The Center is Missing

Chapter One hundred twenty-four

The Strongest Wind that Blows

Twilight’s parents had interacted with Rainbow’s some, but were not close, and when their daughters entered the boardroom with Princess Luna gliding behind, an invisible wall of tension broke. While Rainbow embraced her father and Twilight was embraced by hers, face empty, Luna closed the windows and drew the curtains. Bathing the room in dark magic, she took the table’s head and waited for everyone to settle. It was the same boardroom where the Elements had convened after their adventure, signed paperwork concerning their official stories, reviewed plans for Rarity’s boutique, discussed publicity, and taken hundreds of other meetings private and professional. Both goddesses, everyone important in the country it seemed had taken those worn seats.

“What’s today’s date?” Twilight asked.

“The ninth,” her mother said. “Two days, Twily. Are you excited?”

“Unfortunately, we are not coming together to discuss the reception,” Luna said. “I have enchanted this room to let no sound escape, and I am maintaining my most powerful spells to block Celestia from spying on us, if she tries. And if she does, we will have not much warning.”

“Haven’t our children suffered enough under you two?” Rainbow’s mother, Windy Whistles, stood and placed her forehooves on the table, a small but steadfast mare who left no question of where Rainbow had gotten her fierce streak.

“I agree.” Windy paused and stuttered, and Luna gave her a patient smile, a smile reserved for ponies who were not close to her. “Rainbow and Twilight need to go home now, and my sister is making that impossible. I have stepped in to assist them.”

“We asked her to,” Rainbow clarified. “But it’s not gonna be pretty. Just letting you know now.”

“And it’s not reversible.”

Twilight’s parents were already looking at her, they could see that Twilight was not well, and Luna began her preamble that death could be overcome under certain miraculous circumstances—not a commodity for the magically-endowed that Twilight and Rainbow knew it to be, but a marvelous, one-in-a-million feat, stars aligning and a secret wish granted, a goddess reaching down to breathe new life into clay. Twilight Velvet slowly turned her shocked gaze to the princess, but Night Light had eyes only for Twilight, who could not speak or even look up from the table. Even if it worked, and Twilight had to consider the possibility that it would not, she was throwing away too much. It had been a good idea at the time, but she could feel the hurt spreading through the room and knew that her heart wasn’t as hard as she liked to think. Just look up at them, Twilight, face them, she thought, tell them. Tell them you’re stealing yourself, diving down that scary black hole with no possibility of return, leaving only—yep, there they go, there, out in the midafternoon sun, caroming over the palace walls and the suburbs, out into the fields, up and away, over the clouds, gone, wheeling like seagulls, her soul and Rainbow’s, Luna speaking them away softly as she emphasized once more that neither daughter would be gone save for in flesh.

“It’ll be like they’re wearing perfect disguises, that’s all. Personalities one hundred percent intact, all memories, everything that makes them, them, will remain.” Dash’s parents were crying, her mother trying to hold it in for Rainbow’s sake, Rainbow with her head in her hooves and snuffling a reflective pool onto the table, and the father bawling. Twilight’s parents kept their composure, looking between Luna and Twilight as if expecting her to cut the princess off and say “that’s enough, I think we scared them. Here’s what we’re really doing.”

“You’ll still be alive,” Twilight Velvet eventually said, wincing as she interrupted Luna. “Just different. I understand it right?”

“Completely. Please know that we would never even consider doing this if it weren’t for Miss Sparkle’s unique situation.”

“If it was the Mansels, or something,” Rainbow cut in, face still hidden. “A mortal threat. Then we could deal with it in a less extreme way. But this is…”

Twilight shook her head sharply when her father touched her hoof. A stronger mare than she would put aside her feelings and help explain it to her parents; she would come clean and describe what had happened, not only in the palace with her irresponsible divination, but before that, the lies and the violence, the remorse whose sting had grown softer over time, at least so they would not have to guess. Twilight’s tongue was frozen, though, her mind foggy, her cloud of thoughts running on its own on a problem of no consequence, how much the party in Snowdrift must have cost to set up. She could not bring herself to speak, only cry, to rise and release herself into her mother’s coat, and what an image it was to them, Twilight who always had something to say, speechless while the princess talked of death and resurrection. That was the true sign, confirmation of what they feared, that their child had been swept away and returned to them harmed.

On the very first night, when the Elements flew in Twilight’s hot air balloon from Ponyville to Canterlot, babbling and worried, Twilight had found solace in the thought that perhaps it was all a dream. When daybreak came, she would open her crusty eyes and reach for a glass of water on the nightstand, and Spike would be snoring in his basket, and she would mumble and curse the sun while going downstairs in her robe and slippers, send a letter, reorganize some books, and then only later, over iced tea or on the way to Pinkie’s latest party, recount her nightmare. “It’s gone on a little long, hasn’t it, Twily?” her own voice mocked while she sobbed. But that’s how dreams always feel, a day can pass in the space of ten minutes behind closed eyelids.

“I wanna wake up,” she whispered, and her mother rubbed her back. Luna gave them the time they needed.

“We can’t tell you when we’re going to do it,” Rainbow said. She had recovered first, her face a mess but her voice strong. “But it’ll be fast and painless, I promise. Then we’ll just, well I don’t know how it works exactly, but we’ll wake up somewhere else, as someone else, and then that’s it. Princess Luna picks us up and takes us to Ponyville as the new Elements.”

“Who else knows?” Night Light asked softly. He had denied everything, though he worried it was too late when he saw Twilight after she got home. It was in her eyes then, small enough to wish away.

“The other Elements,” Luna said, “but not their parents. No one else. We’re minimizing the risk of my sister learning about it.”

“Is she that angry?” Rainbow’s father asked. “She can’t at least let Dash go?”

“I’m not abandoning Twilight, dad,” Rainbow mumbled.

“Princess Celestia doesn’t see these two the way you or I do,” Luna said. “I say this with deep regret, but to her, Twilight and Rainbow Dash are threats to her authority.”

“Me more than Rainbow,” Twilight managed. “You don’t know this, mom, dad, but I’ve learned a lot more about magic. Enough to challenge the princess on certain things.”

“Twilight scared her,” Rainbow said, a hint of pride in her voice.

“No small feat,” Luna agreed.

“That’s why my girl has to die,” Twilight Velvet said, and Twilight heard the note of anger buried in her voice, anger from a mare used to holding her feelings back. “Why a mother buries her daughter, because… you scared the princess? This is—this is the ruler of our nation, and you’re telling me she’s going after our daughter because she learned too much? What kind of a princess is she?”

“I…” Twilight had expended herself already, and father and mother looked at her for several expectant seconds.

“I have no adequate response for you, Mrs. Velvet,” Luna said, drawing their attention back. “My sister is far from perfect, particularly now, and in this, Twilight got too close at the wrong time.”

“What does that mean, ‘the wrong time’?” Night Light demanded. Twilight Velvet shook her head next to him, the rest of her body statue-still.

“Twilight challenged Celestia’s authority, and this is how she has chosen to respond, by forcing Twilight to live in the palace for the rest of her life, to give up her freedom. Please let me impress that if Celestia discovers what we are doing, I have no doubt in my mind that both of these incredible ponies will suffer greatly, and perhaps their friends as well.”

“She has no right!” Twilight Velvet yelled.

“She’s the goddess,” Rainbow said. “We can’t stop her. This is it, the best we can do.”

“We have to pretend to not know you,” Windy Whistles said. “Right?”

“Ludicrous!” Twilight Velvet slammed her hoof on the table. “I don’t care what it takes, your highness, but this can’t happen! You go,” here she stood up, facing Luna, who did not try to stop her. “Tell your mad sister to release these mares at once! Where is she, I’ll tell her myself if you won’t.”

Rainbow looked across at Twilight, who was slumped in her chair.

“I have told her multiple times that she is being unjust,” Luna said slowly. “She refuses to listen to reason, and I would implore that you not approach her. She won’t take kindly to it.”

“And we don’t take kindly to her trying to make our Dashie throw away her life,” Rainbow’s father said, standing as well. “I agree, where’s Princess Celestia?”

“Dad, please,” Rainbow moaned, looking at Twilight again, pleading for support. “You don’t want to get her attention.”

“Yes I do, Rainbow Dash. We’re not gonna stand by and lose you like this, that’s crazy!”

“We can stay in touch, just… you know, carefully.”

“Pen pals?” Windy Whistles asked angrily.

“So we have to pretend you’re what, the next Elements of Harmony?” Twilight Velvet asked, her temper spent already, standing beside her husband who had not stopped shaking his head for several minutes. “We can be friendly with you, that’s all? Twilight, honey… I’m your mother. Princess Celestia can’t do this to us.”

Twilight, addressed, took a deep breath that did not help. “It’s already happening, mom. The plan is in place, ponies are working… It’s happening. If Princess Celestia thinks—I don’t know.” She couldn’t look anyone in the eye.

“Please trust me, you don’t want her paying attention to you right now,” Rainbow repeated. “It won’t end well.”

“It’s ending bad right now,” Windy Whistles said.

“It can always get worse,” Twilight said.

“The first year will be difficult,” Luna said gently, “but after that, when Celestia has mourned and recovered, you will find that you can return to something much like normal. The names and shapes will be different, but these extraordinary ponies will still be your children. Behind closed doors, you can treat them that way.”

Daylight was already failing, and it would soon be the tenth of November, the day before their demise. Rainbow and Luna gradually calmed the parents, and Twilight stared on, and when Luna got up, she did not register what the princess said until she had left them. Privacy for the families, last words, reassurances and words of advice, all things Twilight had not given any thought to when they were speeding toward Canterlot. She wanted to remain silent, to stay inside her cocoon of self-reproach and let her parents break upon it, perhaps pass her by in time. For that, a momentary temptation appeared to tell them something horrible, invented or otherwise, to speed the process along, to cut them off completely and so quicken their loss. Rainbow wept between her mother and father, three pairs of drooping wings and colorful manes limp and long, a perversely gaudy display, counterpoint to Twilight and the parents who mirrored their daughter’s stunned silence. Returning to the dream, Twilight could only think in those terms, resistant to reason: “Any minute now, I’ll wake up, and when I do, I’ll take the train to Canterlot and tell my folks how much I love them.”

“So this really is goodbye?” Twilight Velvet asked at last.

“I don’t know what to say,” Twilight croaked.

“Not a thing?”

“Why me?” she thought, recognizing her mother’s scolding tone.

Night Light’s eyes cleared as he placed a steadying hoof on his wife’s foreleg. “I blame myself, Twily. I should have been there for you.”

“Why didn’t you come to us?” Twilight Velvet asked. “If we…” She looked away, angry at her own weakness. Like her daughter, Twilight Velvet had little use for excessive displays of emotion when there was a problem to be solved. She mastered herself after a few breathy sobs. “If either of us ever made you feel like you couldn’t come to us with anything, just know—” Her voice broke, and Twilight nodded.

“It’s not like that. I trust you completely, I love you, but…” But what? She wasn’t sure. It had never seemed right. “I don’t think I realized the trouble I was in until it was too late.”

“How can that be?”

“These things creep up on you. I felt like I was in control until, one day, I wasn’t, and there was no going back by that point.” She looked to Rainbow, who was explaining a similar thing to her parents, quietly, in a corner. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Night Light stared at her patiently.

“I know I am now, and I know there’s no forgiving it, but at the same time…” The cavalier tone, more than the words, was her undoing. “This is what’s happening.”

“It’s too late to stop you.” He sighed. “Let me guess, because there’s already a mechanism in place, plans that you laid that can’t be undone. You always made sure, whatever you did, that it couldn’t be stopped before you told anyone. We don’t get a say? Your own parents don’t a vote on your ‘temporary’ death, Twilight?”

She hung her head, knowing he had her. Even as a filly, that had been her way, asking forgiveness before permission.

“I don’t even want to look at you,” Twilight Velvet hissed. “Your entire life is still before you. Have you thought of that, of what you’re throwing away?”

Rainbow glanced over, and Twilight glowered at her.

“What life?” Twilight asked emptily, emotion thickening her voice. “I hate the palace, and I hate… I no longer trust Princess Celestia. She has us under guard.”

“Under guard?” Night Light repeated.

“She stations a guard at our doors each night, she’s been meeting me every day to interrogate me about my day. She asks me everything, what I did in the morning, the afternoon, what I ate, who I talked to, she has this, this notebook she records it all in.”

Her parents shared a dark look.

“Has she…”

“She hasn’t threatened me yet—yet. But she gets angry sometimes, if I seem like I’m not enjoying my time here. I remember…” Her cloud of thoughts was racing, finally off its tangent, feeding her conscious mind plausible details. “I sighed once and she accused me of being ungrateful, for the lodging and for my monthly stipend. I can’t practice magic, I can’t do any research, neither of us can go outside without a guard, and she expects us to treat it like early retirement.”

“That monster,” Twilight Velvet growled, Night Light nodding again, visibly overwhelmed. He knew his daughter’s will, and had never been able to fight it, even when she was young; for him, the argument had been over the minute it started. His wife understood, but Twilight did not, and took his silence for reluctance to believe her.

“Princess Celestia is constantly looking back, expecting me to cause trouble, and I can’t do anything without her knowing. Only with Princess Luna’s help, and if she hadn’t come along, I don’t know, I’d be… I don’t know.” On the other side of the room, she heard Rainbow’s father say “a fresh start.” Windy Whistles was nodding with a hint of a smile, and Twilight felt suddenly sick with envy.

“And she can’t be stopped,” Twilight Velvet said. “You and Princess Luna both believe that?”

“We know it.”

When night had fallen and Luna returned to check on them, everything had been said. Rainbow and her parents had cried themselves empty, but to Twilight, it felt like the feelings had simply gone away. It had taken her an hour, but she turned them to her side in the end, giving anecdotes of Celestia’s unfairness, her multiple attempts to intimidate and gaslight them, and by that time, the very real emotions she had started with had blended with the darker narrative she invented, and she was crying for a false version of herself. It was a relief when Luna told them that they must leave, promising that she would stay in touch to help with the grieving process, and when Twilight’s parents hugged and kissed her, she offered no more than a rote “I love you so much.” Profound in its simplicity, or an echo from within a hollowed heart? Twilight didn’t know, and she had no time to examine it.

For they did not go to sleep that night. They went to the bathroom to splash some water on their faces, then to the empty banquet hall to meet with Lotus. Twilight lit a single candle, then snuffed it and replaced the light with her magic; no melted wax to give their presence away.

“You okay?” Rainbow asked.

“Absolutely not.”

“Yep, me too.” There was an edge in her voice. “I’m surprised it took them so long to come around, with how you were exaggerating everything. Guards at our doors?”

Twilight looked Rainbow in the eyes, hating her in that moment. “The quicker they saw it my way, the better. That’s all I’m saying about it.” She turned her head to a far-off sound, just missing Rainbow’s swift reach to the tabletop, the empty teacup pelting through the air and breaking across her back.

“You—”

Rainbow was upon her and they went to the floor, Twilight banging her head against a chair leg, both of them growling and wrestling, kicking at the floor and at each other’s hooves. “It’s your fault! You stupid—” Rainbow whipped away, and Twilight stood up, a bead of sweat under her lit horn. She could feel where the teacup had hit, a tender welt that felt large enough to see from a distance. “You ruined my life, Twilight, and your parents’, and my parents’.” She paced a moment before grabbing a spoon and throwing it, and Twilight, too shocked from the attack, did nothing to stop it flying past her and clattering across the table.

“You’re right, Dash, and you have every right—”

“Shut up! You always say that, you always turn all humble the second I get mad at you! You’re just patronizing me so I’ll go along with you. I-I should have let you come up here alone.” She took a shuddering breath, calming.

Twilight kept looking at her, in no small part wishing that the outburst would end soon so they could get back on track. “What do you want me to say?”

“Nothing, Twilight, ‘cause I won’t believe it.”

“Fine, but someone’s coming.” She extinguished her spell and rubbed at her back, and Lotus pushed open the doors, a little orb of light bobbing by her head where it hung from a tall hat.

She looked around and said, “I hope you got it out of your systems. Let’s get to work, I don’t have much time.” She set down a diagram of the Via Luna and a thermos of citrus tea. Colgate, she explained, was aboard the ship searching for the best death locations.

“Death locations?” Rainbow asked.

Lotus sighed. “Please be specific in your inquiries, ladies. The cloud doesn’t like open-ended questions, remember.”

“I feel your pain,” Twilight said.

“Yes, you have one now too. I’m aware of that, Miss Sparkle.” She unrolled the diagram on the table, shoving a white and pink saucer out of the way. “How are you dying? What precisely are you going to do to take your own lives?”

“I haven’t done it yet, but I’m going to enchant a pair of amulets to drive a magical beam through our hearts. I’ll be able to activate them with a simple spell.”

“Through your hearts, or through whatever part of your body the amulet is facing at the moment?”

“Our hearts specifically.” She ran her hoof through her mane, wishing that she did not have to explain, for the answer was not pleasant. “Am I bleeding?”

“You’ll be fine,” Rainbow said, not looking at her.

“The amulets will be enchanted to point toward the area of greatest blood volume. Uh, Dash, I was going to tell you, I’m going to need a little of your blood to set these up.”

“Whatever.”

“Do you know the dimensions of this magical beam?” Lotus asked. “What will it look like to a medical examiner?”

“I don’t know, Lotus, probably like a pulse crystal shot, or maybe smaller than that,” Twilight said.

“You’re doing this because you can’t sneak a pulse crystal on board the Via Luna, I assume?”

“I also don’t want anyone to find a pulse crystal with our bodies.”

“When will lightning strike the ship?”

“I’m not sure, it depends on how quickly I can take control of the storm. I’m going to hit us as soon as I possibly can, though.”

“And where on the ship will you both be?”

“I’m going to fake not feeling well, and I’ll be in a bedroom—unless Colgate finds something better. Rainbow, what about you?”

“I’ll stay in the ballroom, near the doors so I can run out,” Rainbow said. They studied the diagram, Rainbow occasionally looking up to frown at Twilight, and Lotus explained that dying in or near the aft cabins would be best. The closer to the ship’s engines, the more plausible their injuries.

“Colgate’s job will be to chase after you and help facilitate. Once you’re both dead, she will move your bodies, if needed, and possibly mutilate them.” Rainbow gave her a horrified look. “Death in a crashing airship is not as clean as Twilight’s making it.”

“She’ll be putting that surgical experience to use,” Twilight said, an attempt at levity that Rainbow did not favor with a response.

By midnight, they had swept the banquet hall and gone their separate ways, both mares mature enough to leave the scuffle behind them for the time.

The rain storm was scheduled for the eleventh, the palace precogs were flying out to Manehattan, and Twilight understood what she needed to do to summon a lightning bolt. They had told their parents, felt the pain of separation, and had extracted promises of silence from all relevant parties, and the rest of the night saw them wandering aimlessly, Twilight through the hallowed halls and Rainbow on the grounds. On the tenth, Versus went down to Ponyville to meet the rest of the Elements and Colgate took Twilight and Rainbow aboard the Via Luna to go over where they wanted to die.

“Lotus told us you had to ‘fix’ our bodies once we’d done the deed,” Twilight said. They were in the ballroom, looking at exits and windows, Colgate trying to determine how the crowd of partygoers would disperse once panic set in.

“It really depends on where we are at the time,” she replied. “What direction we’re turning around the mountain, that’ll determine which way the ship tilts. Ponies freaking out, lots of ‘em are gonna run downhill, so that might be that-a-way, and it might be this-a-way.”

“Does it matter?” Rainbow asked.

“How are you gonna find Twilight fast?”

“I know where to go.”

“Show me. Here, let’s run through it, okay?” She rattled a chair. “Oh no, thunder! Engine failure! We’re going down, uh-oh! Run, Dashie, get to Twilight!”

Rainbow gave her a sour look, but Twilight took off, and Rainbow had to follow. Behind them at a sporting trot, Colgate turned her head wildly and tried to take in as much of the ship as she could, eyes open for details, herself not feeling much urgency or dread in the moment; for her, it was entirely reserved for the following night.

They made the run from the ballroom to the aft cabins in four minutes, pounding up carpeted stairs and down the empty corridor, around a corner that Colgate noted was near one of the lesser kitchens, a threat for Rainbow to crash into a server running the opposite way.

“I’ll say that I saw you take off looking for Twilight,” she said, bouncing on a mattress and looking up at the ceiling. “I went after, like ‘hey, can I help?’ That’s what I’ll say.”

“Whatever works, Colgate,” Twilight said. “I never thanked you for helping us with this.”

“That’s all right.” She looked at Rainbow, who looked like she expected more of an answer.

“What else do we need to watch out for?” Rainbow asked after an awkward pause.

“Depends on—”

“Stop.” Twilight stood up and closed her eyes for a moment. “She’s on the ship. She’s nearby.”

“Celestia?”

“Time to go, girls.” Once more it was Twilight, then Rainbow, then Colgate hastening into the hall, downstairs to the dining room, stopping at their foot for Twilight to locate Celestia again and then turn, dashing, back up and into a parallel hall, along the rest of the airship’s length to a staircase to the deck. A prodding impulse in her brain was the warning of Celestia’s proximity, not diminishing as they ran; the princess was following them, whether intentionally or not Twilight wished she could tell. In the hall, there was nowhere useful to go, the bending along the ship too gentle to hide one end from the other, and for their charge down its length Twilight feared her former mentor appearing at the other end and calling to her. They emerged, panting, before a team of chattering unicorns and one earth pony giving directions. The decoration of the Via Luna had begun; Twilight spotted crates of supplies coming in a line onto the lot where they were stationed, a tiny personal plinth in the corner of one of the palace’s many gardens. From the height that the deck afforded, she could see over the walls to the shadowy top of a pine grove and the houses beyond.

“Sorry ‘bout that, ladies, thought I left my toothbrush here,” Colgate said confidently, pushing between Twilight and Rainbow. “Must be somewhere on the northern coast, wedged between a couple rocks. Don’t you hate it when that happens?”

“Miss Sparkle, I’m glad you’re here, what do you think—”

“Sorry, really,” Twilight said, following behind Colgate. “I can’t stay, I’m already late for an appointment.” She ran off the Via Luna, cheeks burning and heart racing, and they followed Colgate to her room, not sure whether she wanted them to until she rummaged through a drawer and produced two sheets of paper, speaking as though no time had intervened.

“We were pretty close to all the engine stuff, so I think we can…” She lowered her voice. “You make your little amulets go, and then I can do the rest.”

“Do I want to know what you’re gonna do?” Rainbow asked.

“Burn marks. There’s gonna be fire, so I figure that’s easiest.”

“Gross.”

“Check it out,” Colgate said, flapping the papers. “These are you.”

“Shouldn’t Lotus be here?” Twilight asked.

“She’s not available, so sorry. Don’t worry, she told me what to say.” She gave Twilight an insincere smile that Twilight took to be placating. “Dashie, you’re gonna wake up in Fillydelphia, they’ve got a temporary spot on the local weather team already lined up. Couple days to get used to your new body, recuperate, all that, you’ll be starting on the… fourteenth, I think?”

“Are there gonna be… Geez, hang on.” Rainbow’s photograph displayed a lemon-yellow pegasus mare supine on a surgical table, yellow and white mane splayed out long and loose over the sides, a lean body that looked tense even at rest, closed eyes that looked ready to snap open and highlight the self-conscious smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Sunlit Gables, all right,” she mumbled, turning the photo over and reading the basic details. “Female, pegasus, sun-and-clouds cutie mark, yep, all right. Meet the new me.”

“There’s gonna be a Datura there to fill you in when you wake up. They’ll give you your ID, birth certificate, all your legal and financial stuff, and they’ll talk you through getting started in the big city.”

“Colgate, have you done this before?” Twilight asked.

“I’m repeating what Lotus told me.”

“Comforting. And my name is Aureole.” Twilight turned over her paper, not wishing to look at the pale blue unicorn on her table, the bloodless lips drawn to reveal neat little teeth, the short mane of rod-straight hair in a smooth cap on her skull, the baby weight soft and smooth around her joints and chest.

“You’re gonna wake up on an airship heading north from Applewood, they’re gonna drop you off in Trottingham, or New Trottingham, whatever. Not much going in terms of jobs there, it’ll be a lot more like Ponyville than what Dashie has to deal with. It’s you and a bunch of other Applewood homeless. Hey, who knows? Maybe there’ll be another re-body in there. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

“A gas,” Rainbow said. “And we just have to wait there until Luna comes for us?”

“Yep, you’ll be wanting to make yourselves at home. Uh, I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but don’t try to reach out to anyone before the princess grabs you, okay?”

“Some time away from everyone will be good,” Twilight said, passing her paper back to Colgate.

“Are we totally sure the Elements will stick with us?” Rainbow asked. “I know Luna said, but…”

“I trust her. Colgate, what about my cloud of thoughts?”

Colgate’s eyes were on a stain in the wall. “No idea if that’ll transfer.”

“And if someone tries to send Twilight Sparkle a letter, will it still come out of Aureole? Oh, and what about all the other enchantments I have myself under?”

“How else have you enchanted yourself?” Rainbow asked, exasperated.

“You gotta ask the princess, Twi, I don’t know how any of that stuff works,” Colgate said. “I just know the basics. Now we’re clear on how tomorrow’s gonna go?”

Twilight sighed as Rainbow spoke up. “We get on the Via Luna, hob-nob until Vinyl pulls both princesses off, and then Twi’s gonna strengthen the storm—the storm that should already be in full swing by then.”

“I need to make our death amulets, I’m going to do that next, and then I want to see if I can think of a better way to hit the ship. It’ll be the only thing in the air, so there’s a good chance I won’t have to aim my lightning at all, but still, I want to be sure.”

“You said something about bringing an anvil up,” Colgate said.

“That was a joke.” She pondered it. “Unless you have one readily available.”

“Cole, is Vinyl ready to do her part?” Rainbow asked. “I don’t like relying on her as our distraction, if I’m honest.”

“She’ll be there, and she’ll be ready,” Colgate said. “I told her that us Elements are on the hunt for an imposter, and we’re trying to sniff ‘em out without the princesses knowing. Gave her a good reason to do what you need.”

“What’s she going to tell Princess Celestia?” Twilight asked. “Does she actually have something in mind, or will she try to drunkenly improvise?”

“Hmmmm.”

“Okay, you tell her this. Tell her to use the time I tried to get her to place potions around Greater and Lower Canterlot, she should remember that, it was right before Dash and I left for The Hive. If she needs, I can give her a refresher.”

“Will do, Twilight.”

“Call me Aureole. Might as well start practicing now.”

“Aureole and Sunlit Gables,” Rainbow said. “What’s a gable?”

The two repaired to Twilight’s room while Colgate went in search of Vinyl, and Rainbow stared out the window while Twilight assembled their amulets from materials scrounged out of the bathroom. Rainbow had told Leaf Blower that they needed to talk later that afternoon, and it was in anticipation of the meeting that she fidgeted while Twilight cast her magic over a pair of cotton pads strung through with dental floss. Without Luna to watch over them, Twilight didn’t have sufficient warning against Celestia’s wandering eye, which made designing a chain of sigils too risky; so, with one simple design on the floor and repeating spell clusters cast inside her cloud of thoughts, Twilight enchanted the makeshift devices, eyes rolling back and forth as she jumped from spell to spell, pale whites flashing in her sockets and her mouth drooping.

“This’ll hurt,” she slurred, hoof poised with a pair of tweezers. With no knives or razors nearby, it was the best Twilight could do on short notice to let the necessary blood.

“Go ahead,” Rainbow said softly. She hissed when Twilight poked her, pushing apart her fur and squeezing a few drops into the pad, and then Twilight wiped the tweezers and bled as well. She enchanted them at the same time: a spell of attraction first, so that the amulets would face always their wearers’ chests; then, a complication wherein Twilight thought she would have to make a new batch, solved when she enchanted the cotton edges where blood had not seeped, allowing the amulets to grow hot and discharge their concentrations of magic, straight through flesh but not wall or ceiling behind—a several-minute ordeal of dialing in on the precise intensity that she needed, impossible without her cloud of thoughts, calculating in a few minutes the densities of skin, fur, muscle, bone, and organ tissue; and with adrenaline flowing through their veins, the chest muscles contracting and the hearts beating faster, that too changed things a little. Even better, and what Twilight hadn’t considered, was that the spells would burn their amulets to nothing, leaving no evidence.

She wiped their cuts with rubbing alcohol and a wash cloth, and Rainbow didn’t complain.

“We’ll tuck these under our clothes, and when I activate them, they’ll drive a lance of hot magic straight through our hearts. It’ll hurt, but not for long.”

“Super, Twilight.” Rainbow touched her chest. “Are we done?”

“You can be. Are you gonna talk to Leaf Blower?”

“Yeah.” She got up, a knee popping, and flexed her wings. “I’m gonna break it off with her. Not tell her about tomorrow.”

Twilight sighed and gave Rainbow her amulet. “That’s for the best.”

“You don’t need to tell me.” She closed the door, and Twilight placed her own amulet in a shoe under the bed. Versus would be back the following morning with Applejack and Big Mac, and the others would be by later in the afternoon with Octavia, who had elected to stay in Ponyville for the few days.

Tomorrow. Twilight checked the clock. Twenty-five hours until liftoff into the Canterlot sky, maybe twenty-six until spiraling back out of it. Her loose ends were tied up as well as they could be, so she lay on the bed and went over her knowledge of the storm again, everything Luna had shown her. Chaotic as the magic was, storms were not without constants and fundamentals.

“Think in terms of a value that is always changing,” Luna had said one gusty night over the desert. “Never static, always changing inside a set of ranges. If you can control those ranges, you can control the storm, at least in a basic sense.”

Temperature and humidity came first, and changing those factors gave her air flow; add in pressure for more precise control, and those three things alone, compounded correctly and with proper timing, could eventually lead to a full storm. It was why the hurricane would not have been beyond her, for, aside from its scale, it was relatively simple and required no finesse.

A deliberate bolt of lightning needed more, and with the time Twilight had to study, she had not learned to change a cloud’s charge, and would have to manually shift its shape instead. She, down in one of the airship’s bedrooms, trying to ignore the sounds of a party over her head, would have to sculpt the rain clouds into a great incus, taking wind and rain in huge clumps and spreading them across the cloud, mixing with graupel and tossing all like the world’s biggest, coldest salad until nature took its course and a bolt came on its own. A messy and inexpert approach, but the best she had learned. A more experienced storm mage, Luna had told her, would simply reach in and charge the appropriate thunderhead halves with their own magical electricity, positive on top and negative below, a flick of the switch, lightning every time; and aiming it, why, that required either a second cloud under the caster’s control or an ability to manipulate the target’s charge concurrently.

Her sight would be useless except to know when the storm was ready, and she would have to manage it by feel and theory alone up to that point. Though Twilight could run through the steps in her head backwards and forwards, and knew what to do if she encountered the more common problems, she could not give herself any confidence. Where she wanted to see the thunderhead in her mind’s eye, she saw her parents’ uncomprehending faces. Father’s doubt, a breakdown in his face reserved for later, and mother’s wounded regret as she closed the door.

Well, fine, if I’m to die, she would think, at least I’ll leave my mark. But that was bravado just as bad as the stoic optimism she had shown the world initially, and alone in her bed, its repetition left her just as cold. Simply, she was afraid, and no proud or lofty rhetoric would change that.

Rainbow met Twilight for breakfast, which neither of them was in the mood for, at seven in the morning, when cruciform bands of sunlight came through low eaves on the eastern terrace. They first looked at each other’s faces for signs of the fight earlier, and seeing none, sat down uneasily.

Twilight told Rainbow of her dream, gliding on invisible wings out to Ponyville and crashing through the wall of her old library to find all her friends, even Pinkie, gathered in celebration of Saint Silver’s Day—“Whatever in the world that is,” she said with a shrug—and the noisy peace of homecoming, which she said without embarrassment had woken her and kept her weeping in the bed until sunup. Rainbow had relived her breakup with Leaf Blower in her dreams, nothing as tearful as Twilight’s, but bitter and full of betrayal. Leaf Blower had taken it poorly, not said more than a clipped “fine” when Rainbow tried to explain why she was ending the relationship, citing a fear of commitment that she was sure Leaf Blower could tell was a lie. It was difficult to feel bad for her on the dawn of their final day, but Rainbow and Twilight shared a moment of quiet reflection for Leaf Blower’s bad luck.

They met Versus, Applejack, and Big Mac in the palace vestibule just after eight, and Applejack spared a sardonic smile for Twilight. “Evildoer,” she whispered, winking, not pausing as she crossed through, explaining to Versus everything she had already seen on her first appearance.

“If she screws this up—”

“She said she won’t,” Rainbow said. Then, looking between Twilight and the others, she ran to catch up.

As morning lengthened to overcast afternoon and the wide toll of finality had dulled for a time in Twilight’s mind, she met Celestia to go over her new job for the palace, something soft and easy to give the pretense for staying.

“Have you told your family that you will remain in the palace?” Celestia asked early on, and Twilight replied that she had, loathing every second, the princess’ smile and hollow praise of Twilight’s wisdom. “I hope this breaks your heart,” she thought angrily. She was sure Celestia detected it, for the meeting ended stiffly and cordially after nearly an hour of paperwork and financial talk, with just enough time for Twilight to get dressed, don her amulet, and head to the reception.

It was thirty minutes until the Via Luna was to take off when she stepped onto the airship lot, fine rain breaking upon a crystalline shield with Rarity at the epicenter, a serene look on her face as she held off the weather and socialized with the other guests. The Elements by unspoken rule were the most dressed up for the occasion, and Twilight was no exception. She had been tempted to wear something loose and minimal, but decided it was out of her character, she like all her friends used to wearing whatever it pleased Rarity to make for them. She adjusted her lilac overcoat’s high, thick collar, into which Rarity had at the last second woven a pair of copper wires. There had been a note tucked under the collar when she removed her garment from its box, “just in case,” and touching them as she stepped into the shield warmed her heart.

Twilight met her parents with a solemn hug but no significant words. Her father’s eyes danced with forced joviality, but her mother rubbed her back and told her that she loved her, and Twilight said she loved them too and moved on. Most of the guests were family, but a few she recognized from the palace: Pinkie’s former diplomat coworkers, laughing loudly in a tight knot near no one else; everyone from the old restoration team, save for Leaf Blower; a couple high-ranking guards, the treasurer, a spokespony for the National Park Administration, the directress of the obsolete cloud convoy; and several that she assumed were Daturas. Fluttershy’s parents talked amiably with Cloudchaser about life in Fillydelphia while Rarity’s father chatted with a server, a bald stallion who seemed more interested in poking toothpicks through cheese cubes than talking. The airship stood ready, its balloon swollen behind the smokey illusion of naval rigging that Celestia so enjoyed, shifting gently in the gray weather, the thick columnar mainmast covering the downstairs hatch to the dining room; Twilight had walked through that heady smoke plenty of times, strong enough to irritate the eyes and sting the nostrils. Rarity’s shield reached high enough to protect the crow’s nest, but once they were aloft, the smoke would mix with rain into acrid soot that panicking ponies would skid on and catch in the face when the ship was making its first wide twirl through an air current into scissoring white spotlights. Where Big Mac stood talking with someone Twilight didn’t recognize, trying to keep his eyes off Versus, who had come in a candy-striped gown with collar and sleeves flared out like shallow mushroom caps, there would in ninety minutes stand a team of reporters getting the first salvo of pictures, CANTERLOT TRAGEDY for the papers the following day.

The other Elements gathered and greeted Twilight, everyone cold and courteous, Rainbow with them already and pretending for the time she had left that she was there for other reasons. When Versus wished Twilight good luck, Octavia kicked her lightly, and Applejack didn’t take her eyes of Twilight’s face the whole time. Twilight didn’t know what to say, so decided that a sigh and a cold look were enough before walking over to Vinyl, who was slipping a flask back into her breast pocket when Twilight greeted her.

“How many is that today?” Twilight asked. “Four? Five?”

“Bite me,” Vinyl whispered, adjusting her goggles. When Twilight didn’t move, she said, “Oh, you’re worried I won’t be able to distract the princesses tonight. Cole gave me what I need, I’ll be fine.”

“Just making sure.”

“Reasonable.” She reached again for her pocket, and Twilight put a gentle hoof on her foreleg.

“May I?”

Vinyl hesitated before floating the flask over to her. “Thought you didn’t imbibe.”

Twilight licked her lips and, bending her head down a fraction, dribbled a glob of spit into its mouth. “That’s for you.” She walked away.

Princess Luna made the opening remarks from atop the quarterdeck, under which were Celestia’s personal chambers, where Twilight had once raced to hide her enchanted paint chip and behind which her lightning bolt would slam, gilt wood trim flying apart and the double doors flapping like frantic claws in pounding hail. From those doors then strode Celestia in three layers of silk, cinnabar on top of malachite on top of amethyst, veined with black thread that, like the deck of her ship, smoked gently from under the wings that she spread in massive greeting, each feather tipped with enchanted, lightweight gold to match a coronet that glimmered like a candle’s flame. She raised a glass and toasted the country, the ponies present and elsewhere, the health of the nation, and began the reception proper by knocking back her drink and spitting a delicate fountain of sparkles into the air where they were lost with the drizzle.

“Why must there be a storm tonight, dear sister?” Twilight heard Celestia ask as she walked with Versus to the bow, where the helm had been replaced with a brass and steel bandstand, which would scrape along for a minute until giving up on a violent swing and leaving ugly black striations in the deck where it pitched over, taking a piece of the unicorn horn bowsprit with it, tumbling onto the mountain and rolling off trees like a pinball until coming to rest with a honking splash in a stream, where it would not be found until some weeks later when a forest ranger would decide to investigate the metallic wailing that had been frightening hikers—for thick-soled boots stomped in coordination on the hollow pipes that made its tiers, adding percussion to the music: ponies bowing fiddles and cellos and violins and double basses, one mare on the top tier’s end to play, with a partner on the bottom, an octobass that was mostly there for show; sharp-dressed unicorns with clarinets and flutes and oboes in front of trumpeters and tuba players, a bassoon too, and a flinty-eyed stallion with a fiery mane who clutched his saxophone as if he could not wait for his time to jump in; someone with a stand of chimes that they ran their hoof through on occasion, exchanging smiles with the harpist who also waited for her time to join; four tiers of musicians, playing or waiting to play, on the hollow stand which made no music at the moment but was connected to an enormous system of bellows and gears half-sunken into the deck beside an empty seat, where eventually the organ player would come along and amaze the princesses’ guests by playing through the bandstand itself.

“I was offered a spot on this,” Octavia said beside Twilight, holding a silver flask in her hoof. “I declined.”

“How much would it have paid?” Versus asked.

“Four-thousand bits for the night.” She took a swig.

“Is that Colgate’s?” Twilight asked.

“She asked me to hold it for her, since she is so nervous about tonight.” Octavia looked back to the princesses, who were talking with Rarity’s parents. Rarity’s mother was visible from anywhere on deck, coming in a giant, heavy headdress of artificial peacock feathers; that ostentatious thing would peel off her head as she ran for an exit, and be trampled. “When are you doing it?”

“At the moment, we’re waiting to get farther out, and for the storm to build a little more steam. I’ll tell Colgate when I’m ready, and then she’ll tell Vinyl.”

“Anything we can do to help?” Versus asked.

“I don’t think so. How’s Applejack?”

“Pissed, but committed. You really hurt her, Twilight.”

“She will come around once she sees how much better off you will be,” Octavia said, looking around again and shaking Fluttershy’s hoof when she came up.

“Doing okay, Twilight?”

Twilight shook her head. “The more I talk about it, the worse it gets. Can we…” She gestured with her hoof, shooing Fluttershy away, and Fluttershy nodded and went to Cloudchaser and Rainbow’s parents, none of whom looked happy to be there.

“This might be the last time I see you,” Octavia began, “and if so, then let me say, thank you for everything. I do not care what anyone else says, to me, you are a great pony, and you deserve happiness.”

Twilight looked around before replying. “I’ll come back eventually.”

“But I might be gone. Princess Luna is talking about sending Colgate and I to Appleloosa.”

“Oh.” The information hit harder than she would have expected for her state of mind. Then again, Octavia had come to be as close a friend as the others, and it was with some relief that she felt the emotion sink in.

“We found out this afternoon. I think it will be good for Colgate to get away from this city, but personally, I will miss it.”

“Yeah. Oh, damn.” Twilight sighed and offered a smile, gave Octavia a faltering hug, and Octavia nodded and joined a small group toward the middle deck. “Neither of us like long goodbyes. She’s sparing me that.” Still, it hurt.

Versus followed Twilight down a set of stairs to the Via Luna’s bar and lounge. She and Rainbow had spent nearly no time there on their flight to The Hive, no bartender to serve them and no real reason to use the lounge’s facilities when their bedrooms served just as well.

“Good idea,” Versus said as they crossed into the room and she saw where Twilight had taken her. Most of the guests were divided between the deck and the ballroom, both near enough to the lounge that Twilight and Versus could hear dueling strains of music, softer strings and a piano to ease ponies into intimate slow dances below and the jazzy and bombastic affair above, where a small stampede of dancing hooves tickled the lounge’s lights. Twilight and Versus shared a lime green sofa and ordered a pair of non-alcoholic cocktails, and for a moment sat in the diminished sound of the saxophone pony’s beginning solo, neither mare sure what to say to the other. Versus saw the reception in a poetical way, where Twilight was too focused on her plight and the mechanics thereof to see it as anything more than what was to literally take place. They were ships passing in the night, as true a representation of the idea as Versus had ever seen, one going off to sudden and sharp death and the other orbiting just close enough to offer a farewell. It felt like they had shared much, but most of that was between Versus and the Elements in general; between her and Twilight, there was little save frosty, distanced encounters, back when Twilight would help with her legal problems. Twilight brooding over her Cranberry Drop and water seemed to Versus the only appropriate image, yet she was told that it was not the real Twilight, that that mare had gone away some time ago and, with luck, would be coming back soon.

Fluttershy’s father stood up from the bar and, spotting Twilight and Versus, asked to join. He clenched a lit cigar in his teeth and puffed thick, white smoke as he sat down, and the waitress was right there with a tumbler, an ounce and a half of deep brown bourbon over one perfectly transparent ice sphere. Twilight had met him a few times, a gentler soul than Fluttershy had ever been; how the Element of Kindness had passed him up for his daughter, she was not sure.

“I just want to say—” The rest was lost on Twilight, who thought with horror that he knew of her plan. “They told him already?” blaring in her head, her heart cranking up painfully with rage and despair, cloud of thoughts exploding, “I’ve gotta do it now, now or never, where’s my storm? Shit, no time, can I just jump off and make like I slipped on a spilled drink? What about Dash?” But Versus touched her hoof, feeling Twilight’s panic, and brought her back. Mr. Shy was going on about the ship and its accommodations. He leaned into the sofa and his voice was lost, his body in the blue lamplight appearing dark and sickly, the mane that he ordinarily kept up loose and marcelled down his back and shoulders, bubblegum-pink on a navy blue suit jacket with silver butterfly cuff links and a pearl necklace. Where smoke would pour in from the vents after the airship had landed, floated gently to the ground in Celestia’s iron grip, Mr. Shy blew a preemptive stream, the scents of cedar and hazelnut blossoming in a dim swirl.

“I’m not much of a cigar pony,” Versus was saying to him, “but a lot of folks in Snowdrift, where I’m from, like ‘em. I know like, the hardcore cigar-heads come down there if they can make it.”

“That sounds heavenly,” he said. Twilight didn’t know him, but it seemed to be a favorite word of his; she had heard him describe things as heavenly a couple times before.

He and Versus went on, sparing Twilight, who turned away to compose herself. Haze was building in the lounge’s corded ogives as a small group of ponies filtered in and sparked one of the tall, bejeweled hookahs built into the tables. Narrow slits were cut in the ceiling near small, metal pumps, which sucked out smoke and mixed it with Celestia’s masts and sails; soon, they would be smelling of grass and spices instead of the usual, bitter ash. The bar gleamed, ebony inlaid with silver and brass, mighty black horseshoe that would survive mostly intact but damaged on one end where the wide, circular light advertising the room’s function would buck off its fixture and shatter its cathode tubes, a minor electrical fire that the bartender would put out, cool-headed as they went down, his faith in the princess implacable and his experience serving him, for he had been in a crash once before. The only thing that he would lose that night was his toupee, which would fly off and land in the ice with a few broken glasses and the jigger, a popping of shattered bottles behind him when the ship would lurch, and then the screams, for those in the lounge particularly terrible for they would come from above and below; and ponies then streaming in from fore and aft, racing up from the game room and ballroom, bottlenecking at the stairs to the deck, tripping over ashtrays, kicking hookah coals onto deep blue carpet, upturning drinks. The lights would flicker and some would die to leave the lounge half-shadowed and indistinct, sweet smoke with cologne and perfume turning foul with the smell of burning airship, but too far from the strike point to smell the ozone, the galvanic twitch in the air that only Applejack would be close enough to detect in the moment before disaster hit.

“And my mom said, ‘well you better be paying for that yourself, honey’!” Versus said, laughing with Mr. Shy, who snorted into his bourbon and had to be patted on the back. Twilight mimed amusement as well, having not heard the joke, but Mr. Shy noticed and asked whether she was feeling okay.

“Not really, actually,” Twilight said, committing. “I think it’s something I ate.” She stood and looked at Versus, not sure whether the mare knew what was happening, and made her excuses to leave. First, to find Colgate, who—Twilight was surprised—was not at the bar, and Vinyl neither.

The game room was in the deck beneath her, where no one had yet come. They would soon, once more ponies had gotten a few drinks in them and the Via Luna was into its first pass over Lower Canterlot, ponies with beer and wine coming together to shoot pool and play board games, or just jostle with the music streaming through vents from the deck. She and Rainbow had wiled away the hours with the games, trying not to worry. Twilight had taught her chess and backgammon, and Rainbow had taught Twilight the one trick shot she knew on a billiards table, lining up four balls right next to the side pocket and hitting them dead center, all four sunken symmetrically. Rainbow could even shoot with the cue behind her back, though she had to lean halfway onto the table and splay both wings out for balance, not the cool picture it was supposed to be.

Someone, though, had been in the game room recently; Twilight felt the residue of a spell by one of the chess boards. She knew it could not be her own, weeks old, but that was her first thought, uncomfortably nostalgic. The boards were of a piece with their tables, but the checkers and chess pieces would scatter and become unaccountable. They were still at the ship’s front, so no real damage would be done, though one unfortunate mare would step wrong on a white queen and twist a pastern falling down while her guest would run headlong and hysterical into a chair and plow through the whole setup, velvet bag scattering its pieces across the floor and someone’s smoldering cigar skipping sparks where it would bounce along the wall and land under a dartboard, which would fall when they landed with a dart still sticking out near the bullseye. From there to the ballroom, Twilight walked against the future stream of evacuees into the place where she had experimented with her divination, where she had puzzled out how to eaves drop on Celestia and Luna, and where Rarity danced with Applejack, both of them in exquisite gowns, Rarity’s a pattern of pastel blue and green on white, semicircular like broken ripples and segmented by darker green and blue godets that flared near the hem, cinched in a golden band and gathered up into striped periwinkle and cerulean on tight sleeves, these complimenting her mane, which she had combed out, straightened, and adorned with blue streaks that shone when she spun under a lustre’s warm light; and Applejack in red and black tartan with jacquard roses in the larger black squares, tighter and stiffer than Rarity’s, dragging with her movements like an extension of her tail. She had kept her mane loose, and it fell long and untamed onto her shoulders, adorned with little apple sequins that also surrounded a needlepoint design of Sweet Apple Acres on her breast, only visible for a second as she turned in Twilight’s direction, the burgundy barn and the green trees dotted with knots of red thread under streaky blue sky. She gave Twilight a knowing smile and mouthed that word once more, “evildoer,” and Twilight hastened past her, pretending not to hear Rarity’s greeting, trotting past the other dancers who spun on luminous tile floor, skirts and coattails, headbands and ties. She nodded to Rainbow’s parents who swayed side to side with their chins on each other’s withers, who would take to the air in surprise and then join everyone else in frantic egress, Windy Whistles who would bite her tongue missing a stair and leave a worrisome but harmless trail of blood all the way up to the deck.

Rainbow was in the back, exactly as she said she would be, and asked Twilight whether it was time. Colgate, she said, was still on the deck, and Twilight told her to be ready, but not quite yet. “Maybe you should come up too, so you can see how things are… going,” she said.

They rose up through the dining room where white-clad attendants were setting the table, creasing napkins to fit like tulips in tall flute glasses, giving last-minute shines to silverware, making sure that the blue and cream checkered patterns on the plates’ edges lined up with the soup bowls on top. Of all the rooms on the airship, the dining room would be worst damaged, for in addition to the overhead lights and those on the walls, there would be candelabras to knock off balance. Hot wax would drip into smears of sauce and half-finished heaps of roasted vegetables, candles would come loose and roll onto the floor, the tablecloth would catch; drinks would spill, a swan-shaped boat would tip off and someone would slip in its gravy, kicking the porcelain bird as they did so and snapping its wingtip on a table leg; forks and knives would tinkle and soup would slosh, and the unlucky waitress levitating a fresh basket of sun-dried tomato rolls would have them dropped, steaming and bouncing, on her head when her magic failed her in shock. From the ballroom, those who did not run through the game room and lounge would race up as well and make the mess even worse, the tablecloth burning rapidly by that point and pouring stinging smoke into the cramped air, the chandeliers above swinging in wide circles like groups of corposants. Food would be everywhere, cooling on the floor and in muddy balls on ponies’ cuffs or tails, broken glass invisible and only felt when everyone had calmed down, blood streaking the stairs and the deck, some ponies going to their knees with pain or sheer amazed terror; and by the time they were safely on the ground with the fires put out, the dining room would resemble the charred hollow of a fallen tree, food and table and chairs unsalvageable husks, the candelabras that started it all ashen membranes—fragile when whole, symbols of the diarchy’s wealth and status, massive scrimshaw arms stretching from spruce bases carved and wound with pale blue thread, and then webbed and articulated with needle-thin bridges of whale bone, each candelabra painstakingly individual, hand-made in the subarctic regions of the minotaur lands and gifted to the goddesses decades ago. They were just coming out, floating one at a time before unicorns who received a wide berth from their peers, and Twilight stopped to look at one for a moment before Rainbow jabbed her in the flank.

Colgate was easy to find on the deck, for she was the only one in a solid color: white suit jacket with white buttons over a white blouse, and a white bow tie tight around her neck; she had even put on white eye shadow, which, against her pale blue fur, looked more like an accident with cake frosting than makeup applied deliberately. She was hopping back and forth with the music, restless next to Vinyl, who made polite conversation with a pair of pegasi neither Twilight nor Rainbow knew. As soon as she spotted them, Colgate raced over, her eyes asking the question before her lips did. “Ready?”

Twilight looked into the clouds, calculating as best she could how much time she would need. They were out over the mountainside in a lazy spiral toward Lower Canterlot and the first fireworks were appearing like posies over the city, coloring the clouds with their displays, far enough away for Twilight to count a second between the sight of them and their audible reports.

“Might as well get on with it,” Rainbow said.

“Yes,” Twilight muttered. “I can get us the rest of the way. Dash, go below again and wait to come find me. You remember where I’ll be?”

“Back section, room two-oh-two. I’ve got it.”

“I’ll stay and make sure they’re gone, then I’ll go below, and then, uh… Yeah, do it, Colgate, tell her to go.”

Colgate rejoined Vinyl and whispered in her ear, and Vinyl nodded, and Twilight went to the middle deck to watch the princesses through mizzenmast smoke. Vinyl was some minutes with her conversation partners before approaching Celestia, who was narrating something loudly behind a magical display before a small, impressed crowd. Of Luna there was no sign, but Twilight had faith that she was watching all the same.

Where Vinyl made her request unto the princess; where wind gusted over the port gunwale and ruffled the pale brown lapels that Rarity had insisted went perfectly with her yellow-dyed mane; and where wait staff circulated with pewter trays bearing sparkling wine, focaccias with sliced olives and fire-roasted red pepper, and mixed nuts; at the back of the deck whose acoustics were supposed to funnel the music as clearly as if one were standing at the helm, there would in less than an hour be only wet cinder and party debris. The cabins immediately behind would be blown apart when the engines failed, the sound that would alert Celestia and send her flying back to her flagship in a frenzy, and by which time most ponies would be driven to the lower decks. At the moment, though, there was only Vinyl and Celestia, and Twilight did not miss the fast, predatory look the princess gave her when Vinyl leaned in to be heard over the reception.

Luna, meanwhile, had moved into the ballroom just as Twilight was exiting it, and had to be summoned away from a waltz with Big Mac, who was embarrassed to feel relief. His dark gray suit felt tight and itchy, and he was already sweating, and while the goddesses exchanged words on top, he turned away with a blush when Versus entered, twirling, face alight, teeth gleaming, excessive collar bouncing.

The diarchy argued, Celestia imperious and annoyed, Luna worried, and Vinyl visibly uncomfortable between them before the three disappeared in a flash of white light.

“What was that?” someone asked.

“Princesses just went poof.”

“They put me on edge.”

Twilight looked at the ponies by her side, recognizing the diplomats who had been sent to The Hive, whose names she didn’t recall.

“Care to shake it with me, your highness?” The mare who addressed Twilight bobbed and jived in a stallion’s tuxedo and carnation boutonniere, which clashed noisily with her comb-over blonde mane and ladders of ear and eyebrow piercings.

“I can’t stay long,” Twilight said, letting the mare take the lead in a fast dance that Twilight did not know the steps to. The others were laughing and cheering her on—“Hyacinth, that’s it. Do I like her?”—and Twilight forced her own laughter, eye nervously out for the princesses’ unexpected return. Five minutes, she had told herself, but when she had counted up to three, she could take it no longer and politely disengaged.

She could hear the diplomats yammering as she made for the stairs to the cabins, and it crossed her mind that Hyacinth would be able to claim to have danced with the legendary Twilight Sparkle on the night of her death.

The halls were not empty enough for Twilight’s comfort, but quieter, and she felt again the sense of commitment, stepping into the final place. A few who had drank too much or had tired themselves prematurely were there, lying in beds or dashing into bathrooms. She heard someone groaning weightily behind a closed door as she passed, and sent up a silent apology to anyone who would be on the latrine when lightning struck—there would be a couple, and one of them would still take the time to wash his hooves before running out to see what the commotion was.

Twilight was gratified to hear that the turbines’ singing had been turned off for the occasion, though once hit, they would start up, gentle and melodious at first but quickly reaching a shrill fever pitch as magic and machine were bent out of order. The airship’s engines labored below thick, carpeted floors, white noise colored by the band on the deck, the low crackle of conversation. The dining room was set and the kitchen was coming alive, chefs preparing soup and salad for the four-course feast that would not have time to start, and in the ballroom, Big Mac gathered his courage to approach Versus and ask for a dance. When she turned those bewitching, laughing eyes to him, he forgot everything he had read about ballroom dancing the day before.

Twilight shut the door to her appointed room and sat on the bed, closing her eyes at first but then rolling them back in full magic submersion. She could not build up the storm too fast, else she would lose control or even shake it apart; too much wind, too little pressure, any number of things could begin breaking the clouds apart, and she had not the skill to re-gather them if that happened. Beginning with locating the high and low-pressure zones, Twilight burned her horn steadily to increase the humidity and produce more rain. Out on the deck, they soon noticed her efforts, ponies collecting under the balloon or putting up whatever small shields they could conjure. The band played on, guarded for a time by one of the oboists, who had to release her shield when it was her time to rejoin the song; rain beaded on laminated music pages and drummed the bandstand, sluicing into its brass pipes and flooding out through holes onto the deck, where dancers were clearing away, complaining. Twilight could scarcely hear it from where she lay, her death amulet resting soft and light under her clothes, so close to her heart.

Wind came next, blustering in from the east, swept under a growing thunderhead, Twilight’s magic pulsing somewhere in the woolen mass. She cast her magic out to the cloud’s edge, meaning to gather it in and create a more condensed storm, but gave up when she felt the ship shudder around her. In a mere couple seconds of inattention, the wind had gotten too cold and blown angrily down on them, and meanwhile, in a chamber in the palace, Luna feigned grave seriousness to Vinyl’s claims. She had taken the window-facing seat so that Celestia might not, and through it, she could see the pennants snapping on their poles, but all darkness save for the continuing fireworks.

“I can’t see.” Twilight’s spells, her cloud of thoughts, her running monologue of bullet points ground to a halt, and the storm was unleashed above and around the Via Luna, loud and cold. There were signs she had to wait for to know whether she was ready for the strike, the most important being the natural presence of heat lightning. She had not given it any consideration, knowing she would see it through her eyelids—if she were not indoors. There were portholes in only some of the cabins, too small to get a good look at the sky anyway; and Twilight did not know any magic to detect electrical discharges remotely. Yet above, the revelers danced, three factions appearing out of the confusion: the bedraggled and miserable, ponies with more rain in their martini glasses than gin, with limp manes and feathered headdresses weighed into soggy cushions down their shoulders; the curious and dimly delighted, who had heard the first rumblings of thunder—which Twilight was too close to the ship’s engines to hear herself—and come up to take a look, to raise a hoof to the rain and remark to their partners; and the few whose wetness energized them more, of which Colgate was a member, dancing harder in the rain and lunging out to catch wind in their mouths, soaked clothes be damned, ponies laughing and hugging and jumping around in small rebellion against adversity. Then there were those sheltered below, the wind softly sighing for them, Big Mac and Versus still dancing. She had finally realized his feelings, and liked him well enough to go along, accepting a second dance with a gracious bow and a coy smile, something quicker, memories of Snowdrift for them both. While Twilight fretted with the storm, pausing too long while her cloud of thoughts ran through all the mathematics, science, and magic in order to give her an accurate picture of how it had been when her calculation started, constantly trying to catch up with herself and panicking all the while, Big Mac resisted the temptation to grab a kiss on the cheek, and Versus thought she could see it in his eyes, and Rarity silently urged them to just go for it from where she danced with a Datura.

If she were constructing the hurricane of old, Twilight would not have worried, for letting the storm go and develop on its own was an integral step. She went to the cabin door and threw it open, praying for a glimpse of a window, her fraught memory falsely placing them at both corridor ends. She could not let the Canterlot storm go too far, which it was beginning to do while her cloud of thoughts sizzled with estimations of its progress, precise numbers and percentages that she had read but since forgotten the use of. Twilight was witnessing the primary reason storm magic was outlawed, and she knew it: the easiest spells led to the worst weather, and once begun, it would not stop on its own.

The heat lightning she wanted flickered and flared overhead while rain poured and she ran down the hall, checking in bedrooms for larger windows and doubling back when she nearly barged in on a couple in bed; and her frightened thoughts turned inward and became self-blaming as she went back to her room with a simpler solution in mind. Fluttershy and Rainbow’s parents passed Octavia on the stairs, and Octavia entered the ballroom to see Rainbow waiting pensively in the back, Big Mac and Versus a half pace apart and talking seriously. Meanwhile, Vinyl was running out of things to say to the princesses, and Luna was beginning to run low on follow-up questions for her, trying to buy Twilight as much time as she could, Celestia still unaware of the weather worsening faster than it should be, of the pegasi flying around in disarray trying to figure out what had gone wrong, the weather office near the palace with phones ringing nonstop and analysts in crisis mode. To them, either one of the cloud arrangers had made a grievous mistake or someone was introducing magic into the storm, and as the winds howled and the rain battered the windows more and more ferociously, the second option was concluded and the Director of Storms pounded his phone in anger as he reached Princess Celestia’s personal answering machine for the third time in as many minutes.

Luna saw it all, but there was nothing she could do without making a suspect of herself. Twilight simply needed to hurry.

Wishing she had Rarity’s skill with shield magic, Twilight erected a barrier and patched it over the wall, sawing with a beam of energy through the wood and making a crude hole to look through. She could have cut through with a chainsaw for all the attention it drew, the wind alone sheer and freezing, sending a shiver through her horn as it hit her shield, up on the deck blowing ponies’ manes out of hair ties and forcing the band into clumsy retreat downstairs to the lounge, where those who just wanted to relax the whole night first noticed that something was amiss. The royal treasurer had taken Versus’ place with Fluttershy’s father as well as Rarity’s parents, who sulked on the couch and complained about the cigar smoke. Twilight’s parents were socializing with the diplomats in the ballroom, the ship’s rocking felt as a soothing sway where they were, chandeliers chittering as if in imitation of the bell choir that had come down to replace the classical quartet for a half hour. Rainbow had not specified to them when she and Twilight were to meet their ends, so they had no reason to dread the evening, and had also not yet seen the storm’s severity, only a momentary flash of the lightning that Twilight had missed through a lacquered porthole. Applejack and Rarity meanwhile had gone to the thinning deck, Applejack unbuttoning her dress a fraction for the savage weather, her mane flying and her eyes closed in disconcerting peace as she stood, struggling to keep her balance, against the alette at Princess Celestia’s quarterdeck doors. She knew it was coming, and in the weather, she was searching one last time for the grace to accept Twilight’s decision.

Twilight barged back into the corridor and to the opposite room, for the one she had selected, room two hundred-two, was on the starboard side, tilting down to face Lower Canterlot as they hooked along the northwest arc of their first circle. Air banged and shrieked behind her as she released her shield to create a second, and that too made too little noise to attract attention, for in the thirty seconds it took her to get another hole to look through, the rain was falling sideways, fast and hard, beads of water that would become hail before Twilight had grasped the storm again.

“Wait! There is something else,” Vinyl said, waving a hoof at Celestia. “I just remembered. Don’t know if it’s important, but it might be.”

“Proceed,” Celestia sighed. “But can we make it quick?”

“Sister, please,” Luna said, sounding irritated, inwardly relieved.

“Twilight mentioned it as she was chasing me off, that she would just get Rainbow to do it if I didn’t wanna play ball.”

“Rainbow Dash, I knew Twilight would get to her,” Celestia spat. “You’re doing great, Vinyl. Please continue.”

Rarity gave up and went below when the hail began, but Applejack refused, her dress ruined, her fur and mane soaked to the skin, her entire body shivering but strong. If she could not stop Twilight, she could at least stand defiant until the end and endure whatever her friend created. To the few who peeked up at her from the hatches downstairs, she seemed crazy.

The wind slacked off first, Twilight adjusting the pressurized zones after finally seeing her heat lightning and preparing to conjure up a proper bolt. She had not learned how to evaluate or influence a cloud’s natural charge, and could only shift the pressure closer to the airship and wait for lightning to reach out on its own. The thunderhead felt like it was ready to explode, with it her heart, and Rainbow’s in the ballroom as she declined dance after dance.

Applejack was shouting at the black clouds and the hail, eyes closed as she let the ship’s pitch and yaw determine her placement on the deck: nothing she understood, and would look back on as an incident of temporary madness brought on by stress and self-doubt. In the moment, though, she felt full of life, combatively determined, at one with the storm that she knew did not like her. She smelled the ozone, thought nothing of it; felt the split-second hum of electricity in the air; and then her eyes were blind and her ears were snuffed dumb.

For those who could hear, the first thing they heard was everyone else screaming, and for those who could not, it was like a ringing movie image, huddled crowds flying apart, glasses spilling, colorful clothes ruffling in frantic motion. Luna saw the flash and held her countenance, and Celestia leaned forward with a tiny smile. “Wow, that was a loud one! I think it rattled the windows.” She turned to look, but the Via Luna was out of view.

Rainbow took off, not quite believing, breathless, pushing ahead of one of the diplomats who raced for the same door. She needed to go upstairs, through the back of the dining room and then all the way down to the aft end to Twilight’s room. Her parents were already at the table with Fluttershy and a few Daturas, and when lightning had hit and the lights flinched, one had spilled hot corn chowder all down his front; it was to his howling that Rainbow ran, and her own name called below it, under the hubbub beneath and the engines chugging and rattling, her parents seeking her. She could imagine their thoughts for a moment before she slipped on a butter knife and skidded into a larger mare running her way, dazzling herself on the floor and hurting a wing.

“Not now!” her mother cried in the mess, Rainbow getting to her hooves and bolting for the back, fire licking at the tablecloth, food smells mixing with smoke. Twilight’s parents, meanwhile, had gone to the game room, and they simply hunkered behind one of the chess tables, far enough from the stern that the lightning did not sound as catastrophic as it was—until half the ballroom spilled in, the mare who had taken Twilight’s last dance screaming her head off with tears streaming down her face, looking around without seeing, pushed from behind as everyone else followed her. Then up to the lounge, most of them, a few hiding in the corners but startled into fresh motion when one of the engines blew, punching the ship into a quarter-spin and throwing flaming debris onto Lower Canterlot, a hunk of keel that would roar down and ruin a few late workers’ nights at a legal office. That sound was no loud thunderclap, it grabbed the princesses’ attention right away, and before Vinyl knew what was happening, she was alone in the boardroom while Celestia and Luna streaked out the window toward their burning airship. The Via Luna’s backside had been blown apart, fire creeping at its tattered edges and weakened by the torrent of hail, machinery wobbling and tussive in bent housings, bars of exposed piston, burning fluid dripping off and extinguished before it could reach the ground, the turbines singing in strained triumph, and a smoking hole in the cabin wall.

Twilight, as soon as she had heard the lightning hit, set the outer wall on fire for a minute that any approaching divinity would not think it out of place, a clean hole in an otherwise disorderly crashing airship. When the engine failed and exploded below her, soft to her ringing ears, she stumbled and mouthed a quiet “yes” to herself, crossing over to the agreed-upon room once more where wind and ice filled the air, where the pillows had been sucked from her bed and the comforter was wrapped around a post. She checked her amulet and pushed the dresser out the hole, watched it tumble through orange-tinted night to the city lights below. What must Lower Canterlot think, she wondered. How many ponies, right now, are watching this happen in their very own sky? How many are watching it on TV?

Then the hail stopped and the wind ceased, the ship lurched and was corrected, and a voice boomed through the noise louder than anything yet telling everyone to remain calm, advice too late. Even the other Elements, who knew to expect it, had succumbed: Fluttershy in the dining room with Rainbow’s parents, doing what she could to help without revealing the magic that had been imposed into her so long ago, crouched behind a chair while smoke filled the room and frightened dancers rushed through and up to the deck, falling on food and one another, fire catching a hoop skirt and sending its wearer wailing onto the deck where she would not be immediately quenched, for Celestia had enveloped the ship from the weather; Octavia trying to urge those in the ballroom to calm down too, herself not sure what to do and Big Mac next to her shaking his head and pressing his forehead into the wall; Rarity who had taken off for the cabins behind Rainbow, no plan in mind, simply running, in that moment realizing how little she could do on her own and eventually taking refuge in an empty room until it was over; Versus galloping upstairs through the lounge and nearly knocking over Applejack, who stumbled along with a distant expression. Both princesses presided, Luna swooping up and down and summoning water for the fire eating at the ship’s stern, Celestia calling for order and slowly lowering them to the mountainside.

Rainbow pelted down the thrumming corridor, running in her mind straight into the mouth of madness, the turbines squealing like pigs, ears flat, nostrils prickling, wing throbbing, Fluttershy’s mother clinging to a doorknob in a catatonic panic attack that Rainbow tried to ease for a second before, hating herself, she continued on. Door numbers flashed by, ninety-eight, one hundred, one hundred-two, and the turbines louder than the frightened mass behind her, Celestia’s voice, the smell of smoke, her heart beating its final few hundred times. Daturas on deck corralling ponies and tending to wounded, the diplomats in a huddle near the empty bandstand trying to comfort one another, debris still falling, smaller fires going out and springing up, bloody hooves, glass, alcohol and food, smoke from the decorative masts and sails confused for the real article, the ship’s fabric wings burned into fluttering curls of ash that would break apart long before reaching the ground; below, ponies with binoculars seeing the details, the racing costumes and princesses trying to maintain a sense of order, the individual tongues of fire diminishing at Luna’s touch, and then the naked eye seeing only a ball of light and sound floating, dipping as if weighed by the storm that had come on so lethally fast and which was beginning to taper off. The weather office had dispatched emergency storm-breakers up into the thunderhead, but they had been unable to do anything, and would be lauded anyway because their presence coincided with Twilight’s concluding magic. Around the country, ponies were switching channels to hear the breaking news. Somewhere near the south pole, the minotaur elite made a note of it; in the dragon lands, a laugh was shared at equine foolishness, trying to control the weather, serves ‘em right; in The Hive, Pinkie was touring the palace’s kitchens and would not be told until the day after; and at the top of the highest mountain range on the planet from which ruled the griffon royal family, someone commented that the ponies really were amazingly unprepared to deal with rogue weather.

Enter Colgate, rushing through the game room slick with spilled water and vodka, bug-eyed and frightened, stopping to put a comforting hoof on Twilight’s father and then dashing through the ballroom, up through the smoke and stink of the dining room, following the jog of Rainbow’s colorful tail. The ship no longer swayed or leaned, and Celestia was yelling to prepare for an emergency landing.

Then, “Luna, take over for me!” All three knew what that meant, it went straight into their hearts. Twilight jerked out of her forced relaxation on the bare bed and looked out the hole again, wondering whether she would have the strength to jump if it came down to that. She heard her own name bellowed in Celestia’s frightened voice.

Rainbow looked back for Colgate and tripped over a discarded bowl, slashing melted ice cream across the wall. With the engines’ thunder, it took her a second to hear Celestia’s, but it came fast and hard, wings beating overhead colossal and protective, screaming for Twilight. Not Twilight and Rainbow, just Twilight.

“Not today,” Rainbow growled, abandoning the ground and flying for a few feet before her hurt wing gave out and she landed again, rug burn on a knee and a cheek, the sound of a stitch popping somewhere in her dress. She scrambled up and ran, Colgate twenty rooms behind her, galloping and soaked with sweat and rain, one hundred fifty-two, one hundred fifty-four. Twilight crouched, momentarily paralyzed, behind the bed, waiting for Celestia to spot the hole in the wall and come to it, eyes glowing like floodlights, great wings shoving through broken hull, the terrific image growing in her mind to a princess four times her regular size, massive boulder head foaming and pastel mane crackling with electricity, eyes like hot coals and teeth sharp and bright as polished metal, snarling her name, embracing her greedily. It wasn’t much different for Colgate, who could feel the familiar anxiety barreling down the hall behind her, carpet rippling up, lights popping, brackets dwindling like singed vines into their sconces, then oblivion as her body burst apart to admit the hysterical princess. One hundred seventy-eight, one hundred eighty. Celestia was in flight and Twilight scrambled for the bedroom door as thunder growled outside, and she galloped to meet Rainbow just as the ship swung to the sound of splitting timber.

“My student!” Celestia broke through on the port side, one bedroom away, hooves pounding floorboards before a whirlwind took the furnishings and threw them in a crushed stream out over Lower Canterlot. “You can’t leave me!”

“Downstairs!” Colgate hollered, turning to run the other way, Twilight catching up to her while Celestia scrambled and broke through the door, six bedrooms away as the three of them slammed through to another bedroom. They could hear the goddess crying out, throwing open doors at random, and Twilight fumbled her dress open at the neck.

“Don’t you leave me here with your stupid corpses!” Colgate yelped, grabbing her hoof away.

“She’s just outside,” Rainbow wheezed, slumping to the ground and looking at her back hoof, which had picked up a chip of glass at some point and had left dark red prints on the carpet, prints that led right to their room. Another door shattered as Celestia continued her search, voice frantic.

“You stumbled, you can’t fly anymore,” Colgate said, poking Rainbow.

“So?”

“She’s right,” Twilight said, taking a breath and focusing her magic into her body’s penultimate spell, cutting through the outer wall one more time, praying Celestia wouldn’t feel its discharge and come running.

“Where is my student? Twilight!”

“You got here too late to save us, Colgate. Thank you.”

“I can’t jump!” Rainbow shrieked. “Do the amulet thing, Twilight, I can’t, I-I—stop!”

Twilight did stop, one hoof off the edge, no longer thinking, and Celestia crashing on the other side of the wall. She looked into Rainbow’s eyes, grabbed her own amulet and let it go out the hole, one effortless spark as Rainbow gasped her last breath. Colgate slid the body out and Twilight sidestepped, heart racing, into the cold night that instantly called her from her numb reverie.

Nothing romantic in jumping to her death, nothing darkly beautiful, nothing poetic, certainly nothing heroic, and no dignity either, for Twilight went down crying and voiding her bladder. All her strength of will, her indomitability both real and pretended, meant nothing in the final seconds. Lower Canterlot’s lights were as of reflections on a pond, and when she fell through the princess’ shield into the rain and the wind, all she could do was pray for someone to fly down and catch her. The black city whirled beneath and the gutted airship turned above, and Celestia’s voice was a dwindling tremor behind the wind in her ears. The ultimate memory of that life, powerless, a dark square of buildings that gained definition and then raced out of her blurred sight, not directly below but a few blocks away, Twilight falling final and free into an empty intersection, her last impression on the world a smear of viscera on asphalt. She woke up with new eyes less than a second later.