Ferry pressed.

“I can't leave them here!” She threw herself into a dive. Leaving a friend behind to die was unthinkable to her. She’d never be able to forgive herself if she left without even trying.

“Then I will have to leave them for you.”

The world seemed to jerk suddenly, and Rainbow Dash felt the sickening feeling of being shoved aside, hurled out of her own body. She was looking at herself from the outside – watching herself as she pulled out of the dive, narrowly dodged being incinerated by Folasciathán's latest blast, and flew for all she was worth towards the next bend in the cavern, and the tunnel mouth beyond. It took her a few seconds to realize what had just happened.

Cloud Ferry had taken control of her body!

“No! Go back!” she screeched. By some hidden instinct, she shoved back at Cloud Ferry's mental presence, and for a brief, glorious instant, she was back in the pilot's seat – but then a cold and implacable mental mass, as wide as a moon and as frigid and painful as the empty void, reinforced the phantom, and it was like she was trying to shove a planet out of its orbit. She rebounded off her own mind and felt the ground vanish from under her, and she screamed all the way into the black pit of unconsciousness.

It was a small mercy, really. She couldn't watch as her body was forced to do the single most abhorrent and disloyal thing she'd ever done – abandoning a friend to die in the darkness of the roots of Folasciathán's hollow mountain.

She was being carried roughly down long hallways, somewhere in her mind. Their specifics were hidden from her by a veil of tears.

She'd left them behind. They had trusted her, they had been loyal to her, and she had left them. And now they were dead.

“You are a tool, Rainbow Dash,” Ghealach said. Her voice was absent of emotion. “That was your fate. I rescued you from permanent dissolution and bound your soul to mine. As Folasciathán put it, you were made my champion.”

The hallway was made of clouds. Familiar-seeming pictures were on the walls. Pegasi, maybe? She realized in her misery that, somehow, her wings were feathered again.

“I feel I gave a great degree of leeway to you. Leeway that was not deserved, and that you abused.”

They came to a stop next to a door with a foal's picture of a rainbow on it. Scrawled in large letters on the paper was her name – Rainbow Dash. She knew that picture. It had been taped to her bedroom door for years as a filly.

The door slammed open and Ghealach hurled her in. The Dust Sentinel stared down at her then, face expressionless.

“And even though you abused that leeway, I admitted to myself that your abuses of it could very well work out in my favor in the long run,” she said to Dash coldly. “Streamwalker and his village were bound to me from your first rescue of those foals, but Streamwalker with more effort could have been made a powerful spokesman for me among his kind. Your aiding of him in the investigation of the buggane councils provided me with information that could very well have accelerated my plans immensely. Even your discovery that Folasciathán was the bugganes' leader would have been useful, had you just. Listened.

“I do not trust Cloud Ferry,” she went on. “She is, in fact, a greater liability in some ways than you. You, I could count on to not be able to escape me before I allowed it. But your loyalty – your suicidal lack of self-preservation – forced my hand. I tolerated it before, but if a single wolf is enough to tie you down in front of a charging dragon I cannot tolerate it further. And so I will store you here while Cloud Ferry moves to a new village, a new wolf pack, an eyrie – and starts over.”

“You can't - “

“I already have, Rainbow Dash,” Ghealach interrupted her. “You fail to understand something: from the moment you woke up on my moon, your mind was not your own. It belonged, in large part, to a being infinitely older, infinitely stronger, and infinitely wiser than yourself. Without me, you would have had to fight hordes of phantoms to accomplish something as simple as moving your leg. Without me, you would have slipped into useless insanity in days. Without me, you would be permanently, irretrievably dead. Your mind, your body – both were made and maintained by me.

“The idea then that you had any true power to directly disobey me, in light of that, is laughable.”

“Why here?”

“You have displayed a foalish lack of regard for the integrity of your own body, and a foalish and ridiculous belief that you are somehow invincible,” Ghealach answered. “I found it fitting to imprison you within your foalhood bedroom.”

The door began to swing closed. “Goodbye, Rainbow Dash,” said Ghealach as it did. “Perhaps you will have time to contemplate your actions while genuine progress is made.”

It clicked shut.

Streamwalker is dead because of me.

Rainbow Dash broke down and wept.

Author's Note

It's always darkest just before the dawn...

Merry Christmas everyone :pinkiecrazy:

Prologue: Beltane

Two Thousand Years Ago, Domhan, under the Guidance of the Centauri Sisters...

Alpha Centauri lay atop a woolen blanket, atop a high hill, watching her forest.

A cool breeze washed over the seemingly-endless sea of treetops, sending waves of paler green coursing along the canopy as the leaves danced in the night wind. Overhead, a carpet of glittering stars shone, accompanying the unguided Moon as it sedately plodded along its orbit around the world. Thin columns of pale smoke drifted up from numerous clearings below, twisting in the wind and bearing with them the laughter of the kelpie fillies as they tried to see how many of them could stick together and still catch a wild squirrel. The howling of the wolves as they prepared for the feasts coming later echoed up after the giggling, and the metallic rasping and crashing of the thunderbirds’ feathers against each other resonated like distant thunder as they flitted between bonfires, carrying reports and instructions from camp to camp. She could almost taste the anticipation and excitement in the air – it was Beltane, and everyone expected this Beltane to be one of the finer festivals held in living memory, despite the ongoing war.

Alpha would have loved to be down with her subjects, her little kelpies and wolves and birds, laughing along with the fillies and their parents at their game, organizing the feasts and bonfires with the thunderbirds, maybe even joining the wolves’ choir for the midnight singing contests that were traditionally held to scare off bugganes. Caelum knew she needed a break. Unfortunately, though, she had far more pressing concerns than mere relaxation. Two Nightmares – she refused to think of them as her sisters – were on the loose, with their own followers, and Beltane would be the perfect time to strike. She needed to remain vigilant, for their sakes.

“Pretty night out,” someone commented from behind her. Surprised, Alpha glanced back, and only relaxed her muscles, unconsciously tensed in preparation for combat,when she identified the speaker as her guard captain, Watchful Eye, a kelpie mare with pale green skin and a nearly-black, rivergrass-knotted mane, both cast in sharp relief by the light emanating from Alpha’s own fiery mane. She was wearing nothing except a silver collar to show her rank; odd, when most kelpie guards stayed armored just to avoid the inconvenience of having falling leaves stick to their skin. “You should be enjoying it.”

“I’d like to,” Alpha answered sadly, looking back out at the trees. “It’s a perfect night for Beltane. There’s nothing I’d like more than to just glide down there” – she extended a broad, silvery wing, its feathers sounding like distant thunder as they brushed lightly against each other – “and stick myself onto a cluster of fillies, and see how many squirrels we can catch for the wolves. Or, better yet, enter one of those riddle contests. Maybe even see if I can cook something without incinerating it…” She grimaced, remembering her last attempt at bread. Truthfully, if that “attempt” was still around, Alpha could feel comfortable saying there were three Nightmares haunting the shadows.

Watchful snorted. “But…”

“But I can’t leave them unguarded,” she concluded reluctantly. “The warriors are good for driving off bugganes, or dragons, or roving wolfpacks, but these are Nightmares we’re dealing with! Without me ready to fight at a second’s notice, they’re as good as dead, or worse than dead.” She shuddered slightly at the thought of the laughing fillies huddled fearfully in a buggane’s pot while the monster drew water to make a broth out of them. “I can’t go down and join the festival. It would be irresponsible! If the Nightmares come tonight, I need to be prepared to face them. Not socializing.”

“Hm,” Watchful hummed. Alpha heard the soft crunching of leaves as the kelpie trotted closer. “You know what I think the problem really is?”

“Something to do with my social inadequacies, I assume?”

She chuckled. “Well, that could be it, too, but I think what’s really the problem is that you miss them.”

Alpha frowned. “How is that the real problem?”

“You’re sitting up here hoping Beta and Proxima will fly in at the head of a formation of bugganes and lone wolves, so you can fly in and give redeeming them another shot. You’re thinking that Beltane would be a perfect time for them to launch an attack, and that the festival down there is as good a bait as any to get them back in talking distance so you can try to convince them to join our side again. This whole festival – which is your festival this short-year – is a trap, and good hunters don’t use themselves as bait for a trap.”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely!” Watchful smiled. “Probably in those exact words, too.”

Alpha smiled. She couldn’t help it – Watchful knew her too well. “When did you get so good at reading my mind? Have those funny horned kelpies Tia’s so proud of been giving you lessons?”

“Well, you did sort-of raise me,” she laughed. “I had to figure you out at some point, or I’d never be able to weasel extra snacks out of you.”

The sounds of flutes being tested and lyres being tuned began to drift up from the numerous camps, interrupting the crickets that had dominated the night previously. The insects cut their songs off with irritated, abrupt clicks, surrendering rule of the airwaves to the cheerful music of the kelpies. Alpha idly started tapping a hoof to the rhythm; the first piece had the upbeat tempo of a dance, a reel perhaps. She didn’t really dance, tending more to watch from the sidelines, but it still would have been nice to see her subjects enjoying themselves.

“Sounds like they’re starting a dance,” Watchful said, unnecessarily. “You sure you don’t want to head down? Even the Guard is involved. You’d probably have a better bet of driving off a Nightmare raid if you were down there. You know – with backup?”

“I think Caisleanard showed just how much use ‘backup’ is against Proxi,” Alpha responded, trying to keep bitterness from her voice. “And Uisceban, and Northcastle, and Doeblin…”

“You sound just a bit bitter there, my Queen.”

“Why do I even bother?”

“You wouldn’t be Alpha Centauri if you didn’t keep bothering.”

“Hmph.” Alpha suppressed a sigh as the reel picked up; what if there was no attack tonight? What if she waited, and watched, and waited and watched until the Beltane bonfires’ embers were cold and dead, and Proxima and Beta never seized on the opportunity? What if she wasted a perfect night to spend with her subjects, based on her admittedly uncertain prediction that the Nightmares would attack?

Watchful lay down on the blanket next to Alpha. “Come on…” she grinned, leaning against the Queen’s side. “You know you want to. Nobody likes seeing you unhappy up here on this hill.”

“Can they really see me?” she asked.

“Your head’s almost as bright as some of the smaller bonfires down there.”

She glanced back along her body and sighed. “Watchful Eye?”

“Yes?”

“Did you really just lean on me, knowing full well that we both have kelpie skin, and that kelpies stick together permanently until such a time they are brought in contact with water?”

Watchful grinned mischievously. “Yes. Looks like you’ll have to head down to the festival now, if you want to get unstuck from me.”

Alpha sighed. “It certainly does look like that, yes.” She stood up, dragging Watchful up with her. The kelpie scrambled to get her hooves back underneath herself in surprise. “Come on, Watchful, let’s go find someone with a bucket of water.”

Ten minutes of crashing through the forest later, Alpha and Watchful burst into the first firelit clearing they came across with twin roars. The fillies and colts scattered with childish screams; the thunderbirds shot into the air like startled crows. Even the wolves started, leaping to their feet and baring their teeth at the intruder. Only the adult kelpies failed to show their surprise, for all of them knew exactly what a kelpie covered in sticks and leaves and stones looked like, since all of them had suffered through the same condition before.

“Subjects!” Alpha roared. “Your Queen requires water!”

The kelpies laughed; the wolves rolled their eyes and chuckled to themselves. Soon enough, a trio of thunderbirds swooped overhead, lugging a rain-dense cloud behind them. With much crashing and rattling, they kicked and bullied the cloud into yielding its water earlier than it had intended, and Alpha and Watchful were soaked. The detritus of their descent through the dense underbrush washed off quickly, and the water flowed after it, failing to adhere to their slick pelts.

“Your mane’s out, my Queen,” Watchful giggled. Alpha beat her wings and crashed forwards into the roaring bonfire; compared to the temperature of her celestial form, the burning heat was almost like laying in a dim pool of Proxima’s sunlight – though the assembled beings gasped in shock all the same. Grinning, she clambered up the cone of blazing logs until she stood at its peak, and struck a haughty pose.

“Let the Beltane festival commence!” she decreed, her eyes flickering with magic and reflected firelight as she amplified her voice to be heard across the forest. The cheer that rose afterwards was loud enough to drown her out, even so.

When the dawn came, Alpha still felt half-drunk with happiness. At some point during the night, she’d evidently fallen into a dry riverbed, and hadn’t found any water to dislodge the coating of dust and pebbles on her right flank. She’d managed to stagger back up through the forest to her hill, and now stood once again where she’d lain at the start of the night. Along the east horizon, a faint reddish glow was visible. Puzzling.

“Told you everything would be fine!”

She snorted, amused, as Watchful Eye stumbled happily out of the bushes on the edge of her clearing coated in leaves and sticks and a few unfortunate caterpillars, though she didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. She never had, not even when she was a filly and not quite heavy enough to break off the thin tall branches she climbed up to and then got stuck on like some kind of odd fruit. “See? No Nightmare attack!”

“I still can’t help thinking something’s wrong,” Alpha sighed. She frowned at the subtly brightening glow on the horizon. It almost looked like Proxima Centauri was being raised, but that was ridiculous – Domhan was in orbit around her, where it had been when the civil war began, and where it would stay until the civil war ended…one way or the other.

“The alchemists could probably grind you up and use you to make a potion specifically intended to cause anxiety,” Watchful said. “Honestly, I’m the captain of the guard and I don’t worry as much as you.”

“You aren’t the only kelpie capable of defeating your sisters’ Nightmares,” she pointed out.

“Hm.” Watchful stood next to Alpha, looking out at the anomalous predawn light. “Pretty sunrise so far. Didn’t know you could change the sun’s color.”

“I can’t.” Taking a calming breath and closing her eyes, Alpha detached herself from her body, casting her mind out to find her star. She could sense it, barely, on the distant fringes of her awareness – a warm, welcoming, brilliant spark of white light. On Domhan, her body frowned. Something was seriously wrong. Seriously, seriously wrong; her mind jumped back into her physical form, and her eyes snapped open. “We’ve left my orbit.”

Watchful gave her a wide-eyed look of shock. “We’ve what?”

“Alpha Centauri – my star – is farther away than it was last night. Much farther.” The red glow on the horizon was getting brighter, extending in an arc from the north to the south. In silence, they watched the rising of a far different sun than what had lit the morning not a day earlier. It was a huge disc, brilliant crimson and flecked with dark sunspots. Eventually, Watchful had to avert her gaze to avoid being blinded, but Alpha didn’t need to – and couldn’t.

Somehow, while she had been celebrating during the night, the planet she was on had been stolen from her.

A wild wind whipped across the red-lit forest, sending the dark green leaves into a frenzy. For a moment, Alpha could have sworn she heard faint, manic laughter, but the sound was drowned out by the distant-thunder noise of a thunderbird diving in.

The bird landed in front of them with a crash. Alpha had to hold in a gasp at the sight of him – the kelpie-sized bird looked like he’d been fed through a whipvine patch. His feathers were bent and grimy, and stuck out wildly in clumps; one wing lay uselessly at his side. The red slick of blood darkened his golden plumage in more than a few places, and when he spoke, his voice was painfully weak.

“Buggane attack,” he gasped. “The Nightmares are here.”

Watchful looked to Alpha. “We should – “

“Rally the guard,” Alpha ordered calmly. “Get them outfitted. Arm and armor yourself. I’ll hold them off while you prepare.”

“My Queen – “

“Go!” Alpha commanded. More softly; “Go, Watchful. I can handle myself well enough – I’m a star, after all. A few bugganes are no threat to me.”

Reluctantly, Watchful nodded and galloped off into the forest again. Alpha returned her attention to the thunderbird. “Where?”

“Outermost…camp!” he wheezed. “Came as soon as the sun rose!” – he hesitated and used the moment to suck in a painful breath – “My Queen, is that – “

“It is Proxima Centauri, yes,” she confirmed grimly. “The Nightmares were busy last night. Rest – I’ll handle things from here.”

“Yes…my Queen...” With what sounded worryingly close to a death rattle, the thunderbird toppled over and was still. Alpha checked to ensure he was still breathing before taking wing herself.

From the air, she could see that the attack had only just begun; trees were shuddering under blows from the great mole-like beasts favored by Proxima and Beta, panicked screams and shouts were audible, and flashes of conjured lightning illuminated the undersides of the trees, but the fighting was only around the outskirts of her subjects’ camping grounds. Nothing suggested deeper penetration by the burrowing bugganes, or salient raids by the Nightmares’ wolves. If she acted quickly, the raid could probably be driven off with minimal casualties. She picked a particularly embattled-looking clearing, where a pair of what looked like elephant-sized, bipedal, tusked star-nosed moles were holding back the combined strength of one of her wolf packs. Broken warriors lay scattered across the clearing, and still the wolves attacked, despite the enormous size advantage the bugganes enjoyed and were using with deadly efficiency.

Her landing was swift and terrifying. Like a lightning-wreathed comet, she dropped out of the sky, landing atop one of the black-furred monsters and killing it instantly with a mix of electricity and sheer force. She spread her wings quickly, before the other buggane turned to face her, and delivered the strongest blast of lightning she could muster directly into its chest. With a high-pitched squealing roar, it staggered backwards, sweeping its powerful arms frantically to keep the wolves off, but they dodged its claws and soon brought the monster down.

A scarred, grey-furred wolf detached itself from the pack and loped over to Alpha’s position atop the first buggane. “My Queen, many thanks for your aid. We are hunters, not soldiers – I do not believe we could have held it off much longer,” he growled. “The pups are safely away now. How can we help?”

“There’s another clearing to the west. Last I saw, another buggane had a few kelpies and their foals trapped there,” she answered gravely. “Take your pack and see if you can distract it long enough for them to escape, or for the Guard to arrive.”

“Yes, my Queen.” He nodded, but hesitated before carrying out her command. “My Queen, Woodfang and Leaper were my finest buggane-slayers – ex-Guard, both of them. These things hacked them apart in one blow – both of them!”

“We were taken by surprise,” she replied sourly. “I will not allow it to happen again. Hurry!”

He hesitated again, but turned to go. “Of course, my Queen. I fear we may be facing more than simple conscripts, though.”

“Duly noted.” Alpha watched him go, the rest of the pack following as fast as they could. She prepared to take wing again and intervene elsewhere, but another gust of wind raced through the trees, bringing with it the same twisted laughter, but this time it didn’t fade. It intensified.

The trees moaned as the wind strengthened and kicked up a veritable tornado of dead leaves and forest detritus, eventually resolving itself into two smaller gyres – and when they cleared and the gust subsided, left in their place were two dark beings. Like kelpies in form, graced with the wings of thunderbirds and the strength of wolves, with flaming manes matching the colors of their stars, the Nightmares looked very similar to Alpha herself – except they were clad in metal armor of shadow black, and Alpha was unprotected.

“Were we not a credible enough threat to you, Alpha?” the Nightmare of Beta Centauri jeered, stepping forward from the ring of dead plants their spell had left in its wake.

“Such a foolish Queen,” Proxima Centauri laughed, grinning ferally. “Such a fool, to leave the night of Beltane unwatched. And now Domhan belongs once more to me, as it rightly should.”

“I spent the night celebrating our festival with our subjects, Proxima. You were welcome to join us – it is a celebration of the suns, after all,” Alpha said, hopping off the dead buggane. Where her hooves touched the ground, roots and grass snaked up her legs, wrapping around them and detaching themselves from the earth to form living armor for the Queen.

“It is a celebration of one sun,” Proxima hissed. “Your worthless subjects much prefer spending it with you than spending it with us!”

“Of course, I would expect you to be blind to that,” Beta said, beginning to circle around to Alpha’s right. “After all, you were blind to it before. Why change when you already have what you wanted?”

“I was never blind to it, because it was never a problem,” Alpha retorted. “Beta, can’t you remember before this petty war started? Centuries upon centuries of happy Beltanes and Imbolcs together? Samhains spent with Proxima, as well, with all of our subjects? You were never neglected! And you, Proxima, as well – you had Domhan for fully half of the year! What about our arrangement suggested you were left out?”

“Blind!” Proxima snapped. She began to circle in the opposite direction from Beta, a sneer fixed on her face. “Blinded by your own brilliance, O arrogant sister. Now, though, I will cut you out of the picture, and I shall rule as a goddess.”

“It is time for a new order, Alpha. Three stars are a bit much for any one system, really.” Beta grinned. “A duality is a much more stable arrangement, don’t you agree?”

“Were you both in your right minds, I would welcome a break.” Alpha answered with a sigh. “But with you both acting like spoiled foals, I cannot in good conscience leave this world to you. If what you want is me out of the way for a while, so be it – just return to your senses, please!”

“Blind,” Proxima spat. Before Alpha could react, the Nightmare flared her lightning-filled wings and delivered a blast of electricity straight into the Queen’s chest, hurling her backwards against the buggane’s corpse and tearing the air apart with a deafening clap of thunder. Her armor was incinerated in an instant, and the burst of pain told her that she’d likely broken a rib, but she was alive. Blinking back tears, she tried to stand again, but it was all she could do to stay upright with the buggane’s support while preparing her own spell.

Proxima chuckled darkly. “Really, Alpha? Is that all it will take?” She turned to an almost concerned-looking Beta. “Come, sister. Let us take care of the rest of her band of allies and bring this war to a victorious close.”

“No,” Alpha growled. Her eyes flared brilliant violet, and in a flash of light the Three Sisters were gone. Watchful Eye and her squad of kelpies broke into the clearing just in time to see their afterimages fade.

Another flash of light split the night sky across the planet, above a ring of rune-carved standing stones in a clearing in a snowy pine forest, as the other mouth of Alpha’s portal spat the sisters out. There was no impact; each managed to open her wings and slow her descent before hitting the ground. Where they landed, the heat of their manes and tails evaporated the snow, with the exception of Alpha. She glided to a soft landing in the very heart of the three concentric rings of rock pillars. Though the Nightmares could not recognize it, she, at least, knew what the ring was: a trap. An end to the war. Peace.

Proxima’s fires flared brightly and hotly in fury, boiling off an even larger expanse of snow and causing Beta to cringe backwards. Alpha ignored the blast of heat, sitting sedately in the geometric center of the magical focus. Beneath closed eyelids, magic began to glow in her eyes again.

“Cheater!” Proxima screeched, rounding on the Queen. “We had you by the throat, sister! You are defeated! Return us at once, you – you – “

“Proxima, calm yourself.” Beta snorted. “We have her in an even worse situation than before. All our bugganes, rampaging through her camp, and no infallible Alpha Centauri to save them…”

“Of course – perfect! Perfect!” the other Nightmare cackled. “In the hour of defeat, you abandon your subjects. Truly, they placed their faith in the wrong star, Alpha. Now, let us finish this.”

“I agree completely,” Alpha managed to say, smiling wryly. She could feel the spell taking shape in the ground around her – a banishment to render the Nightmares impotent. The idea had come to her when observing kelpie parents discipline their foals; if a child could be calmed by some quiet time in their room, perhaps stars could be soothed in the same way? If anything, Domhan would have some peace.

“Then you will concede victory?” Beta asked.

“Then I will end you, sister.” Proxima laughed, and began to advance threateningly towards the still-stationary Alpha. Beta shot her a shocked look.

“Proxima, no!” the other Nightmare exclaimed. “Our plan was to – “

“Our plan has changed,” she answered simply. “She would always be a threat to me – but now I will end that threat permanently, while I have the chance!”

“Surely, you mean a threat to us?”

“Of course, Beta,” Proxima assured her sweetly. “But Alpha dies.”

“Proxi, please – “

“Proxi?” she whipped her head around, barely-contained fury in her snakelike eyes. “Proxi? I am a goddess, sister! I am Proxima Centauri, the Red Queen! Never use that childish nickname for me ever again! Do you understand?”

Stunned, Beta froze as the Nightmare returned her attention to Alpha.

“Why are you still smiling?” Proxima asked coldly, looking down upon the eldest sister. She snorted. “No matter. It was wonderful to know you, however blind you might have been. I will ensure Beltane remains as a memorial for the Queen who abandoned her subjects…if anyone will celebrate it.” She spread her ebony wings, arcs of lightning crackling between iron feathers like bolts in a stormcloud. “Goodbye, Alpha…”

“No!” Beta shouted. Like an arrow, she crashed into Proxima’s flank, nearly bowling her over with her momentum. The darkness that had covered her coat was peeling away like ribbons now; her golden wings were spread wide, ready to intercept any attacks. Her eyes, once red and slitted, were now back to what Alpha remembered as her sister’s – round of pupil, blue like the summer sky, and completely clear of the dark taint of the spirit that had possessed her for years. “I forbid it!”

“I will deal with you next, vermin!" Proxima hissed. She spun and delivered a precise buck to Beta’s vulnerable throat, sending her staggering backwards, gasping for breath. The path clear, the Nightmare opened her wings again – and Alpha felt a trillion volts of electricity sear her heart, cut deeper than anything physical ever could, and drive the life from her body.

Beta screamed as Alpha was hurled against one of the standing stones, dropping like a sack of apples as she hit it. She didn’t have much time left, but she had enough; her eyes snapped open, coursing with energy and light even as the edges of her vision began to fade. The spell was cast, and for a moment the stones of the ring glowed in a rainbow of colors. Proxima didn’t even have time to let out a wail of despair as she was banished.

The world faded away quickly, but Alpha never stopped smiling. Beta’s terrified, tear-streaked face filled the last clear portion of her vision. She might have said something – “I’ll be back, sister” – but before Beta could answer, she was too far gone to hear her response.

In the center of a frost-rimed ring of standing stones, Beta stood vigil over the body of her sister until the red dawn touched the tops of the fir trees. When she looked up at the imposing crimson circle of the dwarf star, she swore the sunspots almost looked like Proxi.

In darkness, a glittering violet speck of a soul floated, alone, stripped of its power, and hungry for more. It hung in the void like a snowflake, small and fragile but unique, a packet of magic containing the sum total of a mare. Silently, it drifted towards a triple-star arrangement and its gathering of other sparks, looking for companionship, but something etched into its primitive memory caused it to reject that world – there was too much pain there, too much baggage, even if it couldn’t recall what that pain was from.

So, the spark drifted back out into the void, ethereal winds ripping at it, trying to extinguish it – a candle, adrift in a stormy sea in the dark of a cloudy night. It needed a body, to shelter it as it tried to grow back to what it once was; it needed a host, to let it live again. If the triple-star system was unsuitable, it’d have to seek elsewhere for something to call its own, but there was nothing close enough for it to…

Oh! Yes, there was! A single star, alone save for its blazing-with-magic child world and its softly singing moon. There were sparks on its world, a multitude of other souls hinting at a richness of potential experiences, and the dense ley lines would provide fertile soil to grow back into a star. As eagerly as its limited capacity would allow, the soul began floating towards the star something in its vague memory called Celestia.

It almost didn’t make it.

Hesitant, uncertain, the spark of a soul slowed as the magic of Celestia’s child world became twisted, chaotic – manipulated and pulled like pasta in the hooves of a curious newborn foal as a very familiar entity tried to wrest control from the star. The spark began drifting once again, forced by hungry void-winds, sure that Celestia would take care of matters before it arrived. If anyone with the ability to observe the thaumato-physical plane that souls inhabit had looked in the general direction of the comet shell on the system’s edge at around the Fall and Defeat of Discord (nobody did), they would have seen the spark.

Unimpressively, and unobtrusively, at what Equestrians would date as Year 200 of the Eternal Sisters’ Reign or Year 20 Before Nightmare Moon, the spark reached Equus, and inspired for itself a new body. It was a pegasus, and it came into the world in blood and pain and loud, infantile crying, but it was a start, at least. It – she, now – had time. It would be maybe a thousand years in such a magic-rich environment before she could return to the heavens, but it’d be an interesting millennium, to be sure. So many things to learn and experience, so many lives to live, after all.

Quietly, the soul of Alpha Centauri lived out a life on Equestria. And then another…and another…and another…and another…a hundred quiet lives passed, and a thousand years to add to its long journey through the interstellar medium, until at last in the capital city of the greatest nation on the planet, in the shadow of the Sun, a unicorn foal with a purple coat was born to a mare named Twilight Velvet and a stallion named Night Light.

Author's Note

And now for another multi-parter. This time, I have things planned out ahead of time - so if I don't finish this I give you all my permission to be greatly displeased and make big frowny-faces at your computers.

Please rate and comment! If you dislike something, I cannot improve unless you tell me what I did wrong! If you like something, I always appreciate feedback!

07/10/14 - Edited for spacing betwixt paragraphs as later chapters have.

Chapter 9: Dealing with Mephistopheles

Days of confinement were wearing deeply into Rainbow Dash’s patience. Twilight was trapped by some alien freak halfway across the universe – for all she knew about interstellar distances – and she was stuck on some kind of enforced medical leave until she either died or they found a way to cure her, which she was certain would probably not happen first. Nopony had even come to visit her! Her friends, she assumed, were either still too embarrassed by her rampage or hadn’t been told she was dying – in theory – by the Princess.

She’d taken to pacing in the middle of her living room, to burn off nervous energy. If the cloud floor hadn’t been hardened into something approaching cloudstone’s density and impermeability by the guards, she’d have probably worn through it by now. All her furniture was packed against the walls, especially against the front door; if Princess Luna wanted to come back and interrogate her some more, her dramatic entrance would likely be forestalled satisfyingly by that petty bit of resistance.

“I need powdered phoenix beak,” she mumbled, half to herself. “How can I get that stuff when I’m stuck in here?”

“Logically, one would conclude you would have to leave first,” Ghealach answered pointedly. Dash gave her a flat look.

“Thanks, Ghealach.” She shook her head and continued pacing. “That helped. That helped a lot.”

“There is little I can actually do to help, in that regard,” she pointed out. “You must find a way out on your own.”

“Buck it, you stupid moon-pony, this isn’t some kind of self-discovery quest or something!” she snapped, rounding on the Dust Sentinel’s impassive avatar . “Twilight’s life is in – “

“I have heard it all before,” she interrupted impatiently. “And it is not a matter of – “

“Then why won’t you help me?” she demanded. “I’m trapped in my own home by a dozen guards! I thought you had some kind of plan for me, too! Is this part of it?”

“It is not,” she replied. “Emphatically not. But my hooves are bound by distance – I am several light-years away. Our mental link is the only reason I can send strength to you with any efficiency, and I must put double what I would have to otherwise into that just to make an impression. Direct physical manipulation of your environment would be impractically energy-intensive, even for me; I would need to maintain a space-folding spell to reduce the distance, and those are nigh-impossible to maintain efficiently for any length of time, and then while performing that impossible feat I would have to manipulate objects I cannot personally observe.”

“So?”

“You are not a unicorn,” she explained simply. “You lack a magic sense defined enough to be useful for this. The most you could detect with would be a particularly strong sense of foreboding in high-magic areas.”

Frustrated, Dash whirled back to her pacing. “So, I’m attached to a moon, and even with all that power I still can’t escape and save Twilight.”

“My power is finite,” she responded defensively. “And it must maintain your life functions at the same time as I would have to cast the spell. Phoenix beak powder demands energy to absorb, and I must satiate that demand to the point that it forgets to draw from you altogether. At this moment in time, I effectively lack the ability to replenish my own magic reserves.”

“Great. Awesome.” She sat down abruptly. “This is useless. I’m just going to have to fight my way out somehow and go underground. Black markets have stuff like this, right?” At the very least, they always seemed to be where the villains in the books got their ancient and powerful relics – and who knew where Trixie had found that amulet? “Maybe I’ll find Trixie and see if she can tell me where one is.”

“You idiot,” Ghealach sniffed. “They would have you surrounded and subdued before you got four feet from your front door.”

“Well, I don’t hear you coming up with anything better!”

“I have dealt with the magical portion of this plan,” she said. “It is your task to perform the more physical duties. You have experience.” She shrugged. “This form is little more than a marionette. I am a moon. Fine physical manipulation is beyond my knowledge, difficult as that may be to believe.”

Dash started pacing again. “Okay. I’m in charge.” She grinned. “I’m in charge again. I can do this.”

“I’m glad you have such faith in your abilities,” Ghealach said, her voice devoid of anything approaching gladness.

“So, I need to find some kind of phoenix beak powder stock, and I need to do it fast,” she thought aloud. “The only pony I know who has some is Discord, and I’m not asking him for help ever again.”

“Your pride will make things difficult for us.”

“It’s not my pride!” she protested irritably. “He doesn’t want Twilight back. He’s perfectly happy just letting Beta do whatever she wants to her! The last time he helped basically killed me, and when he helped Luna he purposefully sabotaged it! Asking Discord for help finding her is like asking an earth pony for flying lessons.”

“Then how do you intend to get it?” she asked skeptically.

“I know where the stuff is. How can we store it without getting any more of it on me?”

“A simple unenchanted satchel should be enough to safely store it. Waterproofed would be best, to minimize the chance of it being pulled through the fabric by your magic,” she answered cautiously. “What do you have in mind?”

“Awesome! My saddlebags are waterproofed, that will work…” She frowned. “I still have to get out of here and back in without being detected, though. That might be harder, actually.”

Ghealach’s eyes widened as she caught Dash’s train of thought. “Bonding you was a mistake. You are beyond rationality.”

“What? I’m not asking him for help again,” she said. “This is the only way we can get it!”

“You would seriously consider stealing from the physical embodiment of a primal force?” Ghealach asked disbelievingly.

“Yep. And you aren’t any better,” she replied, grinning. “You want to take over an entire planet from a sun, with only me and the voices in my head for help.”

“That is far more reasonable than what you suggest.” Ghealach frowned. “And as yet I have not heard how you plan to escape.”

Dash’s eyes widened suddenly with a realization. “That doctor!”

Ghealach gave her an even more skeptical look than what she’d already been wearing. “Yes? Do you suggest we use him as a disguise? As a Trojan Horse, perhaps?”

“No, no – the magic-sphere-thing he did!” she clarified. “He said that if unicorn magic was dominant or something, enough of it would make me be able to do unicorn things. If more of whatever was causing the contamination was in my aura, maybe I could get a better magic sense.”

“And?”

“You could use your own magic to make part of the wall normal again, so I can get through it,” she finished triumphantly. “It’s perfect!”

“Did anything I said about the cost of magic over this distance get through to you?” Ghealach sighed. “It would be too costly.”

“Use me as a channel for it or whatever,” Dash suggested dismissively. “I’ll be part unicorn. It’ll be easier, won’t it?”

“Marginally,” she answered. “If I had a better idea, I’d reject this plan, but…” She shrugged. “How do you intend to increase the prevalence of that contaminant?”

“I think I know what’s causing it. This should be easy!” she answered. She dove into a cloudy couch along the wall; her eyes were closed before she hit the cushion. “I can do it in my sleep.”

It was chaos as Twilight and Beta prepared to make their entrance into Uisceban. Dozens of kelpies milled around, pursuing their tasks with all the intensity of hunting dogs who’d scented their prey. Twilight was mildly impressed by their ways of handling objects – clipboards were glued firmly to forelegs by the adhesive properties of their coats, small microphones were affixed near their mouths similarly to allow communication between disparate individuals across the town. Seaweed-like manes were tied up and tied back or tied down or done in a dozen different styles, and smooth stones of varied earth tones were carefully arranged on their flanks and necks like jewelry. Even though the kelpie color palette was far more restricted than the normal range of pony coat colors, it was still easy to distinguish them – maybe even more so than for ponies, as these creatures seemed to go out of their way just to make themselves stand out.

In the center of the madness, the two stars sat – Beta, comfortably and at ease; Twilight, nervously and on edge. She’d never made any sort of public appearance as a political figure before – hay, the last time she’d been in front of a large crowd as the center of attention had been when she’d given a speech as valedictorian of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. She was certain that would be nothing at all like what was about to happen. There were books about it that she could consult to ease her mind, true…but of course, she didn’t have any of them, and she hadn’t had any time to peruse the library Beta claimed she had.

“Calm down a bit, Alpha!” Beta advised. “Today’s going to be simple. Just a quick jaunt down the main boulevard and a feast in Lord Measured Speech’s castle.”

“What if I do something to ruin everything?” she asked worriedly. “I’ve never done this before! What if I trip, or say something I shouldn’t say and cause an international incident, or insult an ambassador by accident – I don’t know any of the cultural norms here, I don’t know what’s acceptable or not – oh, stars, what if I use the wrong fork for my salad?”

“Was that really an issue on Equus?” she snorted. “Really?”

“Yes, it was an issue!” she snapped. “Proper table etiquette is important when dealing with the nobility! There’s a fork for salads, a fork for the main course, a dessert fork – no, was that a dessert spoon?” She racked her brain, trying to remember – was it a dessert fork or a dessert knife or a dessert spoon? Were sporks acceptable to use when dining with ponies of the upper class? How many different knives were there?

“Alpha, take a deep breath and calm down,” Beta ordered. Twilight nodded and tried to get her anxiety under control. “Everything will go perfectly. Measured Speech is a personal friend of mine. The food will be excellent, as it always is, and the people will love us as they always do. There will not be any assassination attempts, there will not be any foreign ambassadors to embarrass, if you commit a faux pas I’ll cover for you, and for the love of Caelum stop worrying about dessert forks. Or spoons. Or knives. I don’t know what kind of elaborate dining scheme Equestrian aristocrats have, but we don’t have it here.”

“Wonderful,” she muttered. “I have to figure out a new dining scheme in the presence of nobility.”

“Just remember that you’re at the top of the heap now, Alpha,” Beta said. “Judgment is the least of your worries. You’re one of the two kelpies on this planet who makes sure the crops grow and the livestock have enough to eat, and whose light keeps the bugganes in their holes half the day.”

“Bugganes?”

Beta grimaced. “There are some things I’m almost glad you can’t remember.” A pair of younger kelpies pushed a cart up to them, on which lay two piles of metal regalia. Beta thanked them and said to Twilight, “Almost showtime! Time to get the adornments of office on.”

Twilight lifted a necklace with her magic – it seemed to be made of smooth lapis lazuli stones linked by a delicate tracery of gold threads. On the front of it was a plate embossed with a trio of four-pointed stars – the same design she’d seen on Beta’s torc when she crashed into the hill. “What does that symbolize?” she asked curiously, trying to distract herself from her impending reveal.

“You, me, Proxi,” Beta answered, pointing first to the largest of the three stars, next to a smaller star above and to the left of the large star, and last to an even smaller star below and to the right of the big one. “We came up with it when we first started to rule our subjects more directly. The symbol of the weird old priesthood had…some bad connotations. Especially after – you know.”

“No, I don’t,” she reminded Beta. “Two thousand years? Several – apparently – reincarnations?”

Beta turned stoically away. “We – Proxima and I – used the old triskelion symbol when we tried to dethrone you,” she managed to respond, after a few seconds. “During the War of Nightmares.”

Twilight didn’t press further. She floated the necklace around her neck and let it settle around it, tugging at it and determining that it had adhered to her coat. The hoof coverings were similar to what Celestia and Luna wore in public, and rather simple; they were gold, and devoid of further detail. She slipped them on without incident, taking pains to make sure they were facing forward and in a comfortable position so she wouldn’t have to summon a stormcloud to get them to come off.

The flurry of activity was starting to die down now. They were in a mid-sized room in a public building at the end of the main road of Uisceban, a wide cobblestone boulevard lined with oak trees older than their reign, from what she’d seen from above when they’d flown in. Sunslight flowed in through a wide pair of frosted glass doors that led out onto a small porch with wide staircases sweeping around toward the ground. Kelpies of the City Guard now took their positions to either side of the doors and prepared to open them; Twilight and Beta stood up.

“Walk forward next to me,” Beta instructed her quickly. “They have to see that we’re equals. Don’t stray behind or rush ahead. Calm, measured pace. Don’t let them see any fear or nervousness – put on a mask. Smile some, if you want. You’re a Queen of Domhan, Alpha” – she smiled – “remember that.” Twilight nodded.

“Starting in five!” Silver Tongue, Beta’s personal aid, declared. She stood against the right-hoof wall, clipboard stuck firmly to her foreleg. She gave them an encouraging smile. “Four…”

"Three..."

Twilight swallowed nervously as they stood before the door. No turning back now…

“Two…”

“One…”

The doors swung open, and the room was flooded with the roar of a city.

It took all of Twilight’s willpower to force herself to take that first step onto the porch next to Beta, but as soon as she did, a wave of calm overcame her. She knew exactly what she had to do and how she had to do it. She grinned, and the crowd’s voice surged louder. Rolling thunder filled the air as thunderbirds perched on rooftops rattled their wings; howling mixed in with the kelpies’ voices as wolves joined in. She matched her pace with Beta’s as they descended their separate staircases and met an honor guard composed of soldiers from both the Royal and City Guard, who fanned out and added a second layer of security to the pickets already stationed at regular intervals on the edge of the onlookers. Camera flashes went off as journalists snapped pictures for what would almost surely be front page news - she could already see the headlines. "Ancient Queen Returns!" they would proclaim. "Alpha Centauri Regina Reclaims Vacant Throne!"

“You seem to have gotten over your fear,” Beta commented happily, about halfway down the boulevard. Their pace had remained even for almost twenty minutes; it would be another twenty to the coral-stone castle at the far end of the street.

“I’ve always liked our subjects,” Alpha responded. “I hope whatever nobility has grown under you is half as pleasant.”

“I've always liked Measured Speech,” Beta said. “I’m sure this will be a feast to remember. Tomorrow we’ll be visiting Caisleanard – the ruling family there is one you’re familiar with, don’t worry! They never gave up hope I’d find you, either.”

The rest of the walk to the Castle passed uneventfully, if accompaniment by thousands of cheering kelpies and wolves and thunderbirds could be considered “uneventful”. The crowd thinned out near the end of the boulevard, where Measured Speech’s Guard had established a security cordon. A tapering semicircular staircase, wide at the base and narrow at the top, lead up to an open double door in a gatehouse that seemed almost purely ornamental; the lord himself was waiting at the top when they arrived.

“Welcome, esteemed guests,” the kelpie stallion rumbled, bowing low. His coat was silver, and studded with dozens of opals – grey as well, though they iridesced in the sunslight. He had a short, pointed beard, devoid of seaweed – Twilight noted with scientific interest how that seemed to be limited to manes on kelpies – and his mane was tied back in a queue. “I trust your journey has left you both with an insatiable appetite, my Queens?”

“I am hungry, at least,” Beta laughed. “I hope it’s up to your usual standards. Visiting your castle has always been an honor for my stomach!”

He laughed good-naturedly. “The cooking staff assure me it will be delicious, my friend, and the honor is all mine.” He turned his eyes toward Twilight. “And here we have your sister – the long-lost leader of our people, Alpha Centauri, Alpha Incorruptible, the ancient Queen. I’m sure you have some interesting stories to share of your long exile.”

“Maybe,” she replied, smiling. “Two thousand years is enough to forget a few, at least.”

He laughed again. “Certainly, it’s time enough to forget more than what we mere mortals can learn in a lifetime! Perhaps we’ll learn a bit of what you’ve forgotten over the course of our meal, hm?”

“Perhaps,” she agreed.

“I suppose that’s all I can hope for right now. Always in motion, after all, the future is.” He stepped aside and swept a foreleg towards the open door. “After you, please, my Queens.”

Confidently, Twilight stepped through the door – Beta following almost immediately after.

The dream where Rainbow Dash met Cloud Ferry again was different from the last time. Instead of a pleasant garden, she found herself in a dark room, seated in a plush red velvet chair. She wore a different ridiculous dress than last time, though she lacked a hat thankfully. Past a few rows of seats in front of her, she couldn’t see anything. She had the sense that she was in some kind of huge theatre.

With an echoing clack, a single spotlight snapped on, its brilliant shaft of white light shining down on Cloud Ferry herself, bedecked solely in a modest feathered cap and laying lazily across the front of the stage. As seats went, Rainbow Dash had a fairly good one – of course, when one is the only patron to show up, any seat is a good one. She was about to say something, to start to make her case, but Cloud Ferry pre-empted her and began to recite what Dash assumed was her line from the play.

“O for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention!” she exclaimed. “A queendom for a stage, Princesses to act, and time-worn stars to behold the swelling scene - then should the selfish Rainbow Dash, like herself, assume the port of Ghealach; and at her heels, leash’d in like hounds, should rashness, idiocy, and ill judgment crouch for employment.” Lazily she rolled off the stage and landed on her hooves, facing away from her guest. “Fair denizens of her mind, I give you the tyrant fool herself! What mad schemes doth she have to share with us, her constituency?”

“Cloud Ferry!” Dash shouted, before she could continue monologuing. “I need your help.”

“Why, my dear, should I help you?” she hissed, turning to face the pegasus. Her eyes burned with barely checked violence. “Your supernatural aid has imprisoned me here on a stage unseen by mortal eyes already. What incentive, what rationalization, might remain to me to justify lending my hoof in aid? Piecing together a mind again, while choking in the detritus of yours, is nothing if not energy-intensive.”

“I need to get Twilight back. She’s my friend! I can’t just leave her with the creature that kidnapped her!” she insisted. Cloud Ferry snorted.

“And you would deliver a world into the tender hooves of Ghealach to get her back?” She barked a laugh. “Single-minded madness, Rainbow Dash! Is she really worth it?”

“Of course she’s worth it!” Dash answered. “She’s my friend, and I’m the Bearer of Loyalty! It’s part of who I am! And the freak who has her messed with my head and made you and a dozen other phantoms appear!”

“You’re straying dangerously close to admitting this is also partially about revenge,” Ferry said, giving her trademark smirk. “Not so high above the crowd now, are you? What’s it like from the perspective of us groundlings, O incomparable Rainbow Dash?”

“I never thought I was better than anypony!” Dash snapped. “Look, I just need you to somehow contaminate my aura with unicorn magic.”

“Is that jealousy I detect in your motives?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Ghealach needs somepony with a unicorn magic sense so she can help me escape my house,” Dash explained, forcing her temper back under control. “Princess Luna decided I was nuts and trapped me in my own home.”

“Oh, you poor dear, I can’t possibly imagine what that’s like,” Ferry groaned with mock sympathy, leaning forward into a chair and casually sweeping a foreleg out to encompass the darkened theatre. “All the world a stage, and to be confined to a bit part in some shadowy backwater unsuitable even for burlesque.”

Dash sighed. “What do I have to do for your help?”

“Make her let me go,” she replied instantly, focusing with an almost frightening intensity on Rainbow Dash. “Let me out, and I’ll do my best to help.”

“No way!” she shouted. “Why, so you can keep messing with my head all the time?”

“Maybe, maybe not.” She shrugged innocently. “Those are my terms. Nonnegotiable. Be glad I’m not asking for more.”

“Like what?”

“Total control of your body,” she answered. She grinned ferally at Dash’s sudden silence. “Count your blessings, Rainbow Dash. I’d give a quick answer, too, if I were you – I could change my mind at any time…”

She gritted her teeth frustratedly. “That’s ridiculous. Isn’t there anything else you want?”

“Take it or leave it,” she said. “And here I was, thinking you wanted your friend back.”

“I do!” she exclaimed. With an even more frustrated sigh, she yielded. “Okay, fine. You want to be free again? You can be free again. After you help me out.”

“I don’t know – the deal seems a bit one-sided…” Ferry murmured thoughtfully.

“That’s all you’re going to get,” Dash declared with a smile. “Take it or leave it.”

“How do you expect me to help, anyways?” she asked with a shrug. “Have you thought that part out?”

“I don’t know. Do whatever you were doing before.” She shrugged. “I kind of assumed you were doing it on purpose.”

Cloud Ferry nodded and smiled – a genuine smile, not a smirk, though Dash had the sneaking suspicion it was an act. “I might have an idea, then. Very well; I agree to your terms, unfair as they may be. I’ll start as soon as you leave my pitiful show-room.”

“Thanks.” In the waking world, she stirred; the dream began to break down. It was almost a sensation like flying – the gentle, unguided ascent that came from catching a strong thermal over an open field. She rose out of the dream, into the off-white space between dream and reality – and that was when Cloud Ferry struck.

The void around her strobed with magical light as the phantom’s presence crashed against her. For an instant, the struggle transcribed itself into physical feelings – Ferry’s body slammed into her midsection, folding Dash’s wings around her body protectively and sending them plummeting back down into the twilight of unreality they’d escaped from; for an instant, she couldn’t feel her real body jerking on the couch. Something snapped; something was mauling her. In a confusing impression of feathers and blood, Rainbow Dash screamed and redoubled her efforts to wake up.

With a herculean effort of will, Dash yanked herself free from Cloud Ferry, and the void was filled with the sound of her screaming now – raw, agonized, shocked emotion, like she’d just stabbed the phantom through the heart. In her house, Rainbow Dash tumbled off her couch and landed on a burning wing.

“I take it your visit went well?” Ghealach asked, a faint smile on her lips, as Dash staggered to her hooves. Her eyes were darting around frantically, jumping from shadow to shadow, corner to corner – she had to have another attack planned! She was trying to kill her! Her own mind was trying to kill her!

After a few minutes, it became apparent that whatever Cloud Ferry had been planning, it was over now. She forced her tensed muscles to relax again, and swallowed her fear before speaking. “Uh, well – I thought it was going good. Then she attacked me!”

“I assume this was the cause for the sudden bout of spasming?

“…Yeah.” She shook her head and tugged her hooves out of the cloud floor. They immediately began to sink through again. “Uh – something’s wrong.”

Ghealach’s eyes flared with power as she cast an aura visualizer spell – a promising sign in and of itself. The sphere appeared in the air between them, and this time it was immediately obvious there was a very serious problem – the sphere was split in half down the center, divided against itself into a white hemisphere and a blue hemisphere, both streaked heavily with silver. The Dust Sentinel nodded approvingly.

“Your plan has worked,” she declared. “You shall have as much of my power as can be spared. We should move to secure Discord’s supply of powder – “

Dash’s hoof broke through the bottom of her cloud floor and found open sky.

An upwelling of primal fear burst into her mind, and before she could get a lid on it she was bolting through the hallway to the kitchen, through the kitchen to the back hall, through the back hall to Tank’s room, and skidding across the solid cloudstone floor that room had, breathing heavily. There was solid ground beneath her again – she was safe. I’m safe.

Tank poked his head out of his shell and blinked at her as she shuddered, before pulling back in again, deciding against intervening. Dash sat down and relished the feeling of solidity again, hovering on the verge of swearing off flying forever just to avoid putting empty sky between her and the ground ever again.

Okay. Fear of falling, she thought. That’s a natural pegasus thing, right? That’s not me being crazy, right?

Cloud Ferry smirked at her from the cloudy wall. It could be, she sang silently. Dash blinked and she vanished.

“If you are finished galloping, Rainbow Dash, perhaps we could begin our journey to the Everfree Forest,” Ghealach suggested from the doorway of the room. Dash smiled sheepishly.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess we should do that.” She stood up before a thought crossed her mind. “Buck. How are we going to get down?”

Ghealach smiled. “You have access to lunar magic now. We get down how I would get down.”

“And that way is…?”

Her navigational sense told her she was moving in every direction at once, including several which didn’t exist. Her stomach turned and bucked against the control of her brain. Finally, with a gut-wrenching, perception-scrambling ripping, she was pulled out of the real world and into the instantaneous folding of a teleport. Where she and Ghealach had been, wisps of cloud flowed in to plug the vacuum nature so abhors. Determinedly unconcerned, Tank didn’t even poke his head back out of his shell.

Author's Note

This story is now officially the longest thing I have ever written. I feel quite pleased with myself.

Thanks for all the feedback I've been getting so far, critical and praising. It's a big help, both in alerting me to plot holes and such and keeping me focused here!

Chapter 19: Under New Management

Kelpies bustled past on either side, giving Beta a wide berth as she stormed down the Long Corridor to the throne room. Tall windows let in water-mottled light, casting swirling shadows across the opposite wall – it was dark. She supposed that meant there was a storm up on the surface. It was dark enough that Rookwind's feathers hardly gleamed at all, though they still rattled as he strode behind her.

Idiot! she berated herself mentally again. Poorly handled, extremely poorly handled. You don't even have to be her to -

She paused at an intersection and took a calming breath. Thinking like that would get her nowhere. She had made a mistake, and mistakes could be corrected. It wasn't her first error and it wouldn't be her last. She'd just have to apologize to Alpha somehow. Granted, she would have had to confront Watchful's death sometime, but when presented abruptly like that...Beta could only hope any residue left from the horned-kelpie life had insulated her somewhat. Her apparent disappearance for almost three days now made that seem increasingly unlikely. She could only hope Alpha wasn't too scarred.

Three days gone. She tried desperately hard to not read too much into that. Caelum, if she'd...she wouldn't think about that. She simply refused to consider it.

“There are a number of new faces here today, my Queen,” Rookwind rumbled, eying the passing kelpies. “I am beginning to wonder who allowed them into private halls.”

There were a number of new faces today, Beta realized, grateful for the distraction. Mainly the faces of the elderly – not too old, but they had age to their features. Wrinkles at the corner of their eyes, laugh lines; when most palace servants were recruited young and retired early, older kelpies tended to stand out. The brightly colored vests they wore didn't help them blend in much, either. Curious. She extended a wing to block the path of one as he tried to hurry past her.

“You are new here,” she said. It wasn't technically a question, but he answered anyways to be safe.

“Aye, I am, my Queen.” He bowed. “Th' Queen Alpha has hired me. Copyist duties, was my job description. I'm literate, see – point of pride in my family for generations!”

“A copyist?” Beta frowned. “Alpha hired you?”

“Yes ma'am,” he confirmed. “Just this morning, actually. It's my first day on the job, and I'm supposed to copy a specific almanac in the Archive. This one” - he turned slightly so she could see a slip of parchment with a title scrawled on it, stuck securely to his flank - “you see? And her majesty's in a right furor, she is, and I'd prefer not to keep her waiting. So, uh, if you'll excuse me, your majesty...”

She let her wing drop, and he went on his way, rapidly. She suppressed a twinge of irritation that servants never rushed on her account. Sure, they got things done, but their speed left something to be desired.

“It would seem Queen Alpha was not informed of the palace's hiring policy,” Rookwind said, watching the new servant – the new scribe – depart. “Perhaps spending some time bringing her up to date on your laws would be worthwhile, my Queen – before she hires a buggane as her personal guard captain.”

“I'm sure she wouldn't go that far,” Beta replied, giving a forced chuckle. Her mind was still digesting this new information. Alpha was hiring? Hiring scribes? To copy almanacs? Why? What were her reasons?

Blast it, what had she been doing for three days?

“Come on,” she ordered, picking up her pace. “We'll have hell from the nobility during court today, I can tell. I'll hurry through it and we'll deal with Alpha.”

Deal with? she thought as the corridor flew past. What exactly do I mean by that?

It almost worried her that she didn't know. And that “almost” did worry her.

The remainder of the Long Corridor – the hallway running the perimeter of the palace, from its coral facade to the portions of it buried deeply in the submerged rock face it was carved from – was marked by steadily thickening crowds of liveried staff. She noted representatives from major noble houses, both supporters and detractors of her; they all came to petition in Court. Sometimes she thought she may have created too large of a nobility – and then she would recall that nobles bred like rabbits and determine that the majority of the issue wasn't her fault. They kept themselves in line, mostly – that was a small comfort.

The Corridor terminated in a vaulted, glorified waiting room, built in emulation of Caelum's own throne room, with the modification of the throne being absent and the great window replaced by a massive oaken door. She'd always liked oak. In the context of the door, the dark wood combined with the magically rust-free iron straps that held it together was suitably impressive for the entrance to a throne room, without stooping to opulence.

The room was packed with nobles and filled with an angry buzz of conversation. A bubble cleared around her immediately – she was the Queen after all, or a Queen at least, and even among the nobility that commanded a certain degree of respect. Or, most times it did.

“Queen Beta, the usurper - “

“She's barred us from - “

“Commoners allowed to - “

“I had to obey one of those accursed - “

“She's refused to hear our - “

The cacophony of complaints ceased the instant she raised a hoof for silence. She shared a worried glance with Rookwind before demanding of the assembled nobility, “What is your complaint?”

“She's barred us from entering the throne room or presenting our petitions before her!” a noblemare wailed.

“We've been forbidden from – in her words – 'interfering' with the new servants!” a stallion complained. “I asked one to fetch me a glass of wine while I waited and he laughed – actually laughed – in my face, and told me to get it myself!”

“Worse, we've been forced to obey them!” another whined. “We have to get out of their way if they tell us to, fetch them paper if they require it of us - “

“Who has done this?” Beta interrupted, though she had a feeling she already knew.

“Alpha Centauri!” several nobles answered at once.

“You must do something, Queen Beta!” one shouted. “She's upset the natural order!”

“She'll send us tumbling into anarchy, my Queen!”

“Please, make her see reason!”

“You must stop her before the nation collapses around us!”

“Well, well,” Rookwind chuckled. He sounded pleased. “It seems your sister has managed to put the fear of the suns back into these.”

“This is no laughing matter, Rookwind,” she responded irritably. “I thought I made clear to Alpha that her inexperience made her a poor choice for co-rule at the moment, and this only proves my point. Hiring new servants, I can accept – but we rely upon the nobility for support, and if she'd alienated these houses...” She shook her head disbelievingly. Two days alone, and Alpha did this?

“I would suggest dealing with the heart of the matter directly,” Rookwind said. “And I believe I still owe Queen Alpha a security briefing.”

The crowd parted before her again, retreating in silence as she trotted up to the door to the throne room. Before she could even reach for the iron door handle, the thick slab of oak swung open abruptly and rammed into her face.

“Ah! Oh, er – Queen Beta!” stammered the scribe who had opened it. She realized she was on the ground, staring up at the ceiling. The wrinkled servant looked properly terrified of what he'd done. “My apologies! I thought the guards had warned nobles to stay away from – er, not that I'm calling - “

She dispersed her physical form into a cloud of stardust, to gasps of shock from the assembled nobility, flowed around the servant, and recoalesced on the opposite side of the doorway. With a flicker of magic, she slammed the door shut. The sound echoed impressively through the cavernous throne room.

Okay, she thought, walking calmly down the center of the room towards the dais the triple thrones rested on. Alpha was there, surrounded by a cloud of parchment and scrolls, her eyes flicking impatiently from one text to the other as they swung around to replace each other in her field of vision. Apologize for prior behavior, assure her that she won't be irrelevant, set a timeline to restore royal powers to her. Desired time of a hundred years, suggest two hundred at the beginning to make the actual desire seem like a grudging compromise. I can handle this.

“You may approach,” Alpha said. Her voice was soft, but it carried. Beta had the absurd feeling that she was a filly being summoned for discipline – but she was a Queen, a star! Alpha was still struggling to recall her time as both.

“You upset the nobility, Alpha,” she said, once she was close enough that she didn't have to shout. The lighting coming from the three windows at the end of the chamber was dim, but enough to read by apparently, or Alpha would have summoned a mage-light. Surely, she hadn't adapted to perfect night vision so quickly. “And what is this about hiring new servants?”

“They're scribes,” Alpha replied, glancing up from what seemed to be a report on the taxation of Lady Gilded Lily's demesne. “You mentioned that books are rare and most of Domhan is completely illiterate. I intend to rectify that state of things as quickly as possible – starting with establishing local libraries in as many cities as I can reach! I've hired as many kelpies as can read or write in An Cathair, and I've set them all to copying every last text in the Archive by hoof, since thaumaturgy itself seems to have stagnated here, and hasn't produced anything approaching a duplication spell.”

“But they can't read,” Beta pointed out. “How is that going to change things besides draining the treasury?”

“I'll have the scribes hold classes to teach them – free of charge for anyone who wants to attend.” Alpha smiled. “If all goes well, we should see a literacy rate of fifty percent within thirty years. Then, maybe, things can start advancing again.”

Too fast! “However successful you think it will be – no, that's not important!” Beta snapped. “What is important is that you don't have the authority yet to implement anything like this - “

She fell silent as the sound of the door slamming shut rang through the throne room like a gong, followed by the clicking of claws on stone and the faint rattling roar of a thunderbird's feathers. Rookwind spoke a second later. “This youngster was quite insistent on seeing you personally, Alpha Centauri. Started waving around a flyer of some sort and saying she could read it.” He chuckled. “She had most of the nobility cowed and cringing backwards just by her approach.”

“Excellent!” Alpha's smile widened into a grin. “Step out of the way, Beta, we can talk in a moment.”

“I, as Queen, will deal with this!” she answered, rounding on the kelpie – barely older than a filly – that Rookwind had escorted in. She had a pale green coat, a short mane, and a band of smooth brown stones encircling her neck, and a determined look on her face that hardly faltered when confronted with a being twice her height with a flaming mane. “What is your name?”

“Red Wave, your majesty,” she answered evenly. “I'm here about - “

“You're not wanted. I am trying to - “ She broke off when Alpha's magic surrounded her and jerked her out of the way.

“Honestly, Beta, if you intend to interfere with my business, leave the throne room.” Her sister sighed, annoyed, but it didn't make it to her voice when she spoke to Red Wave. The cloud of documents parted to give her a clear view before she asked, “You read my notice?”

“Yes, Queen Alpha,” she replied. Her voice was warm. “My grandsire taught me how to read, and the writing came naturally after that. I've been doing it since I was a little filly. I even...” She smiled sheepishly. “I, uh, may have written a few things myself. Nothing important, just a few scraps, but...”

“Perfect!” Alpha said. “Would you prefer scribe work, proofing or organization? Maybe compilation? The Archive is a mess right now, and I need every helping hoof I can get, especially in putting some of the older texts back together.” She snorted. “Who am I kidding? They're all older texts. Nothing of worth has been published here for almost a century.”

“Scribe work is copying books?”

“Yep. Copying, re-copying, and binding.”

“My writing isn't that good,” she admitted. “Grandsire says he can hardly read it. How much will proofing pay? I mean, helping to teach more kelpies how to read is nice and all, but my mother was injured on the job a few weeks back, and paying for her food and my own has been taxing...”

“Move her into the servants' quarters with you,” Alpha suggested. “Free meals twice a day.”

“You can't move her into the servants' quarters!” Beta exclaimed. Just giving away room and board to any kelpie off the street would bankrupt the crown, if the libraries didn't!

“Don't be ridiculous, Beta. There's plenty of space, and besides – they're for servants and immediate family. Her mother is immediate enough to qualify.”

“But the cost - “

“Do you know how often ponies keep books past their due date?” Alpha chuckled. “Once literacy starts climbing, library fines should easily cover meals for a few extra boarders here.”

“You can't fund a palace with library fines!”

“Then perhaps we should find an alternate source of income besides the salt tax and crystal mines?” She turned to Red Wave. “Go find Strident Shoals. Older mare, can't miss her. She'll be wearing a red vest with a gold fringe. I think I saw her last somewhere near the storage rooms where we're keeping book copies. She's in charge of proofing. She'll give you your vest and your assignments.”

“Thank you, Queen Alpha.” Red Wave curtsied quickly and galloped off.

When the door had slammed shut for a third time, Rookwind gave her a curious look. “What is the significance of the vests?”

“An organizational technique I learned back in Equestria. It helps ponies – er, kelpies – know who's doing what job. Boosts efficiency and makes them less likely to slack off,” she answered, and turned towards Beta again. “So.”

“And what, precisely, do you suggest as a new source of income?” she asked. Her voice was barely louder and more cordial than a hiss. Caelum above, she'd come here to dress her down, not be lectured on how best to run her own government and be shunted aside like a common functionary! “Do you suggest we conjure crystals out of thin air?”

“Don't be silly, Beta. I'm well aware of how severely that would affect inflation – I took an entire course on economic theory back in Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns,” Alpha answered. “And then I read everything I could find in my personal collection on the subject. Midas the Morose was quite explicit in how bad magically-obtained gold is for the economy and family relationships, and I can only assume crystals are the same. Instead, I propose we change this.”

The tax report detached itself from the brooding flock of pages that hovered behind Alpha and zipped over to Beta. As near as she could tell from looking at the final page, where the survey traditionally concluded with the amount of taxes due based on the wealth of the property holder's lands, Gilded Lily owed nothing to the crown. The surveyor had made that, in Alpha's own words, quite explicit – he had circled in red the line proclaiming “Landed Nobility – Taxation Exempt”. And then underlined it for emphasis. Several times. Angrily, if the denting left by the pencil tip in the vellum was any sort of indication.

“What are you talking about?” Beta asked, puzzled. She glanced over the rest of the summary; everything seemed to be in order. Gilded Lily was a personal friend of hers; she knew she wouldn't try to disguise any source of income she had. Why should she? Cheaper to report honestly and not pay taxes. Had she been a merchant, things might have been different – tax collectors had numerous reports of doctored ledgers and misreported income coming from that class – but the nobility were honest to a fault.

“She isn't paying any taxes,” Alpha answered simply, like it should be self-evident.

“She doesn't have to.”

“Exactly!” She pulled another few survey reports down from the cloud. “Diamond Eyes, Golden Horseshoe, Glittering Darkness, Stalwart Tower – none of these kelpies are paying any taxes! It's bad enough that the wolves can't be taxed, and the thunderbirds evidently pay their taxes through military service and weather control – which needs to be regulated, apparently the eyries don't submit copies of their rain schedules to us, even just for record-keeping purposes – but the landed nobility have to pay taxes. I would suggest making everyone pay taxes, but in this system it seems that the nobles and merchants are the only ones who have anywhere near enough to make taxation worthwhile.” She shook her head sadly. “Honestly, it's no wonder the Domhanane are so illiterate! With the kind of income we have now, a school system, no matter how rudimentary, would send us so deep into the red we might as well just sell the queendom to Equestria.”

“We can't tax the nobility!”

“Why?”

“Because – well, we'd lose their support!” she tried to rationalize. “If we started taxing them like commoners, they'd revolt, and we'd be run off the planet!” I can't just demand money from my supporters! They'd revolt, almost certainly! Stalwart Tower, Glittering Darkness, Diamond Eyes – does she even know who she's suggesting I take money from? She suppressed a shudder at the idea of fighting the combined personal guards of the three largest land owners besides the crown in Domhan. Alpha didn't even notice.

“We control the suns, Beta.” She snorted. “If we really had to we could incinerate anything a rebellion could throw at us.”

“You see? This is why I don't think you're ready to be a Queen again yet!” Finally, an opening! If she could just retake control of the conversation, she could steer things back towards the outcome she'd wanted in the first place, and defuse this horrible plan before it had a chance to blow up in her face. War against Stalwart Tower...Caelum above, she'd have to somehow rope the bugganes into her service again just to have a snowball's chance on Proxima Centauri of keeping power! “Alpha, you've been gone for two thousand years, and still can't remember most of that time, much less what came before. I've been ruling over a stable, happy queendom for that same amount of time. I have experience that you lack. Once you remember your time as a star again - “

“I remember visiting that cave where Proxi first told us we would have the allegiance of the dragons,” Alpha interrupted softly. Beta froze. No – no, she couldn't. “I remember her complaining about how unoriginal we were in making Domhan. I...I remember sitting on a hill on...Beltane, I think...and watching Proxima Centauri rising when it shouldn't.”

Oh, please, Caelum, don't let her remember that day. Let her remember anything else – let her remember my Fall – before she remembers that day.

She tried to speak again. She found that, inexplicably, she couldn't. She swallowed nervously, waiting for the axe to drop. Leaving her on that hilltop had been a mistake. An extremely, horribly, incredibly bad mistake. She could only hope the price for that error would be cheap.

“I...I remember...Proxima...” Alpha shivered, and Beta could guess at what she remembered. She pressed on, regardless. “But anyways, Rookwind, did you ever prepare that security briefing I requested? I apologize for my sudden disappearance, but I think it will be for the better, eventually.”

“My Queen?” Even Thunderclaw Rookwind, that kind-hearted, sensitive and empathetic individual, could tell Alpha wasn't saying something, and whatever she wasn't saying was eating at her. She gave him a hard look and he cleared his throat. “Of course, Queen Alpha. After re-examining the current state of the Guard and - “

“She will not be Queen again for some time yet, Captain Rookwind,” Beta interjected. “I order you to - “

“I countermand that, Captain,” Alpha cut her off, “and, having done a little research myself, I would like to know more about contingency plans we have for emergency situations.”

“Of course, Queen Alpha.” The thunderbird shot an apologetic look towards Beta. She fumed, but silently. She was not going to let this degenerate into foalish bickering. Not in front of Rookwind, at least.

“Start with this one, please.” An ancient sheaf of parchment emerged from the heart of the cloud of documents behind Alpha, the other papers parting before it like the waters of an ocean before a prophet. It glowed with magenta light for a moment and a pair of copies split from it, one floating towards Rookwind and one towards Beta. She knew what it was from the moment that parchment came out. Any anger she might have felt had drained away and left her feeling hollow. Of all the things for Alpha to find decaying in a scroll rack somewhere, she had to find that. Everything was collapsing around her, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. And that, for several reasons, and one in particular that she preferred to avoid thinking about, terrified her.

“A while ago, sister, you mentioned 'safeties' that you had in place,” Alpha said softly. “I was curious. I found this after poking around in the Archive for a few hours yesterday. Rookwind?”

The thunderbird cleared his throat again and nodded. “Where shall I start?”

“The summary, please. The particulars are obsolete, I'm sure – or I would be if I'd thought anything had changed since then.” The way Alpha said 'anything' made Beta's stomach sour.

“Very well.” He straightened himself and read in his gravelly voice, “After the events of Samhain, Year One-Hundred and Seventy-Two After Victory, it was found to be expedient to outline a chain of command for the Queendom should the Queen ever become incapable of performing her duties. Enumerated within is the precedence of the various offices of the Triarchy and - “

“Skip ahead to the portion detailing the conditions under which a Queen may be considered 'incapable of performing her duties' please.”

“Of course, my Queen.” The pages on his copy turned themselves until they reach a point about halfway through. “Under the following conditions, the Queen shall be considered incapable of fulfilling her duties as Triarch. One – in the event of corruption by spirits or magics unknown. Two – in the event of a disappearance lasting no less than three days' length, which shall be treated as indication of corruption occuring - “

“Stop.” Alpha turned to Beta. Beta felt on the verge of simply abandoning her corporeal form and retreating back to her star for a few days. “I looked into the events occurring on Samhain of One-Seven-Two AV. Eyewitness accounts are in complete agreement. On that day, after three days gone missing, you were found half-insane outside of the city of Scathbuaic. Your coat was pitch black, your eyes looked like, and I quote, “a dragon's pitiless globes,” and you had cowed a buggane council into submission. When the wolf pack that escorted you back found you, you were unconscious in the middle of a badly scorched region of pine forest, where the dirt had been vaporized down to the bedrock in some places. You were surrounded by six almost unrecognizably damaged bugganes, and fourteen charred wolf skeletons from the first wolfpack to find you.”

“I fixed that,” she whispered. It sounded pathetic even to herself.

“The next time you wish to talk about my qualification to rule, sister...don't.” The copies vanished. “If someone who is still trying to fight her Nightmare – don't try to deny it! - can rule alone, I think someone inexperienced at ruling anything bigger than a library can reign as co-Queen.”

Beta nodded, but behind her defeated facade her mind was churning furiously, despite how ill she was feeling. I can turn this to my advantage, she thought. I can find some way to curb her, stop her – even just slowing her down would be good! Libraries in every city? Reading lessons for the peasantry? Taxing the landed nobility? How in the vast blackness of space can I turn this into anything but a PR nightmare?

Author's Note

Also...wow that was a lot of comments o_o Seeing a debate over something I've written was interesting - in a good way! Comparing predictions of the plot from you guys with my own plans was fun.

As always, I am welcoming of comments, critical and non, and upvotes never hurt. Enjoy the new chapter!