Pony's Fury

by LordBrony2040

Chapters

The Second Chapter
The Third Chapter
The Fourth Chapter
The Fifth Chapter
The Sixth Chapter
The First Chapter

The Second Chapter

Chapter Roman Numeral Two

Applejack grunted as she carried the large pack of bits strapped to her back while she followed the other girls through the woods, down what was obviously a well beaten path through the light woods and towards the town Twilight’s thingamabob told her about. Up ahead, she looked at the much smaller human mares…or women, as the translation magic in her head said they needed to be called now pressed on.

She didn’t want to make any accusations, but Sunset apparently knew the limits of human strength before she had volunteered to carry all Twilight’s research notes and all their portable lab equipment. The girl didn’t seem to be straining at all. Rainbow Dash seemed equally burdened as Applejack by the sack of gems on her back that Sunset insisted these human yahoos found even more valuable than bits, even though she insisted that they only trade them in limited quantities for ‘safety reasons’ that Applejack really didn’t understand. Of course being the princess, Twilight carried nothing. She had tried to but…with their magic apparently ack-cue-ma-tating, or some such thing, it would be awhile before they could fly or make things float. Which meant the much shorter human with the purple hair couldn’t steamroll everyone into getting her way when it came to helping the other girls.

From what she could feel beneath her feet, Applejack figured it wouldn’t take long to start sensing the land again. The grass and the earth felt…different than it did back in Equestria, but that didn’t mean it was a bad thing. It just took a bit getting used to was all. She just wished these human things didn’t have such noodly muscles. They had to leave half their supply of gems and more than three fours of their trading bits back at the cave Twilight’s mirror had appeared at, because neither she nor Rainbow could carry that much.

Thinking of the pegasus made Applejack chuckle, and she looked over to the girl with the messy rainbow hair that hung down to the middle of her back. Back on Equestria, they had practically been the same size, with Rainbow having a tiny bit more muscle in her forelegs while Applejack’s hindquarters were far more developed thanks to years of apple bucking. Now the little filly barely came up to her teats! If it wasn’t for the fact that the top of her head met Sunset and Twilight’s eyes, Applejack would have thought Rainbow had been reduced to the age of a foal!

Although, Sunset had said they had all undergone some kind of age reduction and were in the bodies of humans somewhere between seventeen and eighteen Celestial Sun Celebrations.

Plus, while Rainbow had turned scrawny, Applejack had become…cumbersome; a fact that she was reminded of when she stepped a bit too lively and her oversized human teats bounced up to slap against her skin inside the human poncho with a belt Sunset was calling a tunic. In that comparison, Rainbow had come out the winner, with a normal of ‘breasts’ that were barely noticeable and wouldn’t get in the way like an unmarried mare should have.

“Okay girls, here’s the town the uh…MALP told us about,” Twilight announced. “According to the sign post there’s another town to the west called Kalare, but I want to check this one out first and see how many books they have on magic and this world’s history, and an atlas…oh, and maybe something on their mythology too. I wonder if they have any tabletop RPGs, Shiny would love it if I brought something like that back a souvenir for him.”

Sunset let out a groan. “Let’s start with an inn, a meal, and maybe some samples to make sure we haven’t picked up a plague that’ll turn us into flesh eating zombies first, okay?”

Beside the once-again human, Rainbow laughed. “Uh, can we do the eating thing first though? All this carrying rocks around is making me hungry.”

Applejack walked over to the group and nodded. “Ah’ll be, Ah think Rainbow’s actually got a better plan than the eggheads for once. Wonder if they got anything as good as Granny’s apple pie.”

Sunset flashed her an evil smile. “Oh Applejack, you’re human. You eat cow now.”

Sunset stuck her head in their bedroom and smiled at the sight. Either Applejack had talked Rainbow into it, or the former pegasus had just decided Twilight was taking too long and used her magic to remove the stains from the night before, then she had cuddled up with their biggest lover. More than a little part of her wanted to just forget about the visitor and join them in bed, share a few kisses with Rainbow, and ask Applejack get them both off with those wonderful fingers of hers.

Instead, Sunset had to push down the ache in her body that cried out for the touch of the former ponies she loved and walked over to the girls. “Okay you two, I know you heard the knocking, time to wake up,” she said before bending over to kiss Applejack on the forehead. Trapped within their lover’s arms like she was some living teddy bear, Rainbow Dash was out of her reach.

The giantess moaned a wrapped her thick arms around the runt of the family that had rested her head in Applejack’s chest. “Just one of them door to door sales ponies,” she mumbled. “Run em off, wouldja?”

“Breakfast time already?” Rainbow mumbled as she smacked her lips.

Sunset let out a groan, and reached under the bed to pull out one of the two foot steel poles she kept throughout the house for emergency defensive purposes. The object in her hand made the former unicorn sigh. Whereas the rest of her family had gotten an increase in abilities, Sunset’s loss of options had been a real blow to her everyday convenience. Although she had discovered a talent in metal crafting allowed her to manipulate various magnetic fields, something the humans of this backwater world had no clue about, to move only metal around...it was no substitute for a horn.

But, Sunset had learned during her first stint as a human not to dwell on such things. Her abilities in this world were far beyond what she had been stuck with the first time, even though the existence of magic had caused some problems when it came to human development of things like telephones, the internet, computers, television, and deodorant. The last one, she had to invent herself.

A combination of metal and fire magic weakened the bar at its center, and Sunset pulled the thing apart before she forced it to cool until frost formed on the ends that had been practically molten a second ago. Then, she put the rods between her girls’ legs.

The resulting screams and way their eyes just shot open made the redhead smile.

Five minutes later, Sunset was still smiling as she stood slightly off to the side of one of the two wash basins that their bathroom had, and spit out the peroxide that had been used to clean her teeth.

“So,” Rainbow Dash managed with her toothbrush still in her mouth. “What’s going on again?”

“A few minutes ago that little child you like to look after showed up at our door with an expression that said he was nervous enough to wet his pants and told me you and Twilight were summoned the Citadel,” Sunset explained before she took a nearby tin cup and placed it under the rain cloud Rainbow had her elemental ponies make so they could wash up. A few seconds later, a stream of water fell from the sky and Sunset used it to wash out her mouth. “Judging by the fact he wanted the two of you and all his panic…they want a healer because something bad has happened to the First Lord, and they can’t let anyone know about it.”

Applejack let out a groan. “Ugh, that fancy tower thing? Been near there a few times. Mac hates that place. Always makes him and Bloom jumpy.”

Sunset nodded in silent agreement. Her own friends had similar reactions.

“Why not?” Rainbow asked. “I mean, shouldn’t they be getting a…medicus, or something if the head princess guy is sick?”

A sigh from Sunset’s lips and a frown on her face apparently got Rainbow’s attention, as she stopped brushing. “Did you learn anything about how the political system of this word works in the past year?” she asked evenly.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “The country is run by ten High Lords and one First Lord, who’s thought of as a first among equals rather than the absolute head of the government like Celestia back home, but it still means the same thing as the Princesses and the lesser royalty like Blueblood. Then they’ve got the citizens, that are like our nobles and junk, with everyone else on the bottom. Cept their nobles are determined by how fast they can fly, or how big a fire they can make, and stuff like that in one of those juju-jurray-”

“Juris macto honor duels,” Sunset supplied with a smile that had no animosity in it. She enjoyed humiliating humans, her family…not so much. “And I’m impressed you actually managed to remember all that with how Twilight and Applejack explained it.” Unable to stop herself, Sunset reached over to give Rainbow ass a squeeze.

Applejack let out a chuckle. “Her learnin’s freaky but it works,” she said before joining in on the groping.

“Yeah I’m awesome,” Rainbow declared as she stood up a little straighter. “Now hands off the ass, I know you guys aren’t really in the mood, and if you get any closer to my pussy, I might start to be.”

“Ah don’t need to be touchin ya to make ya wet Rainbow,” Applejack replied with a smirk.

The display made Sunset roll her eyes at the unintentional bragging of their hidden water and earth magic, with Rainbow’s casual mention of her empathy and Applejack’s ability to inspire lust in another person on command. Of course Sunset’s metallic abilities to suppresses her emotions as well as the powers Celestia gave her to inflame or quell passionate feelings like joy, anger, and fear were much more useful.

In fact, she used them at that very moment to banish the image of Applejack’s fingers invading her cervix while she drank from a screaming Rainbow’s overflowing sex with almost no difficulty at all. Later, she promised the sexual hunger that had come with being human.

“Yeah well, just don’t let the comparison fool you. The First Lord is no Celestia, and the High Lords are more like sharks in the water sniffing for a drop of blood, and the citizens are mostly papered idiots with magical muscle and no clue on how to use it that fall over each other trying to get into that overgrown council they call the Senate,” Sunset told them.

A pair of small, but fit and strong arms encircled Sunset from behind and she reached up to run her hands through Rainbow Dash’s hair as she rested her head on Sunset’s shoulder. “It’s okay.”

Wrapped in Luna’s power, Sunset didn’t feel the emotional flutter that would have come with the touch of her beloved pegasus. But she still lifted Dash’s hand to kiss it. Then a powerful palm completely covered her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze while Sunset looked over to Applejack. “I’m fine. Just because I blocked out my emotions doesn’t mean I’m sad…or angry,” she assured her lovers.

Although logically, she had every right to be. The humans squabbled with their half-measures more than anything Sunset had ever seen in her life. They had a king that wasn’t really a king, and freemen that had next to no rights when stacked against the citizens of the Empire. At least Sunset had gone for total domination when she had wanted to conquer Equestria.

Then there was the complete idiocy of these Roman decedents! Back in high school, the teacher had gone on and on about how much of a marvel Roman engineering was, how they had built such monuments by working together and invented whole new kinds of engineering. But after gaining access to magic, which they insisted wasn’t magic, they became lazy and stupid.

As much as Sunset despised humans, they had an incredible ability to figure out how things work, rather than just how to work them. From that, whole new levels of understanding could be gleaned, and from that, a new way to figure out how to do things was usually invented. After her exile to Earth and decision to eventually return to Equestria, Sunset had taken every advanced class she could in mathematics, science, chemistry, and biology, as well as brought home all the college textbooks she could carry on multiple subjects to learn more after coming home. From all that came the one thing she admired about them.

These humans didn’t have that. If anything, they had become even less than what they were beforehand, forgetting basic science and medicine in favor of using water crafting to heal, or metal crafting to forge weapons. They barely worked together anymore, as even the magic users that were the second and third generation Romans would have had to in order to conquer Alera, and the society that had come about because of it was simply…rotting.

Sunset sighed at the foolishness of it all. “Come on girls, let’s go get dressed. Twilight is still with Tavi, and considering the way these monkeys react to a pair of teats, that little brat is probably ogling the hay out of our Sparkle.”

Tavi looked around the small estate’s sitting room nervously, doing is best to avoid looking at the slightly tanned girl sitting across from him. While he would have normally found it a bit more that difficult to do so, the decorations of the house actually made it quite easy. AlthoughTwilight had always said she was no one special, just the daughter of a writer and an astronomer from Forica, the way she decorated spoke otherwise.

A pair of statues that looked like smaller versions of the odd horse fury that Rainbow manifested from time to time flanked the doorway, although both were a little different from hers thanks to the addition of a horn. The one on the right was made of pure steel, obviously crafted the way it was with pieces of glass made to look like diamonds placed into its flanks. The other was made from dark iron, and had an oddly designed mane and tail that sparkled with more glass. Upon seeing the darker one, Tavi had thought that they were actually diamonds in the horse statues, but…no gem in the world was a big as any of the ones housed in the steel winged horse with its odd horn and stylized mane.

Still, the expensive clock above the mantel, the four expertly sewn banners that hung on each wall of the room with one of which depicting the colorful tattoo on Twilight’s butt Tavi couldn’t help but notice with her so naked in front of him, the expertly crafted furniture, it all spoke of a level of wealth that was too much for anyone outside the citizen’s quarter of the city; even if the house the girls were living in had been reportedly owned by an extremely well to do merchant that had retired to the countryside some years back.

“So…I can see why you didn’t want to live in the dorms,” he said nervously.

Twilight looked at him without much emotion. “My friends and I didn’t want to be broken up, so my uncle arranged this house for us,” she replied evenly.

Finally, Tavi asked the obvious question. “So um…why’re you…naked?”

“We sleep together. Clothes generally get in the way of that,” Twilight answered him simply. “And this is my house, you show up in the middle of the night asking for my help, which I’m glad to give but…don’t expect me to bend over to make you comfortable. Now, tell me about what’s going on please.”

Tavi sighed and shook his head to try and keep the emotions the memories caused from piling up. “I was attending the First Lord like I do nearly every night. There’ve been some bad storms along the western coast recently, and he was using his crafting to try and lessen their effects. I got him his spice wine, well...it really wasn’t wine,” he admitted. “Captain Miles, the um First Lord’s guard and Crown Legion commander said that Gaius had been taking a tonic to help deal with late nights and dull some pain. Then he just...collapsed.”

It was a long and extremely uncomfortable fifteen hours that the lying clock on the mantle called fifteen minutes as Tavi wanted for the other girls to show up so Twilight could go get dressed with help from Sunset. Then, when they came back carrying a large box made of an odd, black wood like substance between them.

Unlike at the academy, each one of them had on a long tunic of the finest silk, with varying colors or each girl. Rainbow’s was a sky blue, while Sunset had a drab tan, and Applejack dressed in orange of all colors. When Twilight came back with Sunset, she had a light purple tunic on.

“You’re bringing your whole lab?” Rainbow asked with an indecorous frown.

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Well it’s not like I can just ask someone what’s wrong,” she replied. “And unless all you want to hear for a diagnosis is sick, tired, gassy and old before the local physicians insist we put leeches on the old coot to suck the evil out of him, then Twilight and I need our proper tools.”

Beside the girl with the blazing hair, Twilight let out a tsk. “Sunset, please behave, we have a guest.”

“No, we have a intruder.”

Tavi frowned at the description, and there was an odd sound behind him, like a light screeching. However, when he turned to leave behind the other girls, nothing had fallen and the floor didn’t show any scrape marks. Although, he got the strange feeling that the horse statues were looking at him for some reason. Looking at him, and scowling.

“Let’s just go,” Twilight groaned.

Despite the fact she had been awoken abruptly and practically dragged out of the best pillows in the world, lost an opportunity to make out with Sunset, and had Twilight taken away before they could have all gotten in one good morning lay, Rainbow was glad for the early hours. It meant there was almost no one around on the streets where she could feel them.

Although the healing abilities that her water partner provided helped her in so many ways, the weird way she could tell what other people were feeling was just...weird. On the other hoof, she had a new respect for Fluttershy and how her oldest friend had always put herself in another pony’s horseshoes. The weight it brought was heavier than Rainbow could have ever imagined.

She looked ahead as they followed Twilight down the street, who was a little ways ahead, still getting the situation from that Tavi boy. Rainbow didn’t care to hear it, the panic he was in was good enough to know bad stuff was going on. So she had a wind screen put up to keep any humans from listening in to her and the girls.

“Ugh, first no racing in Winter Wrap-up, and now I gotta get up before dawn for this,” she bemoaned to Sunset and Applejack as she floated along under the half a dozen minor wind spirits.

Sunset shot her a little smirk. “We all know you’d win Rainbow. Besides, the race is for citizens, and Twilight wants us to keep a low profile. If were still here after we’re done at the Academy, then we challenge for titles like she said. And it’s Winter-send. Don’t make slips like that.”

After flipping through the air and around Applejack while the big girl carried Twilight and Sunset’s egghead stuff, Rainbow dropped alongside her friend and smiled. “Twilight wants, Twilight says…I didn’t know getting a slave ring put on would make you so whipped. You sure you’re the same girl that told Princess Celestia-”

“Just because I agree with her these days more often than not doesn’t mean I’m whipped!” Sunset exclaimed with a bright red face. “And besides, she and I talked about it. Right now the Empire is in a precarious position. So we need to…help out. Oh and you know how Twilight is, right thing to do, bla bla bla.”

“What’cha mean Sunset?” Applejack asked. “Ah thought you of all…people woulda just shrugged at the Empire’s problems. And just what is the problem anyway? Ah thought everyone was just waitin’ for the First Lord to keel over. So what if he kicks it now rather than in a few years?”

As Rainbow voiced her agreement with Applejack’s sentiment, Sunset looked at the two of them like they were total morons. “Well aside from that whole because Twilight cares thing,” she said with a shrug before turning completely serious. “The Lords and Ladies aren’t going to elect a new First Lord, they’re going to fight over it. The biggest problem with that is that there isn’t really a faction that is loyal to the First Lord Gaius, but there are two factions that are against him. The first of whom is Aquitaine, I don’t really know much about them other than they allegedly stirred up some trouble in Calderon Valley a year or so ago, and the Dianic League is behind them.”

That name, Rainbow recognized. While the males of the human species ran things (into the ground) and let the women have next to almost no say in things, that group spoke out for women to have an equal say in things. They were also extremely opposed to slavery. With those two things combined, Rainbow considered them the closest thing to Celestia in this Celestia-forsaken world. So if those Aqua-marine people had their support, the former pegasus figured she could root for them easily enough.

“The other is High Lord Kalarus,” Sunset said darkly. It was enough for all of them.

The city of Kalare, the city that High Lord ruled, had been the first real city that girls had come across in Alera. Since then, Rainbow had learned that it was also by far the worst and they weren’t all like that. But…the fact that such a place even existed in the first place made her sick.

Kalare was the center of the slave trade in Alera, and the whole city seemed to be the perfect place to raise a bully like Brencis. The whole place consisted of nothing but the few bullies, and the mass of people they bullied. It was muddy, caught in the shadow of a mountain that kept the place dark for most of the day, and had a stink to it that Rainbow could smell even with the a weak human’s nose. If it wasn’t for the fact Twilight had ordered her as a Princess not to start trouble, Rainbow would have made a tornado strong enough to wipe that place from the face of existence.

A hand on her wrist snapped Rainbow out of her daydreams of tearing slave collars off dozens of humans, and she looked down to see Sunset had grabbed a hold of her. A slight tingle in the back of her head made the former pegasus realize Celestia was helping to cool her anger, and she let out a low sigh. “Thanks. I just…whenever I think about those…people.”

“Still don’t see what’s the big problem,” Applejack went on as Rainbow dropped to the ground and linked hands with sunset. “Everyone with half a brain gets behind Aquitaine, and it all ends just fine.”

Sunset shook her head. “The problem is there isn’t a faction loyal to Gaius, at least not one out in the open,” she mumbled before looking back and forth between the two girls. “Because of that, everyone might not even pick one of two sides. Crows, I know more than half the High Lords will stay out of the war until one side or the other can bribe them into it somehow, and it may not even just be two factions. With the way the political system here works we could end up seeing three, or maybe even four different sides trying to take power, and that’s not even considering the possibility of other countries like those wolf things across the sea to the west, or the Marat in the east, or the Ice Men of the north. Any one of them could take the opportunity to invade.”

“That don’t sound like something you’d be all worried about sugarcube. Ah mean, war and all that is bad sure, and Ah don’t much like the sound of things. Humans ain’t mah favorite bipeds, but still don’t like the idea of them getting hurt. But you…” Applejack left the rest unsaid.

It was a sentiment Rainbow had to agree with.

“You’re right of course, I don’t care one bit what would happen to every single man, woman, and child in Alera if things went badly,” Sunset replied with a snarky smile. “But war tends to make things more expensive, and certain foods will be next to impossible to find in the market. Even if you can grow things in the middle of winter Applejack, there’s only so much our back yard can produce.”

Rainbow Dash groaned. “You’re saying we should save this First Lord guy because if we don’t…our grocery bill will go up?”

“I knew you weren’t as stupid as you pretend to be Dashie!” Sunset said with a smile that made Rainbow rolled her eyes. A second later, it was gone, replaced by a scowl. “But in all seriousness, the funds we brought from Equestria aren’t going to last forever, and we still have no idea just when the mirror will be useable again. Just because it connected to the old human worth every thirty moons doesn’t mean it will be the same this time around.

“And food is just one problem we’ll have if a war breaks out,” Sunset went on. “Alera Imperia is the capital city. Whoever holds it, holds the realm. Everyone will be fighting for it. The best thing would be to move out. Maybe somewhere to the south like Parica or Rhodes, but that means buying a new house and the huge risk of moving the mirror. If it breaks, we’re stuck here. But if we stay, there’s going to be fires, looting, fighting in the streets, maybe even food shortages and…ugh, sanitation problems.”

Rainbow shuddered at the thought. “So best thing for everyone involved is to fix Gaius. Got it,” she said before looking around. “And where’re we going anyway? This isn’t a street that leads to the Citadel.”

“Okay, dunk him.”

Upon giving the order, Twilight sat on her box of lab equipment and watched as Applejack dunked Anthiller Maximus into the ice cold pool that her friends had crafted in the middle of the street, with Applejack making the impression, Rainbow filing it with water, and Sunset removing the heat. The man kicked and, judging by the bubbles, screamed for a little bit before Applejack lifted him out.

“Again.”

Twilight rubbed the bridge of her nose as she remembered just how they had gotten into this situation. After meeting up with the dark-haired human Tavi, he had explained the situation to Twilight. Like he said before, Gaius Sextus, the First Lord of Alera had apparently fallen unconscious and was in an unknown condition in regards to his health. Unfortunately, because of the humans mistrust of each other, the leader of the country couldn’t let anyone know he was…indisposed. That meant he needed healers, and someone to make sure no one knew that he was sick.

So while Rainbow, Twilight, and Sunset figured out what was wrong with the man, someone would have to use their water crafting talents to make sure no one knew that the First Lord was indisposed. Although Rainbow might have been able to double for the aging ruler by using her friends’ combined talents, Twilight didn’t like the idea of Rainbow walking around as the leader of a country on her own. There was just too much of a chance that she would go overboard or slip up.

Applejack lifted the muscular boy out of the pool again, made sure he was still breaking, then dunked him back in the freezing water while Twilight reminded herself she had no need to feel sympathy for the boy’s current status as a near-popsicle.

After all, they had found him at the house of a widow, where Max was clearly taking advantage of the woman’s loneliness and nearly consuming human desire for close contact…something Twilight was more than experienced with these days, to have cheap sex. While Twilight wasn’t above physical pleasure, something about not having the deeper bond of love behind it made the thing seem…cheap and wrong. Oh Cadence how you left your mark on me.

Max emerged from the drink again, and Rainbow gave him the once-over. “Okay he looks good, and there’s no desperate old lady smell anymore either.”

“She wasn’t old!” Max protested before Applejack tossed him onto the ground, and the hole their makeshift bath had been used for pushed itself up and refilled while the water inside flowed around everyone else and then down the street. Max got to his feet and started to take his soaked tunic off. “And would someone tell me what in the name of the furies you’re all doing here?”

Upon seeing the boy’s bare back, Twilight’s breath caught. As a pony, most scars quickly became covered by the coat, so seeing any blemishes in Equestria was something few and far in-between. However, bare human skin allowed the former unicorn turned alicorn made human to clearly make out every single major cut a human ever experienced.

Max’s back was covered with several scars that cross-crossed at several locations. Telling just what made them was impossible considering their age, but Twilight knew it hadn’t been done with a sword or some other kind of real weapon. If anything, it looked like someone had taken a harsh whip to her friend’s back…repeatedly. Although, the presence of the scars did puzzle her. She knew Maximus was the son of a High Lord, born out of love to a woman he didn’t marry. He had the ability to heal himself without leaving any scars, so their presence was an anomaly that Twilight couldn’t figure out.

From the looks of Rainbow and Applejack, they also didn’t like the sight. Sunset seemed a little less affected, and frowned at the things. “So who beat you when you were…what? Five or six? Maybe seven?”

Twilight’s eyes widened, and she looked over to her fiery lover. “Sunset!”

“…my father’s wife,” Max replied after a moment of silence. Then he looked around at the girl’s and Tavi. “Now would someone tell me why you all literally dragged me out of a nice, mature, woman’s bed to try and freeze my balls off? Or is this just a Wintersend tradition where you all come from?”

Tavi sighed. “There’s trouble Max.”

“What kind of trouble?”

Tavi told him what he had told Twilight.

“Bloody crows!” Max roared. Then he looked up at the sound dome Rainbow had constructed, and sighed before he looked back down at Tavi to glare. “Are you trying to get me killed?”

“You should know better than that,” Tavi replied. “If there was anyone else I thought could do this, I wouldn't have gotten you involved.”

“You wouldn't?” Max asked, his tone suddenly offended. “Why not?”

“Because you've known what's going on for ten seconds, and you're already complaining.”

“I like complaining. It's every soldier's sacred right,” Max growled.

“Okay,” Rainbow spoke to the girls. “You all heard him. There’s the proof. Next time it’s my turn to take out the garbage, I get to complain all I want.”

Applejack groaned. “Rainbow, would you please stuff it?”

The two young men apparently hadn’t heard. “You're not a legionare anymore, Max. You're a Cursor. Or a Cursor-in-Training, anyway.”

“I'm still offended,” Max declared. After a moment, he added, “Tavi, you're my friend. If you need help, just expect me to be there whether you want me there or not.”

Twilight brightened at the human’s words, and clapped her hands once. She knew there was a reason she like the boy beyond his brutish defense of the weak. “Good! I’m glad you agreed. Now let’s hurry and get to the Citadel. Rainbow’s got your dry clothes.”

A few seconds later, as the group made their way through the streets, Twilight sped up a bit and matched pace with the young man. “So, Cursor-in-training huh? I thought that was supposed to be a secret?”

“To non-Cursors, yes. But seeing as how you’re in the program too, I don’t see the problem,” Tavi replied evenly as if discussing the weather.

With Rarity’s help, Twilight managed to avoid wincing. Sunset was not going to like that she had let the boy figure that one out. She was already sore enough over the fact that Twilight had signed them up for the program in the first place, even if she begrudgingly admitted it was a good idea if the worst came to pass and gave them another option of what to do.

The way Twilight understood it, Cursors were like a kind of secret Royal Guard that the First Lord used to check up on the realm and make sure everyone was playing fairly. No one was supposed to know who they were, and they had access to a great deal of information about what was going on in Alera as well as the capital city, like the layout of the catacombs that ran underneath the city called the Deeps.

Although Twilight had tried to make them keep a low profile at the Academy while she and Sunset searched for any information on how to expedite their journey home, Rainbow Dash and Applejack were quite the showoffs, and Sunset didn’t really know how to back down while Twilight…well, she had found that not performing well in class made her feel as if she was developing an ulcer. Their actions had actually managed to attract the attention of a blind man, and without the status that came with being Citizens to scare him away, he had Twilight agreeing to help do what she could to ensure that Alera was a safer place before all the details were known…like just what a Cursor was like every human around apparently already knew.

She supposed citizenship was still a ways out of the program, but…that would cause its own little mess of problems.

Twilight frowned. “And just how do you know that?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“On the way here you asked who else knew. Being the head of the Imperial Guard, Master Miles was kind of obvious, but you didn’t flinch when I mentioned Killian, a blind old man that has no healing fury craft and only gives a few lectures at the Academy,” Tavi replied. “Unless you’re learning under him to be a Cursor of course, then there’s every reason to simply accept his presence.”

Oh Sunset is not going to like this, Twilight told herself as she looked back at her ‘political advisor’ that had become quite the nag since they became humans. Then, she turned her attention back to the boy.

The First Lord’s meditation chamber where Gaius had collapsed was not actually in the Citadel, but beneath it, several flights of stairs beneath it. As soon as the entered the area, Tavi and the others were questioned at several guard checkpoints, and all of his female companions became quite nervous. Still, he made it through all the guard stations, explaining that the First Lord had requested the presence of the people with him, and they had brought him a gift for receiving them on very short notice.

But when he entered the room after giving a coded knock on the door, Sir Miles didn’t seem very pleased at the extra company. “I thought you said you were only bringing four, and none of them are a slave.”

Tavi attempted not to wince under Master Miles’s stare. “C-Circumstances changed sir,” he tried to explain before a rather irate grumble came from behind him.

“You own a slave?” Rainbow Dash growled.

In order to cool the situation down, Tavi turned around and held up his hands in defense. “It’s not what you think! Fade he…he was a legionnaire before he was injured in the head and became…addled. Because he couldn’t fight, they branded a deserter’s mark on his face and now…well, he really can’t take care of himself anymore. My aunt and uncle had him come with me when I left the stead hold, and now he works in the Academy’s kitchens.”

It was a total lie of course. The man known as Fade was just a cover, and although scarred with the traitor’s brand, the man wasn’t really an idiot. He was without a doubt the best swordsman Tavi knew, and could perhaps rightfully claim the title of best in the realm. Although he knew half of why the man had been hiding out in the middle of nowhere, what with him being the bodyguard of the First Lord’s son that had died under his watch, Tavi still had no idea why his aunt Issana had allowed such a thing when she knew his identity.

“Well I suppose a woman is better fit to take care of the First Lord than some mental deviant,” the soldier before turning his attention towards the girls, who all looked at the biggest person in the room.

Applejack caught wind of the attention and sighed. “Guess Ah make most sense, what with mah family and all,” she said before looking around. “Now, where is the old fella?”

After a bit of debate and explanations upon meeting Captain Miles, the limping leader of Gaius’s guard and legion, tasks were assigned and everyone divided up. Twilight had actually brought a miniature apothecary with her that she put together, while Max worked on crafting himself into a likeness of Gaius under Rainbow’s instructions, Applejack simply sat around, and Sunset…argued with Miles.

“Just what are you doing?” the old captain demanded harshly as Sunset jabbed a small, pointed blade attached to a glass tube into the First Lord’s arm.

“I’m drawing his blood to check for poisons,” she replied evenly before pulling out the device that now had a full vial of red liquid in it.

Miles pointed his finger at the girl. “That is why the water crafters are here girl!” he said before looking over to Twilight. “Now get over here and heal him!”

“Do you have any idea what’s actually involved with using water to heal injuries and cure disease?” she asked evenly. “It’s not some instant magical cure-all. Causing parts of the body to regenerate at that increased speed takes a lot out of the person being healed. It’s why people with major injuries suffer from exhaustion afterwards. Your helper monkey said Gaius has been overworking himself and collapsed after drinking a tonic that’s supposed to dull pain and keep him active, meaning that this could just all be a severe case of exhaustion. But hey, if you want us to just kill the old man by working his body to death, I guess we can indulge you.” Sunset turned around and looked to the other girl bent over a table that had been brought in for them as Twilight lit a small flame beneath an oddly shaped glass cup with a broad base and small opening at the top of an elongated neck. “Twilight, can you come here and murder the-”

“I am well aware of the…side effects of using crafting to heal,” Miles said before Sunset could finish. “And…I see your point, however badly delivered. How long will it take to test for the presence of poisons?”

The self satisfied smirk on Sunset’s face went ignored by the man. “One hour if we hurry, although a complete workup will take most of the night. I’ll do both to make sure we don’t miss anything.”

Miles sighed and hung his head. “Gaius has survived this long, as long as he doesn’t go into convulsions and his heart remains beating at the same pace, I can’t fault your caution. But if you find nothing in the first test, administer healing.”

Then he turned to Applejack and frowned. “You, the ox with the tits, I had some bedding and a cot brought down. Assemble it, and then place the First Lord on it. I trust you can handle that yourself.”

Applejack grumbled a little, but didn’t argue ass he got to work.

The night passed quickly enough, with Tavi having to deliver messages in order to make everything look normal, one of which was to Master Killian to inform him of the situation. By the time he was back with the old blind man who trained the First Lord’s spy network, Sunset had apparently completed her tests and was leaning up against the wall alongside Twilight and Rainbow was putting away the portable apothecary.

Miles explained what was going on to Killian, who examined Gaius himself before he looked back to the two girls. “So, did you find anything?”

“Do you want the good news, the bad news first?” Sunset asked.

“Let’s go with the good,” Miles said.

Twilight cleared her throat and took up a stance that she did whenever she was called to give an oral response to test questions. “From what we can tell, The First Lord Gaius is currently suffering from an extreme case of exhaustion. He’ll recover, but it’s going to take time. Probably two or three days. Four would be better though.”

Both Miles and Killian let out a relieved sigh. “Well there’s that,” the captain grumbled.

“We’ll still need the boy to provide a double while he’s unconscious,” Killian went on. “If the First Lord isn’t seen at the pre-Wintersend festivities, the other Lords will become suspicious at best. At worst, it will be seen as a sign of weakness.”

Tavi looked over to the girls next to the wall. “Wait a minute, if that is the good news. Then what’s the bad?”

“Oh, he’s being poisoned,” Sunset replied with a shrug, as if she was announcing the weather half a continent away.

“WHAT?” Miles roared. “But you said-”

Tavi self his body go numb at the news, and the captain’s roars faded in the background. If the First Lord was being poisoned, if he died then…it could very well mean the end of Alera. Civil war would break out, and the enemies that surrounded them would invade. Although, he wasn’t sure about the intentions of the Marrat, after meeting the gaint canine that walked on two legs who was the Canin ambassador, he knew that those monsters would come across the Mare Nostrum and invade the western lands. They were the fiercest enemies the Alerans had ever faced in all their years.

“I SAID BEING POISONED YOU IDIOTS!” Sunset roared, snapping Tavi out of thoughts of thousands of ten foot tall wolves that walked like men, tearing through the villages and towns around Kalare, eating people in the middle of the street while they were still alive, and roasting children on a spit as if they were pigs.

Twilight put her hand on Sunset’s shoulder, and the redhead stood down while the girl with the strange purple hair stepped forward. “You misunderstand, when we examined First Lord’s blood, we found a toxic compound that slowly works to break down the bone and muscles. It’s not like…hemlock or anything that kills outright. So a taste tester wouldn’t notice it, and since they’re switched out every few months, they would never show any side effects. To work the way it has been, the poison would have had to of been fed to him for at least a year, but probably more.”

“I know of something with the effects of what you describe,” Killian mumbled as he ran his hand through his wispy hair before he looked up in the direction of the girls. “But how did you find it?”

“The substance is somewhat metallic in nature,” Sunset explained. “We detected it with our crafting after breaking down the components in Gaius’s blood.”

Miles gave the redhead a thoughtful frown. “I didn’t know we could do that with metal crafting.”

“Well you’re an idiot, so it’s understandable,” she said, getting a scowl from the guard captain.

Killian sighed again. “How long does he have?”

Twilight looked over to Sunset, who shrugged with an annoyed scowl on her face. Tavi knew the expression was from running into a question she couldn’t answer rather than any worry. “Five, maybe seven years if you can find who’s slipping him the drug.”

“I’m sorry,” Twilight told them with a genuine look of concern in her eyes. “But there’s nothing we can do. Lord Gaius is probably already feeling the effects and might have been for some time. In fact, it could have very well been what led to this whole situation in the first place. He…overestimated his abilities because he should have been stronger. Instead…”

Killian nodded. “We understand the situation girl,” he said as he held up his hand. “Still, there are some things to be thankful for. Now, the five of you need to get back to the Academy. Finals start today and some of the best crafters turning up missing will make people wonder. I will remain here with the First Lord. Madam Apple, after your tests are completed, you are to return here to give me a respite, understood?”

The girls said their goodbyes, Tavi watched the big one gather Twilight’s lab and waited for them all to walk out of the room. As he started to close the door behind him, he caught the two old men talking to each other.

“Crows…you know what this all means?” the military man asked.

“Gaius is dying faster than we thought, and has no living male heirs or daughters to marry off. So in less than a decade, we’re going to have a war of succession on our hands. And that’s only if we’re lucky.”

Author's Note

Forgot to state it in my first AN or disclaimer, but this takes place during book two of the Codex Alera, Academ's Fury.

The Third Chapter

Chapter Roman Numeral Three

Twilight had to fight from tapping her fingers against the desk in sheer boredom as she waited for the rest of the class to finish with the test. To her left, Sunset was equally bored, and Rainbow Dash balanced the writing implement the teacher had given her on the tip of her nose as she reclined in her seat. Applejack looked at her paper with a frown as she obviously checked her older calculations for errors in her seat beside Sunset.

Although she tried to force it down, a tiny voice in her head reminded Twilight of Rainbow’s ability to just pick up the information around her and take it in, making Twilight wonder if the former pegasus had been cheating. But then the louder voice that had known Rainbow longer than that said the pegasus would never cheat on something like this, her pride wouldn’t let her.

As the two opinions battled it out, Twilight looked down a few rows and frowned at the boy with the black hair drooling on his paper while like he had been since falling asleep two questions ago. Her eye twitched at the sight, but the former alicorn couldn’t be too angry with Tavi. He had been up for longer than they had last night after all, and didn’t possess metal magic to push his body to keep going like she and Sunset did, nor the unnatural stamina that hard workers and athletes Rainbow and Applejack possessed.

Still, falling asleep during a test was just…WRONG!

“Very well,” the teacher of the class, one Maestro Gallus announced a voice that always sounded like it was complaining. “If you haven’t finished your questions by now, then another minute’s worth of scribbling won’t help you, pass your papers to the left.”

Doing as instructed, Twilight took a second to check Rainbow’s figures and found them all correct, although the path her work took could have used a little more elegance. She didn’t write the whole equation, just little jots and scribbles that were obvious calculations half-done in her head.

After she handed in her paper, Twilight glanced down to see Ehran had woken Tavi up, and the teacher either didn’t notice the boy had been sleeping, or care. As they discussed something she didn’t bother to make out, Twilight turned to Rainbow. “So what did you think of the test.”

“Boring,” Rainbow moaned as she stretched her arms and legs.

Sunset snickered as Twilight felt the girl look over her shoulder. “Oh really? I would have thought you would have been all. Psst! Twilight help!”

The look Rainbow gave Sunset was the same one that the redhead usually showed to humans she thought were acting stupid. “You’re kidding right?” she asked as they got up and began to leave. “Calculating the duration of a merchant ship's voyage or tracking the taxation payments of outlying provinces is just a bunch of stupid word problems revolving around basic addition, subtraction and multiplication. If they want to challenge me, they should have asked how much rainfall reaches the ground of a level two woodland area during a class three rainstorm with a wind factor of five and average humidity rating of eight when the rain is coming from a basic type one rain cloud that hasn’t been loaded with lightning. They uh, hold twenty-two percent more water that way. Instead of using a basic chaos to harmonic order theorem equation to determine how many raindrops would be caught by the leaves and stay there by factoring in the effects of gravity and wind disruption, this might as well of been two plus two equals four.”

As the group left the room and moved into the hallway, Twilight couldn’t control herself. She spun around and pushed the rainbow haired girl that had ignited the fires of passion between her legs that cried out for a certain former weathermare to quench them. “Rainbow, you…you know what mathematical equations do to me these days,” she moaned. “Say some more.”

“Wh-what?” the shorter girl asked as Twilight licked her lips in preparation for a kiss. The whole world faded out as far as the girl with the purple hair was concerned. All that existed was her, and her mathematical beau.

“Keep it up Rainbow,” Twilight whispered. “Talk nerdy to me.”

Twilight felt someone else touch her shoulder, and the raging flames slowly quelled to a burning candle under Sunset’s magical assistance. “Save it till later Sluttish Sue,” the redhead told her. “We got company.”

The edge to Sunset’s tone made Twilight steel herself, and she looked down the hallway before frowning. Tavi and his friend were standing with the female member of his little group, Gaelle.

Gaelle Patronus Sabinus was a girl no older than Tavi. She was short, stocky, and plain, with mouse brown hair done in a braid. A small scattering of green and blue beads decorated her lanyard, that kind of clashed with the drabness of her grey robes. Despite being friendly with her, Twilight didn’t know much about her past. But, the former pony couldn’t fault her for wanting to keep her past a secret.

However, she wasn’t who held everyone’s attention, that honor belonged to the usual suspect at the Academy. It was Brencis. The arrogant young lord's dark hair was mussed and stringy after the long exam. The hulking Renzo hovered behind him and a little bit to one side, and Varien stood to Brencis's left, eyes glittering with anticipation and malice.

“You know,” Rainbow commented. “It’s really not fair that you can just dunk something in water and get it fixed around here. Makes guys like him a pain to convince its better for them to just go away…or stay in a hospital for a few weeks.”

Applejack snorted. “And how many times did that annoying ability keep you on your feet when your cute little butt kept crashing into the ground?” she snarked.

Before the two of them could get into a fight, make-out session, or just start rutting each other in the hallway, Twilight sighed and singled for them all to follow her over and stop more unnecessary violence before it could occur. However, by the time she got there, Brencis was already leaving.

Without a fight.

Or bloody nose.

“Huh,” Sunset managed.

“That was…odd,” Applejack mumbled.

“Odd nothing, he saw me coming and got scared away by my awesomeness,” Rainbow commented.

“Or maybe he’s just growing up,” Twilight commented, which got an odd look from her girlfriends. She sighed and slumped. “Okay, I’ll admit it, Rainbow’s theory is more likely than mine…for once.” Obviously, the picture in her head of doing it with Rainbow in the back of a giant chalkboard while they left complex equations related to quantum physics in their wake as they rolled around in each others grips using a sixty-nine position to engage in maximum sexual release at the same time was affecting her ability to think, even with eighty-seven point three two five percent of her emotional responses suppressed.

She cleared her throat and walked over to the group of real humans. “Hello everyone!” Twilight greeted them before turning to the boy without magic. “So Tavi, ready to go?”

“Go?” Gaelle asked. “Go where?”

Tavi cleared his throat. “Oh, Twilight had just offered to help me do something before the next test, but I’m afraid I’ll have to wait till later. I’ve got some letters to deliver.”

The real human girl raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t sleep at all last night, and you’re still running errands? To who?”

“Uh.” Tavi rummaged in his pockets until he found the envelope and glanced at the name on it. “Oh, bloody crows,” he swore with a sigh as his fear spiked for a few instants. “I'll catch up to you later.”

As he started to run down the hallway Twilight frowned. From the looks of things, and what she felt from the boy, it didn’t look like she’d be getting the relief that had brought about that daydream after all. A quick glance in Rainbow’s direction and mental please had Dashie creating a sound proof tunnel between her mouth at the rainbow girl’s head. “Something’s up. Follow him, and don’t be seen.”

“What’s going on?” Rainbow asked evenly as she looked around at the personal communication bubble. “Trouble?”

“Maybe. Tavi is heading towards the predator embassy with a forged letter from the First Lord.”

Rainbow Dash hated the Citadel. The whole place had nothing on Canterlot Palace despite the fact they were both white. The Palace was cool and magical, the Citadel was just…stupid rock that had been shaped by magic. What was worse was that it was a lot of rock, which kind of made it hard to fly at even the upper levels, and near impossible in the lower ones. Plus, being around that place made her feel weird, like there was an inch in her back she just couldn’t scratch, and her girls Wonderbolt were always on edge whenever they got near the place.

Last night had been the absolute worst. They had been underground, behind a metal door, and completely cut off from the open sky. On top of which, the creepy feeling had spread from behind her back to all over. The others had felt it too, they just…didn’t want to let it show to the humans.

So when her princess had told her to follow Tavi there, Rainbow had gathered herself up in an invisible cloak and coasted through the air slowly above him before they came to the gate of the Black Hall.

The Black Hall was a long corridor of dark, rough-quarried stone very different from the rest of the First Lord's marble stronghold. It was as if the humans were shouting ‘NOT LIKE US’. The entrance to the hall had an actual gate upon it, bars of dark steel as thick and hard as the portcullis to any stronghold. Outside the gate stood a pair of soldiers from the Royal Guard in red and blue in full arms and armor as usual. Instead of guarding the outside from invaders, they stood facing the gate.

Although considering just who was on the other end of the gate, Rainbow couldn’t blame them.

On the other side of the gate, a single candle cast just enough light to show a pair of Canim crouched on their haunches. Half-covered in their round capes, Dash could see little of them beyond the sharper angles of their armor at the shoulders and elbows as she dropped to the ground silently and adjusted her cloak to filter out her footsteps and breathing. The shape of the Canim heads was half-hidden in their hoods, but their wolfish muzzles showed, and their teeth, and the faint red-fire gleam of their inhuman eyes. Though they squatted on the floor, their stance was somehow every bit as rigid, alert, and prepared as the Aleran guards facing them.

The Canim were like the big bullying cousins of the Diamond Dogs, in Rainbow’s opinion. They were big, monstrous, too greedy to keep to their own lands, and tended to think themselves better than everyone else around them with the impolite way they acted. Rainbow understood being rude and wanting to provoke a fight, but from what she understood, the giant wolf-men were outright threatening.

Even with her human nose, Rainbow could smell the creatures. The revelation quickly made her ask Wonder for a light screen of water to cover most of her body so she wouldn’t give off a detectable scent. Having a griffon for a rather obnoxious friend and a few years as a Wonderbolt reservist had taught her how to deal with canine predators. They relied more on scent than anything.

“Guard,” Tavi said. “I bear a letter for His Excellency, Ambassador Varg.”

One of the Alerans glanced over his shoulder and waved him past. Tavi approached the gate. On the other side, a leather basket sat in its usual place on the rough floor, an arm's length away from the bars, and Tavi leaned through to drop the letter into the basket. Not even a second later, one of the Canim moved faster than any human without wind or metal magic would have been able.

But instead of grabbing the letter, he snatched the boy’s arm.

Rainbow tensed and made ready to move. Since the wolf had the human, simply electrocuting him like her first impulse said to do was out, as was simply charging in fast enough to put a hole in the creature with her bare hands thanks to the bars. So she flexed her fingers while her mind raced with possibilities. The obvious option to make the Canim drop the boy would be to take the light skin of water that covered her body and shove it down the wolf nose before giving a brief shock through it that would carry through to its lungs before taking out the other one.

In the second it took the wind user to consider her options, Tavi raised his free hand to the guards. “Wait,” he said, voice quiet as his head tilted to look at the wolf. “What do you want, Guard?” Tavi demanded, his tone impatient, peremptory.

The Cane regarded him with unreadable, feral eyes and released his wrist in a slow, deliberate motion that trailed the tips of the Cane's claws harmlessly against Tavi's skin. “His Excellency,” the Cane growled, “requests the messenger to deliver the letter directly to his hands.”

After a bit of shouting from the guards and chest thumping from the dogs, the gate was opened and the human boy was let in. For her part, Rainbow Dash let out a groan no one else could hear, and silently followed. Sure Twilight, go into the dark spooky tunnel full of man-eating wolves? What’s that, no I don’t mind, I’m Loyalty after all! Rainbow Dash thought to herself as she fiddled with her slave ring.

While the thought of giving Twilight an order never crossed her mind, the next time they did it, Rainbow promised to bring her so close to the edge, and then just leave her there for a minute or two.

The end of the hall was the only door in the place, made of some thick, heavy wood of some dark color that shone with deep red and heavy purple highlights in the light of the single candle the human had been given. Then Tavi's guard strode past him in those too-long stalking steps of a grown Cane, and drew its claws slowly down the dark wood. Whatever it was, the wood was hard. The Cane's heavy claws scraped loudly, but no indentation or mark appeared on the wood.

There was a snarl from the room beyond, a sound that had to be the dog’s primary language. The guard replied with a similar sound, though higher in pitch. There was a brief silence, then a chuckling growl, and another voice rumbled, “Send him in.” A second later, the guard opened the door and stalked away without giving Tavi a second glance. The boy swallowed, took a deep breath, and strode into the room, Rainbow flattened herself against the hall to let the guard pass, then slipped into the room after him to find that someone had blown Tavi’s candle out.

As the door closed, Rainbow closed her eyes and relied on her friends to tell her what was going on. A disturbance in the air beside her had the former pegasus moving forward past Tavi to avoid a large shape coming in from her side using her magic before she spun to face it.

Tavi turned and faced almost directly behind him. “Ambassador, I have a-”

“Be silent whelp,” the deep voice growled. “I may not be able to smell you, but I know you’re there. Come out. Now!”

The command made Rainbow tense, and she dropped her cloak before redirecting the minor air and water spirits around her into a continuous burst of lightning from her hands while she surrounded them with the screen of water that had hidden her scent. The effect lit up the room, and she opened her eyes that were still used to some light, so she wasn’t blinded by her own lightning and got her first good look at Ambassador Varg.

The Cane stood at its full height, and the ten-foot ceiling barely allowed it. Covered with fur the color of the darkest depths of night, the creature stood upon two legs, with the mass of two or three big legionaries. Its shoulders looked too narrow for its height, and its arms were longer than human proportions. Its long, blunt fingers were tipped with dark claws.

He was dressed in clothing similar to Aleran in fashion, though made with far greater lengths of cloth underneath some kind of armor that was made for wolf-people. Varg wore colors of grey and black exclusively, and over that the odd Canim-style circular cloak that draped over the back and half of the Cane's chest. Where fur showed through, thin spots and white streaks marked dozens of battle scars. One triangular ear, notched and torn to ragged edges with old wounds, sported a gleaming golden ring hung with a skull carved from some stone or gem the color of blood. A similar ring glittered amidst the dark fur covering its left hand, and at its side the Cane wore one of the huge, scything war swords of its kind.

“Rainbow? What’re you-how did you get in here?”

“I walked in through the front gate,” Rainbow told him evenly.

“But the guards-”

“Are blind and stupid, and they got snot up their noses,” the former pegasus said.

Varg stared at her for a moment, then took in a deep breath through his nose, and frowned. “You are not a demon. What are you doing here?”

The odd statement threw Rainbow off a bit, but she recovered before it did more than make her frown. “Making sure this idiot doesn’t get himself eaten.”

“Why?” the wolf growled.

“Because he’s my friend.”

“Most friends trust their comrades,” Varg relied.

Rainbow let out a snort. “I trust this idiot to get himself into trouble, especially around stupid dogs that don’t know when to heel.”

“Rainbow!” Tavi admonished her.

The dog paused for a moment. “You do not smell afraid,” he growled.

“No reason to be,” Rainbow told him as she crouched in preparation for a fight. “I’ve run into plenty of things bigger, stronger, and faster than you, and walked away just fine every time.”

Varg was silent for a moment more, and let out a loud laugh that echoed throughout the halls. “Well said girl,” he went on before he looked down at the other human. “Give me the message boy.”

Rainbow frowned at the monster. “Hey, we’re not done here!”

“Yes we are,” Varg relied as he took the paper and opened it with a swipe of his claws. “I threatened, you responded without fear in your eyes or scent on your body and wisely prepared to do battle while also taking the honorable course and letting me make the first move. You’ve proved your worth to me, and I to you by not attacking but showing that I am not afraid of you.”

The rather…odd explanation made Rainbow raise an eyebrow. “Um…okay?”

Varg nodded, then looked down at the missive. “It would seem the First Lord refuses to meet with me,” he grumbled. “Fools. It will be on your heads then.”

“What-” was all Rainbow managed to ask before another presence made itself known.

“You see, my lord,” hissed a higher-pitched growling voice from the doorway. “They have no respect for you or for our people. We should be rid of this place and return to the Bloodlands.”

The three people turned to face the doorway, where a new Cane crouched. It wore no armor, but was draped in long robes of deep scarlet. Its pawlike hands were far thinner and more spidery than Varg's, and its reddish fur looked thin and unhealthy. The muzzle, too, was narrow and pointed, and its tongue lolled out to one side, nickering nervously. “Sarl,” Varg growled. “I did not send for you.”

“Apologies, mighty lord,” Sarl said after removing his hood and giving the bigger wolf an odd grin with his teeth. “But I came to report to you that word has come, and that the change of guard would arrive in two days' time.”

“Very good, Sarl,” Varg growled. “Out.”

“As you wish, lord,” Sarl replied, baring its throat again, hunching low. The Cane backed away, scraping, and hurried back into the corridor.

“Who was-” Rainbow began, to be cut off by Varg.

“My secretary. He attends to matters beneath my notice.”

“"I-uh, I’m familiar with the concept," Tavi said, finally shaking off the weird haze he had been in for awhile.

Varg's teeth showed as its muzzle lolled open. “Yes. You would be. That is all, cub.”

“Then we take our leave, Excellency,” Tavi said as he flashed the dog-man a toothy smile for some reason, and motioned for Rainbow to lead him outside. He started to walk past Varg, but the Cane suddenly put out a heavy paw-hand and blocked Tavi's way. Tavi swallowed and glanced up at the Cane. He met the Ambassador's eyes for a moment, and Rainbow clenched her fist.

Varg regarded them, fangs gleaming, and said, “Light your candle at my fire before you go. Your night eyes are weak and that magic crackling is annoying. I'll not have you stumbling in my corridor and bawling like a puppy or agitating my guards.”

Tavi exhaled slowly and tilted his head again. “Yes, sir,” he replied before doing just that. Rainbow cut her magic, and sent the water she had collected into a nearby drainage basin.

Just before he crossed the threshold again, Varg growled, “Aleran. I have rats.”

As Tavi paused, Rainbow looked over to the thing. “Rats?”

“Rats,” Varg growled. It turned its head to look over one armored shoulder. “I hear them at night. There are rats in my walls.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow and looked over to the walls, then to the boy. “Rats? Really? How do you have rats in solid-”

“Out,” said Varg.

Tavi grabbed the girl’s arm, and hurried back into the hallway and started retreating back toward the Citadel proper before slowing down a bit. “I don’t think he was talking about actual rats,” the boy said. “And what…what in the name of the great furies were you doing in there?”

“Keeping you alive, obviously,” Rainbow told him. “Now what-”

“Wait,” Tavi said. Then, he looked down at his candle. “There’s a breeze. Can you tell where it’s coming from?”

Rainbow frowned at the question, then rolled her eyes and extended her senses. She pointed to a spot along the wall. “Over there.”

A second later, the boy rushed over to where the breeze was coming from in the wall, braced himself up against it, and pushed. A secret panel slid open, and Rainbow joined the boy to look past him at a flight of stairs going down into the darkness.

“Oh crows…the Canim have a passageway into the Deeps,” Tavi mumbled.

“Oh please,” Raise said with a roll of her eyes, a little put off by the boy’s surprise. “Everyone and their crow-begotten grandmother has a passageway into the Deeps in this town. So what?”

“Shh!” Tavi replied before he started moving down the stairs.

Rainbow groaned, and followed. Then, she heard voices that weren’t hers or the boy’s.

The first speaker was Canim-Sarl, Rainbow was sure of it. She recognized the cringing tone to its snarling voice. “And I tell you that all is in readiness. There is nothing to fear.”

“Talk is cheap, Cane,” said a human voice, so quiet that Rainbow felt tempted to use her magic to try and hear it better, even if her wind power would have been greatly reduced underground. “Show me.”

“That was not a part of our agreement,” the Cane said. There was a shivering, flapping sound, like a dog shaking its chops. “You must believe my words.”

“Suppose I don't?” asked the other.

“It is too late to change your mind now,” said Sarl, a nasty slur to the words. “Let us not discuss what cannot-” The Cane's words cut off suddenly.

Rainbow tensed. Numerous encounters with predators over the years, especially ones that could talk told her what a thing that had good nose and could talk suddenly stopped when she was sneaking nearby. “Bloody…he caught our scent, come on.”

“What?” Tavi whispered.

Using her inner wind magic, Rainbow dragged the boy behind her using as much speed as she could without tearing his arm out of its socket. Once she was back in the Black Hall, Rainbow wrapped herself in water and air again. A few seconds later, they were at the gate, and then outside. Tavi actually ran away from the place at a decent pace for once.

After they had turned a corner, rainbow dropped her cloak and bit of water. “What was all that about?”

“I…don’t know,” Tavi replied. “Something…something’s going on inside the Canim embassy. And while the First Lord is…too weak to do anything because of strange storms on the coast.”

Rainbow dropped out of the air and looked at the boy eye to eye. “Think they’re related?”

For a few seconds, Tavi got the same look all eggheads managed whenever they put all their brainpower into thinking. When he came out of it, the boy shook his head. “There’s not enough information for me to form a conclusion. I…if I knew who the other speaker was, or…crows, I don’t even know if the Canim can cause storms. We know they can use an archaic form of fury craft, but nowhere near as powerful as an Aleran’s. Plus, there’d be no way for them to know the First Lord’s limits…or the problems we’ve been having.”

“So now there’s something else, unrelated to you know who’s problem completely,” Rainbow muttered. “Really wish everyone would just take a number and wait their turn in line like in the old days.”

Rainbow waved her off before the confused boy could ask a question. “Never mind. Go get some sleep. I got to go see Twilight about some math,” she said before licking her lips. After that little encounter, Rainbow needed something else to think about.

“…huh?” Tavi managed.

“Crafting…has it’s advantages,” Twilight managed as her ‘mistress’ continued to run her finger around the inside of the former alicorn’s cutie mark. The motion made her whole leg quiver with excitement. “What was that anyway? Ten?”

The heavenly touch stopped, and Twilight let out a sigh of loss before Rainbow’s face filled her vision. Her hair was a little more matted than usual, but the sweat that covered the girl after Twilight had finished her turn had long since dissipated. “Wow you’re off, we’re up to twelve.”

Twilight gulped down the air her body demanded, and gently pulled Rainbow in for a kiss. As soon as their lips touched, Twilight’s body responded to the desire of her leash holder’s wishes that she experience pleasure, and a warm feeling of contentment filled her being while they locked lips, then lingered when the former pegasus lined up her and Twilight wrapped her legs around Rainbow’s. “Looks like Sunset’s still going to hold the record then.”

“Sure you don’t want more?” Rainbow asked as she traced a line between Twilight’s breasts. However, no intense feeling of pleasure came with it to try and bait the girl with the purple hair into further escapades. “I can do more.”

For a second, Twilight considered the offer. Thanks to her link to Rarity, Twilight’s body could strengthen itself and ignore its normal limitations that humans unconsciously set; which according to Sunset, was around twenty percent. Thanks to that, she could ignore pain, push her endurance, leap short buildings in a single bound without the need for Dashie, and even push aside her body’s natural desire for sexual contact if the situation called for it. But just because she could ignore the pain didn’t mean the damage wasn’t there. The only way to stop that problem was a full metal manifestation of self…which would kind of make sex impossible.

So, Twilight decided to err on the side of caution. “I know, and I love you for it…but I think twelve orgasms of magically assisted bliss is enough for one evening.”

“Okay, if you say so.” Rainbow sighed, then lowered herself onto Twilight, and the both rolled onto their sides to face each other. “Still need to break Sunset’s record though.”

Twilight giggled. “I could always get you off some more Ms three’s enough for me.”

“Yeah well...if you two would play fair and give me some metal magic, I’d be having twenty,” Rainbow replied before Twilight leaned forward to kiss her lightly on the lips before her face became serious. “So uh…Sunset’s…”

“Citadel with Applejack, doesn’t want us alone in there, and since crafting won’t do Gaius any good…” Twilight left the rest unsaid before she reached up and used a finger to push back a strand of Rainbow’s hair behind her ear. “Now, how’re you doing? Get it out of your system?”

Rainbow fidgeted a bit, and Twilight moved her hand down to grab onto the flying girl’s cutie mark to give it a light squeeze. “Yeah,” she admitted after a second. “I’m all…adrenalined out, or whatever. It’s just…seeing that Varg guy, getting ready to face him…kind of made me feel like…you know, me again. He wasn’t just some overgrown bully, he was a real threat and…you know.”

The slightly different feeling of Rainbow’s cutie mark, a smooth sensation with a tiny magical tingle told Twilight she had found the right place and simply traced the lighting bolt symbol. “But nothing really happened, right?”

“Yeah he just gave me some posturing mumbo-jumbo and stuff like griffons tend to do,” Rainbow replied.

Twilight sighed in relief and kissed Rainbow again. It had been a mistake to send her to look after the boy, she realized, even if nothing had come of it. She would probably need to apologize to the wolf creature at a later date, although how to do that was a question she didn’t have an answer to, other than just waiting for him to leave his hall on business.

The strange meeting Rainbow stumbled upon concerned her, but…she didn’t want to get mixed up in it either. Tavi was right in holding off judgment about whether whatever was going on in the Canim embassy and what happened to the First Lord were connected.

Oh for the simple days, Twilight told herself. Even back when the had first come to Alera Imperia, the schedule had been simple: get up, have breakfast, go to school, come home, study/homework, eat, have sex, sleep, repeat. Then when the bullies started picking on that crippled boy and Rainbow had equated him with Scootaloo, their schedule had changed to get up, have breakfast, go to school, beat up idiots, yell at girls for beating up idiots, come home, study/homework, eat, have sex, sleep, repeat. It was a simple life full of learning, love, laughter, and enough joy to numb the pain Twilight felt at the absence of her other friends.

Then the worry that this world may not link up with Equestria for several years came into her mind, and Twilight had to start making plans for their possible future, of which there were three options. The first of which was that they could simply go into some remote part of Alera and hope that the mirror would open again one day. It would drive Rainbow crazy since she doubted there would be much to do, but…it was safe.

The second option involved the path of the Cursor, one she hadn’t been aware of until Killian introduced himself to her when Twilight apparently passed a morality test he set up, as if she would have ever taken a blind man’s sack of money! Nopony would have done such a thing back on Equestria, even if he hadn’t been old and blind. With the possible exception of the Flim Flam brothers of course. But that option would put them in danger and…Twilight was starting to think the Cursor’s didn’t really have access to some secret knowledge involving Alera.

The third option was to simply take a trial by combat and become a Citizen. With the extra status that afforded, Twilight and the others could start a business or two and gain financial solvency while living in the human dominated part of Alera. All the while waiting for the gate to open. Sunset had also shown an interest in Appia, saying that it might hold a clue to why this society was so closely linked to the other ancient human civilization that fell apart thousands of years ago, or even a way home for them. A business would give them funds to pursue that option.

Then, Twilight became aware of a strange look on Rainbow’s face, and frowned. “Something wrong Rainbow?”

“Hmm? Oh, uh…just thinking about that test we took earlier today.”

With a topic like that, Twilight could help but dive in. “Oh, which one? We all studied plenty and I made those posters for you to look at while we explained things, so I-”

Rainbow shifted on the bed, and held up a hand. “No not…I wasn’t really thinking about the test but um…well…Twilight, are windigos and timber wolves…you know, furies?”

Twilight blinked at the question. It was something she had debated with Sunset Shimmer before, but she hadn’t thought Rainbow of all their family would bring it up. “Well, I can’t really speak for the windigoes since I’ve never seen one, but…I don’t really think that timber wolves could be classified as a fury,” she said before propping herself up on an elbow. “They don’t have any power over the nature around them, despite the elemental nature of their construction. They are elemental, but not like the spirits this world has.”

As her explanation finished Rainbow rolled onto her back, and Twilight waited for the question she knew was going to come next.

“Huh. Okay.”

And waited.

“Well um…thanks Twilight.”

And continued to wait.

“…why’re you looking at me like that?” Rainbow asked with worry on her face.

Twilight blinked and notice she had been giving Rainbow one of her rather manic grins, then let out a groan. “Oh come on Rainbow, aren’t you going to ask if we do have anything like this world’s elemental spirits back in Equestria?”

“Oooooo-kay,” she replied. “Do we have any elemental spirits back in Equestria?”

Twilight let out a sigh. Pillow talk with Sunset is so much more fun, she told herself. Although, she supposed that teaching was also pretty rewarding too.

Rainbow might not have been the intellectual that Sunset was, but that didn’t meanTwilight didn’t love her any less. After all, they both shared a love of reading and Twilight had to admit she had always admired Dash for her bravery and heroism. She still remembered the day she came up with the saying ‘what would a brave pony like Rainbow Dash do?’ before charging a hydra. It had become a bit of mental mantra of ‘what would a brave pony like Rainbow Dash do if she sat down and thought out her actions for ten minutes?’ after that, but the basic idea was the same. She had taught Twilight to fly, and in more ways than one…both literally and figuratively considering their newfound means of transportation that kind of scared the hay out of her…or grains, since human stomachs couldn’t digest processed grass.

But despite her oddities, Twilight loved Rainbow for the pony she was, just as much as she loved Sunset and Applejack for who they were in equal amounts. And…as much as she hated to admit it to herself, she was a little grateful for being marooned on this upside down world so that their feelings could develop into something physical. Even if their ‘obedience collar’ safety features were the primary cause of it thanks to the unheard of amounts of pleasure it allowed to them experience, the love was still there, and they had long since proven the level of trust between them was absolute.

Twilight blinked as her mind came back to reality when Rainbow Dash started looking at her funny again.

Oh right, pony explanation, the former alicorn reminded herself. “No Rainbow, what I told you to say-” Twilight cut herself off when she heard a knock at the door, and groaned. “Figures.”

“I thought Sunset and AJ where over in freaky tower,” Rainbow mumbled.

“They wouldn’t need to knock,” Twilight replied as she braced herself with more metal magic, and stood up. She looked at her nude body for a moment, then grabbed her silk tunic that had been left in the nightstand and slipped on the top of her tunic, then trotted, or jogged, downstairs to see what was going on.

As soon as she opened the door, Twilight regretted not coming down in full armor and a privacy screen between her and the man standing outside. Max took one look at the girl with the tanned skin and smiled. “Hey there Twilight, I see you’re wearing my favorite kind of outfit, almost with a hint of nothing.”

Twilight groaned, and invited the boy in with a wave of her arm. As soon as he was inside, she frowned at him. “What do you want Maximus?”

The boy cleared his throat, and actually managed to look away from her breasts. Twilight didn’t know whether to be grateful, or insulted. “Right...about that, um…you see, I need your help. I was going to get Tavi, but he’s asleep...and finals, and no crafting, and um, you and him usually tie for first place in all the um…egghead stuff when Sunset doesn’t so…”

She sighed. “Help with what?”

“There’s this um…thing tonight with a bunch of old farts that the First Lord is supposed to be at called the…um…Board…something.”

As Max lost his concentration, Twilight quickly scanned her mental schedule of events and figured out what Max was trying to remember. “The Board of Speakers of the Crafting Society?” Twilight asked with a frown as her irritation increased. In her estimation, the whole lot of them were a bunch of foolish fossils that were so caught up in their own ideas they couldn’t even begin to appreciate a new viewpoint that clearly put both their arguments into a wider view of things that validated them both and yet showed those old farts just how little they knew!

The boy nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah that’s it!” he exclaimed before coming a little more serious. “They're meeting with the First Lord to get approval for more studies of, uh…” Max squinted up his eyes. "Arthritic Beer, I keep thinking, but those aren't the right words.”

Twilight couldn’t help but giggle a little. Months of loving Rainbow and Applejack had turned her pronunciation Nazism, as Sunset like to call it, that usually had her giving a lesson in conjugation into just a little snicker when she realized just how cute they were for at least trying. “I think you mean Anthropomorphic Theorem.”

Max nodded again, in exactly the same unconcerned way. “That's it. I've got to learn all about it by the time we walk up to the palace, and you're to teach it to me.”

Outside, the evening bells began to ring, signaling the coming of twilight, and Max swore. “Crows! Come on. I've got to be there in a quarter hour!”

“Okay, what do you need to know, um do you need flash cards? Or do you want to just go with a basic lecture? Or…wait,” Twilight said as something occurred to her. If someone as important as the First Lord was attending… “You mean to say you’re going to be asking question to the board itself? Taking part in the discussions?”

Max blinked. “Um, well, maybe?” he said. “I don’t really know what it's all about, and even if you can teach me everything I need to know, I'll probably I need you to be near me hidden in a veil just in case they ask something compli-”

Twilight cut him off with an excited squeal as the million billion possibilities danced in her mind.

Vindication.

Reparation!

VENGEANCE!

“Uh, are you alright?” the boy asked.

“Alright?” Twilight asked as she flew up to meet him eye to eye. “Alright? I’m better than alright!” She grabbed onto his shirt and had a less than spectacular landing when she accidentally flew forward and down instead of just down, but managed to recover and pinned Maximus to the ground. “With your help, I can finally show those idiots just how wrong they are!”

Max gulped a second before Twilight straightened up and opened the door to shake her fist in the general direction of the assembly while sanding directly above Max. “Uh, Twilight-”

“REJECT MY THEORETICAL PAPER ON THE NATURE OF ELEMENTAL SPIRITS WILL YOU? CALL ME A NO NOTHING CRACKPOT OF A KID WHO DOESN’T KNOW A FURY FROM A FURRY, WILL YOU?”

“S-Something wrong.”

“TURN DOWN MY REQUEST FOR A DEMONSTRATION TO PROVE MY THEORIES CORRECT, HUH?”

“There’s a girl on top of me without any pants on,” Max went on in fear.

“WELL, I’LL SHOW YOU!”

“And all I want to do is get her off!”

“I’LL SHOW YOU ALL! MUA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Twilight went on in her 'mad scientist' laugh as her little ponies responded to her enthusiasm with a bright bolt of lightning that lit up the newly made night sky.

The Fourth Chapter

-Chapter Roman Numeral Four-

“Rainbow Dash, please calm down.”

“Calm down? CALM DOWN? HOW THE HAY AM I SUPPOSED TO CALM DOWN?” the human with the multi-colored hair shouted as she jumped up into the air as per her usual way whenever arguing with someone to gain the height advantage, and quickly fell flat on her face, into the muddy floor of the cave Twilight’s mirror had brought them to.

Off to side, Sunset Shimmer grit her teeth as she watched the former pegasus just freeze. Although her eyes were level with Twilight’s feet, Sunset could tell from the wide-eyed expression that she wasn’t looking at anything anymore, at least nothing physical. All her attention was on a horrible future that probably went along the lines of ‘I can’t fly’ or ‘I’ll never fly again’ and ‘I’m stuck like this’. Sunset understood that because, it was the same line of thought she had experienced upon trying to go back to Equestria the first time she had been on a human world and found the gate closed behind her.

Tears started to fall down Rainbow’s face, and Twilight simply reached down, then lifted her out of the mud to hug her, obviously not caring about the stains it would bring to her human clothing. A few second later, Rainbow broke down and began to wail at her situation while Twilight patted her back without an ounce of irritation from behind shouted at earlier.

“What’re we supposta do now?” Applejack’s hollow voice asked. She looked perhaps a step behind the pegasus in the morale department, with the lost expression on her face that seemed to actually be weighing her down as she slightly slumped.

For a second, Sunset glanced over to her princess, and found the demi-goddess staring back at her in worry while she held the shivering girl that was crying out in emotional pain. From the looks of things, she didn’t seem to be much better off than Applejack, and since Twilight had led the expedition to this land called Alera, the ex-unicorn knew that the guilt would be hitting her pretty hard once her friends had settled down and Twilight took a second to think about herself. But right now, she needed just as much reassurance as the others, and logically, Sunset was the one to go to.

After all, Sunset had survived in a world of humans before. Buck, she had thrived! It might have just been the microcosm of high school, but she had clawed her way to the top of that little mountain without a single thing but the clothes on her back, the money she could extort, and an abandoned warehouse she had chanced upon with a second floor employee lounge that housed an intact couch and a rat population that stayed downstairs.

This time she had three good friends that wouldn’t run off to college, a fortune in gems, a society with a complete lack of social security numbers, and the proof that magic still existed on this world. “Don’t worry girls, everything’s going to be just fine.”

Ringing bells made Sunset open her eyes, and she readjusted herself while splashing a little of the tub’s water before sighing in contentment, raising her feet a bit, and wiggling her toes. The giant copper tub that filled a good bit of the First Lord’s personal bathing room was equal to the one she and the girls had at their own home, which had been one of the reasons why she bought it. The way it kept in the heat when it came to the metal to warm her body felt absolutely divine, and when Twilight or Dash joined her to creating streams of water and turn the thing into a powered hot tub…Sunset moaned at the memories.

“Hey now girl, I ain’t even started yet,” Applejack told her before the bigger girl’s arms released Sunset’s waist. Sunset just sank further into the bath until she was up to her chin, the leaned her head back against her Applejack’s stomach.

Then she smiled up at the massive woman’s face while it was partially obscured by her mountainous mammaries and spoke. “Well you know how I like my baths. Good thing we’ve got this place and not somewhere else. Can’t believe that idiot Miles agreed to let us use the old man’s private bath though.”

“You made all them good points,” Applejack said. “Nobody can see us goin’ around the place all the time without makin’ everyone suspicious. Course it means that half of us are cooped up here half the day, and…um, Sunset…you mind telling me something?”

Still firmly in the grip of her bathing ecstasy, Sunset reached up and touched the point of her Applejack’s nose with her finger. “Anything for you, beautiful,” she said before sending a bit of pleasure through the farmer’s body. Although Sunset didn’t have wood magic to inspire lust like Applejack could, the slave rings were a pretty good second.

Applejack cleared her throat and blushed. “Um, yeah…about…something,” she went on before quickly shaking her head. “Ah was wonderin, you noticing anything…odd about this place?”

For a moment, Sunset thought about continuing to tease her big human with sparks of pleasure, but then she noticed a slightly worried look in Applejack’s eyes. Concern quashed her playfulness in an instant. A second later, Luna had steeled the woman’s resolve to keep her sexual fantasies in the back of her mind, and her face became serious. “Define odd.”

“Ah dunno,” Applejack mumbled. “It’s like…well, whenever I’m inside a building, Mac is a bit more…in his environment ya know. So bein’ underground like this should make him jump for joy, but…he’s all…twitchy.”

Less than a second later, Sunset completely sobered, and she moved away from Applejack to sit on the other side of the tub. “Our girls are reacting to something down here,” she replied while thinking of her own elemental spirits. “Celestia is on edge, and Luna’s being kind of…well, she’s always overprotective, but I’ve had to stop her from going total defensive twice now. It’s worse the deeper we go.”

Applejack nodded. “Ah noticed,” she mumbled while looking around. “What’s um…what’s in the bottom basement of this place anyway?”

“I asked Tavi about that the first day,” Sunset told her. “He said it’s the First Lord’s meditation chamber. It’s where he goes to watch over Alera.”

Seeing that Applejack wasn’t quite getting it, Sunset took a second to put things into context. “Well, you know how Princess Celestia has that telescope at Canterlot that can pretty much look at all of Equestria? The First Lord’s meditation chamber is this world’s equivalent. He apparently has stone from all over Alera built into the floor and made into a mural along the walls.”

Only then did Applejack nod and reply. “Which is still linked to where it comes from, so he can check up on everybody, everywhere. Probably has some other stuff like that around too, like an underground stream or somethin fer the water and such. But that still don’t explain why Mac and Bloom would be all…anxious.”

Sunset sighed, and nodded. For a minute, she almost wished Luna and Celestia could communicate beyond their basic rush of emotions and mental images that they managed to convey, like Twilight’s Fluttershy and Dash’s water elemental could. Although she and her girls could still talk in a fashion, it was…difficult. Despite their looks and understanding of Sunset’s verbal language, Luna and Celestia were still very alien to her in so many ways. Aside from body language when they manifested, Luna could implant images in her mind sometimes, and Celestia’s magic allowed her to convey how passionate she was about things. Usually, the two of them worked together to get their point across.

“In that much I don’t have an answer,” Sunset replied as she turned up her hands in a shrug of defeat. “I’m the analytical genius of the family. You want the emotional stuff, go talk to Twilight. She’s the Princess of Friendship.”

Applejack smirked back at her. “Okay Ms Genius. How about we try analyzin’ the situation we’re in now?”

For a moment, Sunset thought of telling her that the downstairs creeped her out too much to go looking, but she quickly found another option when inspiration struck up. “Well I’m naked and soaking wet,” the metallic pyromancer said as she put on a predatory smile and started to approach her slave, “with a big, beautiful, talented woman that can fill my body with the most flexible things I’ve ever had inside of me. So after examining the situation…I’d say it’s time for her to fuck me.”

As she came nose to nose with the giant woman, Applejack gulped and licked her lips. “Well um…t-that’s some mighty fine…analyzin’ there.”

“Anal-izing?” Sunset asked as she chuckled. “Oh AJ, I didn’t know you were so kinky. We haven’t tried anything like that since Twilight experimented with a domination fetish on me.” Which rather turned the purple alicorn off, in Sunset’s rather disappointed memory. But she could understand, considering the circumstances.

Applejack’s eyes managed to go even wider. “Um, Ah think Ah’ll stick to the basics, thanks.”

Sunset kissed her lover on the lips. “Okay, just some boring old banging then,” the redhead replied before she came down on Applejack’s lap with a sigh. “You earth girls, so traditional. Crows, even when we’re in a whole new local…I think you’ve actually regressed in your ways.”

“Pfft, says the girl that’s more horny now than she ever was before.”

As he made his way down the street with his…strangely unappealing companions, despite their obvious beautify and flexible forms, Max was starting to think that he should have woken the boy from Calderon up and taken him as a ‘page’ to fill in any questions that the more physically capable young man might have had via a hastily delivered letter from such and such that the First Lord needed to read immediately.

Rainbow was…well, Rainbow was still pretty okay. The cute little boyish girl didn’t have the figure of her other three friends, but made up for that with her enthusiasm and playful nature. It was kind of an oddity that the least desirable of the four physically was the girl Max could actually see himself getting into a real relationship with…had she been up for that sort of thing, and didn’t do her terrifying sort of flying all the time.

The sight of it still kind of made the young man uneasy. It wasn’t a deeply buried jealousy or anything. Sure, being the bastard son of a High Lord meant Max could use all six elements, but they were not in equal amounts. His flight control was…pitiful at best. Especially when he compared it to Rainbow’s ability to fly slowly. Flying fast was easy enough, anyone with the power over the wind could rocket ahead at a full aerial sprint before the crashed into something. Flying slowly took skill and restraint…which was kind of odd considering it was Rainbow Dash that Max was looking at. But it wasn’t her restraint that made him uneasy, it was the way she was just hovering a foot off the ground. The same way she always seemed to hover a foot or two off the ground. Crows, the girl flew more than she walked!

Even the most basic student of crafting knew just how much of a monster that made Rainbow Dash. It was also the reason why when she told people to stop riding her about her odd hair that first time at the Academy, everyone in the school shut their mouths in unison, and never spoke about it again.

For wind furies, the ground was their antithesis, their opposite. The closer someone was to the ground, the harder it was for them to fly. Most Citizens strong enough to become Knights Aries and fly in full armor as well as engage Alera’s enemies in battle couldn’t do what she did for more than an hour or two. It was one of the reasons why people muttered about how she could be equal to a High Lord in her area of expertise. And having grown up around his father, unlike most bastard offspring, Max knew that the comparison was somewhat accurate.

Somewhat, because he had never actually seen his father do what Rainbow did.

“So,” the slightly more desirable physically but also more annoying girl thanks to her personality said as she turned around with a lot of tiny squares of paper in her hands, bringing up the horrible memories of the time Max had asked for a tutoring session before his first crating exam…and got it. Just it. Nothing else, and…she hadn’t even noticed his attempts at seduction!

“What’re you wanting us to review?” Twilight finished asking as she completely ignored her equally impossible companion.

“Um…all of it?” he said, getting a raised eyebrow from Twilight. “I-I took a class, but…it was a long time ago, and only lasted three months…and there were these pretty girls.”

She took a look at Rainbow for a second, who snickered for some reason while Twilight rolled her eyes. “Oh crow feathers…he’s like an alicorn version of you, with a penis.”

Rainbow waved her off. “Pfft, and your wings,” she said before looking to Max. “Offers still open to teach you by the way.”

For a second, Max looked between the two girls while trying to figure out just what they had been talking about, but he just gave up. “Can you please just give me the gist of it? I don’t want it to take me three minutes to respond to every question.”

Twilight groaned, and then put her bits of paper away. “Okay well…you at least know that…furies are the beings that inhabit the elements, right?”

“Yes,” Max deadpanned. “Thanks to months of study, I am familiar with that idea.”

“There's been debate among fury crafters since the dawn of Aleran history as to the nature of those beings. That's what the various theories try to describe. There are a number of different ideas about how much of the furies are truly intrinsic to their nature, and how much is something that we cause them to become through a human’s prolonged presence,” Twilight began. “Understand?”

Max smiled, and then swiped his head from side to side. “Not in the least.”

In response, Twilight slumped, and sighed. “Okay, let’s try this,” she began again. “Humans command furies with thei-our thoughts. That's what Imposed Anthropomorphic Theory states. Maybe part of our thoughts also shape how our furies appear to us. Maybe a wind fury on its own doesn't look like anything much at all. But when a crafter encounters it, maybe that crafter, somewhere in his head, believes that it should look like a horse, or an eagle or whatever. So when that fury manifests in a visible form, that's what it looks like.”

That bit Max remembered from the class. “We might give them form without realizing, right?”

Twilight brightened in that way that made someone with her level of fury craft seem much too cute. “Right! That's the predominant view in the cities and among most Citizens. But other scholars support the Natural Anthropomorphic Theory. They insist that since the furies are each associated with some specific portion of their element like a mountain, a stream, a forest, whatever-that each has its own unique identity, talents, and personality!”

“Which is why a lot of folks in the country name their furies?” Max guessed.

“Right! See, you know more about this than you thought,” Twilight went on happily. “Now, that’s why the city folk tend to sneer at the idea, mot of they regard it as just superstition. However, it’s a proven fact that country furies that have a form are stronger than city furies, and each has their own special talent! Some earth furies can build stronger walls than others, while others can do more artistic construction!”

Rainbow let out a breath. “You make it sound like they each have a cutie mark or something Twilight.”

The confusing comment made Max frown, but Twilight just looked over to her with one of those knowing smiles intelligent kids like her got from time to time. “That’s a very interesting observation Rainbow.”

Max cleared his throat. “Uh, what’s a…cutie mark.”

“Oh…that’s um,” Twilight fumbled while Rainbow fidgeted with something under her tunic, and then lifted it to show Max her ass, stopping the boy cold. It was probably just dumb luck the part of the street thy were on was completely empty.

“It’s this, see? My special talent.”

Despite the fact that the girl he might possibly be able to forge a real connection with was showing him her naked butt, Max found himself drawn in by the symbol on the side of her rear. While someone else might have mistaken it for a colorful tattoo, Max had see plenty of markings, Legion and otherwise, during two tours on the Shield Wall that protected Alera from the Ice Men. Just looking at the thing, Max could tell there was something…different about it. It was too good to be simple ink, as seemed to shine with…it wasn’t light, but…brightness?

“Rainbow! Put your pants back on!”

Dash groaned and did as instructed while Twilight cleared her throat, ending the moment. “Yes well anyway… The other theory is known as-”

“Um,” Max interrupted.

“Do you have a question relating to furies, are you going to ask me about Rainbow’s special sigil, which I am refusing to talk about,” she said. Then, before Max could go on, Twilight also added. “I’m also not showing you mine. You saw it when you were in the house anyway. It was the big star on the purple banner, surrounded by five smaller ones.”

When Max let out a dejected sigh, Twilight continued on with her lecture. “Natural theorists say that the furies of increasingly domesticated lands tend to break down. They lose their specific identities as they get passed down from generation to generation and as the natural landscape becomes more and more settled and tamed. They're still present, but instead of being there in their natural form, the furies have been broken down into countless tiny bits that a crafter calls together when he wants to get something done. Because of this, they aren't as strong. It’s like…having a slave that’s been beaten so badly they can barely do the work. But…they don’t act up like the more spirited ones,” she finished with a sad tone about her.

Max grunted. “Makes some sense,” he said as he was unable to force the bitterness out of his voice. “My old man had some things to say when I named one of my furies. Insisted that it was childish nonsense. Told me that he had to break me of the habit before it ruined me. It was harder to do things, his way, but he wouldn't hear of anything else.”

For a moment, both the girls stood and glared at him. Rainbow had an angry scowl, but Twilight’s was more weighing. Then she looked over to Rainbow and shook her head before mouthing two words, and the girl with the odder hair let out a sigh and nodded before she brightened back up a little.

Not wanting to get into whatever they were silently going on about, and praying it wasn’t about his family issues, Max cleared his throat. “So…which is it?”

“It’s neither and both at the same time,” Twilight told him with a sly smile.

“Oh.” Max nodded, then what she said ran through his mind and he frowned. “That makes…wait, what?”

Once again, Twilight got a gleeful look on her face and practically skipped backwards in front of Max as they reached the citadel’s grounds. “I know! I mean, it’s so obvious I just don’t see why someone hasn’t thought of it before, but when I turned in my paper they were all ‘well I haven’t seen it so it must not be’ and ‘durrrr that’s stupid’ and ‘you’re a witch!’.”

Max let out a sigh, once again wishing he had brought Tavi instead. “Come on. We’ll be lucky to get there two minutes before everyone else shows up, and I need to change.”

“Just where in the heck are we going anyway?” Rainbow asked.

The Aleran teen turned to look at the floating one. “First Lord’s private reception chambers. It’s about as big as one of the Academy's lecture halls. But between the Board of Speakers, their wives, assistants, and their wives, and all the Royal Guard, there’s going to be about seventy people,” he explained. “Basically, it’s just going to be a big fancy party where a lot of important people talk about nothing while eating the First Lord’s food.”

Rainbow chuckled. “Ah okay. Fancy parties. We’ve done one of them before, remember Twilight?”

The other girl groaned. “Please don’t remind me about that,” she said before letting out a sigh. “At least there’s no way it could be as bad as the Gala.”

“Ugh…ah! AHHHHHH! P-Please, n-no more!”

“You sure?”

“Y-Yes.”

“Okay, let me just clean up here.”

Applejack shuttered on the floor of the bathing room as Sunset went down between the larger woman’s legs one last time. She ran tongue run over the soaked folds of the earth crafter’s sex, but it would be a minor tickle compared to when the girl who held her leash wanted to make Applejack feel good. Still, the giant farmer did react a little. Her legs kicked in the water of the tub that Sunset continued to soak in.

“Oh Applejack, how is it you taste so sweet?” she asked while lapping up the larger girl’s fluids while avoiding anyplace that would cause too much stimulation.

The other girl cleared her throat. “Clean livin. Plus, all them apples from the back yard.”

Sunset finished her work, and kissed the bare area around her slave’s sex a few times. They would need to do another quick wash-up even though things looked pretty cleaned off. After that and a quick rinsing of the bath, no one would know what the two girls had done.

“Sunset, you mind if Ah ask you somethin’ personal?”

Curiosity entered her mind, and the girl crawled up along Applejack’s body to look at her larger lover face to face. “Go right ahead AJ.”

“Ah know you love me an all. Ah mean, we all got this group thing going on, but…mind if Ah ask…why?”

The oddity of the question threw Sunset off for a second, and she wrapped her fingers on Applejack’s collarbone in thought. Then, she looked around the First Lord’s bath chambers while trying to come up with a proper answer. She knew what she wanted to say, it was just...hard to put into words.

“You’re…steady,” she figured. “Rainbow’s energetic, and Twilight’s smart but crazy, but you…you’re my rock.” Then she frowned. “Wow that sounds corny.” Or the ultimate form of affection from that weird sister of Pinkie’s but…best to keep that in my head.

Applejack raised an eyebrow. “You like me cause Ah’m predictable?”

Sunset backed u a bit, then lowered body onto AJ’s. “Well...yes. I mean, we’re here in a strange new world, new kind of magic, new level of political intrigue not even I’m sure how to deal with…is it at all surprising I’d fall in love with the one thing that’s the same as it has been since before we came here? Plus with you, and all the rest of the girls…we can be ourselves. I mean, let’s face it, even though we’re ninety-nine-point-nine percent human, we’ll never be one of these people. We’ll never be able to tell them who we really are. That’s…crows, that’s why we all ended up together.”

“Now hold on a second,” Applejack began as she pushed herself up and Sunset started to worry the smaller girl with her tone. From the sound of things, she didn’t seem to take it as a compliment. “What about…everything else?”

For a moment, Sunset looked Applejack over, and then turned her attention back to the woman’s eyes. “Well…honestly…I am kind of a little into humans,” she admitted. “I mean, five years does tend to get rid of that icky alien opinion when you’re surrounded by them and your breasts are huge, your arms are strong, you’ve got gorgeous hair, a cute face, and your plot is just so squeezable I-”

Applejack’s eyes widened, and her face reddened. “N-Not that! Ah’m not…well, Ah think yer gorgeous too, but…Ah, um…oh horse apples! Ah’m talking about personality wise.”

“Oh,” Sunset replied as everything came together in her mind. “Well, I love your courage, and your steadfastness, even if it does turn to bullheadedness sometimes. You have principles you stick to, and I love…well, if you didn’t pick it up the first time mule brain. I love your honesty. I love how I can be me in front of you, and you want me to be me…at least now anyway.”

She dropped back on top of the larger woman again, and kissed Applejack on the lips. “You told me what you thought of me from day one, and that may have pissed me off at the time…or um…made me break down in tears later when Twilight put in a room at her castle-”

Applejack blanched. “W-What?”

“But now…I like it,” she went on, purposely ignoring the other girl’s uneasiness before she could dig deeper. “You’re not too nice like Twilight, or completely oblivious like Rainbow is until just about the very last second. You’re my perfect center.”

The two mares turned women shared another kiss, and Sunset’s ears twitched as…something reached them. Although, it sounded rather muted. “Do you hear something?”

Applejack frowned for a second. “Yeah…sounds like it’s commin’ from the other side of the main door. People…talking?”

“Talking loudly if we can hear it from in here. I thought we got rid of that little thing the First Lord was keeping around here with that forged note,” Sunset mumbled as she remembered the First Lady…or whatever the Alaren’s called Gaius’s wife and unused baby machine. The woman didn’t appear very smart for what she was supposed to be, and wouldn’t be attending some dumb… “Oh it’s that stupid banquet…thing that’s being held tonight. I remember Miles telling Max about it now.”

The frown on Applejack’s face deepened. “Banquet? Um…ain’t that in the room we‘re supposed to use to leave? Goin’ out the back and all around to the first basement?”

“No…that was…” Sunset paused for a few seconds. “Crows you’re right. We can’t use the main exit. Guards will see us,” she mumbled. “Okay well, as long as we don’t do anything, we can just wait around until…”

A strange feeling in the water around her made Sunset look down. She frowned at the liquid that was flowing around on its own, and watched as it climbed the walls of the tub to begin taking a shape she was a little familiar with while also drawing in the steam in the surrounding air to get the extra moisture.

Unlike the real pony, the elemental spirit named Fluttershy had a horn as well as wings, and was more than twice the size of her Equestrian base that the model for her body looked like. Still, she possessed a light pinkish hue to her hair, and even spoke with the same gentle voice despite being anywhere from a few inches to ten feet tall, depending on how big she needed to be at the moment. Her adjustable size was just another little thing about how stupid humans were when it came to their own magic. To them, a spirit’s size was set in stone, and because of their close-mindedness, that was how things were. But she knew that her girls could vary in height considerably, depending on the available resources.

However, her presence was odd. The even Celestia never did never did much without Sunset telling her to, and she was the most volatile of all the elemental spirits.

“F-Fluttershy…what’re you doing here?” Applejack managed before Sunset could.

The gargantuan pony looked down at them for a moment. “Oh, Mommy wants me to help her with some rude men she’s talking with right now at the fancy party.”

Sunset sighed at Fluttershy’s reference to Twilight, another reason why she didn’t want Luna and Celestia ever gaining the ability of speech. If a blazing version of the pony she considered her own mother ever started acting like that…well, Sunset knew she could bare it, but it didn’t mean she wanted to.

Celestia and Luna weren’t her kids. They were the physical manifestation of her magic, elemental spirits given personality and form by Sunset’s experiences she shared with them. They learned what she taught them, did as they were told as long as she kept a firm hand, and even showed her how to use her magic properly when she could figure out what they were saying.

The two former ponies looked at each other for a moment. “Should we um…do something?”

“Oh no,” Applejack replied before she practically melted into the empty tub and took cover. “Ah learned my lesson the first time. We got ourselves a nice little bunker, and we’re gonna use it.”

Sunset decided to yield to experience, and sat down in the tub as she watched the giant water pony walk up to the door and open it without splashing around, a process that thankfully no longer caused Sunset to wonder just how a being that was made of water could turn solid. It wasn’t her pony, it wasn’t her problem.

A few seconds after the water elemental disappeared into the First Lord’s bedroom, Sunset’s ears twitched as she heard Fluttershy’s voice. “Um excuse me, old lady? Could you get out of the way please? Mommy wants me on the other side of the door for when she gives me mycue.”

“That is not a good idea child.”

Sunset frowned at the new voice. “Um, did you hear-”

“Enope,” Applejack said as she crossed her arms and gave Sunset a glare. “Got Mah bunker, gonna stay right here.”

“Mommy says to wait outside in the hall. So I’m going into the hall.”

“Child, as interesting as I find your…mother, there are certain rules-”

“Mommy wants me, SO GET OUT OF MY WAY!”

The sound of a rather loud crash quickly followed, and Applejack looked up at the ceiling with a frown. “Alright, roof’s not gonna collapse in on us. Now we can go.”

Max sat in the First Lord’s chair as the night continued to deteriorate. Things had started off nice enough. The introduction party had been one of the better ones that Max had been forced to attend since the deception of him being the First Lord began. Most of the people just wanted go on about themselves, so he barely even needed to talk. But after everyone had drank a little wine and said hello, the men split into two groups and took their places in the seating that looked an awful lot like the raised positioning of the Senate. However, there was a stark lack of people in the middle seats, and most of the people were just sitting where the seating arrangements became to curve around the half-bowl of the room.

Then the opening statements were made, and when Max had been called to talk, he introduced Twilight to the crowd and said she had sent a missive with a very interesting theory involving the nature of fury crafting that he thought should be addressed at the debate tonight. That way, Max would barely need to talk at all.

However…

“You are Wrong. Wrong! WRONG!”

“She’s a witch!”

“Crucify the blasphemer!”

…things weren’t going like he had hoped they would.

For the supposedly most intelligent crafters in the Realm, they sounded an awful lot like children.

“Oh for the love of,” Twilight grumbled. “My theory not only validates both sides of your arguments, but brings everything to a whole new level of thought! If you’d just-”

“YOUNG LADY!” the main speaker Crocus Brutus spoke up. “We are the most learned scholars of the realm!”

“And Citizens!” one of the men on the other side of the room added.

“And you’re just a stupid ugly girl!” yet another man spoke up, who didn’t have any dates from the look of things.

The main speaker cleared his throat. “Ahem! Yes, well, as entertaining as your thoughts are. There isn’t a single ounce of evidence proving-”

“Oh you want proof?” Twilight asked in that sly way she had talked to Rainbow Dash outside in the street, if a bit louder. “Well in that case…” She looked to the door and smiled. “”You’re going to love-”

Twilight’s words were cut off when the large metal doors turned bright red and suddenly burst outward in a burst of intense heat and white flame before Max saw a figure crash into the middle of the floor while the door finished melting into a pile of bubbling red slag from the advanced fire fury crafting.

“HA! How do you like that you bitch?” Sunset’s voice called from beyond the pile of quickly cooling metal before she stepped into view, covered in nothing at all.

The entire room froze, and then an odd clopping sound came through the open doorway before a horse water fury with a horn and wings that obviously belonged to one of the girls came in via the door and run up to Twilight. “I’m sorry I’m late Mommy!” she said before raising a hoof at the prone figure’s general direction. “That mean old lady wouldn’t let me through the door!”

Max’s eye twitched at the sound. Experience told him that water furies could replicate sounds. He even had a lion, the only fury in his power that took a normal form, that could roar loud enough to make his eardrums ring. But… “Did that thing just talk?”

A second later, all the glasses in the room started trembling, and the water in them shot out to form another misshaped horse made from the collected water, wine, and whatever else the scholars had been drinking. Unlike the first, the second looked a little rougher, and lacked a horn. “Fluttershy? What’s going on?”

As if his eyes couldn’t believe what he was seeing, or his ears what he was hearing, much like Max was doing at the moment, one of the speakers reached out to touch the newly formed water fury. A quick brush of the man’s fingers against it’s liquid coat, and the multicolored horse with wings whirled on him. “HEY! Get your hands off me you dirty ape!” she shouted in a voice that sounded exactly like Rainbow Dash, sending the man stumbling backwards.

“It-it can talk.”

“It can talk!”

“It can TALK!”

Rainbow Dash stepped out of her alcove and groaned. “Wonder, get down from there!”

“Hmm? Oh, sure thing Mom,” the fury replied before Rainbow Dash groaned and told the new talking fury not to call her that.

Then, a slight groan came from the center of the room, and the figure that had been thrown into the reception room by the fire craft that had melted a door strong enough to keep out rampaging Canim…picked itself up.

Max blinked at the sight. The figure in question was a woman, but…she wasn’t human, only shaped like one. She had a body made from a clay that looked almost the color of human skin, and her tunic seemed to be composed of clouds, while her wooden sandals had a few small flowers sprouting from them. Tiny embers of red fire ran through her gray hair that was a contrast to her youthful face.

“You children are really getting on my…” the creature stopped, and turned to look around at the assembled people, showing a pair of steel eyes, and a tongue made of water that rested in her open mouth. “Well that’s just great.”

Beside max, Twilight recovered from the shock of everything, and was practically jumping up and down in place from the way her feet moved about. “Ohmygosh! Ohmygosh! Ohmygosh! You…you’re a sapient elemental spirit, but you look like a human!” she said before looking the fury up and down as she got closer to it. “But, wait…that means a human presence gave you shape and form so…huh, maybe my Universal Elemental Theory needs to some work, and…is that fire? And water? And…are you’re eyes made of metal? Does that mean you’re an amalgam? How does that work? Is it something like a harmonious combination that lets usually opposing forces work in tandem and feed off one another, or can all the elements actually be used to fuel each other, which is actually possible even with opposing ones because I know plenty of was that the chemical composition for water could be used to fuel fire rather than snuff it out, but everyone here argues that the opposing natures of such things cancel each other out, which is just stupid! I mean, just because you’re close to the ground doesn’t mean the air is any weaker!

“Um…excuse me,” the fury spoke while Twilight continued to ramble.

“Well, okay, if you go underground the air would get a little stale, but that has nothing to do with being surrounded by rock, it has to do with air flow. With proper ventilation, there can be plenty of fresh air, but these people still say that proper wind crafting can’t be done!”

The furry took a step back. “W-Well actually if air is pulled in from outside, then it would still be-wait, never mind that!” she exclaimed.

Twilight let out a gasp. “Oh right! I’m sorry, I completely forgot my manners!” she exclaimed. “This is a first contact situation! Well, we have already met furies, but you’re the first one we didn’t need to show how to take a sapient form and talk with our unconscious desires. There’s procedures for this! Protocols! I have to make proper introductions!”

The girl stepped back and cleared her throat before extending her hand. “My name is-”

“Twilight Sparkle, I know,” the youthful-looking fury the talking horse had called a mean old lady said before she let out a sigh and looked around the room at the stunned guards, speakers, and pair of naked girls standing in the doorway that had been destroyed. “I am Alera. And if you'd just me a moment..."

Then the multi-element fury attacked everyone in the room with a storm of lightning from her hands.

The Fifth Chapter

-Chapter Roman Numeral Five-

Although she was no longer a pegasus, Rainbow Dash knew weather. She knew the smell of coming rain, the feel of each different wind, and the tingle that told her where lightning was going to fly a second before it struck. It was that, and the magic of her aerial partner that allowed her to lash out in defense and catch the lightning bolt before she pulled the energy down into her body, through its center, and out her other hand to strike the ceiling before it could hit Max. The rest of the humans in the room, the ones that had been humans all their lives, weren’t so lucky. The lighting coming from the elemental spirit hit them all, and they fell into unconsciousness after a few seconds of shaking in their boots.

The non-humanoid elemental spirits reacted at the same time. The ground underneath Twilight shifted and pulled her back while an a giant alicorn version of Sunset Shimmer’s old body came into being alongside Twilight’s wind and earth elementals that could have doubled for Rainbow and Pinkie if they had been of a different, pony tribe, coloration, and much smaller.

Dash’s own wind spirit formed right next to her, and she saw Celestia take shape while Applejack’s Mac rose up from the ground to let out a growl that sounded like rumbling rocks coming down a hillside.

“Easy children, I did not come here to fight,” the elemental woman who called herself Alera said as she held up her hands in a placating gesture.

“Coulda fooled me!” Rainbow shouted as she jumped on top of the desk Max had and glared at her. “Cause all these people-”

“Are merely unconscious,” Alera cut in. “They will awaken in a few hours with no memory of this meeting ever taking place. Now step out of the way and allow me to deal with the last of the humans, then we may…speak.”

Wonder stepped in front of her ‘mother’ with a growl as she crouched in readiness to attack. With the extra size the water pegasus had gained since the human elemental had appeared and her solid aquatic coloring, Dash guessed her little girl had been gathering moisture from the air and removing the booze from her body. “Try it hag! There’s twelve of us, and only one of you!”

“THAT’S ENOUGH!” Twilight’s voice boomed throughout the room. She took a second to look around, then took in the sight of the door, the strange elemental, and Max before turning her attention over to Sunset. “Just what in the name of…the great furies is all this about?”

Sunset crossed her arms over her chest and let out a satisfied sniff. “That thing appeared when you called Fluttershy from the nearest body of water. They had a little argument and Fluttershy knocked her back into the main hallway. I got between them before their fight could escalate, and decided to take care of things.”

“You attacked me under an agreement of truce,” Alera spoke.

“Like I said, take care of things.”

Twilight stomped her foot down, the action left cracks in the fury crafted ground. “That doesn’t explain anything!”

“Child, you are about to tell these little boys and girls something that should never be known,” Alera said.

The girl with the purple hair gave the elemental woman a curious frown. “What? That elemental spirits can talk? That they have just as much intelligence as you or me?”

“Certain ones, yes,” Alera replied cautiously. “And it is something that they must never know. Why do you think Gaius holds these debates? To listen to fools prattle on about something they know nothing about? Or to find someone that has a small inkling of the way things truly work, and make sure they can do no harm?”

Twilight’s fists clenched. “What?” she demanded. “You mean the First Lord knows what’s going on with the…wait a minute.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked around at the ponies. “You…you’re what’s at the bottom of the Citadel. You’re the reason why all my girls get on edge when they come in here.”

“Yes,” Alera replied. “You can tell from your own experiences that we don’t like it when others encroach upon our domain, or try to take what is ours.” She looked over the assembled spirits for a moment and sighed. “And you children do not know the dangerous game you play with…your...children.”

From his place behind the desk, Max raised his hand to speak. “Um…would someone mind telling me what’s going on?”

“This woman,” Twilight said in a steely voice before she addressed Max for a moment. “She’s the First Lord’s Fury,” Twilight explained before turning back to Alera. “Judging by your face, he must have educated you some time ago, or…was it some kind of crafting process? You hold elements of all six um…elements. There’s no way you can be natural.”

Alera responded with a shake of her head. “You misunderstand, I was created by the House of Gaius many centuries ago and made a covenant with them.”

“Is that why you’re still…you?” Twilight asked. “I mean, you aren’t broken down like the other elemental spirits we’ve seen that have spent a long time around humans, and-”

For a moment, Alera paused to look through the remaining door in the room, and then sighed. “It would seem that we are out of time. I will speak with you again at a later date Twilight Sparkle,” she said before turning to the only real human in the room that was still conscious. “You.”

As the Aleran spirit looked at Max, Rainbow gathered her magic. “You ain’t doing nothing to him you old-”

“Tell the guards that are coming there was an attempt on the First Lord’s life. Tell the them someone poisoned the drinks, but you managed to save everyone in the room when the real assassins attacked and knocked the guards unconscious from the blast that melted the wall.” On the ground, the bodies of the guards were moved around by crafting, and laid out in front of the destroyed door. “Now get your clothes, and GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

It was almost midnight as Max walked out of the Citadel, back in his normal appearance and glad for it. Dealing with the guards had been easy enough after he got Captain Miles. Talking furies, he told himself. Well…that’s new.

For a second he wondered if his lion could actually speak but…if by already deciding to make his water manifestation a lion, Max considered the possibility that he had made it so that it would never talk. Then came the question of just how smart a fury would have to be to hold a conversation.

But on the other hand, that fury…Alera she had called herself, said there was more to it than that.

Hadn't she?

“Hello Maximus,” the familiar female voice spoke, making the young man jump. He hadn’t even noticed Twilight standing beside him he had been so lost in thought. It was one of the reasons he didn’t do it too often, made Max miss the pretty girls.

But Max recovered fast enough and used his metal and fire crafting to cut down on the nervousness he felt. “Ahem. Twilight…um, where are the others?”

Twilight sighed. “Rainbow wanted to wait on your too, but I had Applejack take her back to the house. They’re both so tired. Sunset needed to go check on Gaius, so…I was the only one left to make sure you were alright. You are alright, aren’t you?”

“Fine,” Max said a little too nervously for his taste while the girl with the tanned skin and purple hair stared at him.

Twilight sighed in relief. “Good, I was worried that elemental spirit might have done something.”

A thought occurred to Max. “Why do you call furies that?”

“Why do you call elemental spirits, furies?”

Max paused with his mouth half opened. “Well…” He was going to say ‘because that’s what everyone else calls them’ but Max knew Twilight would just follow that up with another question as to why, so… “I have no idea really, it’s just what everyone calls them.”

Twilight shrugged. “Well, it’s good to see you safe at any rate,” she said before looking towards the street at the end of the Citadel’s courtyard. “I should be getting home before-Tavi?”

The shift in conversation made him blink, and Max found himself unable to stop his mouth from opening and words from forming. “You mean he’s the guy you girls picked for you four woman orgy? Come on Twilight, I’m much better than-”

“WHAT?” the girl shouted as she spun to face the boy, then kicked him in the shin. “No you idiot! He’s on the street and headed over here! I thought you said he was asleep.”

Max frowned, and looked as Twilight pointed in the direction he had been heading before the young woman showed up. The boy without furies really was in the middle of the empty street, coming at them as fast as he could with a piece of paper in his hand.

When he reached them, Max saw the letter wasn’t something pertaining to government matters. There was no seal, and it wouldn't have been opened by the boy if it had been important. Tavi gasped for breath several times, choking down air as he did. “Max…there…you are…trouble…letter…need…legionnaire…fake…message.”

Both Max and Twilight shared a pair of confused looks. “Huh?” the crafter asked before Tavi handed him the letter.

“Tavi it’s the middle of the night? How are you even awake?” Twilight asked.

The boy stared at her for a second and took in a deep breath. “With everything that’s going on, do you honestly think I have a good sleep schedule? I found this note shoved under my door.”

“Dear Tavi, this is your aunt Isana….bla bla bla…in the city, staying with Nedus on Garden lane…oh, I didn’t know you had a little sister,” Max said as he read the letter.

“I don’t,” Tavi said as he finished getting his breath back.

Twilight frowned. “Come again?”

“The letter is from my aunt, but she mentions things that don’t exist, like me having a sister, and she got my uncle’s name wrong,” Tavi told them. “I thought something was wrong, so I-”

Max’s expression turned to a mirror of Twilight’s. “Are you sure the letter is genuine? I can think of a few people who wouldn't mind catching up with you in a dark alley somewhere late at night. Brencis and his cronies being at the top of the list.”

“It's her handwriting," Tavi replied. “I'm sure of it.”

Twilight cocked her head to the side in that weird way she did whenever she got confused. “Okay so…what does that have to do with why you came and got us? I mean, if it says where she’s staying-”

“I already checked the house, my aunt isn’t there,” Tavi cut in. “The man at the door said she left to attend a party.”

“Good for her,” Max said. “You said she never married right, and her element is water? So she still probably looks real young. Let her find a rich Citizen to buy her some nice things and-”

Tavi’s face darkened. “The party is at Lord Kalare’s estate.”

Max quickly shut up, and Twilight’s brows furrowed in thought. “Wait a minute Tavi, isn’t your aunt the woman who was given a steadhold last year?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“The woman who was put on equal status as male Citizens of the Realm without a duel or military service?”

“Yes.”

“And isn’t she this prominent female figure that the Dianic League would probably want as their spokesperson? I mean, I knew where are plenty of female Citizens, but…most of them kind of cheated their way to the title with hiding their gender during military service and bribery. If they weren’t born into it I mean.”

“Yes.”

“And she’s in the house of the most sexist, slave supporting High Lord in Alera? The man who, if rumors are to be believed, not only turns a blind eye to illegal slavery, but supports it? The father of the boy that would kill you given half the chance?” Twilight asked with a raised eyebrow. “And you want to sneak into his party?”

“Yes.”

Max turned back and looked at the Citadel for a few seconds, the memories of everything that he had just seen ran through his mind. Then he turned and faced Tavi again. “Eh, why not? Far from the craziest thing I’ve been involved with tonight. So what’s the plan?”

“This plan is stupid.”

Tavi ignored Max’s words as the trio paused outside Lord Kalare's manor on Garden Lane and studied it for a long moment, frowning. The town house of Lord Kalare was larger than the whole of his old homestead, and rose seven stories into the air. Balconies and stairs wound all over the outside of the building, thickly planted with broad-leafed plants, flowers, and small trees, all laid out in miniature gardens, complete with several beautifully lit fountains. A coachman could have driven through the house's front doors without ducking his head or being particularly careful about the position of the carriage's wheels. Wintersend streamers and bunting in the green and grey of the city of Kalare festooned every balcony railing, window, and pillar, and had been wound round twin rows of statuary that led up to the front doors.

If he had not spent so much time in the First Lord's palace in the Citadel, Kalare’s manor would have impressed him. The place was ridiculously large. The place was richly appointed, lit, gardened, landscaped, and decorated, and Tavi could not help but be uncomfortably reminded of the harlots down near the river, with painted faces, gaudy clothes, and false smiles that never reached jaded eyes.

He took a deep breath and started toward the house down its double lines of statuary. Four men in plain, common clothing walked by him. They had hard faces, wary eyes, and Tavi saw the hilt of a sword beneath the cloak of the third man. He kept an eye on them as he approached the manor, and saw a harried-looking servant come running to meet them at the street, drawing four saddled horses with him.

“You see that?” Max murmured.

Tavi nodded. “They don't look much like visiting dignitaries, do they?”

“They look like hired help,” Max said.

“But there's a valet rushing to bring them horses,” Tavi murmured.

“Cutters?”

“Probably.”

As the men mounted up, Twilight involved herself in the conversation. “What’s a cutter?”

Both boys paused and looked back on her with confusion expressions. “Are you kidding me?” Max asked. “You’re kidding me, right?”

Tavi cleared his throat. “Cutters are… a um, layman term for cheap…assassins.”

Twilight blanched and followed the group of men with her eyes. “Sorry I asked,” she mumbled before becoming hesitant. “Uh, shouldn’t we…do something about them?”

“You mean assault them in the middle of the street?” Tavi asked dryly. “Or follow them and wait for them to actually do something while my aunt is in the middle of a lion’s den?”

The girl looked back and forth between the manor and the departing group of men before she finally grit her teeth and let out a long sigh. “Okay fine, just…hurry and get back here with your aunt as soon as you can. Then we can tell the Civic Legion about what we saw. Hopefully it’ll be in time to deal with them.”

Tavi didn’t see how that was possible, but Twilight did have an odd naiveté about her, despite the girl’s intelligence. It was probably why Sunset was the group’s obvious second. One was morality, the other, practicality.

They left her waiting in the street while she looked towards the departing horsemen.

Dressed as a guard in light armor, Max was able to bluff his way in with Tavi, who held the dispatch pouch he normally carried documents in, a fine piece of blue-and-scarlet leather bearing the golden image of the royal eagle. When asked by the guards what his business was, he simply showed them the bag and said he was carrying dispatches for the First Lord and that they had to be delivered in person, under guard.

The doorman led them through more of the same lavish decadence to the gardens at the center of the manor. Tavi walked along behind the man, trying to look bored. Max's boots hit the floor with the steady, disciplined cadence of a marching legionare.

The doorman, or rather, the majordomo paused at the entrance to the garden and turned to Tavi. Shifting colored lights flickered and flashed behind the man, and the garden buzzed with conversation and music. The aroma of food, wine, and perfume drifted through Tavi's breath. “If you will tell me the name of your party, sir, I will invite them to come receive your letter.”

“Certainly,” Tavi said. “If you would invite Steadholder Isana here, I would be most grateful.”

The majordomo hesitated, and Tavi saw something shift in his eyes. “The Steadholder is no longer here, young sir,” the man said. “She departed not a quarter hour ago.”

Tavi frowned and exchanged a glance with Max. “Indeed? For what reason?”

“I'm sure I could not say, young sir,” the man replied.

Max gave Tavi the slightest nod, then rumbled, “The second missive is for High Lady Placida. Bring her.”

The majordomo eyed Max suspiciously and glanced at Tavi. Tavi gave the man a between-us-servants roll of his eyes, and said, “Please invite her, sir.”

The man pursed his lips in thought and shrugged. “As you wish, young sir. A moment.” He vanished into the garden.

“Lady Placida?” Tavi muttered to Max.

“I know her,” Max replied. “She'll know what is going on.”

“We'll need some privacy,” Tavi said.

Max nodded, then frowned in concentration and waved a hand vaguely at the air. Tavi felt a sudden pressure on his ears, sharp at first, but it subsided. “Done,” Max said.

“Thank you,” Tavi said. In only a moment, a tall woman with severe, distant features approached, wearing simple, elegant jewelry and a rich gown of a deep, compelling green, the majordomo at her elbow. She paused, studying them, and Tavi felt the weight of her gaze as palpably as the touch of a gentle hand. She frowned at him, and then frowned more deeply upon seeing Max. She dismissed the majordomo with a word and a curt flick of her wrist, and approached them.

She stepped into the area Max had protected from eavesdropping via wind furies and arched her eyebrow. Then she walked forward to stand over Tavi and murmur, “This isn't a missive from the First Lord, is it?”

Tavi opened the pouch and passed her a folded piece of paper. There was nothing written on it, but Tavi went through the motions for the benefit of those watching. “No, Your Grace. I'm afraid not.”

She accepted the paper and opened it, glancing at it as if to read. “Oh how I love Wintersend in the capital. Good evening, Maximus.”

“Good evening, my lady. Your gown is very lovely.”

One corner of her mouth quirked into a tiny smile. “It's nice to see you took my advice about offering compliments to ladies.”

“I have found it to be a most effective tactic, my lady,” Max replied.

Lady Placida arched an eyebrow, and said, “I've created a monster.”

“Ladies sometimes scream,” Max said loftily. “But other than that, I would hardly say that I was a monster.”

Her eyes hardened. “Which is something of a miracle. I know your father is on the Wall, but I expected to see your stepmother here.”

“She was forbidden,” Max said. “Or that's what I hear on the grapevine.”

“They don't write,” Lady Placida said, more than asked. “I suppose they wouldn't, though.” She folded up the letter, and offered Max a brief smile. “It's nice to see you, Maximus. But would you very much mind telling me why you've very publicly associated me with the First Lord in front of half of the Lords Council and members of the Senate?”

“Your Grace,” Tavi said. “I came here to speak to my aunt Isana. I think she's in some kind of trouble, and I want to help her.”

“So you are the boy,” Lady Placida mumbled as she narrowed her eyes in thought.

“Tavi of the Calderon Valley, Your Grace,” Max said.

“Please, lady,” Tavi said. “Can you tell us anything you know of her.”

“I would take it as a favor, lady,” Max added, and put a solid hand on Tavi's shoulder.

Lady Placida's eyebrows rose sharply at the gesture. Then she studied Tavi again, and more intently. “She was here, along with the Amaranth Courtesan, Serai. They spoke to several different people.”

“Who?” Tavi asked.

“Myself, Lady Aquitaine, any number of nobles and dignitaries. And Lord Kalare.”

“Kalare?” Tavi said, frowning.

A strident male voice boomed in the garden, and was followed by a polite round of cheering and applause.

“Well,” Lady Placida said. “It would seem that Brencis has won his duel to claim real Citizenship. What a surprise.”

“Brencis couldn't duel his way through a herd of sheep,” Max snorted. “I hate show duels.”

“Lady, please,” Tavi said. “Do you know why she left early?”

Lady Placida shook her head. “Not for certain. But they had a less than pleasant discussion with Lord Kalare immediately prior to their departure.”

Tavi glanced aside in the passageway as he felt a sudden attention on him. Two young men stood not ten feet from him, and Tavi recognized them both. They were dressed in their nicest clothes, but the bland and watery-eyed Varien and the hulking Renzo could not be mistaken for anyone else.

Varien blinked at Tavi for a second, then at Max. Then he muttered something to Renzo, and the two of them hurried away into the garden. Tavi's heart pounded. There was about to be trouble.

“How unpleasant a discussion?” Max asked.

“He struck Serai, openly.” Lady Placida's lips pressed into a firm line. “I've little use for a man who strikes a woman simply because he knows he can.”

“I can think of one or two things,” Max growled.

“Be careful, Maximus,” Lady Placida said in instant warning. “Guard your words.”

“Crows,” Tavi spat.

Both of them stopped to stare at Tavi.

“You say they left in a rush, Your Grace?” he asked.

“Very much so,” Lady Placida answered.

“Max,” Tavi said, his heart pounding, “those cutters we saw on the way in. They're going after my aunt.”

“Bloody crows,” Max said. “Aria, please excuse us?”

Lady Placida nodded once, and said, “Be careful, Maximus. I owe you my son's life, and I would hate to miss the chance to repay the debt.”

“You know me, Your Grace.”

“Yes, and that’s the problem,” Lady Placida said. She inclined her head to Tavi, smiled again at Max, then turned back to the garden, dismissing them with the same flick of her hand she'd used for the majordomo.

“Come on,” Tavi said, his voice tense, and started trotting back through the house. “We have to hurry. Can you get us there any faster?”

Max hesitated for a second, then said, “Not in quarters this close. If I tried to wind craft us both there, I'd fly us into a building for sure.” His face flushed with color. “It, uh, isn't my strong suit.”

“Crows,” Tavi spat. “But you could take yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Go. Warn them. I'll have Twilight take me.”

“Tavi, we don't know that those cutters were after her,” Max pointed out.

“We don't know that they weren't. She's my family. If I'm wrong, and she's safe, you can make fun of me for a year,” he grumbled while wanting to kick himself. Cutters, they had known those men were cutters, and yet they did nothing because they thought his aunt was in danger at a public party, surrounded by dozens of witnesses.

Max nodded sharply as they emerged from the front door. “What does she look like?”

“Long hair, dark with some grey, very thin, looks early twenties in the face.”

With the description given, Max and Tavi exited the house and looked around the empty street. The completely. Empty. Street. That didn’t have the girl with the purple hair Tavi had been expecting.

“Do you think she…” Max baited.

“I really, really hope so,” Tavi mumbled.

“Please don’t drop me, please don’t drop me, please don’t drop me,” Twilight begged Dashie as she sailed through the sky at speeds that usually ended with her crashing when she had been an alicorn. With wings. Now she had none, and it made seeing the world from up above all the more terrifying.

It didn’t help her mood that she was currently wrapped in an invisible, air alicorn version of Rainbow Dash right after she had abandoned her friends. But...Max could take care of Tavi, and...well… Okay there really is no excuse but still. I can’t just do nothing when other people are in danger! Twilight told her conscience.

Even if they weren’t ponies and did things to the spirits of the land that seemed a little too akin to what her people did back in Equestria, Twilight wasn’t about to let any of them be murdered! Especially when the one telling the killers what to do was High Lord Kalarus. The biggest monster action-wise she had met since Tirek.

“Ah you’re alone. Now I suppose would be as good a time as any to talk.”

The female voice made Twilight nearly lose her grip on Dashie, or mental grip since she really wasn’t holding anything, and she looked over to see the woman of stone, grass, and everything else floating along beside her. “You know there’s easier ways to do that,” Alera told the former alicorn. "Flying, I mean."

“Ugh! I swear your timing is as bad as Discord’s!” Twilight grumbled to herself. “Go away! I have murderers to chase!” She looked down to he ground. "Okay, find and chase."

Alera studied the girl for a moment. “I know where they’re going. If you want, I could guide you to their destination. We would get there in plenty of time, and be able to talk on the way.”

The offer was a tempting one, but…Twilight had run into such things before from beings who could just pop out of nowhere. “What’s the catch?” she asked hesitantly.

“None. There are certain...rules to the forces you are playing around with little girl. Rules you must know, or the consequences could be dire.”

For an instant, Twilight thought about just telling her to buck off, but then she looked at the empty streets below. The hired killers had disappeared long before the girl had made her choice to chase them down and...so far her efforts to find them weren’t bearing any fruit.

“Okay...start talking.”

Isana sat back in the couch as they pulled up to Nedus’s estate. Attending Kalarus’s party had been...foolish, and trying on her patience.

She had come to the capital city against her will because Gaius had wanted to show the woman off during Wintersend as his newest prize to win back the support of the League from political rivals. At least, that was what everyone was thinking. In truth, she didn’t give a rat’s ass about Gaius and would have refused the invitation just to slight him.

But that had been before the people of her home valley had been attacked by the creatures the Marat called the Vord. Isana still shuddered at the memory of the things that could take over a human host and use him like a puppet. Dogra, the leader of the biggest Marat tribe along with several others had taken heavy losses wiping out a Vord nest in the valley before enlisting the steadholders to help them locate and exterminate the second that had sprang up when three groups of the creatures had separated from the place of their hibernation.

While they were doing that, Isana had been convinced to go to the capital and inform the First Lord about what was going on. It helped that there was strong evidence that the third force of Vord was also heading to Alera Imperia to establish its own nest there. The city where Tavi currently resided.

For that, she went with the Cursor who came bearing Gaius's summons, only to find the First Lord wasn’t taking visitors for any reason, even when he was the one who summoned them. So they had to try and approach him through other channels, such as running into the man at social events he just might appear at.

So far, as she had done was meet the scariest woman in existence, and saw her Cursor guard stuck in the face so hard she was laid out on the ground by Kalarus himself because the older man just wanted to show that he could do it. After all, no one officially knew of Serai's position as one of the crown’s personal aides. All they saw was the sex slave she was supposed to be. Serai apparently preferred it that way, and played the part of the seductress so well Isana had to wonder how much of what she did was actually an act.

As Serai stepped out of the coach, the assassins came without sound or warning.

Isana heard a sudden, harsh exhalation from the driver. Serai froze in place on the stair leading out into the open air, and a frozen gale of sudden fear swept over Isana's senses. Nedus shouted, and she heard the steely rasp of a sword being drawn. There were shuffling footsteps, and the ring of steel on steel.

“Stay back!” Serai cried. Isana saw a dark figure, a man with a sword, step up close to the coach. His blade thrust at Serai. The courtesan batted the blade aside with her left hand, and the flesh of her forearm parted, sending blood sprinkling down. The courtesan's other hand flew to her hair, to what Isana had taken as the handle of a jeweled comb. Instead, Serai drew forth a slender, needle-sharp blade and thrust it into the assassin's eye. The man screamed and fell away.

Serai leaned out to catch the handle of the coach's door and began to close it.

There was a hissing sound, a thump of impact, and the bloodied, barbed steel head of an arrow burst from Serai's back. Blood flooded over the rippled silk of her amber gown.

“Oh,” Serai said, her voice breathless, startled.

“Serai!” Isana screamed.

The courtesan toppled slowly forward and out of the coach.

Isana rushed out of the coach to go to the woman's aid. She seized Serai’s arm and hauled on it, trying to draw the Cursor back into the coach. Isana slipped in Serai’s blood and stumbled. A second arrow sped past her shoulder as she did, driving itself to the feathers in the heavy oak wall of the coach.

She heard another scream to her right, and saw the old weapon instructor Nedus standing with his back to the wall of the coach, facing a pair of armed assassins, hard-looking men in drab clothing. A third attacker lay bleeding on the cobblestones, and even as Isana looked, the old metal crafter's sword whipped up into a high parry and dealt back a slash that split open the throat of his opponet.

But the blow had left the old Knight open, and the other assassin lunged forward. However, he was distracted for a second when there was a loud scream of a girl yelling at the top of her lungs before an odd blur of purple and something shiney crashed into him in a mass that sounded of broken bones.

“Well, that’s one way to land I guess. Thanks Rarity,” a girl’s voice sounded before a strange girl with oddly colored purple hair and a tunic of the same color picked herself up and looked down at the corpse of the man she had crash landed on. “Oh...that’s...not good.”

With the distraction, Nedus whirled on the last man, and seized his sword arm wrist in one hand. Instead of pushing the man away, though, Nedus simply clamped down an iron grip, and with grim determination, rammed his sword into the assassin's mouth.

Terrified, Isana pulled at Serai, struggling to get the Cursor back into the coach, before the situation could worsen. There was still an archer around somewhere, and they were out in the open.

“You!” Nedus called out at the newcomer. “Who are you girl?”

For a moment, Isana paused and looked up. She got the stranger in her sights just in time to see the arrow shoot out of the sky and...stop in midair an inch from the side of her head. “Oh I’m...gah!” she girl shouted when she noticed the air just...hovering there.

“What in the name of-”

“YOU KNOW,” the girl shouted as she looked in the direction the arrow had come from. “IF PEOPLE CAN MOVE WOOD AND METAL AROUND WITH CRAFTING, DON’T YOU THINK WE CAN STOP IT TOO?” she shouted into the air before plucking the object out of where it floated and tossing it back like a dark with the flick of her wrist. It disappeared into the night a second later, faster than a normal person’s strength should have been able to throw.

A second later, a scream of pain resounded, and a figure toppled from the rooftops.

She took a deep breath and looked around for a second before her eyes fell on the woman in Isana’s arms and gasped. “Oh my gosh! Is she…”

Isana flinched at the unasked question and looked down. Serai rolled limply to one side, her eyes open and staring. The arrow had taken her through the heart. “She’s...gone.”

“I...I’m so sorry, I didn’t-” the girl took in a deep breath and put her hand to her chest, then let it out. When she was done, she looked much more together. “I’m sorry. I need to get back to the manor before...I’m so sorry!”

Without waiting another second, she turn and ran, then bounded up into the night quickly, if a tad unsteady, leaving Isana and her apparent bodyguard Nedus behind.

Max realized the feeling the back of his head that said to come back and check on Tavi proved to be a good one when he found the boy in an alleyway that was filled with thick mist that just screamed something was going on inside. If not for that, he probably wouldn't have found the boy at all.

Tavi was pinned up against the wall by the Kalarus brat with some earth crafting that held him to the side of the building via crafted restraints, while Brencis’s two goons lay sprawled out on the ground. However, from the looks of things, whatever stroke of luck had managed to see the boy without any furies through a fight with two crafters had run out and managed to whip the last of them into a rage.

Brencis drove his fist into Tavi's belly, and though the boy managed to tighten his abdomen and let out a harsh breath in time with the blow, lessening its impact, it still drove the breath from him though from the sheer force of an earth crafter.

“You don't tell me what I must do!” Brencis shrieked, his face white with fury. “You do as I will it. You die as I will it.” He licked his lips and tightened his grip on the sword in his hand. “You have no idea for how long I've been looking forward to this.”

Well if that’s not an entrance cue, I don’t know what is, Max told himself as there was the rasp of steel when sword was drawn from scabbard. “Funny,” he said said as he came forward from the mist, legionare blade in hand. “I was just thinking that very thing.”

Brencis went rigid, and though he did not take the sword's tip from Tavi's cheek, he looked over his shoulder.

“Get away from him, Brencis,” Max ordered.

Brencis's lip twisted up into a sneer. “The bastard. No, Antillar. You get away. Walk away now, or I'll kill your little paganus friend.”

“You just said that you intend to kill him anyway,” Max said with a frown. “How stupid do I look to you?”

“BACK OFF!” Brencis screamed. “I'll kill him! Right now!”

“I'm sure you would,” Max said as he steeled himself and his expression became empty. “But then I would kill you. You know it. I know it. Be smart, Brencis. Leave.”

Brencis's body started to quiver, and he looked swiftly back and forth between Tavi and Max. His eyes were too wide, too bloodshot, and they burned with desperate, alien fire. Then they abruptly narrowed.

“Max!” Tavi shouted, struggling to warn his friend.

At the same instant, Brencis turned from Tavi, his hand extended, and fire filled the narrow alley in a sudden and deadly storm that came from nowhere and howled down upon Max.

For a second, flame consumed his world, but Max brought up his sword to absorb some of the heat and countered by spreading it out and away. The flame abruptly vanished, and left Max crouched on one knee, his left forearm up to shield his eyes, his blade still in hand. The tip of the sword glowed cherry red, and Max's clothing had been blackened and burned away in places, but he came to his feet again. Unharmed, and started walking toward Brencis. “You'll have to do better than that,” Max said quietly.

Brencis turned his back on Tavi and faced Max with a snarl. He gestured, and cobblestones before his feet tore themselves free of the ground and flew at Max in a heavy, deadly cloud.

Max lifted his left hand and clenched it into a fist, his expression grim as he countered earth with earth. One of the stone walls of the alley abruptly flowed like water, stretching out between Max and the oncoming stones. They slammed into the sheet of stone before Max, shattering into gravel as they struck. A second later, the wall snapped back into its original position. Max lowered his arm and kept walking forward.

Brencis snarled again, and a larger patch of stones began to rip their way from the ground, but Max gestured sharply at an almost-depleted pile of firewood stacked neatly against one wall, and a dozen logs, each the size of a man’s thigh, suddenly flexed and bounded toward Brencis.

Brencis released the stones he had begun to raise, and his sword blurred into a web of steel that intercepted each log and cleanly severed it, sending the pieces spinning harmlessly away. Max charged forward, sword in hand, and with a cry of frustrated anger and fear, Brencis advanced to meet him. Blades rang harshly in the alley, steel chiming, sparks flowering into drizzling clouds of fiery rain where blade met blade. The two clashed and flowed past one another, then turned to do it again and again, their movements as graceful and smooth as any pair of dancers.

He lunged, parried, stabbed and flowed through the forms he had been taught. Attacks were met with defensive parries, and counterattacks had to be blocked as the met in each pass.

Max's face twisted into confused anger after their third pass. He was a skilled fencer, taught by the best instructor in the Realm at one point in his life, but for some reason beyond his comprehension, Kalare Brencis had yet to die after three clashes. The other boy was his match, and another pair of passes resulted in more ringing steel and no blood.

Then Brencis, facing toward Tavi, gave Max an ugly smile, lifted a hand, and cast it at the boy. Fire lanced from his fingertips and screamed toward the helpless boy.

“No!” Max cried. He turned with a flick of his hand, and a wave of raw wind rose up before Tavi, holding the flames at bay, shielding Tavi from the fire.

“Max!” Tavi screamed.

There was a sharp pain in Max's back, and he looked down to see the tip of a sword emerge from his belly.

Max's face went white, his eyes wide in shock.

The blade twisted once...twice...and then it was pulled clear.

Max exhaled slowly, and crumpled to his hands and knees, fighting to stay conscious as he concentrated on the water in his own body. Sudden silence filled the alley.

“Yes,” Brencis said, panting, his eyes bright. “Yes. FINALLY!” A vicious lash of wind landed across Max's back in a line so fine that it sliced through his shirt and opened a long, bloody furrow in his skin. “Bastard!” Lash. “So smug!” Lash! “So sure of yourself!” LASH! Brencis flicked his wrist again and again, opening the horrible scars on Max's back into fresh agonies and blood.

Max let out a groan, each blow driving him farther down. But when he looked up at Tavi, he managed to keep his determined mask on. With Brencis focused on Max, the boy concentrated on the the bonds that held Tavi to the wall.

Brencis paid Tavi no attention at all, utterly focused upon continuing to lash at Max, snarling and cursing at him the entire while. Max let out a harsh groan and sagged almost completely to the ground when the last of the earth crafting was undone and Tavi was abruptly free of the stone.

The boy set his feet, flicked his knife's handle, caught the flat of its blade between his fingers, and with a practiced, instinctive motion, threw the knife at Brencis's throat. It spun end over end through the air, and Brencis didn't know it was coming until the last instant. He flinched from the knife, and its blade struck home hard, drawing blood from one of Brencis's cheeks and sinking entirely through the boy's ear. Brencis screamed in sudden pain.

Then he launched himself forward, leaping over Max and driving his shoulder into Brencis's chest. They both went down. Brencis reached for his dagger, but Tavi drove his thumb into the other boy's eye with vicious desperation, and Brencis screamed.

There was no time for thought, for technique, for complex tactics. The struggle was too ugly, elemental, brutal. Brencis got his free hand on Tavi's throat and started to squeeze, trying to crush Tavi's windpipe, but Tavi countered by getting his teeth into Brencis's forearm and biting down until blood showed. Brencis screamed. Tavi started hitting the other boy, pounding his fists down like clumsy sledgehammers while Brencis tried uselessly to bring his sword to bear in the close quarters of their grapple.

Tavi screamed and did not relent. Brencis tried to crawl away, but Tavi seized him by his braid and started slamming the other boy's face down onto the stones. Again and again he drove Brencis's face into the cobblestones, his weight on the other boy's back, until the body underneath him suddenly went limp.

And then Max sensed a new crafting, and a hammer of wind slammed into the top of Tavi’s head and threw him back, away from Brencis.

Tavi landed in a heap while Max fought to stay conscious and looked up, his head pounding with nauseating throbs while his body threatened to continue bleeding out from just the slight motion. The pain on his back was familiar and manageable, but the stab had been deep. Max saw a man emerge from the mist, dressed in green and grey.

It was the High Lord Kalare.

The man stared contemptuously at Tavi, then walked over to Brencis. He prodded his son with the tip of his boot.

“Get up,” said the lord of Kalarus, his voice seething with bitter anger. Behind him were the pathetic, hunched forms of Varien and Renzo, leaning on one another to keep from falling.

Brencis stirred, then slowly lifted his head. He sat up, his face a mass of cuts, blood, and bruises. His bloodied mouth hung open, and Max could see broken teeth.

“You are pathetic,” Kalare said. There was neither compassion nor concern for his son in his voice. “You had them. And you allowed this... freakish little nothing to overcome you.”

Brencis tried to say something, but it came out as a mush of sounds and sobs that meant nothing.

“There is no excuse,” Kalare said. “None!” He looked up at the two boys at the back of the alley. “No one can ever know that you, my son, were bested by this paganus. Never. We cannot allow word of this humiliation to leave this alley.”

His heartbeat fought to increase, but Max kept it down and steady to keep his wounds from opening up again. Self healing was hard, but it kept him from bleeding out. Still, Max knew there was no way he was going to be moving anytime soon.

Tavi tried to gain his feet, but fell a second later from his own injuries.

It was with a strangely calm resolve that Max knew High Lord Kalare was about to kill them. He watched helplessly as Kalare raised one hand and the earth began to shake around him. You know...I never did get to find out what was with those talking furies.

It was an odd thought to have before he died but...it was there.

Or maybe, it wasn’t the mystery of the furies that was what weighed on his mind, but...

“GET AWAY FROM THEM!”

A burst of harsh wind filled the alleyway and blew away the fog as it forced the High Lord to cover his eyes and made the others drop from their injuries when they tried to shield themselves. The pool of Max’s blood moved on its own, and crept up his body to cover the larger wound before the familiar tingling of a water crafter entered his body, and he felt himself pulled along the ground by an earth crafting until he was laying next to Tavi.

A second later, Twilight dropped from the sky between the boys and the High Lord, a mask of pure rage on her face.

“Well now, what have we here?” Kalare grumbled. “A little whore come to join the fun? So many of you out tonight. No matter, one more is-”

“BE QUIET!” Twilight roared with a voice so loud Max felt his intestines shake. “You...you… How dare you...you...monster!”

Kalare let out a cry of anger that Max could barely hear over the ringing in his ear and threw out his hand before the entire alleyway was consumed in fire. Max grit his teeth and tried to ready a defense, knowing it was too late.

Only...as the seconds ticked by, Max noticed that he had been alive for far too many of them. He opened his eyes, and they went wide at the giant wall of flame that abruptly stopped less than a foot from where Twilight was standing.

A second later, the flames died down, and Max caught sight of a look of surprise on the High Lord’s face before he scowled at the girl in front of him before Twilight spoke. “Is that really all you can do?”

Kalare’s face twisted into one of rage, and he pointed a finger at the young girl. The action made Max tense from what he knew was coming.

Large conflagrations were not the mark of an expert fire crafter, just a sloppy one. The true masters of the craft could create flames so hot they turned white, and send them out in contained bursts or streams that could blow and cut through anything. Against something of that level, there was no defense.

Max’s mind raced as he tried to think of something, anything, to do in order to get out of the situation but...nothing came to mind. All Twilight had done was buy them a few more moments, and it was about to cost the girl her life.

For some reason, Max found himself wondering if she had managed to track down those cutters...or just which High Lord had fathered her. Once again, it was a strange way to spend the last moment of his life, but...he found it a little bit more fitting than the last one of five seconds ago. He was thinking about a girl after all.

But then light flooded the alley, a searing, golden light that lit everything up as though the sun itself had come to Alera Imperia. The light stabbed at Max’s eyes, and he lifted his hand to shield them against it while looking to see what was going on.

Placida Aria, High Lady of Placida, stood at the other end of the alley with half a century of the civic Legion behind her. One slender arm was lifted, wrist parallel to the ground, and upon it perched the form of a hunting falcon made of pure, golden fire. That light fell onto the alley, illuminating everything there.

“Your Grace,” Lady Placida said, her voice ringing with the clarity of a silver trumpet, calm and unmistakably strong. “What passes here?”

The heat Max could feel building in the alleyway ceased. Kalare stared at Tavi for a moment with empty eyes, and then turned to face Lady Placida and the legionnaires. “An assault, Your Grace. Antillar Maximus and this...rouge have attacked and badly injured my son and his companions from the Academy.”

Lady Placida narrowed her eyes. “Indeed?” She looked from Kalare to the boys on the ground, to Brencis, Renzo, and Varien. “And you observed this assault?”

“The last of it,” Kalare said. “Swords were drawn. Antillar was trying to murder my son with his whore after badly beating these other boys. My son and his friends can all testify to the facts.”

Twilight stomped her foot into the ground. “YOU LIAR!”

“Girl,” Kalare snapped, fury in his voice. “This is Citizens' business. Hold your tongue.”

“No! I wil not-” The air suddenly wavered, and Twilight stopped for a moment, choking her for a second before the air waved again and there was a snapping sensation. “I will not allow you to stand here after you tried to murder my friends and sent killers to another man’s house tonight!”

“Girl,” Lady Placida said in a cold voice. “You will hold your tongue. The High Lord is quite correct. This is Citizens' business.”

Twilight seethed at the other woman, and turned back to Kalare. “In that case, I call you a liar and an attempted murder! A piece of trash that needs to be burned away! You, and your siv of a son! I spit on your name, and everything you stand for, and I hereby take my right as a powerful fury crafter of Alera, and challenge you to juris macto for the title of Citizen!”

Silence filled the the alleyway for a good ten seconds, and Kalare’s expression turned to a frown. “What?” he asked in a soft, yet gruff voice.

“You heard me you piece of cow feces,” Twilight went on in an even tone. “You can turn me down of course, but then everyone will know that the High Lord of Kalarus ran away from a little girl. I bet they’ll even be plays and songs about it. Think of it…

Twilight’s rather...melodious voice filled the alleyway for a few seconds, and despite the beauty of it all, there was also a mocking tone to it as well.

Brave brave Kalarus
He wanted to make her pay
But brave brave Kalarus
Instead he ran away

“You’ll be famous,” she teased darkly. “Your whole pathetic family line will remember the man that ran away from a little girl.”

Kalare seethed at the girls wods, and for a moment, Max thought he was going to try and strike her down right then and there. Lady Placida tensed and raised her blazing sword. The guards backed away.

Then, Kalare’s trembling stopped, and he took in a deep breath, obvious using metal and fire crafting to keep himself under control. “Very well then little girl, I judge you worthy of the attempt, and accept your challenge,” he said as a smile crossed his face. “We will have the duel at my estate in the next ten minutes.

“Now take that trash away,” he said while pointing to Max.

Twilight’s face twisted into one of shock, and she looked back at Lady Placida. “What? No, you can’t! He’s lying about the assault! I challenged him to a duel! You can’t accept his accusations! They’re lies!”

“I know that girl,” Placida told Twilight sadly. “But until that can be proven, one way or another, Max must be taken into custody.” Her hardened features became those of a normal woman in the throes of sadness. “You stupid little girl, why? You’ve just thrown your life away!”

Confusion covered Twilight’s face. “What’re you talking about?”

Lady Placida stood still for a moment in shock. “Don’t you even know what you’ve done? That man is going to kill you! Crows! He’s going to do it in front of his friends, and make it a spectacle!”

“No he’s not,” Twilight replied, still oblivious.

“What in the name of the great furies makes you say that you-you stupid child?” the woman demanded.

“Because he’s the one who’s going to die. I’m going to be the one to murder him, and I'll do it in front of all his stupid, slaver friends."

The Sixth Chapter

-Chapter Roman Numeral Six-

Twilight stared at the campfire as the flames danced outside of the cave that had been their home/base camp for the past several days. The air was biting at the uncoated parts of her human body and she longed for her turn to sleep inside with the others but…someone had to be on lookout for the wolves they had heard the night before. Part of the girl whined that she was a princess, and thus deserved a full night’s sleep while the others could have stood guard, but Twilight’s mind quickly reminded her that it was her fault they were in this precarious position in the first place and princesses took responsibility for their actions. They protected their friends. And did everything in their power to make the ponies under them as happy as possible.

After forcing down another pang of guilt about her decision to go to this world that ended up trapping her them all in alien forms without magic, avoiding the temptation to spend every waking moment to just try figuring out just why the mirror she had transported through the interdimensional tunnel didn’t work, and blinking back tears that threatened to come pouring out when she thought of the look Rainbow and Applejack had on their faces, Twilight focused on the task at hand. They couldn’t simply stay in a cave for the duration of their stay here, she needed to think of something to do.

She knew magic was an operable force on Alera. She had seen it work herself in the human town. It wasn’t much compared to what she was used to, but Twilight had seen people move water without touching it, she felt the tingle of magic at the local blacksmith’s shop, saw another man light fires with his fingers, and several examples of ‘crafted’ stone houses that were all just one big piece of impossibly shaped rock. But any attempts to use her kind of magic had left Twilight with nothing more than a migraine and a strained set of muscles.

The books she brought in town on the subject of crafting, which insisted that it was not magic but a phenomenon that had even less of an explanation that anything Celestia had ever given her, weren’t all that helpful in understanding how to tap into her new type of mystical energy. In fact, the little explanations they did give were horrifying! Apparently, humans took years to just gain the basics of their abilities, a timeframe that could be anywhere from five to fifteen!

It was something she and Sunset had decided to not share with Rainbow or Applejack until they found a way to get them out of their depression.

Twilight let out another sigh. As much as she hated to say it… “I’m just thankful Sunset’s here,” she told the empty air. Without her, they would have actually tried eating flowers and would never have been pushed into eating meat. She might have said how human’s ate cow as a joke to Applejack before being stranded, but now that they were…Twilight had to admit that the only way they were going to get a proper amount of human nutrition was to ingest the parts of cows, pigs, birds and…well, eating fish wasn’t all that bad.

“You say something Princess?”

Sunset’s voice coming from behind her made Twilight jump a little, and she turned back to look at the other girl. “Oh…Sunset. Um…what’re you doing out here? Couldn’t sleep?”

“Wasn’t really tired,” she said. “It’s weird. Ever since we got here, I’ve kind of been…I dunno…I’m not really full of energy, but I haven’t felt tired when I needed to be alert.”

Twilight blinked at the description. It was…eerily similar to how she had felt for the past two days, actually. “Only when we do lay down to get some sleep, it hits you like a ton of bricks and you’re out like a light?”

Sunset frowned back at her. “You too?”

The coincidence was odd, but… “Rainbow and Applejack seem to be having the opposite happen to them.”

“I noticed,” she mumbled while looking down at the ground. “They’re not sick though. No fevers, and plenty of what we brought in that little lab of yours can double to test for disease. They’re just…depressed.”

Twilight lowered her head in shame. “Can you blame them?” she asked her advisor. “Rainbow can’t fly and Applejack…buck Sunset, they’re both missing family just being here! And you-”

Sunset snorted and looked over to the former mare with a steady gaze before she spoke in an even tone. “I’ve got all the family I need right here.”

The statement froze Twilight in mid-sentence, and she let out a sigh. “Sunset…I know you. Your advice usually comes at the top of your lungs, and is delivered two inches from my ears. I know you’re angry. I…I know you blame me, and I-I know it’s my fault.”

The admittance seemed to open a floodgate inside Twilight’s mind, and all of a sudden guilt started to come pouring it. It didn’t start with a trickle. She was hit fullon by the by the fact that she had separated her friends from the ponies they loved, cripples them, ruined their lives! Twilight took in breath after breath as just how uncaring a pony she was became self-evident when the facts were presented in her mind.

“Stop it,” Sunset told her evenly as her fists clenched.

Ignoring her advisor’s advice, the former alicorn just continued on. “I should have checked my readings better. I s-should have investigated more. I should have left with more than a two-hour window. Why? Why did I have to even stay more than a day? We got everything I wanted, all the books, all the samples, all-”

“Oh shut up already!” Sunset shouted as she jumped to her feet and raised her hands halfway in claws like she was going to strangle Twilight. “Stop beating yourself about this! It was an accident! It’s over and done! There’s no changing anything! But we’re still here sitting in a hole in the ground, waiting for you to make a decision when I can hear wild animals howling at our doorstep!

“We sit here for days, and days, and days just waiting on you to give us a direction! “Should we stay here? Should we go into town? Just give up and kill ourselves? You’re the princess. You’re the one with the wings. You’re the one with the crown! You’re the Leader! So lead! Make decisions!

“Just stop sitting here kicking yourself and DECIDE SOMETHING!” Sunset shouted in the other girls face before she threw her hands down in a frustrated yell.

As she did, the fire behind them roared, and became a column of flame, making both girls jump back in surprise and fear. A second later, the roaring tower of fire shrank back down to its normal levels, and Sunset tensed, her hand closed around Twilight’s.

“Um…did I do that?” the redhead asked.

“I’m…not sure,” the purple-haired girl replied.

Twilight cleared her thoughts of the past as she made her way back towards the house of Lord Kalare from Kalarus. Even after seeing crafted stone for so long, it was still a little odd to find a building such as what she saw, just one giant piece of rock done partially in the classic pegasus style. Never did get that connection, she mused while looking at some of the pillars in the gardens that were visible from the outside.

“Girl! Are you even listening to me?”

Twilight turned her head and looked over to High Lady Phacia and blushed in embarrassment. “Sorry, I...got distracted.”

The woman sighed, and shook her head. “I just told you how you’re going to survive this,” she went on as they made their way to the large yard in front of the man’s house that was inclosed within his walls. “Since you apparently have some talent with fire crafting, attempt to draw the power away when Kalare first tries to kill you. You won’t be able to stop him, but it will buy you the second or two you need to surrender.”

The suggestion helped remind Twilight just why she had stopped listening to the woman back in the alleyway. It was moving that this stranger of such a high rank would be concerned about another stranger she had just met, but...the consequences of such an action jumped to the forefront of Twilight’s mind. She hadn’t been as bored in her Aleran Law class like somepony turned person that had red hair and a loud mouth.

“That would invalidate my testimony and get me sent to jail for bearing false witness against a Citizen,” Twilight told her. “Not to mention slander of a High Lord. Oh, and I suppose assault on Brencis too, since I was supposed to have done that as well.”

Placida frowned at her. “You’ll at least be alive.”

Thanks to Rarity, Twilight was able to keep her tone neutral and her body from shivering at the thought the option created. She had a feeling she’d be beeding the embrace of the metal spirit a great deal tonight. “Inside a little box for the rest of my life, cut off from my...furies, and Kalare will walk away from attempted murder along with his son, and his two friends. All because they have money, and a name.”

“That is the way of the world,” Placida told her.

Even steeled as she was, Twilight couldn’t stop her teeth from clenching. That was probably the thing she hated about humans the most. While there were bad ponies in Equestria, nopony just sat around and just accepted what they did with a shrug when they had the power to change things. Nopony, not even the princesses would just be able to just...get away with cold blooded murder like Kalare had been about to do.

But within Alera, even the rules were different. Bad things happened, everyone complained about it, but nothing was done to fix it. Even good people like Tavi and Max, who had seen those murderers walking down the street, just...shrugged and gone on about their business because it didn’t concern them.

Everyone knew how horrible Kalarus was, and even had ways to fix the problem that was his continued cognitive function. A High Lord could challenge him to a duel, the Legions could overwhelm his city with numbers, the First Lord could...do...well, something before he had fallen unconscious! But instead, everyone just let him do as he pleased.

Because it didn’t concern them. Because it was too risky. Because they made money off his cruelty. Because none of them really cared to do anything about it.

Well not me, Twilight told herself as they finished moving through the house and came out into the back yard where the party was still going strong.

People were gathered in small groups, talking about whatever nothing was important to them. There was a long table set out with numerous orderves and the strange drinks that Twilight and the others had sworn off after experimenting with a few nights upon entering Alera Imperia and awakening with skull splitting headaches, little memory of the night before, and disgusting vomit all over their house. Then the crowd noticed the return of the High Lord and his spawn, and the presence of the High Lady, backed by several members of the Imperial Civic Legion that held Max. Tavi was outside the knot of soldiers.

Conversations stopped and people turned to look at the group with confused frowns and murmurs. A few seconds later, High Lord Kalare addressed his guests. “My fair ladies and gentlemen, it seems that tonight, we have yet another duel for one of the people of Alera to claim the title of Citizen! Please, come and watch as this,” he said before getting to Twilight. A second later his expression became dark along with his voice. “Young girl attempts to claim a position meant for her betters.”

There was some confused mumbling in the crowd, but every now and then Twilight caught sight of a dark grin, a hungry lick of the lips, or a dry washing of hands that obviously signified anticipation of some sort.

“He’s going to make a show of this,” Placida told Twilight.

A bit of revulsion ran through Twilight’s mind at the thought. Killing wasn’t something that should have...spectators. It was a dark and dirty thing that still churned Twilight’s stomach when she pushed away the help of her friends and let it. But, as much as she ran the situation through her mind, Twilight could find little to solve the problems that had appeared because of the course of events.

If things had been different, if she had stayed on the street and waited for the boys, the circumstances of the moment she was in right now would undoubtedly be different. Max probably wouldn’t have gotten hurt, and...it was completely possible that Brencis could have been forced into backing down without a fight. Instead, she went to help strangers, and returned just in time to save Max’s life.

That was what had set her on her current path and presented the option to either go to prison under the command of a High Lord, or call him out and fight for the title of Citizen, and more importantly, her continued freedom.

There was an excited murmur in the crowd, and the collection of people in scattered groups began to turn into an audience while Twilight spun to face the group of law enforcement soldiers. “Max, can I borrow your sword? I don’t really have one.” she said before a thought occurred to her. “Wait, do we even need weapons for a duel when we have crafting?”

“Well...it is traditional,” Max joked with a nervous laugh before his face became serious. “But listen, do like Lady Placida says Twilight. Slow him down for a second, and then give up. The First Lord can sort this all out in a few days.”

Twilight sighed and held out her hand. “Just give me the sword.”

The blade was handed to her by a guardsman. The weight was a bit more than the practice weapon she had played with in the back yard with Rainbow a couple of times, heavier, and much more dangerous. Twilight looked back over to Max when he coughed to get her attention. “Do you even know how to use that thing?”

“Sort of, I tried having a practice fight with Rainbow once, but she wouldn’t follow the rules so we had to quit,” Twilight grumbled as she remembered that particular experience.

Max’s face took on a frown and his tone gained an edge of anger. “Rules?”

“Yes,” Twilight replied with an annoyed frown as she remembered the incident. “She wasn’t using any of the forms that I’d seen in a book I got on sword fighting the day before. It was all just her swinging her sword around so fas-”

“Listen to me!” Max cut in harshly. “The only rule in a duel are once it starts is that one person dies and the other person kills him, unless she surrenders before he can. The second it starts, give up.”

Twilight groaned, but a second later she took in in a deep breath and let it out like Cadence had taught her. Max was just concerned for her health, she knew that. It didn’t have to do with a belief in ones friends, it was more of a concern for their wellbeing and mental stability. If she had been in his sandals, Twilight would probably have the same opinion as he did right now.

But she wasn’t.

She had talked with Alera.

And now Twilight knew the rules of the game better than he did.

After taking a moment to try and think of a way to reassure Max and coming up empty, Twilight let out a long sigh, and looked over to the boy outside the ring of guards. “Tavi, make sure Max doesn’t do anything stupid, would you? I don’t want him trying to jump in and getting himself hurt.”

Before the boy could reply, the ground rumbled beneath them, and Twilight turned to look as a whole section of the back yard’s grass was covered by dirt that just bubbled up and formed a square area a foot higher than the area around it. A another crafting quickly turned it into solid stone. It was a showy, yet controlled use of magic, and she found at least some comfort in the fact Kalare was following at least some protocols.

Even if they were the ones for public murder.

As per the rules, as the challenger, Twilight had to appear in the ring first. She simply walked to the center of the back yard were Kalere had set up his arena and stepped up inside. As Kalare made his way to the cleared area, Twilight took a moment to study him.

He was not a particularly imposing figure of a man. Tall, but thin, and his eyes always seemed sunken in shadows, giving his face a gaunt, stark look, his hair hung straight, fine, and limp. He looked...dark, like some kind of thing Twilight expected to leap out of the shadow’s back when she was in Equestria and take little foals who didn’t finish their math homework.

For a moment, Twilight was struck by the oddity of his name. Like his son, the man was also called Kalarus Brencis, and held the title of High Lord of Kalare, which most people simply addressed him as. Although, she never quite understood why. Even though humans passed half their names along family lines, if the family was important enough, Twilight couldn’t fathom why the father would give his son his full name.

But then, human names were weird compared to ponies, who always had a name associated with their looks, or in a rare instance when their parents were hit by a wave of inspiration, their destiny.

The answer could lay in the differences of the species psyche. Like how humans always had half their legs in the past, burdened by the constant reminder of what had been, and ponies moved towards the future by forgiving transgressions...at least the forgivable ones at any rate.

“So little girl, being the challenged party in this duel, I believe I set the terms,” he said before Twilight cut in.

“Then make it to the death already,” she spoke before raising the volume of her voice for anyone that wasn’t listening in with wind magic. “Or do you think this little girl is too much of a threat for the pathetic Kalarus?”

From the corner of her eye, Twilight became aware of the conversations that had still been going on even after Kalare’s display suddenly stopping at her words. Some of the the guests regarded her curiously, while others looked like they were trying to locate a means of escape. At least some of the people had enough morals not to watch a murder as it was done right in front of them.

As for the High Lord himself, if looks could kill, Twilight was pretty certain she could have died right then and there.

“Very well,” he said before turning to the crowd. “Do we have a volunteer to officiate?” he called out to be met by silence from the crowd. “Come now, this is simply another duel for Citizenship! Another show to entertain. You come to my parties, drink my mine, eat my food, insult me with your-”

“Oh very well,” a female’s voice shout out loudly, if almost bored. “I volunteer.”

Twilight saw movement out of the corner of her eye as the crowd parted, and watched as a woman in red walked out of the throng of humans. She was probably in her late twenties, as Fluttershy could tell there wasn’t any water magic holding her to a different form, with long limbs and slightly pale skin. Her hair was naturally black, and done up in pins.

Kalare’s lips became a sneer. “Aquitaine. How good to see you here. I hope you pay special attention.”

“What is this...frivolity about Kalarus?” the stoic woman asked before she glance over at Twilight for a moment before turning her attention back to the older man. “Who is this girl?”

He gave the woman a wolfish smile. “Why, merely a demonstration, Your Grace. I hope you pay close attention.”

For a moment, Twilight found her old habits pulling at her, and she needed to force herself to resist introducing herself to Invidia Aquitaine, the wife of Kalarus’s major political rival and perhaps next First Lord of Alera. Rarity and Sunny helped her keep her cool.

“This piece of trash attempted to murder me not ten minutes ago, along with two other boys, and sent a pack of murderers to kill a pair of women and an old man” Twilight explained. “As such, I challenged him to a duel of honor, with the prize being my Citizenship.”

Invidia raised an eyebrow. “Well, that was very stupid of you little girl.”

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken Your Grace,” Twilight replied evenly as she remembered to use a respectful title for the woman. “I made him mad, and he did exactly what I wanted. That makes him the fool for accepting.”

Kalare, apparently angry at being so ignored, let out a breath between his teeth that launched a little bit of spille in the air. “Be silent, both of you. As the challenged, I declare this duel will be to the death!”

For her part, the woman didn’t even bat an eye. “Very well. Allow me to examine the blades.”

Twilight looked down at the woman standing on the grass. “What for?”

“Poison my dear.”

The response shook Twilight a little, but she complied and a few seconds later, was holding Max’s sword once again and Invidia addressed her. “Take five steps back from the center of the dueling ground.The battle will begin when I count down from ten.”

As Twilight took her position, Kalar licked his lips. “I’m going to make you beg.”

“Ten.”

“Roast you alive.”

“Nine.”

“Beat you to within an inch of your life.”

“Eight.”

“Cut off your arms.”

“Seven.”

“Break your legs.”

“Six.”

“Shatter your teeth.”

“Five.”

“Rip out your eyes.”

“Four.”

“And as you're lying there.”

“Three.”

“Hearing the bastard and the freak.”

“Two.”

“Scream your name.”

“One.”

“I’m going to rape you.”

“Begin!”

The old man threw out his hand in a sweeping motion, and Twilight’s word was consumed in flames.

From his place on the sidelines, Tavi cursed his lack of furies for about the millionth time in his life. Although Brencis’s toadies went down thanks to the two of them underestimating him, the High Lord’s son had disabled Tavi with his earth craft and forced Max to come to his rescue. Once again, he hadn’t been able to do anything because he couldn’t control the elements like every single other person in Alera, and now people were going to die because of it.

Max was destined for jail, and without him to double as Gaius while the old man recovered, the Crown would either lose too much power with the Citizens, or be found out entirely. As for Twilight…

“Stupid girl, I told her to try and slow down his crafting and surender,” High Lady Placida muttered before a beam of white hot fire shot from the man’s hand in an upward slicing motion.

Then, a second before it struck the girl with the purple hair, a conflagration of golden flame enveloped Twilight to intercept the white-hot fire before the world went white. A roaring voice seemed to reverberate in Tavi’s ears, and when he looked again, Tavi saw a large horse-like creature made of flames standing between Twilight and High Lord Kalere.

Like the manifested furies he had seen before from the girls on rare occasions, it was a large horse-like creature that had legs that looked a bit too bulky and short for its size, but with wings and a horn. Obviously a fire fury, the thing’s body was composed of mostly golden flames, but hair was more red in coloration, except for the odd strip or two of yellow that seemed to be even brighter than the fury’s ‘coat’.

As the white hot fire continued to bombard Twilight’s fury, the flaming beast reared its head and its horn shone with a blinding light before there was a bright flash and a stream of equally white hot flame shot forth from the fury’s horn to strike at Lord Kalere.

The older of the two combatants cried out as he dived with winborn speed out of the way of the counterattack, completely cutting off his assault before he rolled to his feet and raised his hand towards Twilight again. “Stupid bitch!”

Twilight stood her ground while the fire fury moved aside, and Tavi held his breath as he waited for the second attack to come.

And waited.

And continued to wait.

In the makeshift arena, the old man’s breath became visible in the late Winter air.

“That’s...not...possible,” High Lady Placida mumbled in shock.

A second later, they were joined by the tall woman that Kalarus had chosen to officiate the duel. She had slowly backed away when the fighting began, and hadn’t stopped until she reached the crowd. “Placida, who is that girl?”

“I’m not really sure, to be honest,” the other woman replied with her usual level of calm restored before the combatants started up again.

Kalere planted his feet, and the ground heaved so much Tavi saw the stone floor shift around enough to be mistaken for water in a pool. Twilight fell and caught the ground with her free hand to steady herself as she put her feet back under her. As soon as she did, the trembling slowly subsided, and another fury rose from the ground.

Like the first, the new fury was equine in shape, with an exaggerated head, oversized eyes, a horn, wings, and...the oddest of manes that looked more akin to a cloud with how puffed up it was; with a tail to match. Like the other fury, as soon as it manifested, it simply stood there.

“That’s two,” Twilight spoke in a neutral tone. “I’ll give you one more chance.”

The judge of the event let out a half-calculating, half-amused hum before speaking. “Oh my, I’m afraid that is going to send poor Kalare over the edge, wouldn’t you say?”

“What?” Tavi asked as he looked over to the woman before remembering himself. “Do you mean by that, if I may ask, Your Grace?”

The tall woman studied him for a moment, and then raised an eyebrow. “Ah yes. I suppose you wouldn’t know much about that, now would you child?” she replied before looking back to the match. “In a battle between fury craters, it is the ultimate insult to your opponent's abilities to completely neutralize your their crafting.”

“Mostly because it requires a great deal of control...and superior strength,” Lady Placida added.

What was left unsaid became clear to Tavi in an instant. “But...Kalarus is a High Lord.”

“Precisely,” both the woman spoke as once.

Back on the battlefield, Kalarus Brencis, High Lord of Kalare, took a look at his gladius that had been covered in frost, and then let out a scream of mixed fury and desperation as he charged the girl with the purple hair. Fury-borne speed let him cover the fifteen feet between them in an instant, and he whipped his sword out from behind him in a powerful overhead smash. The whole action took place in the blink of an eye.

For her part, Twilight let out a scream that sounded more frightened than anything else. What had to be instinctual reaction brought her arm up to block the blow. Her unarmored, unarmed left arm that didn’t even hold her gladius.

The weapon came down on the unprotected girl’s skin, and Tavi could hear several people’s breath suck in when it struck.

Then, the blade shattered at it impacted Twilight’s arm, which had become a piece of metal in the instant steel had touched it.

Lord Kalare stumbled forward as Twilight’s sword became a shining star unto itself, a mass of heat that Tavi could feel even as far back as he was from the battle.

And she jammed it straight into the man’s chest before he could recover.

A hush fell over the crowd as they froze at the sight. Despite having a blade in him, Kalare slumped forward and there was a sizzling sound as he fell to his knees, Max’s lent gladius cutting through his body like a hot knife through butter as he did until it passed his collar and was freed.

The man that had been halfway sliced in two from the chest up remained on his knees for a moment, and Tavi found himself wondering why there was no blood. Did the heat from the sword sear the wound closed?

Then Twilight brought up her free hand of metal that could apparently still move, and grabbed onto the man’s hair to hold him up. Then she swung the searing sword in her other hand again to lop off Kalare’s head.

The dead man’s body fell down to the ground as it were a puppet with its strings cut, and Twilight held his head aloft in her metal arm as she turned to look at the crowd. She took a deep breath, and raised the dead High Lord’s head as high as she could. “Friends...and guests of Kalare, or Kalarus, or...whatever!” she said before turning to face another direction. “Take a good. Long. Look.”

“My name is Twilight Sparkle, and THIS!” she shouted while shaking the severed head and turning to face each of the for direction. “Is what happens to ANYONE, THAT THREATENS THE LIVES AND FREEDOM OF MY FRIENDS!”

All around him, the crowd of observers froze.

No one breathed, Tavi included.

They simply stood there, staring at the impossible sight of what was presented to them, and the impossible moments that had been leading up to it. A little oddball of a girl that had her nose in a book more often than not, who advocated non-violence more than any of the other girls Tavi knew had just walked into Kalare’s party, fought him in a duel, completely overpowered him, and chopped off the man’s head.

A High Lord had just died, and Twilight Sparkle was the one responsible.

She had killed a High Lord.

Then the moment passed, and a sea of excited, terrified, confused, and angry murmurs began.

Some people turned and left the party so quickly that they forgot running wasn’t proper decorum. A few managed to applaud, if rather uneasily. Several became pale, and there was some retching from the citizenry that put a little of the fancy food that had been taken from the buffet table back onto the ground. Others outright fainted, with some just acted as if they had seen their own deaths.

Twilight tossed the head aside, and her furies returned from which they came while she turned to face the direction Tavi was standing. “High Lady Aquitaine. If you would do the honors. There are rules to this sort of thing you know.”

Once again, Tavi froze at Twilight’s words.

The tall woman next to Tavi chuckled. “Oh very well,” she said before spreading her arms wide. “Due to Lord Kalarus’s...situation. As officiator, I hereby declare...Twilight Sparkle a Citizen of the realm, with all duties and privileges thereof.”

He slowly turned his attention to the woman with the dark hair standing next to him, shock still keeping him from doing much else. Aquitaine, one of two high nobles that had engineered a barbarian invasion of his home valley a year ago. Although the whole thing had ended in a truce with the Marat, hundreds of people had died, and Tavi had nearly been killed in more than five separate occasions because of rouge furies, a trial against a Marat girl named Kitai, and the battle of Second Calderon where his life had been in constant danger.

And now, she was standing right next to him and...judging by her earlier words, knew exactly who he was.

Tavi found his fingers wrapped around the hilt of his knife, unsure of what to do. The Aquitaine family were monsters that had engineered the deaths of several people he had grown up with, not his friends. In fact, the vast majority of those people were his tormentors more often than not, but they had still been people.

And Invicta Aquitaine was the person responsible for their deaths. Everyone knew it, yet she had...gotten away with it. The same way Kalare would have gotten away with what he had been attempting to do.

“So now what?”

Tavi jumped at the sound of Twilight’s voice, his hand released its grip on his knife, and he found Twilight standing next to him, but addressing High Lady Placida.

“Now I take you into custody for assault on Brencis,” the woman told Twilight, whose face turned to shock.

“WHAT? But I just-that duel was completely legal!”

“Brencis Minor,” Placida stressed. “Although I wouldn’t worry. A competent judge would have thrown the whole case out before this...mess. Now, since your main accuser is…” She looked up, and apparently not even fury craft could keep the unease from her face. “...dead. You’ll be out inside and free within forty-eight hours.”

Twilight frowned, the took in a deep breath and turned to point her gladius at the boy in question and his friends. “In that case, as a Citizen of Alera, I accuse these men of being accomplices to the attempted murder of Antillus Maximus by the former High Lord Kalare!”

The wind whipped through the yard at her words, and Brencis glared at the girl. Despite his lack of teeth from when Tavi had beaten him in the face, he managed to form words between terrified, angry breaths. “No! You bitch! I’ll kill you!” he shouted as the air around the boy and his friends began to waver from the incoming firecrafting.

“Don’t do it you idiot,” Twilight warned as her eyes narrowed.

Tavi stood frozen as Brencis prepared to unleash a barrage of flames on the crowd, and his eyes moved to the severed head of the dead boy’s father while a lesson at the Academy on furycrafting came to mind. When people of extraordinary crafting talents died, they were able to pass on the furies bound to them to someone else, usually a son or daughter, thus passing on their strength.

And Brencis’s father had just been killed.

A second after Twilight spoke, the boy threw out his hands. People screamed and ran as Brencis unleashed a gout of flame, and then screamed as the place he and his friends were standing in became consumed in a comflaguragion that rose into sky, like a tornado that had been set aflame.

Moments after it began, the flames died out, and three charred corpses littered the ground.

“What,” High Lady Aquitaine spoke, confusion entering her voice. “What just happened?” She looked down at Twilight and frowned. “You...that wasn’t a fire crafting, at least not from you.”

Twilight let out a sigh and shook her head. “That fool, I warned him not to.”

From her place besides the Civic Legion, Lady Placida stepped forward. “What did you do?”

“Considering who he was, I thought he might cheat during the duel, so I had my...air fury create a zone of highly oxygenated air around him in case Brencis tried to attack me from behind with fire. He didn’t seem like the subtle type,” Twilight explained.

Tavi frowned. “Highly what?”

The girl with the purple hair looked back at the boy, and looked up in through for a few seconds before answering. “I made the air as flammable as oil. It’s a very subtle crafting, moving only the tiniest pieces of air, so it’s hard to detect.”

As the implications of such a statement sunk in, Twilight turned to Lady Placida. “So...what now?”

“I still need to take you in girl,” she said before looking to the dead High Lord, then to the charred corpses of his son and friends. “But considering all your accusers are now dead, and the only witness left is the boy they were undoubtedly trying to kill. Not even the most corrupt magistrate could manage to judge you guilty and not end up in the cell next to you.”

Twilight’s expression slipped a little, and she looked over to the young man that was currently surrounded by the civic legion. “And Maximus?”

“He as well.”

“But that’s stupid!” Twilight exclaimed, showing more emotion than she had since coming into the High Lord’s mansion.

Placida frowned at her. “It’s the law.”

“It’s outdated, foolish, inane procedure that has no point!” Twilight yelled back. “It...it…” She slowed down as she took deep breaths between each word. “You know what happened, we all know what happened, but…”

Under the High Lady’s gaze, Twilight let out a long breath, and took another look back at Max before returning her attentions to Placida. “One or two days? It will just be one or two days?”

“You have my guarantee,” the woman replied.

Twilight let out a long breath. “Fine,” she relented before turning to face Tavi. “Since Rainbow and A are probably asleep, go back to...go tell Sunset what’s going on, and tell her I said to wait for this mess to sort itself out.”

The order made Tavi need to tighten his fists to keep from becoming too emotional. “Twilight...without Max…”

Before he could continue, the girl with the purple hair silence him with a frown. “There’s nothing we can do about that at the moment. Worrying about it won’t do any good. Concentrate on what we can do. I’ll see you in two days.”

With that, Twilight handed over her borrowed sword, and was eventually placed under arrest by several extremely nervous legionnaires.

Fidelias was a careful man, most of the time, one did not survive as a Cursor for several years as well as more than a year after betraying a group of secret spies and assassins without being cautious.

He opened the door of the room and stepped aside, letting in a haze of smoke and incense, the sound of reed pipes, and the low murmur of human sound that drifted through the halls of the brothel like cheap perfume. The cloaked and hooded figure on the other side slipped into the room and drew back her hood. Invidia Aquitaine looked around the room, her expression remote, and while she felt around her for any intrusive fury craftings as she always did when they met, Fidelias shut and locked the door.

Lady Invidia nodded to herself in satisfaction, and Fidelias felt her own fury craftings rise up to keep their conversation private. Her voice was low, tense, and her eyes looked strained. “What happened? The streets were a madhouse of rumors.”

“Kalare's men followed them back to Sir Nedus's manor,” Fidelias reported. “Four cutters and an archer. They attacked as Isana dismounted from the carriage.”

Invidia looked at the very still form lying on the room's bed. “And?”

“Sir Nedus killed three of them, and a newcomer dealt with the rest,” Fidelias explained.

Invidia’s eyes darkened for a moment. “What do you mean newcomer? A guard from Nedus’s home?”

Fidelias shook his head. “No she was a strong fury crafter that just...well...she fell from the sky and crashed into one of the cutters, killing him,” the man explained. “To be honest, it looked like just a complete oddity of fortune to me, but the archer tried to shoot her and...something strange occurred.”

“Explain,” Invidia ordered.

“The assassin tried to shoot her, but the arrow never reached the girl,” Fidelias went on. “Then she threw it back at him. It stuck him in the chest, in the heart. Most likely he was dead before he hit the ground. It was like...what a Knight Flora, only without the bow."

The High Lady Aquitaine’s face furrowed in thought for a moment. “This girl, did she have an odd hair coloring, with a...bright streak of pink in the middle of it?”

Fidelus found himself surprised. It was not often his employer was the one to give him information. “You...know of her?”

“Apparently, after she foiled Kalarus’s assassination attempt, she challenged him to a duel...for Citizenship of all things,” the woman went on. “She killed him, and his son when Brencis tried to...well, avenge his father I guess.”

The world spun. “She...what?” Fidelus managed as he fell to his chair.

Lady Aquitaine crossed her arms and sighed. “It would appear that Isana has already found some form of protection, so we can no longer offer it to her. Not that she matters anymore. With the death of Kalere... The League will be foaming at the mouth by the time this girl gets out of the Black Tower in two days. I will contact my husband, with Kalare gone...much has changed. There is a power vacuum to fill and...plans to be made.”

Then the woman turned to regard Fidelus. “Find out what you can about this girl. Apparently, Antilles Maximus has allied himself with her, or put himself under her, for some form of protection. That boy from Calderon as well.”

And a moment later, she was gone.

Fidelias locked the door and sank down into the room's only chair. He ached all the way to his bones, and he was more than a little tired, but he didn't dare let his guard down. Those interested in claiming the reward for him offered by the Crown would certainly be looking for him. But bounty hunters were a secondary concern.

There was the question of Kalare's Blood Crows, and what would happen with the dead man’s answer to the Cursors. They were more organized, more formidable, and much more capable trackers. The fact that they had, in fact, seemingly stretched their influence into the Deeps, traditionally the haunt of the Cursors and the criminal underworld of the capital, spoke volumes about how they must have prospered.

If Kalare was dead...they were leaderless. Considering their inroads to the underworld in Alera, they could become quite the headache if they decided to go into business for themselves.

Although, it was equally possible their command would simply pass on to Kalare’s sister. Despite the fact she had been brought into another High Lord’s family as a political marriage. He still maintained close ties with her when he was alive. If the Blood Crows wanted to make her their leader and patron, then Fidelus knew the first action they would be attempting to undertake.

A quick search through his mental list of contacts told the aging man just who he could start talking to at the Academy for information on this new girl and her allies. For a moment, Fidelus felt sleep call to him, and then brushed it off. He only had a few hours of nighttime left, and there was still much work to do.

The First Chapter

~~Legal Tissue Paper~~ Disclaimer: I don’t own The Codex Alera or My Little Pony. Jim the Butcher and ~~Satan~~ Hasbro do, respectively. Although, due to his work dealing with the occult in a world of fiction, some idiots might also argue that Satan owns Jim Butcher. This work is completely non-profit and done for the sake of my own ego....that's right, I didn't cross that part out so it must be true. Why are you even reading this? The story is down there \/

-Chapter Roman Numeral One-

Due to his lack of furies, small size, and fact that he grew up in one wilder places of Alera, the valley of Calderon, Tavi had spent a good deal of his life dealing with bullies. Not fighting them, that would have been akin to suicide. Even if he had been taller, stronger, faster, and armed to the teeth, his lack of a fury to control one of the six elements meant that anyone other than someone who could use a water fury could have easily dealt with him. And even a Water user would have had next to an insurmountable advantage.

No, Tavi learned that the best way to deal with bullies was to avoid them. Sure, getting help from someone who was older or stronger would solve an immediate problem, but that protection would fade be it from officials or friends, and the repercussions would be all the more severe.

Avoidance was by far the best option.

It was also not an option for him on this particular morning.

Unfortunately, it was also the option Ehren Patronus Vellus a young man that managed to be even skinnier and shorter than Tavi at five feet tall appeared to be about to advocate. So being the natural strategist that he was, Tavi moved to put a stop to it. “You’ve got that look again.”

“What look?”

Tavi drew back from the corner, and tugged idly at his own student's uniform. It seemed that no matter how many times he got the garment adjusted, his body kept a pace ahead of the seamstress. The robes were too tight in the shoulders and chest, and the arms didn't come close to touching Tavi's wrists. While he had been rather scrawny his whole life up until reaching the academy and was grateful to the extra size, it would have been nice to wear clothes that fit.

“You know it, Ehren. The one you get when you're about to give someone advice.”

“Actually it's the one I get when I'm about to give advice I'm sure will be ignored." Ehren peeked around the corner too and said, "Tavi, they're all there. We might as well leave. There's only the one way to get to the dining hall. They're going to see us.”

Tavi didn’t bother looking back. He had already seen everyone in the courtyard and made the tally. He also knew Ehern’s information was wrong. “The twins aren’t there.”

"No. Just Brencis and Renzo and Varien. Any one of whom could skin both of us together,” Ehern replied nervously.

"We might be more of a handful than they think," Tavi said stubbornly as he felt some annoyance that the smaller and weaker of the pair was actually trying to defend him.

The smaller boy sighed. "Tavi, it's only a matter of time before they hurt someone. Maybe bad."

“They wouldn't dare,” Tavi growled. That was one thing he knew from personal experience bullies didn’t do. A few cuts, plenty of bruises, and maybe a broken bone or two on accident. But nothing to get them in any real trouble that would put a stop to their fun.

“They're Citizens, Tavi. We aren't. It's as simple as that.”

“That's not how it works.”

“Do you ever actually listen to your history lessons?” Ehren countered. “Of course it's how it works. They'll say it was an accident, and they're terribly sorry. Assuming it even gets to a court, a magistrate will make them pay a fine to your relatives. Meanwhile, you'll be walking around missing your eyes or your feet. Well...if you could walk without feet, I mean.”

Tavi set his jaw and started around the corner. “I'm not missing breakfast. I was up at the Citadel all night, he made me run up and down those crows-eaten stairs a dozen times, and if I have to skip another meal I'll go insane.”

Ehren grabbed his arm. His lanyard, sporting one white bead, one blue, and one green bounced against his skinny chest. Three beads meant that the fury masters of the Academy thought Ehren barely had a grasp of furycrafting at all. Of course, with his three to Tavi’s none, it still meant he outranked the taller boy.

“Look, just wait for the third bell, if you do then maybe-”

As if by some unspoken cue, the third morning bell sounded and…Tavi’s stomach rumbled. “Last bell. If we don't get moving, we won't have time to eat. If we time it right, we can walk past them when some others are coming out. They might not see us. Are you coming or not?”

Ehren bit his lip and shook his head. "I'm not that hungry. I'll see you in class?”

Tavi felt a swell of disappointment, but he smacked Ehren on the arm. He could understand the smaller boy's reluctance. Ehren had grown up among his parents' quiet books and tables, where his keen memory and ability with mathematics far outweighed his lack of strong furycrafting. Before coming to the Academy, Ehren had never been faced with the kind of casual, petty cruelty that powerful young fury crafters could show their lessers.

Unlike Tavi. He had had been facing that particular problem for the whole of his life. “I’ll see you in class,” he told the smaller boy.

“You sure?”

“Don't worry. I'll be fine.” With that, Tavi stepped around the corner and started walking across the courtyard toward the dining hall.

A few seconds later, Tavi heard running footsteps and Ehren puffed into place beside him, his expression nervous, but resolved. “I should eat more," he said. “It could stunt my growth.”

Spring sunlight, warmer than the mountain air around the capital of Alera, poured down over the Academy grounds. The courtyard was a richly planted garden with walkways of smooth white stone set in a number of meandering paths across it. The early blooms had accompanied the green grass up from the earth after winter's chill, and their colors, all reds and blues, decorated the courtyard. Students lounged at benches, talking, reading, and eating breakfast, all dressed in the uniform grey robes and tunics. Birds dipped and flashed through the sunshine, perching on the eaves of the buildings framing the courtyard before diving down to strike at insects emerging from their holes to gather in the crumbs dropped by careless academs.

Tavi absolutely hated it. The whole thing looked all peaceful, but the truth was that the capital of Alera was one of the cruelest places in the world. They just needed all the glamour to cover up the dirt.

Kalarus Brencis Minoris and his cronies had settled in their usual spot, at a fountain just outside the entrance to the dining hall. Just looking at the other boy seemed to make Tavi's morning grow darker. Brencis was a tall and handsome young man, regal of bearing and narrow of face. He wore his hair in long curls, considered fashionably decadent in the southern cities, particularly in his home of Kalare. His academ's robes were made of the finest of cloth, tailored personally to fit him, and embroidered with threads of pure gold. His lanyard shone with beads of semi-precious stones rather than cheap glass, and lay heavily on his chest with multiple representatives of all six colors-one for each area of furycrafting: red, blue, green, brown, white, and silver.

As Tavi and Ehren approached the fountain, the group of students from Parcia, golden brown skin shining in the morning sun, started passing between them and the bullies. Tavi hurried his steps. They only needed to avoid notice for a few more yards.

They didn't. Brencis rose from his seat at the fountain's edge, his lips curling into a wide and cheerful smile. “Well, well,” he said. “The little scribe and his pet freak out for a walk. I'm not sure they'll let the freak into the dining hall if you don't put him on a leash, scribe.”

Tavi didn't even glance toward Brencis, continuing on without slowing his steps. There was a chance that if he simply took no notice of the other boy, he might not bother to push. However, Ehren stopped and and glowered at Brencis. The small boy licked his lips, and said, in a crisp tone, “He isn't a freak.”

Brencis's smile widened as he came closer. “Of course he is, scribaby. The First Lord's pet monkey. It did a trick once, and now Gaius wants to show it off, like any other trained beast.”

Ehren's dark eyes glistened abruptly, and his lower lip trembled. But the boy lifted his chin and didn't look away from Brencis. “H-he isn't a freak,” Ehren insisted.

“Are you calling me a liar, scribe?” Brencis asked. His smile became vicious, and he flexed his fingers. “And I thought you had learned proper respect for your betters.”

Tavi ground his teeth in frustration. It wasn't fair that idiots like Brencis should get to throw their weight around so casually, while decent folk like Ehren were constantly walked upon. Brencis obviously wasn't going to let them pass without incident. He glanced at Ehren and shook his head. The smaller boy would not have been here to begin with if he hadn't been following Tavi. That made Tavi responsible for what happened to him. He turned to face Brencis and said, “Brencis, please leave us alone. We just want to get some breakfast.”

Brencis put his hand to his ear, his face reflecting feigned puzzlement. “Did you hear something? Varien, did you hear anything?”

Behind Brencis, the first of his two lackeys stood up and meandered over. Varien was a boy of medium height and heavy build. His robes were nowhere near so fine as Brencis's, though still superior to Tavi's. The extra fat gave Varien's face a petulant, spoiled look, and his baby-fine blond hair was too lank to curl properly, like Brencis's. His lanyard bore several beads of white and green that somehow clashed with his muddy hazel eyes. “I might have heard a rat squeaking.”

“Could be,” Brencis said gravely. “Now then, scribe. Would you prefer mud or water?”

Ehren swallowed and took a step back. “Wait. I'm not looking for trouble.”

Brencis followed the small boy, his eyes narrowing, and grasped Ehren by his academ's robe. “Mud or water, you gutless piglet.”

“Mud, my lord,” urged Varien, eyes lit with an ugly sparkle. “Leave him up to his neck in it and let those clever wits of his broil in the sun for a while.”

“Let me go!” Ehren said, his voice rising to a panicked pitch.

Tavi looked around him for help, but there was none to be seen. None of the Maestros were passing through, and with the exception of a handful of other students, none of the others were willing to defy Brencis when he was amusing himself at someone else's expense. But none of them were in the courtyard.

“Wait!” Ehren cried. “Please, these are the only shoes I have!”

“Well then,” Brencis said. “It looks like your little freeholder family should have saved up for another generation before they sent someone here.”

Tavi had to get Brencis's attention away from Ehren, and he could only think of one way to manage it. He bent over, dug up a handful of sodden earth into one scooped hand, and flung it at Brencis's head.

The young Kalaran let out a short sound of surprise as mud plastered his face. Brencis wiped at the mud and stared, shocked, at his soiled fingers. There was a sudden burst of stifled giggles from the students watching the exchange, but when Brencis stared around him, they all averted their gaze and hid smiles behind lifted hands. Brencis glowered at Tavi, his eyes flat with anger.

“Pfft! Hehehehehehehehe.”

Tavi blinked at the familiar voice coming from somewhere nearby, but found it odd that he couldn’t find the source of the voice despite its apparent closeness. Even the bullies stopped in their tracks and listened in confusion.

“Hahahahahahahahahaha! Oh man, that was funny! You should totally see your face right now!” the young woman’s disembodied voice managed to say between the guffaws. “I…oh, crow feathers, forgot to tell her to keep up my sound shield.”

A few seconds later, a woman simply appeared floating in the air in front of Tavi, between him and the bullies. She was one of the three oddest people that he had ever seen and, despite knowing her since coming to the academy, the multi-hued hair still made him wonder just why she had chosen to craft her hair in such a multitude of odd shades.

With a name as odd as her wild hair, Rainbow Dash’s clothes were made from normal cloth, and the beads she wore signified an extremely high affinity for win fury craft, while a few water beads were placed on the other end of her necklace as if an afterthought. Although Tavi had thought he was staring at a pretty boy when they first met, the girl didn’t take any offence over how easy it was to mistake her for a male. The way she simply floated in midair spoke a level of control over wind furies that most people could only dream of, it was the girl’s perfect timing and method of her appearance that made Tavi frown.

“You…you were here this whole time, weren’t you?” the taller student grumbled as Rainbow just…reclined in the air as if she was laying on a bed. Ever since the girl had learned to turn invisible...it was even worse than when one of the Maestros had shown her about altering her appearance using water crafting. Although not cruel, the girl did have a penchant for pranks that just about everyone at the Academy had felt once or twice.

Rainbow let out a chuckle. “Maaaaaaaybe.”

“Then why didn’t you do something to help sooner?” Tavi demanded in anger.

The floating girl spun in midair until she was hanging upside down, but still looking at Tavi eye to eye. “Please! Where would the fun in that be?” she replied. “Not to mention how much cooler it is to come flying in at the last second and save the day. Oh, that reminds me.”

The odd woman disappeared in a blur of motion instead of simply vanishing, and Tavi heard a loud yelp coming from Brencis a second before he saw Rainbow scoop Ehren off the ground and then fly up and backwards as she spun around at a speed that anyone without wind fury craft would have found impossible to duplicate before she landed next to Tavi and let her passenger go.

Ehren stampeded a bit and managed a thank you before falling to his knees from the vertigo while Tavi tensed at the sight. Dash had taken Tavi up in the air so he could see what it was like in the sky once…the resulting ride that he could only compare to an out of control one-man riverboat that was forced through half a dozen rocks before it went over a waterfall and had left the boy afraid to even look at a sky carriage for more than a month.

A short ways away, Brencis was rubbing his arm where Rainbow Dash had touched him, probably nursing where the strange girls spark of lightning had struck. “You little bitch,” he growled as the other member of their group, Renzo, came to join him.

Renzo was simply huge. Huge across, huge up and down, built on the same scale as barns and warehouses-big, roomy, and plain. He had dark hair and the scruffy beginnings of a full beard, and tiny eyes set in his square face. Renzo's academy tunic was made of unexceptional cloth, but its very size meant that it had to have cost twice what a normal outfit would have. Renzo had only heavy brown beads on his lanyard. But he had lots and lots of them. “Don’t got your stupid whores with you this time you little cunt.”

The comment got a growl out of Rainbow, and she stroked a large iron band that she wore on her right middle finger with her thumb before her hand became a fist. “Please,” she said in a tone that showed she was definitely not asking for anything. “All I need is my personal friends to take care of you idiots.”

All around the courtyard, the wind picked up and Tavi instinctively tensed as Rainbow’s fury manifested itself to stand next to her in a mass of off clouds. Although Tavi had seen a wind fury in the shape of a horse before, the one that Rainbow possessed seemed like an odd cross between a horse and a dog…with wings. Its legs were thicker than the most fit equine’s and didn’t even seem to possess knees, while the creature’s muzzle and face seemed more canine in the positioning of its eyes, and a slight trick of the light seemed to make the horses mane shine in every color imaginable. The fury’s mistress only came up to the thing’s shoulders, and Tavi could swear ‘Bolt’ was crouching in preparation to attack while lightning crackled across its body.

Off to the sides of the two groups, the water fountain in the center of the courtyard went still for a second, but Rainbow raised a hand as if to wave off her other fury in mid-manifestation and the running waters went back to normal.

Brenics let out a snort of a laugh. “Girl when I’m done, I think I’ll slap a collar on you and show you how little nothings are supposed to behave.”

The empty threat, at least what Tavi hoped was an empty threat, got a growl from Rainbow that her fury mimicked before a slight tingling in the air made the hairs on the boy’s arm stand on end. Slavery was something Tavi had never really been fond of, even though the more logical part of his mind could admit that it had some uses. However, threatening to slap a slave collar on a free member of the Empire was an idea that turned his stomach. Even normal slaves didn’t deserve that, they were meant for only the most unrepentant criminals that could be put to better use as hard labor rather than simply doing away with them.

But the Kalarus family was known for their avocation of slavery and all of its darker uses and made no secret of it. Pleasure slaves were a known trade in the lands owned by Brenics’s father, and some people even said he had slave soldiers in his legions that were forced to fight rather than undergo the unimaginable pain the collars could cause on the demand of the one who put them on.

Rainbow’s fury Bolt vanished in a huge gust of wind, and the girl practically shook with anger. “Try it, and I don’t care what the others say. I’ll hit you hard enough you’ll never be walking again.”

For a moment, the bullies showed a bit of hesitation, and then Brenic’s goons spread out. Renzo slowly went left. Varien walked around to the right. Rainbow floated into the air a few inches, but didn’t even seem to bother to notice their movements. “You two should back up now,” she told Tavi and Ehren without looking back at them. “It’s going to get very violent, very soon.”

Part of Tavi wanted to just thank her and run but…letting a friend, a girl that had never once called attention to his…disability take on the three citizens that were clearly out for blood…the part of his brain that had put him into dangerous situation after dangerous situation back in his home valley and earned him a scholarship from the First Lord of Alera in thanks for Tavi’s efforts in dealing with the uprising that had happened before he came to the capital wouldn’t let him. Sure, it was the stupid part of his brain, because the logical part was saying how he now had an out and if he ran to get food it might just be enough of a distraction for Rainbow to get the upper hand and take out one or two of her opponents before they even knew what hit them…but he listened to it anyway.

“Brencus,” Tavi spoke up as his eyes scanned the crowd that looked like they were debating on watching the spectacle, or getting away from what was about to be a real fight instead of two boys getting beaten up by a trio of hoodlums. “Think about this for a second. You really don’t want to do this. The Maestros-”

The bully cut him off. “Won't care about you or your friend, freak.” He regarded Tavi with a relaxed, calculating expression. “I am the eldest son of a High Lord of Alera. You're no one. You're nothing. Haven't you learned that by now?”

Tavi knew that the other boy was trying to hurt him, to anger him, and had chosen his words carefully. He knew that Brencis was deliberately manipulating him, but it seemed to make little difference. The words hurt. For most of his young life, Tavi had dreamed of leaving his aunt and uncle's steadholt, of coming to the Academy, to make something of himself despite his utter lack of ability in furycrafting.

“How dare you,” Rainbow growled as her hands shook and Tavi saw faint traces of electricity spark out of her arms. “Just because you can do a few stupid tricks with those…furies,” she sat the name like a curse, “you’ve bullied into obeying you, you think you’re better than him? You think because you and your dad was lucky enough to be born where he was, you think that makes you special? No matter how much you dress it up, trash is still trash, and I’m going to put you where you belong loser.”

Then, Rainbow’s expression took on an almost feral grin. “I wonder what your daddy will think when everybody in town tells him his stupid baby boy got beat up by me and buried upside down in a refuse pile. Because I know everyone else is gonna see your bare butt sticking out, and they’re gonna point, and laugh.”

The comment seemed to have the desired effect, and Brencis’s face took on a look of pure rage. He made to charge, and then suddenly let out a surprised cry when he fell forward and smashed into the ground face first.

Tavi’s thought’s stumbled in confusion at the sight. “How in the-”

“Rainbow! How many times we gotta ask ya to not be pickin fights with the monkeys?” a deep female voice with an odd accent that Tavi had never been able to place said before three figures walked out of the crowd and slowly moved over to put themselves next to the flying girl.

The one who had spoken towered head and shoulder above the other two, as was by far the biggest woman Tavi had ever met, on equal size with Renzo in both height and girth. AJ, which apparently stood for Apple and something else that the boy could never quite catch wore down to earth robes and a lanyard that spoke of more than impressive skills in wood crafting, with only slightly less ability when it came to her manipulation of earth. However, while Renzo was a block-headed bully, the giant woman with the golden hair was the friendliest person Tavi had ever met and tended to keep herself grounded better than most.

It was a sharp contrast to the girl walking beside the mountainous woman.

Sunset Shimmer had an even more fierce disposition Rainbow, with a level of skill in fire crafting that matched her explosive personality and hair with its odd streaks of gold that made Tavi wonder just how she did that. Rainbow’s appearance would have been written off with her ability to craft herself to look different using her talents in water, but Sunset had no such abilities. However, the beads on her lanyard showed equal talents in metal crafting as she had in fire. Unlike the others, she wore silks of the highest quality and several gemstones that matched her hair, stylized into blazing suns of red and gold using actual gold. She also wore several large bracelets and two chain necklaces that weren’t adored with a single jewel.

Then there was the girl in the lead of the trio, and boss of their group overall. Like Rainbow, Twilight Sparkle’s hair was as odd as her name, mostly purple with a highlighted strip of it flowing from the scalp to the end. Her lanyard was covered with multiple beads from every fury craft, in numbers that didn’t seem to be bothered by the girl’s all encompassing realms of crafting. Like two of her three partners, she was dressed in simple clothes and seemed determined to downplay she was obviously the bastard child of a High Lord or Lady.

And a rather favored one at that, if the rumors were to be believed.

Twilight and her friends had come to the capital with enough money in their possession to buy a rather extravagant house off campus, pay for their tuition, clothes, food, and whatever thing the most impulsive member of their group wanted on whims that changed faster than the winds Rainbow could control. They never worked, and usually paid for the meals Tavi ate whenever Rainbow dragged him out of the Academy to have some fun.

“You stinking overgrown cow of a whore! Get this thing off me!” Brencis shouted, making Tavi look over to the boy as he caught sight of just what had tripped the High Lord’s son up.

A rope that was so brown looked more like a think piece of wood had wrapped itself around Brencis’s ankles. Then, Tavi noticed the tiny bits of it sticking into the ground and realized that it was indeed made of wood…because it was actually a small hardened vine.

The appearance of the plant life served to remind Tavi that the simplistic and good natures most of the girls had, they were in fact the four most talented crafting students the Academy had seen in the memory of every teacher who worked there. Some even went so far as to say they were the best ever…although that seemed to be stretching it in Tavi’s opinion.

Even with Rainbow’s easy control of the air, AJ’s unusual size and link to plantlife, Sunset’s unorthodox mastery of metal, and Twilight’s apparent gift in all things furycrafting, the idea that four young girls barely older than him could show up from out of nowhere and have talents equaling…or even surpassing a High Lord according to some rumors, was preposterous. But Tavi was hardly going to start poking around four of the five people who made getting by at the Academy possible.

“Ya know, on second thought, maybe teachin’ that boy some manners will be a good thing,” AJ said as she cracked her knuckles. The popping sound they made could have doubled for breaking bones. “Jus gimmme a minute to make a switch.”

Twilight, the group’s obvious leader held up her hand that had a metal band matching Rainbow’s own, and AJ froze in place. “We’re not here to pick fights or make waves,” she said before turning her attention to the three boys while her voice turned to steel. “Now you’re the ones outnumbered by two. Do what’s best for everyone and back down. I don’t want my friends getting demerits for fighting.”

A bit of irritation entered Tavi’s mind as he checked Twilight’s math and found she was counting Ehern, but not the larger of the two targets of the bullies. He also knew it was a plea on deaf ears. With a crowd around them and Brencis’s hatred of the strength of the female sex, there was no way he would be backing down in front of a crowd without something like a Maestro around to tell him so.

“Two? You think that little scribe is gonna be able to do anything?” Brencis said as he finally worked himself free of the plant with strength from the earth obviously assisting him. “Or are you talking about the freak?”

Twilight flashed him a bright smile and pointed in Brencis’s general direction. “No, I was talking about the big ape walking up behind you while you and your cronies were all looking at me,” she explained.

Brencis frowned, then turned around. He was just in time to block the fist belonging to the larger boy that had been making his way through the crowd his nose. The Kalarn son spun around while crying out in pain and smacked into the hard ground.

“Crows Brenics! I’m trying to give you a hand here! The least you can do is catch it when I throw it!” the fifth member of Tavi’s self-appointed protection detail exclaimed as he shook the droplet’s of blood off his hand.

Unlike the rest of the people that had come to Tavi’s defense, Antillar Maximus didn’t have an odd name, or come from some out there part of the Empire, or sport a pair of breasts. Instead, he had a weak link to a High Lord, was born in the far north where the shield wall kept the dreaded ice men at bay, and sported the part of human anatomy that made him quite male.

Max’s feature’s weren’t as…appealing as the girls Tavi had with him at the moment, but they were clean-cut, rugged, and strong. He had the wolfish grey eyes of the northern High Houses and combined a powerful build with a casual feline grace. Though usually he shaved scrupulously every day, he evidently hadn't had time to this morning, and shadowy stubble gave his features a roguish cast that went well with the dents in his twice-broken nose. Max's robes were plain and wrinkled, and had to struggle to contain his shoulders and chest. His lanyard, randomly arrayed with a hefty number of colored beads, had been carelessly knotted in several places where it had broken.

“Okay Twilight, for the last time,” Sunset cut in. “Max is a monkey, the two runts here are apes. If you’re going to use my lingo, could you get it right?”

Twilight looked over to the other genius of her group in confusion. “But I thought you used monkey as an insult. I mean, you call Brenics and his friends monkeys.”

A pair of crossed arms and a groan came from Sunset. “That’s because all they think about is breeding,” she corrected the girl with the more outlandish hair. “Just because Max is a good monkey doesn’t mean he thinks with his cock any less than those three. The apes at least have some brains.”

“Thanks for the distinction,” Tavi deadpanned. A comment that was ignored by the young woman.

“Crows just…get them you fools!”

Tavi tensed at the outraged cry that came from Brenics, and his eyes widened when the idiots that followed him apparently took the plural to mean the girls rather than the young man that had just left Brenics on the ground.

“Idiots incoming!”

From her place at the front of the group, Twilight didn’t even move as she let out an annoyed groan. “Yes Rainbow I know,” she said. “You’re the one who walked me through reading the air, remember? I don’t need to see them to-” Twilight’s words came to a halt when Rezo’s fist slammed into the back of her head.

A startled cry of pain echoed throughout the courtyard, and Twilight turned around while Renzo staggered backwards while clutching a his hand…that had broken on the back of Twilight’s head when he smashed it into her. What in the name of-Tavi was able to think before he saw a strange, almost…metallic sheen from behind her odd hair that through his thoughts completely off kilter.

Twilight sighed and turned around to face Renzo. “See? That’s what fighting-” she managed to say before the female mountain range with the golden hair sent her own bolder of a fist over Twilight’s head to land on Renzo’s face.

As the giant bully was sent flying, Twilight whirled back to face her own gargantuan ally. “Applejack! I said I don’t want any of you getting in trouble.”

“That weren’t no trouble ‘tall,” AJ replied with a smile that seemed to add a few extra blemishes to a face that seemed too cute to be on a monster of her size.

Sunset sighed and looked over to the floating woman. “Rainbow, could you ask Wonder to give Celestia a hoof with something?”

The look on the rainbow-haired woman’s face became a bit disbelieving, and she slowly coasted through the air behind the girl with the fire-red locks. “I still can’t believe you named your friends after them.”

“If I didn’t, Sparkles would have,” Sunset as they approached the third member of the opposing group.

“H-HEY! Sunset! I am…very strongly asking you to not…do anything…foolish!” Twilight ordered in an odd fashion rather awkwardly.

Rainbow held up a free hand, and water just started to gather from apparently out of nowhere until it was about the size of her head. “So, what am I doing with this?”

“Aim for the crotch,” Sunset replied.

The girl with the rainbow hair shrugged, then tossed her ball of harmless liquid at the larger man. A second after it hit, there was a rush of steam and Varien reached to grab his manhood as his voice died and the water simply…froze?

Tavi frowned at the sight of the boy that had gotten the area between his legs frozen and couldn’t help but wonder. “H-How did you do that?”

“That’s…a good question,” Rainbow said just loud enough to be heard before she looked over to Sunset. “I mean, I can freeze water by making it stay still, but how’d you do it? I know you’re terrible at water stuff.”

A groan came out of Sunset’s lips, and she rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I swear, there should be some kind of requirement that the rest of you go to high school too,” she grumbled before looking to Rainbow. “You stop water molecules from moving, I draw away the heat. It’s pretty much the same thing when it comes to water, but my way is more encompassing.”

Then the redhead took off one of her necklaces and it crumpled in on itself before floating in front of her finger. A finger she pointed towards the man with his lower extremities frozen. “Bang!” Sunset announced before the balled up necklace of metal flew into the center of Varien’s head hard enough to knock him onto his back before it bounced off into the air and untangled before landing in Sunset’s waiting hand so she could put the deceptive jewelry that was more of a weapon back on.

For some reason, a tiny flame flickered to life at the tip of Sunset’s finger, and then extinguished itself to leave behind a faint trail of smoke before she blew it away.

“You know, there’s such a thing as trying too hard to look cool,” Rainbow deadpanned.

Sunset let out a giggle that sounded more like a cackle while the rest of the group caught up. “That coming from you of all people,” she managed before catching sight of the others and giving a satisfied smile. “Hi Twilight, what took you?”

Twilight let out a groan in response, and glanced over to where Max was finishing off Brenics. “Honestly, can you two at least act a little like them?”

“When in Rome…or Alera,” Sunset replied, drawing Tavi’s attention at the odd comment concerning the ancient civilization. When no one else seemed to think the comment funny Sunset let out another groan and the smile disappeared from her face. “Ugh! Uncultured louts! At least one of you should have gotten that.”

With Sunset glaring at her, Twilight rolled her eyes. “I understand the reference Sunset-”

“No you don’t-”

“But this is hardly the time of the place for jokes,” Twilight went on before turning to the girl that was laying in the air again. “And Rainbow! Just what were you thinking? Picking a fight with these three?”

Rainbow rolled around on her air mattress until she would have been laying on her stomach if there was anything beneath her, and looked Twilight in the eyes. “They were messing with Tavi, Twilight. You know how I get around bullies.”

A long sigh escaped from the girl with the purple hair, and she stole a look at Tavi before returning her attention to Rainbow Dash. “Look, I don’t like those people any more than you do Rainbow. Crows! They don’t even belong in here! The fact that someone like Brenics is being tutored by some of the best scholars in this world makes me sick! And I know Tavi reminds you of-”

“Not. One. Word. Twilight,” Dash told her in an even tone.

Twilight’s mouth seized up and her eyes went wide as her arms shook for a second from the flying girl’s tone of voice.

Then Rainbow’s eyes went equally wide, and AJ looked over to the smaller of the two with a scowl. “Rainbow!”

“Sorry!” she said before landing and reaching up to grab Twilight by the shoulders. “Plenty of words! Use plenty of words!”

The leader of the for let out a long sigh, and rubbed her head. “It’s okay Rainbow. I… Look, did you at least eat breakfast before slipping out of the hall and waiting for these two to show up?”

“Umm,” she managed to say before her stomach rumbled.

AJ slumped. “Gonna take that as a no,” she said before grabbing Rainbow by the arm. “Come on partner, what do you say to me and you getting some grub?”

As the odd conversation broke down and a somewhat sullen Rainbow floated off the ground while AJ led her to the eatery, Tavi found Sunset. A few seconds of debate of whether he should ask the girls just what that weird interaction had been all about, or pursue his academic hobby had him going towards Sunset since it was the only choice that made sense. Twilight’s group might have been friendly, caring and some of the nicest people at the Academy, but they were also very secretive about anything that wasn’t in the now.

But if Sunset was interested in the ancient Romans as well, then there was a hope to strike up at least some kind of conversation with her about it. The interest was purely academic of course, as the girl was known to be…less than pleasant to any man that approached her in the mood for romantic activities. Max had been very vocal on that fact about her.

Up ahead, Tavi saw a member of the crowd come out to address the man that had taken care of Brenics. “Antillar,” the female said in a low and throaty purr drawling out consonants with an Attican accent. Tavi couldn’t help but wet his lips at the sight of the ravishing young woman, her dark hair worn in a long braid that fell over her left shoulder. She was surpassingly lovely, and her dark eyes smoldered with a sensuality that had long since enraptured nearly every young man at the Academy. Her academ's robes did not manage to conceal the lush curves of her breasts, and the southern silks they were made from clung to her hips and hinted at the outlines of her thighs as she walked across the courtyard.

Max turned to face her and gave her a gallant little bow. “Good morning, Celine.”

Celine smiled, the expression a lazy promise, and let Max take and kiss her hand. She let her hand rest on Max's and sighed. “Oh, Antillar. I know it amuses you to beat my fiancé unconscious, but you're so much... larger than he. It hardly seems fair.”

“Life isn't fair,” said a second female voice, and a second beauty, indistinguishable from Celine except that she wore her hair braided over the opposite shoulder, joined them. She slid one hand over Max's shoulder, on his other side, and added, “My sister can be such a romantic.”

“Lady Celeste,” Max murmured. “I'm just trying to teach him manners. It's for his own good."

Celeste gave Max an arch look, and said, “You are a vile brute of a man.”

Max swept his arm back as he gave the young noblewomen a gallant bow. “Celeste,” he said. "Celine. I trust you slept well last night? You've almost missed breakfast.”

Both of their mouths curved up into identical small smiles. “Beast,” said Celine, while her sister went with, “Cad.”

“Ladies,” Max bid them with another bow, and watched them walking away as he stood with Tavi and Sunset.

Tavi grimaced. It was easy enough to figure out what had happened and why Max was so late coming to breakfast from the way the twins were acting. “That's where you were all night? Both of them?”

“They do share the same quarters. Hardly would have been polite to only have one, and leave the other all lonely,” Max said, his voice pious. “I was merely doing what any gentleman would.”

Tavi glanced over his shoulder, his eyes drawn to the slow sway of the girls' hips as they walked away. “Sick, Max. You make me sick.”

For her part, Sunset sighed. “Yeah, yeah, you like to rut well-dressed whores,” she grumbled. “Don’t really care. What I do care about is when that means your little pet here gets in trouble, and my friend has to bail him out! I couldn’t care less what happens to your academic buddy here, but Rainbow’s stupid and has a soft spot for unfortunates.”

“Isn’t that the same thing your friend was spouting a second ago?” Max replied. “Don’t get in trouble by fighting?”

Sunset’s frown turned even more sour, and the air became a bit hotter. “Just because I don’t do what Twilight asks me to doesn’t mean I ignore her concerns,” she went on with a growl. “Keep your little friend here safe, or what I did to that idiot back here? I’ll do the opposite and burn yours off.”

The threat, which Tavi thought was probably empty as Sunset was way too nice a person on the inside to carry through with it, made Max laugh. It wasn’t a nervous laugh. “Oh, you’re already making me plenty hot down there already.”

Tavi gulped, then backed away in case Sunset did something she would later regret. As for the girl, she put on an evil grin. “Sorry little boy,” she replied in a way that left absolutely no doubt as to what was little about Max while she fingered the plain iron band on her finger that was an ugly contrast to the rest of her outfit. “But I’ve already got someone much bigger than you, with fingers that are twice as long as anything you’ve got, another whose touch is positively electric, and someone that can make me feel better than any human ever could with just her lips and tongue.”

As the girl departed, Tavi was left staring at Sunset with his mouth hanging open. “Y-You can’t…all four of them…together?” he managed.

“Great furies…the legends were true,” Max mumbled.

“Legends? Really?” Tavi asked the large young man next to him.

Max managed to take in a breath and let it out with some effort. “The four furies of the Academy, four women that appeared at the start of the year with an unheard of talent for fury craft in their areas, with their leader the unclaimed daughter of a High Lord. Each one a perfect beauty, depending on your preference,” he said before his voice became sullen. “And each one only preferring the touch of a woman, with all of them in some kind of four-way permanent orgy that occurs at their house every night!”

The reverence of which Max had in his voice made Tavi slump. “You’re kidding, right?” he asked in an almost bored tone.

“I know they’ll never let me in the group-”

“I’m going to get breakfast,” Tavi said.

“But can’t they at least let me watch?” Max lamented.

“Before I lose my lunch,” Tavi finished as he made his way to the cafeteria.

The house that Twilight called home was the envy of the neighborhood. Although it was a bit too opulent for the young woman’s taste, the large yard that made the two story, one bedroom, three fireplace home with its own miniature bathhouse and back yard that now served as a private vegetable garden and tree nursery was a block of the city unto itself. Thanks to all the space, and a few elemental spirits asked to help in various ways it provided the four women with what they needed most: privacy.

This need was also met by the numerous dark curtains placed behind the windows that let no light in, and required Sunset to light the small army of fury lamps to ignite as soon as they entered the dormitory just to see more than a few inches in front of her face.

However, it had all become so commonplace that Twilight paid it no mind. Her attention was all on the girl with the rainbow hair that was currently causing a stab of pain to run though the purple haired woman’s heart.

“Rainbow for the tenth time, it’s okay. I know you didn’t mean to tell me what to do,” Twilight assured her guilty friend as they made their way into the home Twilight’s ‘uncle’ had bought for her with the rest of her friends following behind.

The former pegasus didn’t seem to cheer up even after the assurance, and floated towards the basement. “I’m going to go check the mirror.”

Twilight sighed as she watched the woman who held her proverbial leash float through the air and leave out the non-descript door under the stairs. After she disappeared, Twilight shut and locked the door behind them before she reached to begin taking off the stifling clothes the real humans insisted she wear. “You don’t think she’s going to try and take my collar off again, right?” Twilight asked as the turned around and found Applejack in the process of stripping. “She knows why we have these things.”

A few seconds later, Applejack finished disrobing, and Twilight was met with the large pair of teats the earth and plant adept woman sported as a human, much to the farmer’s lament. “Ah told her not to.”

“Applejack!” Twilight scolded her as she looked up at the six foot nine woman’s face. “That’s against the rules!”

The giant human flinched, but only a bit. “Look Twi, we all know why we’re wearing these things. We all agreed it was safer, but…Ah don’t see why you just can’t hold them all.”

“We all hold one leash,” Twilight replied as she felt her anger rise. “I have Sunset’s, she has yours, you have Rainbow’s and Rainbow has mine. That’s what we agreed to. We all knew she was going to have the most slips, and I agreed to have my slave collar linked to her so the two of you didn’t get into a fight when the inevitable happened.”

“Please, out of all of us, the two of you fight like an old married couple more than the rest of us,” Sunset said as she collected their clothes and put them into the nearby was basket without adding hers. Two and a half years had allowed her to become far more adjusted to the awful fabrics the Alerns put against the sensitive skin humans were covered with.

Nearly a year, and Twilight still hadn’t gotten used to the crow-begotten things. At least the other human world she had journeyed to had bearable fabrics. But this branch of Roman decedents hadn’t seen the need to invent polyester, or a lot of other things for that matter. The whole thing would actually make a fascinating topic for a paper if…when she got home.

Twilight frowned at her slave. “But we don’t tell each other what to do Sunset. One comment by Applejack for Rainbow to go buck herself, and…I don’t want to know what would happen.”

“Celestia, I hate humans,” Sunset growled, catching AJ’s attention. At the two questioning glances, she rolled her eyes. “And don’t tell me you're going to argue.”

After a second of consideration, Twilight sighed and hung her head. “They’re not all bad Sunset,” she replied, her weak tone betraying her feelings on the matter. “But the last world we were on, it was better than…this.”

Sunset let out a humph, then her expression softened, if just by a hair. “Twilight, that naivety of yours is what I hate and love about you the most,” she said before sighing. “So, anything special you girls want for dinner before I take these to the laundry?”

“You want some help there sugarcube?” AJ asked before Sunset waved her off.

“I can carry badly processed sheep hair,” she replied before she looked over to Twilight. “Although I would like a kiss, Mistress.”

The sultry way Sunset spoke made Twilight roll her eyes. “Alright, but you’re so damn ugly,” She said before stepping forward and pressing their lips together while mentally commanding Sunset to experience a surge of pleasure at the touch. The redheaded human’s entire body shivered, and Applejack had to grab the girl’s basket when she almost dropped it.

A few seconds later, Sunset was panting from the touch. “Okay, gonna see you after I get dinner started.”

“Shouldn’t you be watching the food cook?” Applejack asked evenly.

Sunset let out a tiny laugh as she started to walk away. “Oh please AJ. With how much I’ve shown Celestia and Luna, all I need to do is put the food in the pan and wait.”

As the girl disappeared around the corner, Applejack let out a groan. “Can’t believe she named her main elemental friends after the princesses.”

Twilight thought it best not to grumble about how Sunset had beaten her to the punch on that one. Instead, she simply looked up at her friend. “Can you do me a favor and distract Rainbow when she gets done poking the mirror? We’ve got finals coming up and…I don’t want her moping around when I’m trying to study.”

Even though it felt like she was abandoning her mistress, Twilight knew it was all for the better in the long run. The academic tests would open a path for citizenship for her and the others, while the physical ones would increase her options despite the upside down gender roles this Aleran Empire seemed to run on. It seemed a bit a cheat, since Twilight had no intention whatsoever in keeping the oaths that would come with any new positions, but then she had no intention of spending the rest of her life on Alera either.

“By distract, Ah take it you mean…” Applejack left the rest unsaid, and licked her lips.

Unable to hold down her giggle as the barely contained excitement in Applejack’s eyes, Twilight nodded. “I’ll let the sound from downstairs reach me until I start hearing her squeal.”

“But uh…what if she don’t-” Twilight just gave Applejack a level gaze, and the giant woman sighed and nodded. “Yeah, Rainbow turning down mah attentions is about as likely as humans puttin a mare in charge here like they should. But um…what if she does?”

The thought scared Twilight more than she had been in eight months. “Then we’ve got a real problem on our hands, and you get the rest of us so we can talk to her.”

After collecting her books, which she had to place to side before stripping, Twilight made her way up to her study room and laid down on the single human bed before she took a moment to put her books away and looked over on the nightstand where a collection of bowls held everything from bits of wood, to some incense, water, metal shavings, simple dirt, and while nothing was inside the bowl meant for air, she hadn’t wanted her to feel left out.

“Hello everypony, can I have your attention for a second please?” she asked her friends before the elementals used the materials provided to take on a physical form of reduced stature, with her air friend simply creating a cloud the way Rainbow Dash’s had been taught.

A second later, six tiny alicorns of very familiar appearance came into being of the girl’s nightstand. When the elementals had first taken form based on Twilight’s unconscious desires, she had nearly broken down in tears thanks to how each one looked and the names they had obviously wanted for themselves, but…the heartbreak had long since healed and she could stare at the alicorn versions of the three friends that she hadn’t seen in so long without as much trouble.

“Thank you for all your help today, and thank you for protecting me Rarity,” Twilight told the tiny alicorn that looked like her namesake made from metal while the alicorn made of clouds became a thunderhead. “And yes Dashie, I know I didn’t dodge in time like you were telling me to.”

The increasing flames of the alicorn made of fire got a roll of the eyes from Twilight. “Sunny. Violence wouldn’t have solved anything.”

“That’s just because you just don’t use enough of it,” the other Sunny’s voice came from the door, making Twilight roll her eyes as the former unicorn walked into the room, as naked as Twilight had made herself when they got home.”

Twilight let out a good-natured sigh, and turned away from the physical manifestations of her magic in this upside down world before she rolled onto her back and Sunset walked up to get on the bed and straddle Twilight while she tucked her legs in under themselves. The girl with the purple hair hair grunted at the extra weight on her stomach. “What’re you doing here Sunset? I thought you were cooking.”

A roll of her eyes told Twilight all she needed to know about her slave’s current state of mind. “Like I said, Luna and Celestia can cook without me just fine once I put all the stuff in the pot,” she said before her hands lowered to cover Twilight’s human teats and squeeze them. “I came here to make sure you took mini-me’s advice. Oh, and have sex.

“Rainbow came out of the basement still sad, and Applejack was all, ‘Rainbow, you want me to stick my fingers in your honey pot?’ and Rainbow just went ‘Oh yes Applejack, and I want to be a little foal and suck on your ridiculously big tits cause I’m being such a baby right now and-’”

“Sunset,” Twilight warned her. “That’s out of line and you kno-oooooooh!” she managed as the other girl squeezed her small mammaries and sent a slightly painful wave of wonderful pleasure through Twilight’s body. How Applejack’s oversized teats could be so…tactilely dead despite their size while Twilight’s own made her shiver in pleasure at the lightest touch, the former alicorn had never been able to figure out.

But at the moment, she didn’t care. The hand expert of their four former pony relationship was giving Twilight her attentions, and the princess’s mind was much too full of enjoyment to care. “S-Sunset, please wait a second.”

“As my mistress commands,” Twilight’s slave replied in a joking manner, making the former alicorn roll her eyes before she looked to her elemental friends.

“Ahem, like I was saying. Thank you for all your help, I couldn’t have gotten through the day without you.”

The little Fluttershy with the extra horn appendage nodded her head. “Oh, you’re welcome Twilight. I’m just glad we could be of use to you.”

“Haaaaaave fuuuuuuuun seeeeeeeex.”

Sunset’s head whipped around to stare at the little Rainbow Dash alicorn double with wide eyes. “Since when can the wind talk?” she asked. “Not that they really need to but…”

A bit of excitement bubbled up in Twilight’s gut at the chance to talk about her new discovery. “Oh, I showed her this morning when Rainbow was taking in the new elementals that wanted to join with her, and Dashie was watching her and then…she just repeated what Dash said when she was done.”

“Are they all going to start talking?” Sunset asked. “I mean, I love Luna but…she’s kind of an overprotective nag. If I actually had to hear what she’s saying…ugh!”

Twilight thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Of course Wonder and Fluttershy can speak because they know the sending spell the humans use, and Dashie…well, she can only do sounds like…you heard her.”

Sunset chuckled. “Yeah. Figures she’d take after the other Dash.”

“No!” Twilight exclaimed with a frown before giving the proper response. “She can’t vibrate the air well enough for full conversations. It’s all…ghostly. Enough for a few words, but nothing…conversational.”

As her elemental friends dissipated, Twilight looked back up to her human property and sighed. “I’m not going to get any studying done before dinner, am I?”

Once again, Sunset chuckled. “Nope!”

“I could just say no.”

Sunset only lay there with a smirk.

“I could order you to leave.”

Still, Sunset smirked.

“…would you please just get started then. Just don’t pass out when it’s your turn to take it please. Asking your friends to do something is hard enough when you're in the room, they’ll probably ignore me completely if your unconscious.”

Applejack sat in her personally crafted cushioned chair as she watched Rainbow come up from the basement. Judging by the fact she was still around, Applejack didn’t need to ask, she held out her arms. “Come here and sit Rainbow.”

The command was obeyed fast enough Applejack didn’t see any effects from resistance, and she took the smaller woman onto her lap, and wrapped the girl in a hug that pulled Rainbow’s head onto Applejack’s shoulder. “See now sugar, that wasn’t so bad. Was it?”

Applejack’s ‘slave’ let out a low moan, and the larger woman stroked her hair before Rainbow spoke. “I hate this place Applejack. It’s horrible.”

“Long as we got each other, we’re good though, right?” the farmer asked. “Ain’t nothing gonna happen to ya long as Ah’m around. Twilight and Sunset made sure of that. Right?”

As she felt Rainbow tense, Applejack guessed that she had picked the wrong topic to discuss first, and kissed her Rainbow on the top of her head. “Or you still frettin over that whole accident with Twilight?” she asked. “Cause that’s what it was, an accident. She wouldn’t of let you put that ring on her if she didn’t trust you completely.”

“…it’s not…that…”

Applejack moved her hand down to put it under Rainbow’s wonderfully toned rump and gave her a good squeeze. “Still rememberin’ that, huh?” she asked as the memory of a man’s screams echoed in her mind, and Applejack’s grip tighten on Rainbow’s rear.

“He got what he deserved,” the large woman told Rainbow in an even voice as she fought to keep herself under control. “Hay Rainbow, when we found you…I wanted to do it myself. I wanted to tear him apart, and I woulda if you hadn’t…” Applejack cut herself off. Rainbow didn’t need reminders, she needed consolidation. “Twilight woulda done something…lasting, and Sunset…well, compared to what she woulda done…you let that monster off easy.”

A flash of realization ran through her mind as memory faded, and Applejack noticed that she was digging her fingers into Rainbow’s butt just a little too hard. She forced herself to unclench her digits, and made the strength she was drawing from the earth recede. It wasn’t a slaver’s neck Applejack had her hands around, she was holding the woman she loved.

One of them anyway. Although Applejack would be lying if she didn’t say Rainbow had a special place in her heart. Sunset and Twilight did too, it was all just in a different way.

Rainbow was energetic, fun and all kinds of joyful. She was the brightest light in the new life Applejack had found herself in, separated from her old family. When they were together competing, or just messing around more often than not since the magic of Alera made wrestling Applejack an impossible task and turned Rainbow into the fastest thing alive on the land or in the air made competitions that matched their strength a moot point, everything just felt so good.

Sunset was the dependable one when it came to getting out of jams. She was as fierce as Rainbow and as smart as Twilight, if in different fields. While Applejack had to admit she had always been put off by the girl’s darker side, and her snarky ways were a might annoying, those traits that had made Applejack a little leery of her back home turned her into the most adaptable of the bunch. She could spot the threats that Twilight was too trusting to see and Rainbow couldn’t figure out, and deal with them too. Applejack felt safe with her around, not like when Rainbow watched her back in a fight, it was something deeper. She knew Sunset would always be there to protect the girls from the things that the rest of them would never see coming.

Twilight was…their princess, their center. That much hadn’t changed no matter what they looked like, or where they lived. She tempered Applejack’s stubbornness, Rainbow’s brashness, and Sunset’s anger to make them better ponies on the inside while the rest of them went to the extremes she couldn’t when the situation called for it. She kept Applejack from…not being Applejack. The farmer didn’t know how else to explain it.

The sensation of lips on her neck and a squeeze to the jugs that her human form had been cursed with drew Applejack out of her ruminations and she looked down to see Rainbow trying to fit her hand around the mound of flesh that was almost as big as the former pegasus’s head. “You wantin some of my attentions, Rainbow?”

“Y-Yes?” Rainbow whispered after she stretched up to whisper into Applejack’s ears.

Applejack felt the moistness on her legs where Rainbow was sitting, but the hesitation in her beloved girl’s voice gave the farmer pause. “You sure now? Ah ain’t gonna do nothin less yer sure. You known that. This is about you, Ah can go to Sunset if Ah want to feel good.”

A kiss to her earlobe made Applejack strain to contain herself. “I love you, Applejack. I want to feel it, real love not…what…they…”

“I love you too partner,” the large mare at heart said before she moved her hand up underneath Rainbow and into her already wet folds. “Now get yerself ready for one wild ride.”

Twilight sparkle paced back and forth in front of the crystal mirror Mk 3.4. Her wings fluttered a bit as she was unable to contain her apprehension. Despite her status as an alicorn for several years, the demi-goddess lamented that she never did truly get used to the things despite all of Rainbow’s coaching. They tended to obey the emotional part of her mind more so than the logical one. So much so that the rest of her friends could easily tell the alicorn’s mood just by giving her a brief once-over.

A tiny surge of magic drew Twilight’s attention away from the faults of her youngest appendages, and she looked back to the mirror as the tiny silver orb came through. It hovered in the air for a moment, then Twilight had to catch it in her magic when it suddenly fell for no apparent reason.

The alicorn frowned at the oddity, but filed it away for later and quickly checked the MALPS’s findings. Why Sunset insisted it be called that, Twilight had no idea, but it was her invention, so she got to name it. Atmosphere normal, the alicorn read while scanning the list. Presence of suitable vegetation, magical field in use, Equestrian compatible, high life-forms detected. Then, after reviewing the magical scout’s findings a second time, Twilight quickly glance around to make sure there wasn’t a non-council member present like that guard who had wandered in the last time it was time to celebrate something. After finding out that she was indeed alone, the alicorn reared up on her hind legs…and began to dance in joy.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Twilight shouted in repetition for a good thirty seconds before her hooves hit the ground and she cast another spell on the mirror to measure the time until dimensional desynchronization occurred. Once she had a reading, Twilight did some quick mental math and… “Carry the two and…forty eight hours!”

The portal to the new world she had located would exist for forty-eight hours. Forty eight hours to discover new life and new civilizations! To boldly go where nopony had ever gone before!

Twilight blinked at her estimation of the situation, remembering the pony it came from with a tiny smile. While she had said it in a snarky tone, Twilight couldn’t help but admit that it summed up her mission perfectly and…she owed the unicorn five bits because she had ended up thinking just that.

“Okay…focus Twilight,” the alicorn told herself. “Forty eight hours, get the girls and then get gone. New friends to make, to magic to learn, and not one moment to lose! Oh, why didn’t I have them here with me?”

Although, considering the last three times she had tried to open a gateway to a new world during a time of mystical convergence and ended up with squat…Twilight couldn’t blame the girls for not wanting to get their hopes up. So she would need to fetch them as quickly as possible and have provision prepared, and give them time to say goodbye to their families, or give Applejack time to say goodbye to hers at least.

Twilight awoke from her nightmarish memory and stifled a groan. Carry the two? Carry the two you idiot, she told herself. What in the pit of Tartarus kind of math has carry the two?

Because of her mistake brought on from…no, there was no excuse! Because of her mistake that was completely her fault, Twilight had led an expedition of three friends into this world and…overstayed their welcome.

On top of which, the equestrian compatible magic was so incomplete, and had taken so long to befriend. Memories of Rainbow crying in both sadness and terror for fear of never flying again assaulted the former alicorn as she felt the human mare stir in her sleep, her head currently resting on Twilight’s stomach. She had long since recovered her old adeptness and far beyond in the months following their arrival, but that first week had been Rainbow’s worst fear made manifest.

The strong arms that held her fast tightened around Twilight’s body, and she remembered how Applejack had taken to this new world. The loss of her family had hurt her to the point it affected her mood, appetite, and energy levels to the point the sought mare had spent more time asleep than awake those first few weeks. While Rainbow had mostly recovered upon connecting with the elemental wind spirits to provide her with flight, Applejack had taken so much longer. Twilight turned her head and buried herself in the chest of her larger lover to take in her scent despite the fact human olfactory abilities were so poor there didn’t seem to be anything different from Rainbow or Sunset’s.

Then a murmur from the foot of the bed drew Twilight’s attention, and she had to stop a giggle while Sunset mumbled to herself. “More pies Woona,” she cried in a voice that sounded rather foalish.

Sunset had taken the…being stranded in this new human world the best out of all of them. She understood human body language, the strange way they sometimes talked with their hands, and even had a basic grasp of the workings of the Aleran government from day one thanks to its basis on something called Rome that Sunset had learned about back in her high school. If not for her support and reassurance for Twilight, lessons in humanity for the others, and…as much as Twilight hated to admit it, her mistrusting nature, Twilight and girls would have been sitting on a lot somewhere out west, waiting to be put up for auction.

The mental image that created made Twilight shiver, and she found herself feeling the miniature slave collar Rainbow had placed on her finger. The things were a creation of Twilight and Sunset. They were their first collaborative work outside of the Academy on Alera. A copy of a real slave collar in every way, only small enough to fit on a finger before they were re-crafted much too small to be taken off. As long as Twilight and the others wore them, any other slave collars placed on the girls would be useless. It was the one weakness to the horrid things, as one slave couldn’t have two masters.

Of course thoughts of slavery and the collars themselves made the former alicorn’s mind split off on two paths. One concerning the so-called furies, and the other being the unknown side effects of the collars that the girls had only learned about after putting them on.

Laying as she was in Applejack’s arms with Rainbow apparently having gone to sleep after giving Twilight an orgasm so powerful she had lost consciousness, and her own slave still in la-la land, Twilight couldn’t quite agree with the notion that the collars could also be used to produce otherwise impossible amounts of pleasure was a bad thing. She would have never considered making any of the three girls that shared the giant mattress of their bedroom a lover had it not been for that. The major changes in appearance also played a part of course, allowing from a slight disconnect in a way from how the three girls that had shared tonight’s sexual experience with Twilight were also three of her best friends that she would never have thought of in such a way before.

But it was mostly the sex.

The Incredible.

Unquantifiable.

Sex.

Twilight sighed in contentment and settled into the pillows Applejack always had on hand...barrel...or chest really. Then she frowned when her body spoke to her. “And of course…now I have to pee.”

“Everypony…come on, wake up,” she called out while shifting around, getting the attention of her friends before she reached out to the tiny elementals contained in the several house lamps. “Light please.”

The request was answered, and the tiny groans became a mass of annoyed grumbling while Twilight fought Applejack’s tree trunk arms off her. “Sorry. Sorry.”

“I’m up! I’m up,” Sunset declared in a slurred voice as she picked herself off the mattress. “Just one second. Luna, make with the metal, would you?”

Twilight winced as she saw Sunset stiffen for a second, and all of her tiredness just fade away as the metal elemental stringier the limits of the young woman’s body.

“Morning already? Twilight can we skip class today?” Rainbow blasphemed.

“Rainbow get to work on cleanin’ the sheets, would ya? We got a puddle of stickiness again,” Applejack moaned, thankfully remembering to make it a request instead of a command.

The former pegasus let out a low whine. “You’re the one that makes them, big pussy.”

“You weren’t complaining when you were drinking my sweet cider last night like it was the last day of the season.”

Before the two girls could get into their inevitable argument and sexual make-up, Twilight cleared her throat. “It’s not morning. I just woke up in the middle of the night, and now I have to pee. You all can go back to sleep in a minute, and I’ll clean the bed. Sorry for waking everypony up.”

Twilight turned her head when she heard the slap of flesh on wooden floor, and groaned when Sunset ran out of the room. “Calling dibs!”

It took every ounce of Twilight willpower not to order her slave to stop right then and there and wait for her mistress to have her turn in the bathroom first. Instead, she summoned up the power of her wind elemental, and dashed out of the room as fast as she could. While nowhere near Rainbow’s speed, Twilight was able to pass the redhead in the hall and made it downstairs and into the room of relief before Sunset.

When the other girl arrived and got through the door, she let out grumble, and then turned around before crossing her arms while Twilight gave her a reminder. “Dibs only works on food and shout gun. Besides, you’ve got metal craft, you can endure.”

“It’s shotgun, and they don’t even have that here, or the term…backwards primitives,” she grumbled.

Twilight found herself staring as Sunset’s bare ass and then cleaned herself off before ordering the elemental inside the bowl to clean everything. Once she was done, Twilight thanked the elemental and got up to offer Sunset the seat.

“Ugh…fixture furies,” she grumbled while Twilight passed her.

The comment made Twilight frown sadly. “You know you shouldn’t call them that Sunset, they’re not…anger manifestations.”

Sunset looked back at her with a much deeper scowl. “No, it’s not even that,” the redhead spoke before her hand opened. A second later a flame blossomed in Sunsets hand and formed into a fiery duplicate of the pony that had laid the groundwork for everything Twilight knew about magic, the pony that had raised Sunset since she lost her parents at the age of five. “This is an elemental spirit. It is my companion, my protector, something that reached into my mind and took the form of something I knew would always be there for me, who would keep me warm, light up the darkness, ensure that I am never afraid, and turn anyone who dared to threaten my life to ash. That is what Celestia is.

“Yours took the form of the Council and your closest advisor. Applejack has her family, and Ms Ego’s look just like her own reflection,” she went on as she got right up into Twilight’s face. “They learn, and grow. Crows, Dashie used real words to talk to you today, not some mass of emotions and desires. They’re the perfect example of how friendship is magic.”

Sunset pointed at the water sitting in the toilet. “But that?” she asked rhetorically. “That’s what humans do. They beat that magic down until it doesn’t have form, or personality or...anything! It doesn’t learn, it doesn’t grow, it doesn’t feel! It just exists, and does what its told to,” she went on while raising the band on her hand. “Like the perfect little slave.”

The other geniuses tirade had Twilight backing up till she was against the wall as her stomach threatened to empty itself. “Sunset…what…I don’t…”

Twilight shook her head to try and clear it. It wasn’t like she could dispute Sunset’s facts. They had all traveled from the wilds where the elemental spirits roamed free and showed as much intelligence as Fluttershy’s pets. But the closer the girls got to a human city, the more...docile things became. Until Twilight found that in the heart of the human Empire, fire was simply flame instead of a raging unicorn, the breeze was just wind instead of a playful pegasus, and the ground was just dirt instead of a dependable earth pony. The presence of the spirit was still there, but it was just...silent.

Even the...furies that the humans of the outlying provinces used, the ones that still looked like an animal, or copy of their human owner were greatly diminished from what a free elemental spirit was. Sunset was of the opinion that the very presence of the humans enslaved all around them, although Twilight’s own theories were a bit less harsh towards the bipeds. It was possible that they couldn’t help it, while the ponies could.

Despite her appearance and lack of a horn, Twilight was at her core, a unicorn. She had made the new mirror give all the girls new forms, while keeping the hair as well as the all important cutie marks that the first mirror Twilight had encountered removed, but a unicorn was a unicorn no matter what she looked like. At her core, her magic was the same, even without her horn, or wings, or slightly larger body. It was a magic of friendship and inclusion not the magic of...domination that humans seemed to have.

All of a sudden, the other girl’s angry glare turned to one of exhaustion. “Sorry, I just…you don’t know what they’re really like Twilight,” Sunset went on. “They lie and cheat. They say one thing and mean another. They break promises, and throw away friendship for their own gain and leave you in a refuse pile because it’s convenient for them. And that was a society that considered this one barbaric.”

“You’re…not talking about the Alerans, are you?” Twilight asked. “That um, that last part I mean.”

Sunset stared at Twilight for a moment with sad eyes that reflected the purple haired girl’s own mood before breaking away. “Can I use the bathroom now?”

Before Twilight could reply, the sound of someone pounding on the door drew her attention. A look of surprise and confusion was shared with Sunset, and the princess wandered out into the main room to see just what the buck was going on with someone pounding on her door at what had to be a time well past midnight.

“Twilight!” Sunset called as she carried a pair of bath robes with her. “I know it’s late but, you’re naked, remember?”

For a moment, Twilight thought about taking the clothing, but then she looked up into the face of her intellectual love and smiled. It was time to show Sunset she didn’t bend over backward for humans all the time. “This is my house, and they’re knocking on my door in the middle of the night. If they have a problem with these things,” she said before lifting up her little less than average teats with her hands. “Then they can suck on them!”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “It’s, they can suck it. It! Not them! It implies that the human is putting a-hey come back here!”

Groaning at being corrected, Twilight turned and walked over to the door, then threw it open. The familiar boy standing on the other end of the doorway had his eyes go wide upon Twilight’s appearance, and the former alicorn put her hand on her hips as she looked down at him. “Oh Tavi it’s you,” she said before the icy demeanor she had been trying to make melted thanks to the appearance of he one human in the whole world that didn’t have an enslaved elemental at his beck and call.

Oh how Twilight wanted to experiment on him to find out why. He might even hold the answer to how to change the magic of the humans to be more equine!

“What’re you doing here?” she asked as politely as she could manage.

“It...you...the legends are true!” he managed to get out before Sunset walked up and delivered a slap across his face.

“Yeah yeah, we’re naked and you just interrupted the beginings of a four woman orgey,” she grumbeled before the girl with the second largest pair of breasts in their group crossed her arms in a way that made them seem bigger. “Now what do you want” And it had better be important.”

Tavi’s mouth hung open for a second while the imprint of Sunset’s hand decorated his face. Then, he apparently snapped himself out of it and looked to the girl in charge of the house. “It… The First Lord he...Twilight, you and Rainbow have been called to the Citadel to um...attend him.”

The tingle in the back of her mind from Fluttershy said that the boy wasn’t being completely honest, but he wasn’t really lying either, and he was definitely worried about something. “What for?” she asked. Twilight knew Tavi was one of the attendants for the First Among Equals, which was the biggest load of manure as far as Twilight could see when she compared it to her Council, but it seemed extremely out of place for Tavi to be the one to come and get her himself.

“The um...First Lord is...having problems and needs a water crafter that can keep a secret and...you girls are the most secretive bunch of people I know,” Tavi replied nervously.

Sunset let out a humph. “In other words, the old man is sick...or been poisoned, and you don’t want anyone to know about it,” she grumbled. The flinch from Tavi and his emotions made it clear Sunset had hit the nail on the head. “Fine, but I’ll need to go too.”

“But-”

“These fools don’t know anything about human anatomy,” she went on. “And I don’t trust you people enough to send two of my friends into the Citadel alone. In fact, we’ll bring AJ too.”

“But-”

“Take us all, or the old man gets no help at all,” Sunset said. Twilight glared at the girl for a moment, but Tavi spoke before she could.

“F-Fine! Just...get dressed and let’s go.”

Author's Note

Hey look, a story of mine where AJ isn't a JackAss.

Something must be wrong with me....