Every Action Has an Equal and Opposite Reaction (Twilight) Part 2

My explanation ended somewhere around three in the morning, and as the girls mulled over my tale I got around to my other obligation that night.

I had only convinced Spike that he needed a break from Ponyville on the condition I would visit every day. I think he thought I wouldn’t be able to do it, but Luna actually provided a rather elegant solution when we were quickly sending letters back and forth to set up Spike’s therapy as fast as possible. I could work with Morpheus during the day, and study the art of oneiromancy to visit Spike at night.

Spike called that cheating until I told him plan B, although I’m not exactly sure why he was so against that particular plan.

I was perfectly willing to teleport back and forth if need be – regardless of consequences.

I ran the numbers, and the magic fatigue would probably disappear after a week or so as my magic reserves skyrocketed from so much use. It was just like exercise, even if there was a miniscule chance I’d pull a magic ‘muscle’.

Of course, pulling a magic ‘muscle’ is like playing Stalliongrad Roulette with Discord when that much magic is involved, so maybe he had a right to be worried.

Regardless, my visit with Spike was enlightening to say the least. There’s a reason so few ponies besides Luna master dream magic. It’s a very fickle magic. One could almost call it chaotic, and I work best with structured spells, so I honestly should have expected some difficulty even with my talent in magic.

I could only hold the spell for a few minutes – even with the couple of oneiromancy focuses Luna gave me. I was barely there, and couldn’t talk or hear. I wasn’t even able to bring anything into focus besides Luna and Spike.

But at least we managed to get a good long hug in.

I felt Spike’s claws tighten on me as I began to fade back to the waking world, and I managed to get one last nuzzle in before winking out of existence.

I opened my eyes to find Spike’s dream had shifted outside of the sextant’s view.

In its place was an entirely undesirable view of Cadance’s dreams about my brother, and I almost viciously cut my magic off from the device.

Setting the device in its well-crafted box, I stretched and got up from the pillow I’d been resting on. The party was in full swing again.

Castle had been generous in his preparations, and I was starting to wonder exactly how much he could rearrange himself.

It was rather disconcerting to find out he could do more than shift furniture around. We had entered my room to find it at least twice as large as normal. Such a change in width should have warped the outside architecture, but when I flew out the balcony – which hadn’t moved from where I had entered the castle – there wasn’t a flaw to be found.

In other words the inside of the castle seemed to be completely independent of the outside, and I had no idea of why that was or how that could be.

My bed and other furniture were missing. Instead there were three massive bean bag chairs – or more accurately bean bag beds – in front of the fireplace. Above those were three cloud beds that Dash had refused to believe were made by anything other than a master pegasus craftspony.

Each one of them – even the clouds – was in a color corresponding to one of us, and they all smelled like some of our favorite things.

Pinkie had spent a good five minutes chewing hers like it was bubblegum in an attempt to find out if it actually was.

Tables lined the room filled with various sweets from around Ponyville. A small note from Castle claimed that cooking the snacks was starting to take too long, so he’d unfortunately had to liberate them from Pinkie’s stashes throughout the castle.

A large pile of bits from the treasury I didn’t even know we had sat nearby as payment.

And feathers were everywhere.

Most of the pillows we had started with were nowhere to be seen – their deaths the tragic cost of our full on pillow war.

I made my way past the dancing Pinkie and Fluttershy to the snack table.

“So are you done with Luna’s sex toy yet?” Rainbow swooped over and looped back around to finish her approach with Applejacks more sedate one.

“It’s a sextant not a sex toy.” My facehoof lacked the force to blind me to lingering visions of Cadance’s dream. “And it’s used to locate and attune two dreams together by-“

“You can keep going, but that’s not what your face says, egghead!” Rainbow waggled her eyebrows as my blush deepened.

Applejack shoved Rainbow lightly. “Stop teasin’ the girl, sugarcube. We’re not here for that.”

Rainbow shrugged. “What? All I’m saying is if I had a magical trinket to look into other ponies’ dreams I’d-“

“You’d what?” The keystone of any good Applejack eyebrow arch is the especially deadpan stare.

“I’d- I’d-“ Rainbow promptly shoved her head into her wing to preen.

“That’s what Ah thought.” Applejack nodded before turning to me. “Twilight, Ah know we asked you before, but you’re sure nothin’s wrong with us? Pinkie told us Morpheus mentioned needing to fix something.”

I shook my head as I finally composed myself enough to levitate up a plate. “I told you I couldn’t sense anything wrong with any of the spells I tried. And if he had harmed you in any real way… Well, you wouldn’t want to know even if I could tell you.”

I took a large swig of punch to wash away my thoughts on that. “My guess is he fixed whatever it was while you were all arguing over him, although I can’t be sure when he actually woke up.

I gestured to the door. “You’re free to ask him yourself. He probably won’t like being woken up again, but if he didn’t fix whatever he did we need to know what it was and how to fix it ourselves.”

Dash looked up at that. I could hear the cogs turning as she looked from me to the door to Pinkie. “Come on, Pinkie! We have a changeling to prank awake!”

Pinkie was at the door faster than Dash. “Whee! This’ll be fun. Just let me get my surfboard!”

The Pinkie-shaped cloud of dust she left behind continued to dance with Fluttershy. “Umm… I know you’re supposed to be Pinkie, Mister Cloud, but could you not step on my hooves as much… If you don’t mind that is…”

I looked to Applejack. “Should I be worried that pranking might mean hostile interrogation?”

Applejack chuckled. “Nah. There’s nothing to worry about if Dash has got Pinkie with her.”

“Pinkie took the surfboard like she was expecting waterboarding.” I deadpanned.

The chuckling stopped as Applejack hummed in thought. “Nah. There’s still nothing to worry about.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Really? I thought you and Dash would be a lot more…”

“Stubborn?” Applejacks chuckle was back. “Oh we’re mighty stubborn about not trusting this feller alright, but Fluttershy and Pinkie want to give him a chance, and Rarity isn’t sure. That makes it three to two counting you, and it’s not worth losing friends over. We figure petty vengeance is best until we all know where he really stands.”

Several reactions went through my head at that, but I finally settled on smiling. “Thank you for being honest, Applejack – even if that was kind of disconcerting. How much of Dash’s mischievous side is rubbing off on you?” The smile tried to turn into a frown, but I kept it going.

Applejack shrugged but didn’t answer the question. “Honesty’s what Ah do, sugarcube. Besides, he seems truthful to me so far. And that means he’s either such a good liar it’ll all build up until everything falls down, or he’ll accidentally reveal any secrets he’s hiding just by staying that way.” Picking up an apple fritter she went off to talk to Fluttershy.

Seeing Rarity trying to get my attention, I headed over to join her. She was currently relaxing on her bed by the fireplace, so I flew up and lowered my cloud to do likewise.

I smiled as she finished putting her sketchbook away. “I see you’re back to your normally fashionable self. When did you even find time to sneak away and freshen up?”

Rarity tittered. “Oh, I just did the same thing you did. You might want to refresh your own spells though. It’s not like we have time for a decent bath any time soon with how Pinkie runs her slumber parties.”

I sniffed my foreleg and blanched. “Great. I guess I need to work on stabilizing the long term version. It seems I’m now exponentially worse than before.”

Rarity giggled. “No problem at all, darling. Most of the others wouldn’t even bother, and it’s the thought that counts.”

I grinned as I refreshed the spells. “Well, that’s a relief. What did you want to talk about?”

Rarity sighed. “I was just thinking about earlier… Morpheus claimed we were all masking our emotions, and I should know just how unhealthy that is after the Photo Finish incident. I was just wondering…”

She trailed off, and it took me a second to realize she was waiting for me to continue for her.

I sighed. “You were wondering if I was actually alright now or just wearing another mask?”

She nodded.

I shook my head as my insides churned slightly. “I’m fine now… I think… It just really hurt when I realized you didn’t know when I might have been replaced. You girls are my best friends. You all know me better than anypony else, but you didn’t trust all the things I actually did with you before Morpheus showed up. You were all worried I might have been replaced for weeks without you knowing.”

Rarity tilted her head. “But why wouldn’t we be worried about that? You’re our friend, Twilight, and the idea that we didn’t notice you being swapped with a changeling was absolutely dreadful.”

I opened my mouth, but couldn’t think of any comeback.

Rarity lifted a hoof to shut my mouth for me. “Don’t do that, darling. That’s entirely unbecoming of a princess.”

Drawing the hoof back she continued. “Besides, we couldn’t tell that Princess Cadance was a changeling either. We may not have met her before, but we should have trusted you when you said something was wrong.”

She frowned. “So given our past experience with changelings, did we have any right not to worry that you had been replaced without us knowing?”

I found myself off my cloud and briefly hugging Rarity. “Thank you. I needed to hear that.”

As I pulled back, I tilted my head. “But that makes it sound like all of you still feel guilty about the wedding. I thought we’d all settled that was in the past.”

Rarity gave a polite not-cough. “Yes… Well, about that…”

My head reared back in surprise for a moment before I found myself hugging Rarity again. “You girls don’t need to worry about that. You didn’t know Cadance then, and you were all busy with the wedding.”

There was another not-cough from my friend. “Darling, as much of a relief as it is to hear that, do you mind letting go? We wouldn’t want your new coltfriend assuming anything.”

Alarm bells sounded in my head as I pulled back. “What?”

“Nothing!” Rarity chimed far too quickly.

I grabbed her bags as she tried to stealthily levitate them out of sight. Lifting her sketch book out, I opened to the most recent drawing.

I groaned at the image of me in a rather elaborate wedding dress. “Rarity…”

She swooned. “But Twilight, it’s like right out of one of my books, and a political marriage would solve everything!”

I messaged my temples. “Rarity, please don’t try and turn my life into one of your trashy romance novels. Morpheus and I haven’t even known each other for three whole days yet. And not even the nobles do arranged marriages anymore! They just happen to prefer their snobby, stuck up selves.”

The doe eyes signaled a retort, so I cut them off. “No. You are absolutely not allowed to play matchmaker for me and Morpheus.”

My deadpan stare met her fluttering eyes for a couple seconds before she gave a refined huff. “Fine, but you have to let me borrow Morpheus at some point. He’s- You’re sure he’s a he, right? Given his whole disguise?”

I nodded, although she was already continuing as if confirmation didn’t even matter. “He’s probably a living matchmaker since he literally feeds off of love. I mean, we have farmers to grow food. Why wouldn’t they have matchmakers to grow love? And the fashions I could try with a shapeshifter are simply limitless…”

I gave a content little sigh and smiled. Ruffling my wings I settled back on my cloud and simply listened to Rarity rambling ‘in the zone’.

I had tuned Rarity out at some point. There is only so much fashion I can take at once, after all. And – while I knew some of the jargon she was spouting – it seemed changelings required terms beyond my general knowledge. Instead, I was idly measuring my reactions to her speech – and comparing them to how ponies reacted to my own lectures – when I caught the voice of Rainbow returning.

“Come on! It was just a joke. Learn to lighten up.” Her voice was even raspier than usual.

The slight echo of Morpheus’ voice retorted. “Turning all the sinks on so you could send me ‘sleep-surfing’ down who knows how many flights of stairs is not a prank. You’re lucky the basement had a pool to break the fall.”

The basement had been a lab last time I checked, so I had another reason to talk to Castle tomorrow. He might have just swapped two rooms around – hopefully – but I had never seen a swimming pool in the castle before.

“I would have caught you! I’m the fastest pegasus in Equestria.” I could all but see Dash’s chest puffing out.

The echo became a buzz. “And ve told you that doesn’t matter on a spiral staircase. The chance of you catching up was miniscule at best considering how much momentum you would have lost on all the turns.”

I got up as they burst into the room.

“Don’t lecture me on flying, you little fly! I know what I’m doing. I could have handled it!” Rainbow – tactful as ever – was both hovering next to the prince’s head and shouting.

Pinkie pronked on with a smile even I could tell was forced.

One quick teleport and I was glaring at Dash and Morpheus. “Alright. I’m not even going to ask, but I expect you both to behave.”

I pointed at Dash. “You apologize and go talk to your marefriend about exactly what counts as petty.”

She grumbled and swooped off – kicking up a bit more wind than was necessary.

I pointed at Morpheus. “You tell me what’s going on between you three, and how to fix it.”

Morpheus actually shrunk inward a bit. “It was a complete accident I swear, but Rainbow was suspicious of me, and ve were trying to talk our way out of it.”

His speech was starting to pick up speed, and the fracturing echo returned. “Something ve said flared her emotions even more, and I couldn’t get the filter up properly in time.”

He had told me he sometimes stuttered yesterday, but it was still unnerving to hear. I could barely tell the difference between how he was currently talking and the angry buzzing fracture from earlier. If he wasn’t curling in on himself, I might have thought he was getting overly defensive.

The tears also helped to clarify.

He lowered his head, avoiding my gaze. “I know ve kind of explained what that sometimes means, but I’ve never even experienced it at that level personally. And now I never want to again, because it’s absolutely terrifying. All ve can really remember is angry, bitter flames trying to consume us, and the pain felt so real even if we logically knew they didn’t exist.”

He was shivering at this point. The girls and I were staring. I should have told him to stop, but my mind had hit a roadblock.

Thus he continued. “And so I took a bit of Applejacks love without thinking. Ve needed it to set up a strong enough filter, but the only filter strong enough left us little better off. Do you know what it’s like to be unable to feel anything? There was no emotion coming in or out, and it was hard to process how terrifying that was at the time because ve literally could not feel anything unless ve lowered the filter. And it took us hours to manage that, so-“

And that was when he was cut off as a small normally timid yellow missile latched onto him. “Oh you poor thing… You can stop now. It’s alright. We won’t be mad if you stop remembering what you don’t want to remember.”

There was a deep shuddering breath from the prince. It almost sounded like a series of rickety shutters opening and closing. He stood up. Calmly pried Fluttershy off him, and began to walk towards the snack table.

The echo was flatter, and his gaze was slightly more glassy-eyed. “Pardon us for that. Ve shouldn’t let our emotions get the better of us like that. Appearing too vulnerable would only bias negotiations. It would either give us your pity – giving us an emotional advantage over you – or it would inspire contempt for my weakness – giving you an emotional advantage over me.”

It took me a second to register he was moving, and I had to canter after him. “Morpheus, wait!”

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed my friends huddling up to converse in whispers.

The prince was mixing some sort of drink when I caught up.

His voice was quiet as I approached. “You know, ve find it odd your friends would even begin to think of forgiving us after our transgression today. But there they are arguing over what it will take to forgive us rather than giving out the proper punishment.”

I looked over the golden cocktail he was making. It was definitely magical in nature. “First, eavesdropping is rude. Second, just what is the proper punishment?”

His chuckle was hollow. “It’s not eavesdropping when changeling hearing is just that sharp. If ve were using the wind sense, then that would be eavesdropping.”

I was going to inquire further, but he answered my second question. “As to what the proper punishment is… It’s rather old fashioned, but many Lords would call for death. Ripping the love from somepony without proper treatment can have serious repercussions, and even changelings have standards. We need love to feed. Killing love like that only deserves death in kind.”

I caught the cup he was raising to drink from in my aura. “That does not sound like somepony who’s in their right mind.”

He snorted. “Yes, clearly the most revolutionary changeling lord in possibly centuries is going to go the traditional route of drinking poison in his dishonor.”

He nudged me, and I thought I caught a ghost of a smile. “Ve are not that stupid. Ve are, however, under a rather taxing filter. So give us our Liquid Courage before the filter breaks and ve break down crying again. Ve need more than that sobbing mess or this cynical, near emotionless, state of mind to help Applejack.”

I looked at the potion then back to him. “This is not alcohol.”

He stared blankly at me. “Of course it’s not alcohol. What use would alcohol be? That is Liquid Courage. Ve’ll feel like Tartarus in the morning for using hivemade remedies, but it should get rid of the lingering fear from our- Wait a minute. Ve forgot you aren’t emotivores.”

He tilted his head in thought before nodding. “The closest thing you have is a digestive system, so let’s use that. This Liquid Courage is basically a laxative for the heart. It’ll purge the backwash of fear built up in our arteries with synthesized bravery. Cutting off our emotions that suddenly earlier forced all the emotions we should have felt to build up.”

He arched an eyebrow knowingly. “You’ve already seen the results. It’s taking most of our self-control to make this, and it doesn’t help that ve’re hung up – or hungover as you ponies would say – on Pinkie’s joy.”

“Ah.” That summed up the awkwardness nicely.

He nodded. “Yes, the sheer strength of pony emotion is quite a double-edged sword for changelings.”

I released the cup, and he drank deeply.

Setting the cup down, he licked his lips. “Wow… Those side effects are hitting faster than the Archive claimed. I suddenly have the strangest urge to slay a dragon for glory and canter off into the sunset. It’s a good thing Spike isn’t here.”

He sighed and rubbed his temples. “Alright, let’s get this done before I crash. With my crisis out of the way ve can focus on Appleja-“

He froze as his gaze wandered over Applejack. “How didn’t ve notice that before?”

My gaze turned steely. “How didn’t you notice what?”

He swallowed. “Applejack’s fixed somehow – which is good – but ve didn’t heal her. And, if ve didn’t heal her, that begs the question of who did. There aren’t many species capable of seeing the damage let alone fixing it.

“I hate to say this, Twilight, but there might be unauthorized changelings in Ponyville.”