Lyra's World

The dragon family’s living room looked like it had been the epicenter of a terrible disaster, but actually none of the debris from the crashing Griffonchaser had hit their house – it had been like that before I even got there. Then again, what do you expect when you have a world ruled by adolescents?

The couch wasn’t really big enough for both of us – I was huge! – so Phoebe had to sit on top of me. She kept picking at my mane, which wasn’t really that bad, and occasionally she’d run one of her claws across my coat, which felt really nice. Not quite as nice as Spike, since her claws were so blunt and soft, but still much nicer than a hoof.

There were all kinds of noises going on outside – sirens, dragons talking too softly for us to make out, and people moving around. Loud periodic beeping, at one point, which was really ear-piercing. I would have gotten up to look out a window, but I had a baby earth dragon sitting on me, so I was trapped. None of it seemed to alarm her, so I figured it was normal enough for this place.

In retrospect, if I had gone and looked out a window, the sniper probably would have shot me again, which would have ruined their window and gotten blood all over everything. So score one for laziness.

“I wish I’d never made that wish, and killed all those people,” Phoebe said, eventually. “They’re never going to stop chasing us.”

“Hmm,” I said, considering that. “Wishing for a paradox seems pretty dangerous. It’s probably better to try and fix things in the present.”

Phoebe threw up her claws and flopped onto her back, her long hair draping itself across my tail. “How do you fix hundreds of people being dead?”

“Well, when all you have is a hammer…” I said.

“Hitting dead people with a hammer just makes them more dead,” she said.

“It’s a saying. A pony saying,” I explained. “’When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’. Since all we have are wishes, everything looks like something we can solve by wishing for it. Right?”

“Nuh uh,” Phoebe said. “We have stories about people wishing the dead back to life. We had to read one of them in English class last week. They come back as zombies and eat your brains.”

“Oh. Well, we should probably do something,” I said. “You’re right. I’m never going to be able to figure out what I came here for if I’m spending all my time dodging snipers.”

“You didn’t dodge the sniper,” Phoebe said. “You didn’t even look like you were trying to dodge.”

“I would have if I’d known when he was going to shoot me,” I said, frowning. That was basically a bald-faced lie. Yes, getting shot hurt, but being healed afterwards was such a rush, and it happened quickly enough that the pain didn’t really have time to make me suffer. It was annoying, in the same way it would be annoying to have someone duck their muzzle under your tail and eat you out while you were walking down the street, but having someone trying to do that and constantly dodging out of the way would be just as annoying, so you might as well just let them.

“We should apologize,” Phoebe said. “We did something bad even if we didn’t mean to, so we need to tell them we’re sorry and we won’t do it again.”

“’Sorry I killed all those people’?” I suggested, glancing back at her.

She was sitting up, now, and nodded eagerly. “And I already have infinity dollars so I can pay for all the damages. Or maybe you can give their parents a wish to make up for it?”

“They’d probably just wish for their kids to be alive again,” I said.

“Oh… well…” Phoebe frowned. “Well, if they do, it probably won’t be that bad. One zombie isn’t too dangerous.”

===

Now I may have mentioned before that while I’m a fairly skilled spellcaster, compared to others in Ponyville, I’m still not really a magic unicorn. In theory, I know the really basic battle magic, but I was never able to cast bolts or shields with enough power to be worth using. So, in reality, I forgot everything I ever learned about them years ago. I’m pretty good at reading scrolls, but not so much at memorization.

Fortunately, I now had a magical reserve from the depths of Tartarus, and an insanely overpowered Woodwinds spell works just as well as a Shield spell against snipers using crossbows. Walking down the middle of the street while hurricane-force winds play the March of the Goat King is also a good way to get everypony’s attention. By the time we reached the field of ruined carts in front of the blasted marketplace, we’d attracted a crowd.

It wasn’t so good for my mane. I probably looked pretty frightfully windswept. It wasn’t very good for Phoebe either. I tried to ask her why she was even following me, but she couldn’t hear me over the wind and the music.

I let the winds curl around me, playing a final fanfare, and ended the storm with a deceptive cadence.

I also know a megaphone spell. “EARTHLINGS,” I shouted at a volume that had an already battered and shaken Phoebe covering her ears and cringing, “I HAVE COME TO MAKE AMENDS!”

Then, everything exploded. This time I swear it wasn’t my fault.

I stood up in the bottom of the crater, scattered pieces of me and Phoebe lying all around. Apparently, I hadn’t killed off the entire city guard after all, because more of them ran up to the lip of the crater and started bathing me in fire from a dozen flamethrowers. When that didn’t work – fire has terrible stopping power, especially against somepony who can’t die – they switched to little darts that hit like lightning bolts, which paralyzed my muscles in the most painful way possible.

Then they shot little darts at me that had some sort of pain-killing sleepy drug in them, and it looked like they were about to put me in a big metal tube when I passed out. I probably could have healed from the drugs if I wanted to, but they felt really good. Like, seriously, dangerously good. If I ever find out what sort of drug does that I’m going to need to get somepony to erase that knowledge from my mind so that I don’t spend the rest of my life drugged out on the couch.

It would be a short life. Bon Bon would never stand for that sort of horseapples. But it would totally be worth it.