Sunset Shimmer Goes to Hell

Chapters

"Tartarus! It's Tartarus."
"I Must! I Will!"
"Sunset Shimmer? That Can't Be You!"
"Nice Trick!"
"This is a Trick Question, Right?"
"Sunset Shimmer, Baby Tyrant"
"He's Mine!"
"No Ring Either."
Lessons Half-Learned
"We're Being Herded."
"No, No, No, No, No!"
"All Ethics are Situational."
"Like a Timberwolf."
"I Want to Jump!"
"The Lesson I Forgot."
"To Bring Light into Infernal Darkness."
"I am The Timberwolf."
"Some Big Baddie I am!"
"The Rarest of Commodities."
"That (So-and-So) (Thus-and-Such) Daughter of a (Whatever)."
"Sunset Shimmer."
"He's Mine!"
"I Really Hate Dogs."
"We're Friends, Right?"
"We Have the Same Goals."
"I Need Help!"
"Miss Mean Pony Won't Let Me!"
"Thank You, Fluttershy."
"Nopony Hurts My Friends!"
"I've Waited Too Long to Ask."
"I am Having a Very Bad Day!"
"Was it Satisfying Anyway?"

"Tartarus! It's Tartarus."

Introduction by Twilight Sparkle

When I originally shared my story with my friends, there were many things I had no way of knowing, connections that I couldn’t make between the actions I took and events that followed. However, it wasn’t until long after the Princess reported that Lord Tirek had escaped when Cerberus appeared in town that I realized that a story about my insecurity and control issues was really much deeper than a story about me. At the time, saving the world took priority and I did not think about it much until after Starlight destroyed Equestria a dozen times all in one day.

Then I thought about it. About connections between friends. And those between enemies, and the flux of relationships, and about the coincidences and discrepancies in my life. With a feeling of foreboding, I realized I had to investigate what really had happened, and learn how the daughter of an archivist and a ghost-writer, a scrawny introverted bookish magic-late-bloomer like me could become, briefly, the most powerful being in the world.

This episode is part of a much a larger on-going work. While the larger work is mostly in my voice, so very many others participated in this story that I have no choice but to include them. Today I relate somepony else's story, as is appropriate. Everypony has been very forthcoming—whether coerced in some cases or just via unexpected humility in others. While an essay, a research paper, or even a thesis is a snap and a pleasure to write, I find biography a bit more challenging despite the many good examples I’ve studied. I’m not sure I’ve mastered the medium. Also, I don’t want readers to feel I’m putting on airs or that I am better than them, because I’m not. Maybe I’m less… and I am certainly fallible, and culpable for much hurt and destruction.

That said, it is a pleasure to be permitted to edit this puzzle piece into the greater whole. That day I tested for entrance into Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns was not only a nexus in my life, but also a tipping point in the existence of all Equestria. Sadly, when my magic flared during the test, I not only rendered myself unaware of much that happened but Princess Celestia covered up some of the damage I caused because she thought me too fragile. It remained a mystery to me, but a clue uttered when I learned of Tirek's threat to Equestia lead to research and interviews. I've since pieced together how my magic flare brought destruction to some and healing to others. Of the ponies, there was Princess Celestia, Starlight, and, of course… dearest Sunset. Her story is one that starts in despair, sinks into avariciousness, and rises to a savior of worlds.

This, however, is the episode where she breaks...

Sunset Shimmer

Standing in the shadows of a recessed balcony just below the rafters of the tower, I gazed down into a lecture hall. Princess Celestia had stood behind these same green marble columns, though she thought herself hidden, while I took the test after which she offered to make me her personal student. Today, I had learned from an annoyed teacher who was also a proctor, that Princess Celestia had arranged to test another foal.

The princess herself had told me that a talent like mine appeared once a century.

I was this century. I had to check out the competition. I would keep Celestia focused on me.

My jaw dropped when I saw Mrs. Card Maker lead in this "prodigy," a somewhat goth-looking purple foal with a purple mane and tail. Her little hooves clicked on the light and dark blue checkerboard granite floor. The tiny blank flank looked bewildered and annoyed at the same time, and was barely out of magic kindergarten judging by her age. Her parents entered from the opposite doorway. The pale purple mare and the blue stallion waved, and made a lips-are-sealed motion which did not seem to reassure the foal much.

I knew him. He was the assistant archivist of the Canterlot library branch on the castle grounds. I'd heard he'd recently been rebuked for borrowing rare books, even some from the Star Swirl the Bearded wing and had taken them to his home in Lower Canterlot.

For her to read?

Interesting.

At her age, how magical could she be? Sure, for me, magic had been the sledgehammer that had allowed me to survive life homeless on the street, but a normal at her age… The archivist must have told a real whopper to get himself out of trouble and his daughter would take the brunt of it.

The proctors climbed four rows up into the orange stadium lecture seating and took out their clipboards. Chief protector, professors Lemon Cottoncandy, looked up; knowingly, her purple eyes briefly met mine above her squared off reading glasses. I smiled, then yawned as I watched the proceedings. I wiped dust off the railing with my hoof as this "Twilight Sparkled" worked through relatively tough arithmetic on the blackboard. She was so nervous, she wrote with a chalk holder she grabbed with her mouth, left for the pegasus and earth pony professors who also used this hall. Minutes later, I scoffed: I knew the answer to that history question before I'd ever attended school!

I was wasting my time.

A golden-rod stallion with a brown mane rolled in a cart stuffed with hay in which nestled a large violet polka-dotted lavender dragon egg. Oh, yeah, definitely a fair test, here. I snickered. I would have to talk to the princess about this one. She had clearly miffed the chief proctor and at the same time wasn't supervising the test. What could Sparkled do to hatch a dragon egg? Nopony knew much about dragons. It was an impossible task.

Fine with me.

Sparkled did try, though; what a sorry show. I could sense her working up spells. And even three stories above her sad dance, I felt her magic, but try as she may, every spell she tried just wouldn't trigger. She even waved her hooves like a stage magician, grunted, and repeated spell mnemonics over the egg. The best she could do were a few ironic firework sparkler-sparks before collapsing into a sweaty heap.

I almost felt sorry for the purple runt. Almost. She ought to have been running from the room in tears, but at the end she seemed simply sad as she said, before the proctors and her parents, "I'm so sorry I wasted your time."

The proctors began scribbling rapidly.

A rainbow strobe of light, from roughly the direction in which I had seen the nomad city of Cloudsdale floating in the early dawn, made me look to the south window below my balcony. A boom delayed by a count of ten rattled the purple-tinted glass. Stranger yet, I felt a stretching sensation in my horn. It was as if, for a few instants, it had turned to rubber and something had thwacked it, causing it to flex and ring. In that nauseating passing moment, I felt a sense of foreboding.

Twilight Sparkled sensed it, too. She jumped in shock, but before her hooves could return to the ground, all the pent up magic inside her burst out. Her horn turned into a glowing translucent amethyst too bright to look at while her aura engulfed her and kept her floating at the top of the arc of her jump. But it didn't stop there. I saw—shielding my eyes with a hoof—that magic now flooded out of her eyes and her slack jaw like a purple searchlight.

The very air grew thick with magic—bolts of it, like lightning—some of which I could tell she sucked from another magic source. Into the electric ether crackled spell after spell, all forming but most not effectuating in an odd abeyance. For the first time in my life I saw another's spell casting. Having grown up alone on the street, magic was the only toy I could have that I did not have to worry about being stolen. It manifested as geometric shapes in my head, which, nudged or stretched, could be spun or activated to do amazing things in the real world, like lift, or crush, or glow. Now, one after another, virtual shapes, few of them symmetrical or pretty, came spinning into existence. It was like clouds streaming over the peaks of Canterlot Mountain from a weather front bashing into the north side, presaging the coming of a pegasus-fabulous storm.

Only this was a magic storm. All the fur on my neck and back stood. I knew I ought to run, but like the proctors below, and Sparkled's parents who only gaped, the all of us were held in thrall. I watched as the first spell triggered.

A spiral tornado shape centered itself over the egg; it grew and pulsed. The egg rocked and shivered, then cracked. A tiny purple beak appeared in the wet hole it made, then at an unnaturally frenetic pace, it pried its way out. It was like a chicken egg hatching, only a hundred times faster.

A second spell triggered. Sparkled's parents turned into potted plants, a saguaro cactus and a fern. Somepony's parents had been pushing their daughter too hard at school.

The proctors scattered, but not quickly enough. Suddenly they, and their discarded clipboards, hovered above the desks in a purple aura, flailing and whinnying.

The storm continued, as one after another of the virtual magical shapes I sensed went off as I backed up. But not fast enough. A huge glowing rod-like apparition reached up, extending itself until it struck the wall below the balcony, then like a hot knife in butter, cut up through the roof and the opposite side, neatly cutting the tower in half and cutting my balcony, leaving the stairway on the other side of a two-yard gap. The building shuddered, making me dance to stay upright as the part not attached to the adjacent building began to crumble away.

My part.

With a sudden jerk and a bang, the separation of the tower's halves ceased. I reached with my magic as if I could hold something; that didn't stop the balcony, which had had its beams cut, from collapsing. I was falling—along with the floor, columns, and the dusty banister.

Unicorns don't fly.

Nor can they self-levitate. The rubble would likely crush me worse than the force of falling three stories would.

But I could levitate rubble. I could exert a force proportional to the square of distance of the object from a surface parallel to the ground. I levitated the raft of hardwood flooring attached to mortared stone beneath my hooves until it pushed up at me. The rubble beside me sped past and crashed thunderously into desks opposite from where Sparkled floated. I had barely time to think to flex my legs as my raft landed on top, tilted, and bounced me like a sled down the still rolling debris. I fell bruisingly and slid across the blue checkerboard floor to fetch up against the cart with the egg.

Or rather, the wreckage of the cart with eggshells, scattered hay, and a pony-sized baby dragon. The lizard-creature with glistening purple scales, a green crest and similarly colored frill and tail point, remained in the tornado of what was probably age magic. In a trance, its green vertically slit eyes stared unseeing as the magic continued to work around it.

I scrambled upright and saw something yet more amazing. The force that had rent the tower had done more, much more. A glowing beam of energy, straight as a javelin and a six-pointed star-shape in cross-section, had extended eastward. The apparition faded after about twenty yards unlike its effects. Through the cracked open tower wall I could see the magic had sliced through an ancient oak, shattered the glass Rushing Steps Arboretum to bits just beyond it, and burst from there through the double castle walls and, as far as I could tell, straight down Alicorn Way, through downtown Canterlot, straight to the horizon—having heaved the ground apart below it, leaving a deep chasm. Anchored beside the crushed cart, the end of the magical apparition had formed into a golden mirror, twice Celestia's height, trimmed with a square frame of fire. It crackled and smoked brightly. In it, I saw my shocked light green eyes, my dust-covered mane—the coloring of which mimicked the mirror's rim of flame—and a cut that bled down my right front leg.

Princess Celestia, banking so her huge wingspan could fit through the gap, flew into the tower, her horn ablaze. It had been she who grabbed the walls in her magic and held the tower together. She circled the room and yelled at me. "Take the proctors to safety!"

As she circled, her magical mane and tail looked wind-blown, but pointed at Sparkled no matter where she flew. I'd heard speculation that all magic came from the "Magic Pulse", an ethereal "zephyr" that could be seen only in an alicorn's mane. Now I believed it.

The runty foal was sourcing magic from Celestia herself.

She manipulated alicorn magic, literally pulsed with the stuff like a magic heart, and I could sense the release of yet another spell whirling a four-dimensional shape into the air. It was a magic hurricane. At the rate Sparkled seemed to be shooting off spells, I feared she might explode.

Which was the answer to the problem. I reached for a length of wood, splintered from a table that would make a good spear, and grabbed a nail to jam into the end.

And shocked even me. For all the days that I had lived on the streets, mostly in command of my destiny, I had never taken a life. I'd been beaten up plenty, and thrown my share of assailants into a brick wall, but never—

If Sparkled exploded, how many would die? Maybe hundreds, not including me and the princess. Not all solutions are ideal.

I hefted the spear.

"Sunset Shimmer!" the princess yelled, landing between us. Sparkled now floated incased in her yellow aura.

Despite the roar of magic and the crash of debris, the dropped spear clanked woodenly as it hit the floor. Shocked, I spun and directed my magic at the poor proctors floating in a bubble above the desks. I caught them up just as a bowling ball bit of masonry tumbled down. I jerked hard to levitate them out of the way.

Nothing happened, except that the masonry bounced off the bubble and headed my way. I jumped aside from the bounding rock, which hit behind me with a bang, and redoubled my effort to no avail.

"It's a shield spell," I yelled, looking to Celestia.

She had her head down and was flooding the purple-white aura surround the goth foal with her magic. But between what Sparkled siphoned off and her keeping the tower from disintegrating around us, it did little good in squelching the magic storm.

"You need help!" I yelled what was obvious, to me at least. "I'll get the Collegiate of Mages."

"Yes, my little pony, do. Fetch Sergeant Wolf Run of the Royal Guard; we'll have need of him, too."

I dashed from the tower, striking the doors into the adjacent Regents Building at a full gallop, heaving them aside and barely missing the rebound. Stupidly curious unicorns milled in the hall. I yelled, "The Luna Tower may fall! Get the Tartarus out of the building!"

Maybe not so stupid; the teachers' hoofbeats sounded behind me as I headed for the glass doors of the entrance, but I dodged down the stairs, took two right turns, and rushed through the maintenance corridor that ran underground between the major buildings. It was an old habit of mine, finding the best hidey-holes. Knowing I could find safe places to hide, no matter how stupid since I now lived in one of the castle's ivory towers, kept away the nightmares. I lit my horn and easily galloped past the Accademie building and Granite Hall to Magical Sciences without having to dodge hysterical ponies that probably clogged the hallways or gaped on the quad at the likely rising dust cloud above the canting tower.

I raced up the stairs to ground level, hooves clattering, and had to bellow at college students eight years older and much taller than me that lallygagged at the base of the stairs on the first floor. "Move! I'm on the princess' business!"

Pastel ponies of green, pink, and orange jumped aside as if I'd shot lightning up their flanks. It didn't hurt that I had a much deserved, finely-honed rep for being bossy. I ensured that everypony knew that the princess had chosen me as her personal student and protégé. I was eleven and a half years old (apparently you could tell by looking at my teeth) and in middle school, but I was more powerful than any of them. For the record, I threw only one grown-up earth pony stallion into a brick wall, but had made sure the entire population of Cliffside homeless ponies knew I'd done it.

Proper PR is the key to real power and peaceable relations. Peace through rep is better than peace through force. Nopony beat me after that. It did start a chain of events that led to Celestia discovering me, but that's a story best left untold.

I burst into the conference room of the Collegiate of Unicorn Mages on the third floor. I knew they'd be meeting because had I not been curious about Nightmare Sparkled, or whatever her name was, I'd have been at this meeting. Not that I was a colleague of the group, though I would be one day, but because it never hurt to curry favor with those you would eventually learn from and someday replace. I could brew tea, carry water, mix ink, and clean anything—and stay to listen so long as I was quiet.

The gaggle of adult unicorns had left their mahogany table and velvet chairs, predictably staring out the window and talking over one another in mathematical jargon. Beyond, the cloud of dust I'd expected rose above the canted tower. The mages resembled a magical rainbow, but for the gray manes and threadbare tails I faced.

Though huffing, I said loudly, "The princess can't hold the Luna Tower together—"

They turned to face me. Yeah, they understood their water-girl was the princess' protégé.

"A student is drawing off her magic and the princess needs your help!"

I dodged aside from the stampede, then took the opposite staircase down. Finding a sergeant of the royal guard wouldn't be half as simple, but I knew which part of the castle the provost worked in. Five minutes had passed since Sparkled had wrecked the tower, and it took almost that long to get instructions from the disturbed ant hill that the royal guard headquarters had become. Bells rang everywhere. News of the chasm through the streets of Canterlot had reached them before that of the tower. No matter. The sergeant had been sent to the audience hall to deal with the confusion of ministers and commoners who had flooded into the building. I galloped off with a description and a destination.

I got stares when I burst into the six-story grand hall with Celestia's throne at one end. I was virtually Celestia's daughter, something that I had made sure was well known whenever I visited downtown Canterlot. I spotted a tall mauve stallion with sergeant stripes on his red uniform. A cropped purple mane stuck through his brass helmet. He might have had some Saddle Arabian in him, considering his height. Early morning petitioners circled him. Through the gabble, I could barely hear a deep voice say, "—be calm and—"

I trotted up, searching for an easy opening, past pink and yellow flanks, that I could easily utilize without resorting to sliding ponies around. And then I saw him.

Not Sergeant Wolf Run, but… him. He stood beside the sergeant, tall for an 8th grader. He was the smartest colt in class, and kind, and a good hoofball player, and so unbearably cute that seeing him made me shudder. His coat was golden-brown, but darkened as if burnished to reveal a mysterious black metal. He had black points and a black beauty nose, but his mane and tail were so red as to look like glowing copper—shot through with the coolest streaks of gold.

I stopped. What was he doing here?

I spent my life in class watching him, but unable to conceive of actually talking to him. I mean, I had had thousands of conversations with him in my mind about everything from advanced magic to needing a prince when I succeeded Celestia to the throne. But. But, I had never talked to him. I mean, how could I? I'd talked to the girls in the study group I ran. But never to him. I'd said his name over and over when nopony was looking, and had written it all over some of my notebooks—which I kept hidden under my mattress—but I had never said it to him.Not ever.

I feared my tongue would glue itself to the roof of my mouth. I'd make a foal of myself. I shivered even now, watching as the adorable colt glanced up at the stallion sergeant, who undoubtedly had to be his father. Sweet Celestia. His eyes were a dreamy golden amber!

I—

I gulped. Celestia was in danger. Equestria was in danger. I couldn't let a stupid schoolgirl crush get in the way!

Why were my legs so leaden? Stupid body!

It took more effort than I'd expended saving myself from being splattered in the collapse of the balcony to get myself moving. I stalked woodenly forward, shouldering aside an aristocratic lily-white mare in green taffeta with a purple mane who stepped in my way. With her loud whinny announcing my approach, I got up to the sergeant and shook as I delivered a rapidly practiced line. "There's a magic storm destroying the Luna Tower. The princess asked that you help her."

Green eyes regarded me, recognized me; he bowed before addressing the crowd. "Move aside. Brandywine, stay here."

The crowd separated and, like chaff in the wind, followed in his wake, leaving me alone where I stood.

Well, not quite alone. Brandywine said—to me— "What happened?"

I would have stuttered as I turned in slow motion to face him, except that my voice had completely and utterly failed me. I realized my mouth moved and I didn't want to jibber, so I clacked my jaw shut. My eyes got caught in the gaze of his amber ones. I immediately looked down at my hooves and found myself brushing the marble tile of the audience hall with my right front hoof across the left. My heart pounded so hard, I didn't hear him the first time.

The second time he all but shouted, "You're bleeding!"

I looked down. And paid attention. I left a dribble line of red across the black veins of the white polished stone. My body cooled at once. Dizziness struck.

Brandywine immediately rushed beside me and leaned to keep me from toppling over. I had a colt leaning against me. As his warmth penetrated the confusion, I realized I had Brandywine leaning against me. Even that didn't pierce the shock that finally caught up to me as my body realized I was losing blood. I cast Levitation to press in on the gash.

Pride did have power, though. In unison, he and I (weakly) yelled, "Get her a doctor!" and "Get me a bandage!"

I was no foal.

My voice engaged, I said, "Thank you."

"That's a shock," he said, kindly but with an edge of sarcasm.

I looked right and up. I might be eleven and a half and rapidly reaching my adult height, but he was taller. Probably those refined S'arabian genes, or the fact he was at least two years older than me. His eyes and smile nonplussed me, though.

"Miss Bossy actually has a sweet voice."

He had actually noticed me! My heart lurched and maybe I did, too, as he redirected his efforts to press against me to keep me upright. I said, "A girl has to protect herself, gallant sir."

Oh, Sweet Celestia, what fevered romance-novel-fueled dream had I pulled that last from? No, I'd read it: Belle Worthaton had written it in A Good Mare.

A physician, thankfully not my adopted father, cleaned my wound and rapidly wrapped on a self-sticking bandage while, I think, Celestia's finance minister with bottle-bottom eye-glasses gave me a cup of water. I did my best not to gulp it and to breathe deeply. I nevertheless couldn't keep my eyes from straying toward Brandywine, who mostly looked at the physician while I admired the colt's charcoal black muzzle and marveled at a type of physical contact I knew I craved but which I had been certain I'd never get. Miss Bossy was too scary to be loved. Even her mother had abandoned her.

My strength returned, probably thanks to the water, and I answered his question. "The princess was testing a new prodigy, a Starshine Sparkled, or somepony, and the foal exploded in a magic storm."

"Exploded?"

My cheeks reddened as the physician finished. I stepped away from Brandywine, not wanting the effect to spread or persist as I thought of him. "In a manner of speaking. I went to watch her test—"

"Fearing competition—?"

"Yeah—no! I mean... She turned out to be a magic-retentive, unable to do magic until something, something in the sky, goosed her. Then it all, and I mean all, flooded out. She's an archivist's daughter—"

"Oh, you mean Twilight Sparkle."

"Whatever. She must have read a magic sourcing spell. It struck Celestia and the princess is struggling to get the situation under control."

Brandywine scratched his chin which sported the tiniest bit of prickly peach fuzz. So masculine and yet so cute! He asked, "Why did the princess need Father, then? He's an administrator, not a mage." His amber eyes speared me.

Through the heart.

"Funny, Celestia seemed to want him more than the Collegiate of Mages. Why, I dunno."

"I do. Princess Celestia cares about only one thing besides organization that Father's an expert in—something that I am, too." He trotted away in the direction of the Luna Tower.

I cantered up beside him, the crowd parting at my approach. "But your father said—"

"My father sometimes forgets who saved whom!"

He dashed toward the southern exit. I followed, saying, "Well, if you're determined, I know a faster way."

"Lead then!"

I dashed up the spiral stairs to the flyway, a set of arches that connected the ramparts of the castle above the buildings. In the morning sun, our hooves rang on granite tiles as we galloped down the crenelated walks, through towers, past a half dozen courtyards, to the main guard tower. Down those stairs, we next ran through the royal gardens. Funny how an emergency tended to clear the pleasure areas of the palace, and I had counted on that. I could see that the cloud of dust had dissipated around the tower, though part of the conical roof had collapsed inward. The balcony side. I could see the tower and the Regent's building beyond the wall of the garden. Between the red roses and the pinks, I spotted the stone bench and table I had moved into place—after a lot of careful surveying—and broke into a gallop.

"What are you doing?" Brandywine cried.

Well, I had taken steeplechase as my sport, and, well, I liked to have my little escape routes. I didn't care if this might cause the wound to bleed. I was doing it for Brandywine. This jump would take me onto a grassy knoll beyond the garden wall, and was the quickest route through the university to Celestia's school for Gifted Unicorns. My ivory tower was on the opposite side of the gardens near the cliff and the air-docks and it had kept me from being tardy dozens of times. The Guard might consider it a security issue, but nopony had moved the garden furniture. "Trust me!"

First the black marble bench with a clop, then the mossy sandstone table with a bang, then with a measured spring up, legs tucked to sail over the ivy covered stone wall like a deer.

Horse Apples!

Twilight Sparkled's chasm had opened up along the garden wall. It took every bit of skill in landing and years of muscle control surviving on the streets to skid just short of tumbling into a five-yard deep cut in the earth, and still I banged up against a disgorged row of boulders. I heard Brandywine yell as he jumped behind me.

I scrambled to cast Levitation. If there was any spell I could cast best, it was Levitation, but speed was another matter. I pushed as hard as I could, even as the golden-brown colt crested the wall and yelled, "Whoa!"

Still pushing to get the magical control shapes formed, I watched as he arced down in the space of a heartbeat, his legs pumping as if the long throw he had accomplished because of his longer legs wouldn't send him into the center of the chasm.

I snatched him from the air as he dipped down into the chasm and swished him up and over to the other side. When I let him down, he collapsed on the grass and looked ready to puke.

I ran and crossed, just barely making the jump. I said, "Sorry, I forgot about that."

Closer, I heard him muttering, "Tartarus! It's Tartarus." He turned toward the tower and focused on the six-point star apparition that thrust out along the chasm, though all but the faintest glimmer, like bright gnats, was visible here. The mages were casting magic to hold the tower up. Oddly enough, they all now had black mustaches, in the twirly-end style of the caricature villain from plays a century ago, even the mares.

Assuming that he was swearing, I said, "That runt cast a bolt of something that did this—"

His amber eyes gleamed in the morning sun as he turned to me. For a second, his irises looked slotted, like a cat's or a dragon's. "And it has a flaming square mirror on the end?"

"Well, yeah," I said, frightened for the first time since falling in the tower. "It did."

This time he did curse, "Tartarus!"

Author's Note

This is the first chapter of a work in progress. Seven chapters are complete so far. Because of a weird personal schedule, these will be posted intermittantly. Please put the story in your tracking folder or follow me to catch all the updates. And please comment! Critiques are welcome, but be sure to quote the part of the story that you are referring to, and tell me what you thought you read when you give the critique. Thanks!

"I Must! I Will!"

Brandywine broke into a furious gallop across the lawn, raining divots of grass behind him as he took the most direct route into the tower—through the crack—despite mustachioed unicorns who leapt to stop him. None tried to—dared to—stop me.

Perhaps his eyesight was better than mine. The contrast between outside and inside was too dark for me, but he sprang through the beginnings of a wooden scaffold without hesitation. I hesitated, looked, and ran through the side door of the Regent's Building instead.

My hooves clattered on the tile floor as I pushed open the door to the Luna tower, huffing loudly. Brandywine stood, blocking the space between his father and the mirror, his forequarters lowered in a fighting stance. Despite Celestia's acidic gaze, which would have stopped even me, and the cacophony of shrieking magic and smashing masonry, he bellowed, "Don't go through the mirror! Don't let her send you back!"

Ribbons of sparkle traces streamed like comets between the princess and the runt. Celestia's aura had completely enveloped the little pony. Twilit Sparkled looked as contained as a fire isolated amidst kindling, neither extinguished nor safe. I sensed untriggered spells flitting unseen like annoying gnats as I threaded my way past five sweaty royal guard who stood as close to the princess as the intense magical field allowed. All five were unicorns in brass armor. Some levitated away stones, others kept an eye on the tower structure. Their ill ease demonstrated that they too sensed the dangerous spells.

A lone Pegasus constable, dressed in blue with a round, billed uniform cap, fluttered in front of Brandywine. "Sonny—" he said.

"No," Celestia said, "He's right to fear me." She groaned as if she were pulling weeds from hard packed soil with her teeth. A glimmering ribbon snapped and burnt away to fading sparks. "My greater good is not an individual's good," she said suddenly, loudly, and profoundly. "My order stands. Wolf Run, go now."

The sergeant bowed. "I am always in the service of the Princess," he said and walked toward the mirror blocked by a sputtering Brandywine.

"N-no!"

"Brandywine," his father said gently, "You would do well to learn duty, trust, and acceptance." With his last words, a purple aura flared around the golden-brown colt. His father held him aside as he walked into the flame-rimmed mirror. His fetlocks instantly ignited as the glass spread around his face and sealed around him like a pool of quicksilver as he stepped in. Brandywine looked over his shoulder in horror as he struggled and shouted ineffectively, then dropped to the ground when the last smoldering hair of his father's tail slipped into the glass with nary a ripple.

Brandywine landed ready to spring, but his father had held him facing away from the mirror.

He was athletic.

His muscles rippled as he blurred into motion. He was Hoofball-striker fast.

Celestia conjured a splash of water and, in a feat of sympathetic magic worthy of only the best earth pony potion masters, extinguished the flaming frame.

Brandywine crashed head long with a wet bang into an inert vitreous wall.

I jumped to his side as he grasped his head below his horn and moaned. "How badly are you hurt?" Not a question of if.

Blood dripped from his charcoal-dust nose as he forced himself to look at me. "He's gone again," he said, and levered himself up, shaking, his irises way too tiny for the light. "What I feel is meaningless. I will get him back, again."

I levitated him upright.

Shaky, he looked at the mirror. "I must. I will," he said, and stared at it.

There was nothing I could do to help him, other than keep him standing, which he apparently could do himself. The princess, on the other hoof, grunted and strained as she untangled what the runt had wrought. When she paused long enough to send the constable off with orders to handle the havoc on Alicorn Way, I realized it was my chance to demonstrate that her first choice for a personal student remained her most worthy successor and only reasonable choice.

"Princess, what can I do? Command me."

"Observe... Ugh! Try to copy me," she said in a voice almost below a whisper. I crept as close as my growing unease let me. Suddenly, it felt like ants crawled on my skin and my fur began to crackle with static. Within a pony-length, a high-pitch whine filled the air.

She said, "I am weaving an unworking... teasing apart a composite hive spell. In the sense that I am unraveling it... pulling the visible threads... all spells are the same, my faithful student. I push and pull with my magic, with no specific spell in a mind... trying to catch the sense of skein, how the mess of tangled yarn implies a mathematical construct of reality... that violates base physical laws. As I do so, I assert the paradox…"

As she rambled on, talking out everything about each magical trick, she knew I would not understand exactly what she meant. I was late to this "student" and "school" thing, more of an uneducated blacksmith's daughter—a blacksmith's daughter whose father wouldn't teach her so she learned the trade by trial and error and became an artisan farrier—than an egghead prodigy or a scholar. Much of what she said was too technical or vague, but her patter helped. I understood magic very well, but not because I had learned theory first, but because I had discovered magic myself. Celestia had learned well how to guide me on the path she desired.

And, after a few minutes, I began to get it. How could I not? With the biggest best teaching toy ever to exist jangling all my senses like an avalanche of cowbells? You don't want to taste and smell rose and sulfur in the same breath. The incredible strength of the spells forced me to see the shapes I would need to work with. The construction surrounding Sparkle Pony did vaguely resemble a bee-hive with a myriad of hexagonal cells. If Celestia worked to pick apart this thing to make a gap that might collapse it, she had a lot more work to do.

I glanced at the mirror. Brandywine paced around the side of the apparition, shouldering it, testing it; as for why, I could not fathom. When Celestia noticed my attention had strayed, she said, "Free the proctors!"

I turned to look, and well...

"Huh!" That was something.

Not so much that the ponies inside the floating shield spell bubble had stopped struggling and looked at me with mild alarm, but because I saw a hairy mess of virtual shapes for which the best description would be a bouquet of spaghetti balloons with maybe fifty waving strings. If I pulled the right balloons from the mass, the static electricity holding them together might fail to hold, breaking the cohesion of the bouquet.

As the revelation made me smile, a whoop from Brandywine made me turn to look. While I was certain I knew his position from his voice, and thought I'd seen him in my peripheral vision, when I looked—he was gone.

No. That wasn't right.

I realized I saw him disappear into the side of the Tartarus gate apparition, but some effect had confused my eyes. It was like a ghost had faded into a wall.

I heard Celestia growl, so it wasn't an optical illusion. Nothing I could do, anyway.

About those strings...

Nothing is as easy as you think; that's an invariant law of the universe. The method I settled on was the right one because the magic felt elastic. I jerked my magic this way and that for minutes until something gave. I sensed when the shield spell began to unravel and caught the four falling proctors in my magic. Grinning, I trotted nose in the air and tail snapping against my rump, carrying them past Celestia into the Regent's Building.

Celestia told them, "Twilight's exam isn't over. Stay near."

I harrumphed. I could imagine myself spectacular on a battlefield in bejeweled gold armor, breaking the shields of the foe. Not that there were any wars... but the princess did maintain a military. Not so sure I liked "battle mage" as a career choice, come to think of it.

Spell canceling: just pull a spell shape until it fell apart. Easy for spells I'd cast. A counter-spell method if I could visualize other ponies' spells.

In this new light, I strained my horn to sense the shapes of the spells that composed the mirror into which Brandywine had disappeared. Vaguely, I sensed lots of merged crystalline shapes and rods, all knitted into a tesseract. It wasn't enough that it warped space—it warped dimensions and time itself! I could not guess the purposes of the shapes, but I could see ways that I might push to mess the entire thing up. It was like a non-magical clock, its gears and springs visible, levers moving, ticking. A stick shoved into the works at the right point? What I looked at was a violation of physics cycling over and over, a grossly magical house of straw in the face of the wind. All I had to do—

"Don't!" Celestia cried sharply, inserting the word between a straining grunt and a hiss.

Of course not. Celestia protected her subjects, as good queens are wont, and wanted Wolf Run to return, despite Brandywine's fear.

Her not wanting me to dispel it meant she wanted it functional. But…

Water to douse it…

Fire to…?

I felt my eyes go so wide that my eyebrows almost touched my horn.

The idea played with the building blocks of magic: sympathetic magic, the law of similarity— With a gasp, I felt my head go egg-shaped, figuratively. I galloped for the doors to the Regent's Building. Professor Whatsisname who taught potions, whose class Celestia often had me audit at the university, had always smelled of incense. Earth ponies could not conjure fire. I burst into his office and quickly found a match alongside an ash smelling of saddlewood on a soapstone holder carved like a reclining dragon.

Standing again before the mirror, I noticed it resembled an artifact that Celestia kept in the castle attic: a gem-studded frame surrounded by wrought iron. The dusty thing had smelled of magic, and on closer inspection I had sensed a slowly rotating magical field. The thing had required a trigger and I suspected a clock spell provided it.

I suspected that the trigger on Sparkled's mirror was manual because Celestia had turned it off with water.

I could not conjure fire. I hadn't learned that spell, yet. But, if I were to be able to stop Brandywine before he messed up his father's mission, or got himself hurt, I had to make this work.

Yellow red-streaked rock, brimstone by the sulfury smell of it, framed the mirror. Fire rock. The law of similarity implied I could use a match to re-ignite the magic because both had sulfur and both aligned with the element of fire.

I took a deep breath. All magic required spell mnemonics, though I certainly didn't know the right ones. Intention counted though; I had to do this.

Yellow and red… The mirror frame and I were the same colors; that gave me an idea.

Holding the match in my magic, repeatedly tracing the frame as if I were to strike it, I intoned, "Touched by the light of the setting sun, set me alight in a shimmer of fire!" Completing a last circle, I struck the match head against the frame. It made a click-pop.

Sparks flew, but not from the match to the mirror.

The match flashed into ash as the magical spray of earth pony magic surrounded me in a shimmering cloud of heat. My heart jumped in my chest as I caught a glimmer of my error, but not before I saw the result in the mirror.

My mane and tail burst into a raging inferno. Smokeless flames shot upward to blacken the rafters of the tower before subsiding into a flaming roiling aura that mimicked the cut of my mane and tail. The dazzling display did not consume me because this uncanny fire was part of me. It was ruby bright where my mane was red and brilliant sunlight yellow where my mane was yellow. It was no illusion.

I smiled. The implications… I did this!

Suddenly, a white glow fogged my view of the world as if I walked amongst luminous clouds. I felt light-headed and weight-free. In a supernatural state of glory, a veritable orchestra blared a crescendo in my head and peaked.

I had invented magic from nothing... and it had been easy, natural. It set my soul on fire.

It really did feel like I was floating, though I couldn't be bothered to look. Inventing magic was fine and good and all, but I had a mission. I flicked my tail and flung a genuine gob of fire.

It splashed across the frame.

The mirror burst to life.

My hearing began to clear as my hooves clattered to the ground. I immediately leaped, but by the time I realized Celestia had cried out, "Don't do it!"—she had probably had been shouting at me all through my revelatory stunt—gravity had taken over.

Like draperies to the wind, the mirror surface parted and I passed unfettered into another realm.

"Sunset Shimmer? That Can't Be You!"

It was a bright, silent, very confusing realm I leapt into. I felt ready to fall with no sense of up or down. It was like looking into a sink draining psychedelic pink, blue, and yellow fluorescent paint. Worse, the flashing lights' quick spiraling motion made me sick to my stomach.

I quickly shut my eyes. It took a half-minute for the whirling feeling to fade and for me to realize I stood not only on solid ground but also on a slope. The moving colors were an illusion!

To check the idea, I peeked and turned my head; the illusion followed with me. I tapped around with my hoof and found a square space where the edge of the mirror would have been.

An attempt to convince anypony shoved through the mirror that they were headed somewhere hellish? La-ame!

Illusions were something I was good at. Dropped alone on the street so young that I couldn't remember my mother, life had forced me to make up tricks. One was to look bigger than I was. Another was to have an even bigger "friend."

Standing there, eyes closed, I remembered making up Sombre. I taught Brea to talk—as much as I could in those days, probably hoof-waving and making faces more than anything—and to play with me. I hadn't a clue how I'd do that today.

My heart skipped a beat.

I couldn't remember when I'd lost her! How could I have done that? I shuddered. Loneliness settled upon me like an annoying friend you didn't want around too often, but nopony else ever came by to play.

I had always suspected foals were more than just disgusting uncivilized goo and noise emitters—that they were a bit crazy, too. Now I knew they were. I shook off the sadness. It's a skill, right? I'm the master of unwanted things.

I knew the magical shape of an illusion, so I tried to sense it as I had the other spells. What I saw was what I'd seen of the mirror before, but this time with a hugely complex shape almost like a squirming mass of voles. I was at the center of that rodent-storm, and inside lay further layers of other shapes.

No, I wasn't going to cancel a spell while inside it. Might cancel myself out of existence.

It took me a minute to gin up the gibberish illusion spell mnemonics I'd invented before I was three, shape the incantation into a magic shape I could control, and guess at the colors and motion I needed. Maybe because it was one of my first spells, I saw it as what geometry class taught me was a tetrahedron. It took me a lot of pushing and pulling and spinning the squishy thing, and blinking at the outside world, to cast a color-canceling illusion that spun just right. It left me with a dim washed-out view of a square corridor that might act as a chute if I were to fall over and slide.

I trotted downward, feeling confident that I might find the two ahead if their illusion skills weren't as super as mine. During my quarter-mile journey, the right wall became increasingly redder and the left bluer, and steadily moister, showing dewy drops. That was no illusion. I decided it was best not to touch.

I heard voices that I recognized and switched to a canter as I approached a pair of horn lights, a shorter amber one and a taller purple one. The angry chatter, which included Brandywine's "so you just have to go back," halted, replaced by a commanding, "Who goes there!" Clearly Wolf Run.

I just smiled and continued quietly. Neither would order me back!

When I could easily see the colt and the stallion, Brandywine—surprisingly—cried, "Stop!" and shot a menacing bolt of hot amber just ahead of me.

It occurred to me that I had cast an illusion around me and who knew what it looked like from the outside. I cancelled the spell as I skidded to a halt, yelling, "It's me, Sunset Shimmer. Don't shoot!"

The mirror's illusion had faded into a vague colorful shifting mist. At about fifteen pony-lengths, a flickering light illuminated the father and son, and the gold mirror just beyond.

"Sunset Shimmer?" Brandywine asked. "That can't be you!"

I huffed and walked forward. I felt Wolf Run's shield spell push at me—so I simply cancelled it. I might not be able to remember tomorrow how I'd cancelled the runt's shield spell, but today I'd unraveled an alicorn-level spell, so... been there, done that.

Wolf Run stepped in front of his son as Brandywine peeked under him. "You're on fire!"

I flicked my tail as I looked back. It was barely bright at all. "Oh, that. It's some sympathetic magic that I ginned up to reopen the mirror. It's harmless."

"A key?" Brandywine asked, then, "No. No, no, no. Stay back!"

I stopped in shock, but while his son had one idea, Wolf Run had another. His brow furled as he cast Levitation and pushed me left into the blue wall, giving me no time to compensate. As I hit it, I felt the same gut-wrenching stretching phenomenon in my horn that I felt just before Sparkled flared into her magic storm as if time itself had rung like a bell. Fire spread from my mane as my momentum pushed me into what proved to be a rubbery surface that may as well have been bathed in kerosene. In a whoosh, a pulse of fire shot in a spiral to momentarily ignite the walls and the floors, and to splash across the mirror at the end, setting the edges aflame. Almost instantly, it twinned into a pair of red- and blue-tinted golden mirrors, drawing away to the right and the left like a two-headed snake that didn't want to speak with itself. In a heartbeat, the corridor ripped down the center, pulling Wolf Run to the red side and Brandywine to the blue side, with me sliding then tumbling after the colt.

The mirrors opened.

A vacuum drew me screaming into darkness.

Author's Note

There are a number of chapters I will be releasing soon. However, my pre-reader is recommending I switch to TEEN from EVERYONE. Just giving you, dear reader, the heads up.

"Nice Trick!"

Author's Note

Dear Reader,
Please note that as of the publication of this chapter the rating tag has been changed from Everyone to Teen based on Sunset's frank thoughts in reference to Brandywine.
—ScifiPony

"Nice Trick!"

I awoke on my back, feeling bruised all over. I blinked as I stared up into a dim purplish sky that had odd, jagged lines as if it were composed of large square-sided puzzle pieces. I noticed I laid at the bottom of a canyon with walls of glowing sparkly rock devoid of any plants, even moss. It looked like pyrite, but silvery-blue. I felt a pressure on my diaphragm and looked toward my hind legs.

I froze. Actually, my impulse was to shriek and jump, not necessarily in that order, but another part of my brain stifled the impulse. I saw Brandywine, still asleep or unconscious, lying on top of me between my rear legs with his charcoal-dipped blood-encrusted nose touching my lower ribs and his golden-brown head laying on my belly.

This was a unique sensation.

Looking down my nose, I studied him as he breathed rhythmically. He had disobeyed the princess to rescue his father. I'd seen many ponies visiting the princess from many lands, but on close examination, I didn't think I'd seen any quite like him with a jaw heavier and squarer than average. And maybe strange eyes, too. He acted very noble. The dried blood made him look rugged, like a real bruiser.

I had done the right thing to try to help.

As much as I could have lain there for hours, imagining things I'd last read in Duello Steel's romance novel The Palomino, we were undoubtedly in Tartarus. I decided not to wake him, nevertheless, and wriggled my hindquarters to slide from under him, which swiftly put me in another situation as he slid downward. To say I was ticklish there did not quite describe the sensation and confused the stuffing out of me. I rolled over, trying not to laugh and fighting not wanting to roll over because part of me wanted to enjoy the sensation further.

Brandywine landed on the glassy white, faintly glowing floor with a cringe-worthy clunk. He groaned, trying to scramble upright even before he opened his eyes. I found my balance and swooped over to lean against him and help him up. After what I'd just felt a moment ago, I'd lost all hesitation at touch. It might not last until tomorrow, but I liked how he felt warm and wobbly.

"You okay?" I asked, only to have my voice echo back at me.

His amber eyes sprang open. In the moment between his eyelids opening and him adjusting to the light, his irises went from slits to round.

He did have dragon eyes! Amazing. I just wanted to gaze into their amber depths. Now I felt wobbly, too!

We looked around at the same time. We stood in a small amphitheater that reminded me of a volcanic crater with very steep sides, but two of the four walls (if it had been a room) were missing. The glassy floor was perhaps twenty pony-lengths in diameter, and we stood at one edge. The floor flood-lit the silvery-blue pyrite walls and the strange lifeless golden square mirror a couple pony-lengths away in the wall out of which we had undoubtedly tumbled. Our shadows played tag on the peaks.

As he steadied, he said, "Don't you know that walking through the Gate of Tartarus is a one-way trip?"

His words caused my body to cool and a shiver caused the fur on my spine to rise. Then I remembered Brandywine had thought he could rescue his father, which meant he could leave. He was teasing me. Besides which— "I can open the gate whenever I want!"

I flicked my tail at the mirror, expecting to fling fire. When nothing happened, I held up my tail. "Phooey." It looked as normal as it ever had. The vacuum had put out the flames, which, thinking about it, was a good thing. Were it alight, where Brandywine had lain—

I broke into uncontrollable giggles.

"Fillies!" Brandywine said, exasperated. He separated from me and looked around. "Well, that proves it. Father ended up somewhere else or he'd be in chains just like you."

I looked down at my hooves, still giggling. I lifted my hooves, then pranced around him high-tailing it, slapping his nose with my tail as I passed, even stepping over the margin of the round glass area on to what was some sort of striated blue rock. I sang, "I have the key, silly. I have the—"

He shook his head and rubbed his smacked nose, looking very surprised. "But-but the gate locks everypony in!"

"Not you, apparently."

He waved a hoof, again exasperated. "Of course not me, I traveled here. I didn't go through the gate."

"Obviously, you don't understand Tartarus as well as you thought you did. Besides which, if Celestia sent your father through, she'd have expected him not to be chained."

"Of course. When the rainbow crows arrived, he would have shown them the princess' pardon—"

I sang, "And I have the ke-ey."

"The key, rrrright. You did do something— Where are the rainbow crows?" He trotted about, looking over the cliff and scanning the skies. "They mobbed me within seconds the first time I arrived."

"How did you get unchained?"

"I traveled here. It's different. The rainbow crows think I'm native and have no power over me. Whoa!" He crept closer and stared at me.

More accurately, he stared at my flank.

"Wait, did you—?" he said, and stopped.

"Did I what?" I asked, beginning to thrash my tail as he continued to stare rudely at my rear end. Actually, on second thought, I kind of liked that he stared—

"You are the princess' protégé. It kind of makes sense..."

"What?"

"Your cutie mark."

I shrieked and jumped 180 degrees, which didn't help me one jot. I twisted and looked. There, in a prairie of yellow fur, blazed a radiant solar cutie mark. Unlike Celestia's, my sun was a yin-yang circle with flares that were half yellow and half red, and—totally awe-some.

I'd earned it by creating magic from scratch. I'd had to do something. I'd applied myself, figured it out, and done it. It had been easy.

It had felt so right.

"Sweet Celestia! I create magic! No wonder the princess picked me as her replacement!" I bounced up and down, laughing gleefully.

And if I had a solar cutie mark, and nopony else in Equestria did, that meant I indeed was Celestia's heir.

Or her daughter.

I sobered instantly.

I couldn't be her daughter. I wasn't an alicorn. The train of thought was just wrong, anyway. I had once sworn that if I learned who my mother was, I'd kill her. The painful memory of being beaten up and lying bleeding, left for dead in the snow, flashed back to me; it was on that day I'd made an oath. I'd traveled a long way up the food chain following that hellish day.

No. Celestia wasn't my mother and that was that.

It was Brandywine's turn to look concerned at my dramatic mood swing. The caring expression directed at me looked good on him. I felt like melting cheese as he asked, "Are you alright?"

"More than alright. Just startled. So, we need to find your father. How do we do that?"

"Congratulations," he said pointing his nose at my flank, which was dripping blood again, then sobered. In a low voice, he said, "Nopony congratulated me when I got mine. Not even my father when I rescued him." Brandywine's was a compass. "Where are those stupid rainbow crows!? I could ask them!" He stomped the glass. It rang hollowly like a huge gong.

"You rescued your father… from Tartarus?"

He glared at me, and I could tell he worked hard not to roll his eyes. "Somepony had to when Princess Celestia refused to release him after I brought her evidence of his innocence."

I blinked. In a low voice, I said, "That doesn't sound like Aunt Celi."

"Well, the princess has priorities that have nothing to do with individual rights. She is more flawed than most ponies believe."

"Like me."

He snorted. "Like you."

"Convince me. What evidence did you give?"

He took a deep breath and turned to face the cliff before he slowly let it out. "Fine!" He looked down and said, "I betrayed my mother and her village to the princess." He looked over his shoulder, eyes narrowed, gauging my open-mouthed response. "Princess Celestia arrested my mother and got her to confess."

I walked over so I could look at him face to face. His amber eyes were moist as I prompted, "Confess?"

He blinked and said, "Well, it's none of your business, now is it?" He stomped away, gazing skyward. "Where are those stupid crows?"

I followed, noticing now that tears ran down his face. "Do you want me to help you or not?"

"Haven't you helped enough already? That Tartarus gate wasn't Celestia's. It had a tunnel and a second door that wasn't opened; I had just about convinced Father to turn back, but no, you had to come along and open the thing, didn't you?"

I felt my face heat up embarrassed, that I'd hurt him, but then pique thinned my lips. I said, "If I levitate spilt milk back into the glass, would you drink it? Fine. We both have mother issues, obviously. My mother abandoned me barely weaned on a back street in Canterlot, and I'd probably buck her in the throat if she ever had the gall to introduce herself to me. You want me to help you? You tell me why I should trust you. I learned to feed myself, protect myself, do magic, talk, and finally how to trust with nopony's help."

After a long wait, he took a deep breath and nodded.

"Convince me."

"Sit," he said, and we both ended up laying sphinx-like facing each other. "Why I'm here in Tartarus won't make sense unless I start at the beginning." He used his magic to compress his bloody nose while he spoke, but he still managed to sound way more mature, and masculine, than his years.

"I like a good story." Feeling a bit snarky after talking about my mother, I added, "Is it a… romance?"

His jaw dropped open, then clacked shut, the muscles on the side of his face bunching up for a moment. "Yeah," he said, "My father was a junior diplomat working at the Equestrian embassy in Equidor when he met my mother. Or rather, as I wheedled out of him, she met him in a farmer's market and helped him pick fodder herbs and mountain melons. He thought she was beautiful and exotic, though I can testify she is strictly average. He was a bit of a nerd, taken by a mare favoring him. She volunteered to cook for him what he'd bought, and struck up the friendship. Equidor Highland Eyrie food, with its reliance on herbs, nuts, crushed berries, roasted seeds, and rind fruit is very spicy, and so much better than the bland or sugary stuff that passes for food here in Equestria. She pursued him in every fashion possible, arranging day trips on his days off, visiting historical sites, parks, and romantic restaurants only locals knew about. And despite a warning from the ambassador herself that his relationship would cost him promotions or worse, he continued the growing romance." The word was a sneer. "He even moved into an apartment outside the embassy compound. He still insists that my arrival wasn't planned. I never could get my mother to deny it wasn't."

He sighed loudly and looked me in the eye to say, "My mother is a night wing."

A night wing! That's a rare type of pegasus pony with bat wings instead of feathers and sharp teeth for eating hard mountain rind fruit. Night wings can't walk on clouds and instead built pueblos in large caves. "I bet that explains your dragon eyes."

"You've lived some sort of protected life, Miss Bossy. If a pegasus and a unicorn foal, the foal is either a pegasus or a unicorn. I'm some sort of mix, like some sort of animal, a monster with qualities of both my parents. My mother was certain I would grow wings when I grew up, so she took me with her— But I'm getting ahead of myself."

I sputtered. "If-If you grew wings, you'd be an alicorn!"

"Not the same thing. Alicorns are made, not born. You've heard of Mi Amore Cadenza, right? The perky pink pony princess in 9th grade? Hey, wait a moment: she's the mare-friend of Twilight Sparkle's brother. Some coincidence, there."

"Wait, alicorns are made?"

"I've read that Celestia made her a princess because of some sort of love magic she created to protect a village from a witch. She was a pegasus."

Ohhh! Maybe there was a chance that when I succeeded Celestia it could be as a made alicorn princess. A chill ran down my spine and I shuddered.

Brandywine continued, "Father married Pear Brandy. That wasn't what got him sent home; it was my mother's suggestion that he hide the fact. She got sent to Canterlot with him, and later some of her family was allowed to emigrate, too. Drummed out of the diplomatic corps, he tried to get a job as a royal guard or a constable, something she really wanted him to do. She tried to start a restaurant, but Canterlot is notable for its snobbishness and conservatism. After they both failed, they moved to Fillydelphia where he got a job as a constable and proved really good at it. With my mother's prodding, advice, and guidance, he made inspector by the time I was ten. She opened the Highland Eyrie Fresh restaurant in Old Town, and they became a little bit famous. She became trusted, despite her family being unique in the city…"

He paused, locking his amber eyes on me. In a testing voice, he asked, "Did you hear about the Walk Withers bridge collapse?"

"Well, yeah. It was all over the newspapers when I was learning to read about three years ago—"

"That same night, Princess Celestia was supposed to have attended the opening game of the Hoofball Aurora Cup Tourney at Filly Stadium adjacent the bridge, but cancelled at the last moment. My father had been the inspector in charge of security for the event. My mother had used all her influence and trust to gain access as royal caterers to the stadium so she and her family could plant magic that would bring down the roof over the stadium boxes—"

"What!?"

"—where Celestia would have attended the game. My mother's helpers changed targets, despite ponies starting to learn about the plot. Father learned of the plot to destroy the bridge because my mother had left a trail implicating him to trap him and make it look like it was all his plan. Father risked his life—even fought his own duty officers who thought him responsible—to clear the bridge before the magic went off. In the aftermath, Mother acted used and dishonored. 'Disillusioned' with Equestria, she returned immediately to the old county, taking me with her. Celestia sent Father to Tartarus."

"Why would your mother try to hurt ponies?"

"Because my mother and her family are crazy, and smart, and cunning? Night wings trace their origin to the abandoned crystal caves below Canterlot mountain. Nearly a thousand years ago, they migrated south, finally settling in the Equidor Caballero mountain range where the peaks are riddled with cavern systems. A few lunatics, like my mother's family, believe that Princess Celestia killed a night wing alicorn princess who ruled Canterlot mountain so she could conquer the surrounding lands. Mother's marriage and my birth were a big lie concocted to exact revenge for something that happened a thousand years ago. After living with her, and the crazy ponies in her little Andean pueblo for a year, I learned the truth about how she framed father for the crime. I ran away to the same embassy my father had staffed—"

"And had her brought to justice."

"I am half-night wing and she's my mother. I betrayed her, at least to the extent that she loved me. She did, too, but I understood that would change if I didn't grow wings at puberty. So far, no wings—yet. Pretty messed up, huh?"

I nodded and extended a hoof. He extended his with a half-smile and tapped mine. I said, "You almost make me feel better about my mother. Nopony was hurt in the bridge collapse, were they?"

"Nopony. My father got the warning out in time, and still Celestia sent him to Tartarus."

"And… You rescued him?"

He stood. "I had to. And my heart tells me the only reason Celestia didn't send him back was that she sees me as a future asset. Him coming back and getting stuck?" He shrugged as he scanned the sky. "Oh, well. No biggy."

"He has a pardon."

"Nopony is sent here that doesn't stay." He gasped and pointed upward. "Stars!"

I chuckled at the romantic notion. "I've been out of the city—"

He bent down to address the glassy surface. "Please, I'm hungry, give me food." Like all floors I knew, it remained mute. "This is bad." He looked at me. "No chains in the maximum restraint zone, or food, or water? No rainbow crows to act as Celestia's eyes and ears to watch everypony. And stars in the sky of a world that exists as a pocket dimension between just now and barely later? If that's Equestria's stars, we've lost half a day, and we couldn't have been unconscious more than a minute. There will be monsters."

"It is Tartarus—"

"Don't make fun of it! They're not likely any more restrained than you are. Do you know Force?"

The spell. I stepped back a step. "Of course." Of it, anyway.

"And Shield?"

"Y-yes." I could take one apart easy peasy lemon squeezy.

"Show me."

Well, didn't this scratch the patina off my crush on him? Not entirely, because my face heated up and I felt a need to demonstrate I wasn't just some random ditzy filly. I had taken apart two shield spells today, so I knew the shape. What I didn't know was how to make the spell take shape. I knew that Shield and Levitation were related from textbooks, but recognizing a spell didn't mean you could cast it. I did try imagining how it might work, and did manage to shove Brandywine slightly, but I think at best I managed to change the directionality of Levitation from an upward force to a slightly sideways and up force. My horn began to itch.

"Not going to stop a charging Monocularos," he said and sighed.

"How would you cast it?"

He turned away and walked to the edge of the amphitheater. As I followed him, I noticed a stone stairway, with no railing, carved into the side of the mountain. He stopped with a hoof on the first stair. "It's not like Celestia teaches her 'gifted' unicorns combat magic. My father taught me. And," he began downward, "that was a pretty good attempt at warping Levitation."

"Thanks."

"We need to get to Central Town, where somepony can help me find my father." He walked about four steps and realized I wasn't following. He looked back and raised an eyebrow, causing his not quite right amber eyes to gleam.

I asked, "How long to get there?"

"Tartarus is a pocket world. Everything's close, relatively speaking. Seven-eight hours, or two-three if my fickle talent decides to help us."

I took a deep breath and glanced back at the golden mirror. "Sparkling's mirror gate isn't going to last that long. I can't imagine the runt's magic storm lasting much longer, especially with Celestia unworking her magic."

He gave me a quizzical look.

"The gate? You know. Key. My way home?"

"Seriously? I think I said that 'when you go to Tartarus it's to stay'? There are no gates on this side!"

I looked at the mountain side. The silvery mountain and the glowing glass arena reflected in the golden pane. I lifted a hoof. "Then, what's that?"

He tried to turn around, then though better of it and walked backwards until he stood peering in the direction that I did. "What's what?"

"That!" I pointed and motioned.

"A geologist at Central said it's a mixture of 'arsenopyrite and magnetite.'"

I glared at him, then looked where he looked, which was where I looked. "You really don't see it?"

"See what!?"

I walked to the mirror and tapped the glass with my hoof. I half expected to sink in, but it went tink-tink. He ran up and tried it, but he made the clacking noise of striking rock.

"Brandywine—" What a nice name for a dense colt. "I said I had the key. I had to have the key to something if I said I had a key."

"This changes everything. You need to go back. If you disobeyed the princess coming here and the gate is dispelled, she'll undoubtedly let you stew here a while to learn a lesson and, trust me… you don't want that. Unlock it. Go."

"But— I came to help!"

He showed a half-smile. "You're sweet—and that's something I'd never thought I'd say about Miss Bossy—but it's really not your battle, being the princess' student and all."

Blushing, I said, "I've made it my battle, and I gather you can leave Tartarus."

"I rescued Father. There's no guarantee I can travel that far with you, though. We aren't related and I don't understand my talent well enough, yet, to know if it matters."

I looked down at my hooves, shuffling one before the other, looking at the bandage with a brown stain. He was right. And— I had no battle magic. "Ok. You win. Do you have a match?"

He didn't, but a choreographed force bolt at the right instant in the ritual worked miracles. My mane and tail ignited with a dramatic flash and whoosh. With a flick, I sent a glob of— With my cutie mark informing my reasoning I realized it wasn't fire—it was liquid sunlight!

The brimstone frame of the gate lit with a baleful fire.

In the mirror I saw his jaw drop. After a few moments, he looked at me as if I were somepony glorious and smiled. "Nice trick!"

"Thank you. Sure you don't want to come with me?"

"Gotta find my father."

I nodded and walked toward the mirror. Before, I had just leaped into it knowing it would open for me. This time I hesitated. Good thing, too, considering Brandywine's busted nose. I only bumped my muzzle on an unyielding surface. "Huh?"

I tapped the glass, then looked closer at the spell I'd cast, finally slipping mentally into the incredibly complex construct of the gate itself. After about a minute, I found reciprocating spell elements that looked like they could slot together, like the tumblers on a lock. The egg shapes in other eggs in spheres rocked and twirled in a tight space. As I watched, they precessed on a common axis.

I hissed.

"There's a stinking timer! The gate won't open until the clock elements align. I'm thinking that if that one is— seconds, the other one is— Multiply each by ten. 100,000 seconds. What? 27 hours?"

"A timing mechanism on a magic mirror? Why?"

"Limit access? Refresh the magic? To keep it anchored in this dimension?" I looked at the simple shapes, tilting my head. I almost felt I understood how it worked. If I were a better poet, I might even be able to invent spell mnemonics so I could add something like it to another spell. A pop-up illusion would make a perfect prank on Celestia! "I'd love to figure out how to make timers."

"We could get to Central and back in a day. Want to come with?"

I looked at the mirror and let out a deep breath. "Sure."

"Good. You're obviously a high level unicorn. If you can do fire magic and open the Tartarus gate only a princess—well, the princess and Twilight Sparkle—can open, I can certainly teach you Force."

He'd just called me out on my inability to perform combat magic, but somehow the obvious praise from the cute colt changed something I'd normally bristle at into a friendly jab. Wow. Friendly banter! Just like Miss Victory with Bey Kenspeckle in Filly A. Whinny's The Mystery of the Golden Horn. I actually smiled. Could a crush become a friendship? At least I wasn't babbling.

"Oh," he said as we clattered down the stone steps, my mane lighting the way as we descended into darkness, "If I should start to become transparent, you need to grab me immediately or you will find yourself left behind."

"This is a Trick Question, Right?"

Despite it only being about five hundred steps, I found myself with a new respect for goats. The gold-edged chromium steel horseshoes I wore, fine on Canterlot lawns and cobblestone streets, provided dodgy traction on the rough-hewn down-angled stone that was barely a hoof wide. I kept barking the frogs of my hoof, making me wonder if I'd be able to pick up anything that way for a while. Sometimes it's good to be a unicorn, though being a pegasus today would have had its advantages. At the bottom, I shook my aching forequarters, throwing sweat from my mane. Fortunately, the sweat had quenched my mane, otherwise I would have lit the scraggly scrub and dead grass afire with liquid sunlight. My withers ached and my neck hurt, not to mention that my front legs shook. Between the balcony fall and tumbling out of the mirror, I was a mass of tightening bruises.

Brandywine jumped back from the droplets. Even wearing a cool brushbuzz-cut mane and tail, he looked improbably fresh—and handsome. "Hike much?" I asked.

"We live in Terrace Heights, above Canterlot. I take the trails up from downtown all the time."

"Show off."

It did explain the muscles I couldn't help noticing as he had climbed down before me, or now as he set off at a trot through an unnaturally flat plain dotted with miniature faux-volcanos with peaks awash with blue-white light. From our angle, I couldn't see any of the inmates of the maximum restriction zone, but moving shadows in the lime light, and an occasional roar or eerie dove coo that came from a non-avian throat, made my fur rise along my spine. Clouds scudded in to hide the stars, to reflect the mountain light that illuminated each stairway and our path. The crack of the few sticks I trod made me cringe at how visible we were.

Brandywine pattered on at length about casting Force. He started talking about the violation-physics of the spell, describing it with elementary deviant algebra, but my sudden yawn forced me to admit I was strictly average at arithmetic, to Celestia's chagrin. I mean, how can numbers help you survive on the street? I mean... Really not good at that. He changed his tack and described how his magic felt flowing into his horn, about a sense of congestion and accumulation, and how Force felt like focusing a related spell like Levitation into a circle so it caused friction along a rod-like cylinder from his horn to the circle. A type of scrubbing "frisson." Only when he spoke about the mnemonics he used—his father's version of the Royal Guard's standard military poetry mixed with what his father had learned on the Fillydelphia Constabulary Force—did I really pay attention. Spell mnemonics are meant to help a unicorn to think correctly about the energies in a spell, but are often nuanced such that each word's intended meaning and relation to the total phrase or clause needed to be understood, and felt in your heart—and Brandywine took it to a level of poetic criticism that seemed too cultured even for the athletic scholar. "Fire in this phrase is not just a magical element or combustion, it's also passion felt in the moment, the surprising heat generated when you love something you're doing so much that you push to your limits, but like fire it burns hot..."

So, okay, admittedly, a lot of this pretty talk went over my head, too. By the time my adopted father had sic'd Celestia on me, trying to extract me from what I understood now was a pitiful kingdom I'd forged for myself in Canterlot Cliffside's alleys and parks, I had learned to speak on the street and then only to fight or command. I had not been well socialized, and for a year after she tamed me, I burnt out a string of tutors as I learned to speak Court Equestrian (as a second language, "ESL," ponies insisted). I understood "nuance" as a nuance that easily made a foal out of me with confounding meanings. That I worked hard to speak and write in a nuanced way—wasn't that nuanced?—didn't mean I understood when others did.

Didn't matter, either. Brandywine's confident manner and occasional questions to see if I followed what he said, comforted me. My feeling of being exposed and vulnerable—admittedly a state that described my entire life on the street (though, asked, I'd lie about that) and as Celestia's student—dissipated. Part of me insisted I should remain scared. I was in Tartarus. Another wondered if this was what becoming friends felt like. I, for one, didn't know what friendship was since I'd never had any friends, just ponies I'd found useful to have around.

I answered a question with, "The friction causes the air to radiate 'infrared' light, whatever that is, along the 'axis of projection'."

He stopped before a knee-high brown rock and gave it a tentative buck. "Infrared is a light beam of heat. Somepony's not paying attention in her science class— You want to try the spell?"

"Um. This is a trick question, right?"

"No." His hoof clacked against the rock. "Fire away."

I compressed my lips to prevent my sarcasm from leaking out. Okay. Scrubbing air in a cylinder, check. Sing-song mnemonics repeating in my head, check. Accumulating magic in my horn, check. I nodded before lowering my head to point my horn. Soon, the glow of my gathering magic illuminated the rock in the night with a turquoise glow.

I tried. I strained. The muscles in my clenched jaw began to ache.

Nothing.

I even grunted, something that horrified me doing it in front of the colt. I even felt the impulse to rear and wave my forehooves like a witch, but my growing anger scotched that. I felt like Twilit Sparkles, increasingly magically constipated. I felt like I might explode like the runt as I reviewed and revised what I'd learned. I pushed.

And.

Nothing...

I collapsed my flawed Force into the more familiar Levitation, and, after the couple of seconds it took for the spell to coalesce, I yanked up on the rock.

It was well embedded in the ground. The earth beneath our hooves nevertheless shuddered and I heard as well as felt a resounding crump!, which shocked me into cancelling the spell.

"Hmmf!" he said.

When I looked, he had his lower lip tucked under his upper teeth in obvious embarrassed disbelief. It was so absolutely incredibly adorable that my anger evaporated instantly.

He smiled as he shook his head. "Nopony casts it on the first try."

I giggled.

Sweet Celestia! Did I just do that?

I looked away, blushing, which I hoped beyond hope he couldn't see in the poor light from the clouds. Into the awkward silence, punctuated only by the whistle of a warm breeze, I finally got out, "Well, how would you cast it?"

"That's what I've been telling you the last hour."

"No. I need to see you cast it."

"What good would that do?"

I took in his amber dragon eyes, tilted head, and scrunched forehead. Of course the idea was bewildering. Of course Celestia figured it out; she had been forced to learn how I thought to be able to teach me—she'd considered me valuable enough that she captured little inarticulate me on the street despite that I'd nearly wrenched off one of her wings and tore out most of her feathers; she wasn't going to waste that sort of investment. I swallowed hard. He needed to understand how I learned also, were he to be able to teach me.

He had bared his soul about having a political fanatic for a mother. Could I do the same?

Of course I could. I was proud of all my achievements, regardless what other ponies thought.

I said, "When Celestia taught me the word feral, she first used it to describe me."

"Oh, dear," Brandywine said.

"Yeah. I lived like a wild horse for years, though mother horses usually take care of their foals. I learned magic before I acquired language. Equations— Physics— Spell mnemonics— Words— That's all a new layer of horse apples over the former Queen of Cliffside, who, though only a foal, fought to take apart Princess Celestia when she threatened the safety of the ponies she protected, and would have succeeded in pulling off one wing had Celestia not knocked me out. My memories of when I learned my early tricks are basically foggy images now, but I remember skulking around the corner of a building… another time lying coated in mud hiding in puddles in Palisades park… and yet another hanging from the inside lip of a dumpster at what could have been three or four or possibly younger, watching unicorns do magic—and figuring out everything that way. I taught myself all my tricks just by watching others do them."

"So... You want me to demonstrate? Like I was dribbling a hoofball?"

"Pretty much."

He shrugged and started. At first, he went slowly but I told him no. Nopony had ever done that when I lived on the street. I did have to get really close to clearly see the set of his head, how he held his muscles, to get a good idea of when he was preparing to cast. Close enough to know he hadn't taken a bath this morning. Close enough to hear him breathing. Close enough to see the very strong muscles of his back that made me wonder if he might actually grow wings as his mother expected. Despite all I'd said, I wasn't quite sure how I picked up on how others cast spells, but I watched, glancing at his golden beam of force, waiting until it felt right.

I tapped him on the shoulder and he looked at me as the rock snapped and crinkled from the heat he'd subjected it to. Something inside told me I knew the shape the spell would take. I knew the mnemonics in the talking side of my mind. And, I sensed that I knew what it felt like to be casting the spell as I imagined myself doing what I'd seen.

He stood there quietly as I looked at him then positioned myself, looked again, adjusted, then looked again, until it felt right. I lowered my head, clearing it of this new fangled think called talk, and pushed my magic.

Sluggishly, it flowed. My adopted father had taken me to Horseshoe bay, where I first saw waves and the tide. It was like that, a little bit forward and back, then more forward and back, then more foamy, then strongly crashing against the beach. I sensed a coiling shape begin to form and coalesce into something I could manipulate. It extended, flowing, awash with warmth. Forward and back, more, a little more, a little bit more. Relaxing into it, I could wait for the seventh wave until it broke in against my shore.

It might have been a dozen seconds, or a dozen minutes, but suddenly, Blam!

"Yikes!" Brandywine cried, jumping back reflexively and striking my flank as he stumbled and rolled into a brittle bush to a chorus of crackles.

My eyes shot open just in time to see pebbles pepper the bushes far beyond the boulder. I'd pulverized the top quarter into gravel. The rock glowed faintly red and some grass began to smolder. I rushed over and stomped out flames. I smiled at the glorious damage I'd done, then at Brandywine still laying there, blinking in disbelief. I bounced up and down. Within a half-minute, I was lowering my horn again.

"No, no. Never point a weapon in the direction of a friend."

I blushed. Friend.

Well, wasn't it a night for firsts?

"If that magical outburst doesn't attract rainbow crows, nothing will."

It didn't. The cloudy sky remained empty.

I couldn't cast the spell again. He stopped me before I became frustrated, saying I'd accumulated so much magic that I'd just exhausted myself. Instead, we trotted along again. Soon, I began to see we left the range of the strange mountains, and that it curved around the horizon. Brandywine explained the mountains formed a circle around a prairie with Central City in the center. At its furthest edge, it abutted a crystal sky, except to the south at Cerberus' Gate. That last was the one natural entrance from Equestria, but impassable because it required passing through while touching the one other being that could pass through at will. Cerberus was a monster that would eat another monster, or a pony, without a second thought.

Further from the mountains, the climate became moister and the grass greener, enough so that we stopped to graze on a very nutty-flavored barley grass before continuing on towards the first isolated wind-blown trees. These dark dusky trees had canopies that stretched windward a dozen times further than their height. As I could start to make out individual branches, Brandywine began to canter, then gallop. I followed as he began calling out, "Oh, Eyes and Ears, heed me!"

I arrived behind the athlete huffing and puffing. He cried "Sirs!" into the branches above. The rustling wasn't just buffeting by the warm wind. Squinting, I made out gray shapes. I noticed a brightening sky through the dappled canopy. Dawn wasn't long off. With a huff, I lit my horn, tuning it sunlight white, shining it upward. (As a foal, I'd learned a spotlight could blind an attacker, allowing escape.)

Crows. Dozens of crows, each painted with stripes directly from a rainbow. The prism effect required a reflection at exactly the right angle, like a sheen of oil on water, off black coloration. Their beaks, talons, and eyes otherwise looked even blacker than black. They were so black, they absorbed light completely. It seemed they were a mere outline of life, like coal soot in living form.

"What do you want?" one asked. "Can't you see we're trying to sleep?"

Brandywine looked from the speaker, to me, and back to the speaker. He asked, "She's doing magic! She isn't native, here. Shouldn't you be trying to restrain her—?"

I gasped. "Hey!"

The spokescrow squawked, tilted his head regarding Brandywine with birdy annoyance and said, "Nothing is amiss. Go away." The bird closed its eyes.

"But— but— Is she native?"

The spokescrow fluttered its wings and said, "Who knows? Who really cares?" With a loud crow, he rousted the thirty others roosting. With a massive cacophony, they rose from the branches, sending down a cascade of leathery leaves, and flew, cawing mockingly, circling, and finally flocking further toward the center of Tartarus.

I said, "That's bad. Right?"

"Rainbow crows can stop magic. Magic use isn't allowed in Tartarus, and inmates don't want to use it as it will get you sent into a restraint zone. The princess can see through the eyes of any rainbow crow, and speak through its voice when she wants. Celestia granted their ancestors their powers for informing ponies of the approach and weaknesses of the Windigos, and for their sacrifice in leading the pegasi to Equestria. Many were frozen during the journey. To commemorate them saving the pegasi, Celestia gave them rainbow colors to match the rainbows they saved. They take their job very seriously."

"Not anymore."

Brandywine reared and stomped the ground. "This whole thing is not right. I have to find my father and get him out before the inmates realize what happened. They'll hurt him!"

He was off and running, leaving a trail of dust and hoof-broken ground anypony could track, even monsters. Fortunately, he couldn't keep up the pace long. The sky had begun to lighten and the grey transformed quickly to shades of light blue, and between breaking clouds, I saw glimpses of rose color and bright orange. It was about the time that I finally trotted up to him that I noticed he looked decidedly transparent.

I wasn't taking any chances. I grabbed him in my magic. As he hurled toward me, I lunged toward him…

"Sunset Shimmer, Baby Tyrant"

The instant I tackled Brandywine, he'd become as see-through as Canterlot mountain glacial ice. He felt bony as my forelegs wrapped around his rear ones and I turned my head aside. We didn't hit the ground.

The world turned instantly totally dark. But for Brandywine's warm fur snugged into my body, with him flailing, the feeling of void would have been total. I couldn't inhale. My lungs strained, stabbing in my chest as they failed to expand. Exhaling had been wrong; there wasn't air to inhale! Sprains grew along my ribs. Choking, my heart racing in sudden panic, I too began to flail, barely noticing the absolute cold that frosted every bit of skin despite my fur, and began freezing my ears and nose. I shut my useless eyes against the cold that burnt them. Ten, fifteen seconds passed. My head pounded as pulses of oxygen-poor blood seemed to expand my skull, shocking my eyes with flashing purple and blue phosphene stars; it made me fear that my head might explode before I passed out. This was how Celestia had bested me when I had fought to expel her from my kingdom. This was how she'd won. I wanted to scream!

Then, wham!

We struck ground as air whooshed in and sunlight blinded me. I tumbled up and over Brandywine's head and withers as we rolled and tumbled. I got my frosted eyelids open just in time to twist so I landed on my back and didn't break my neck— and to squeal as Brandywine came down hard on my stomach, straddling me, blasting out the first great breath of air I had gotten. Much bigger than me, he flattened me. I gasped and choked as if punched.

He looked up, his amber eyes meeting mine. He looked down. His eyes widened. His face reddened as he shoved himself off me, jumping back. "Oh dear! I'm sorry. I didn't do that on purpose!"

I would have laughed had I caught my breath. Him blushing because of me almost made it okay. I rolled over breathlessly as he scooted in front of me, offering a hoof up. As I finally got air into my tortured lungs, and the stars flashing before my eyes faded, I looked at him, then myself. Enough frost clung to me, where I hadn't rolled in the dirt, that I looked snowed upon. Cold condensation steamed from both our hides.

I blinked, bounced up, shaking the stuff off. "We teleported. That was a teleport!" I'd studied the spell and had learned about the black void, a so-called dead-zone in between realities. I had scoffed at the "dead" part of the idea. I'd learned that its duration would be proportional to distance traveled...

I gasped. Though my nose burned, I perked my frost-bitten ears as I looked around excitedly. Beyond Brandywine, I saw a distant bank of clouds that, in the dark beneath them, seemed to hide mountains. Looking left and around, the blue-gray puffy border circled until to the east I could see the already risen sun that had blinded me. We stood in a deep green field of borage and other spicily scented herbs. It smelled like like we stood outside the Grand Bazaar spice market in Is A Bull... reputably. I had crushed a row of basil. And beyond the farm, a mile or so, I saw what looked like a small town on the outskirts of a collection of factory buildings. I looked back toward Brandywine and to what had to be the mountains we'd left behind.

Dusting leaves and soil out of his mane, he said, "Technically a teleport, perhaps, but that was traveling—"

"You have to teach me to teleport." Tartarus, I already sensed I knew the shape of the spell!

He smiled, but still rolled his eyes. "Sweet Miss Bossy, don't you know that too much candy will make your teeth fall out?"

"B-b-b-b-ut–" I sputtered.

"Yes, but— Look, I would teach you—after resting your horn from our last lesson—but I don't know Teleport, either. Traveling is my special talent, and I can't control it." He waved his foreleg toward the mountains and the sun. "We traveled a dozen miles and an hour—apparently forward—in time. All I did was keep a destination in my head. I'm too scared to even think about the moon."

Aw. He really was a tortured hero from any number of stories I'd read! I caught myself mid-sigh when I heard a rustle behind us.

I jumped and faced the noise, crushing fragrant sage this time. Nothing grew higher than my stomach, but I saw nopony. I started casting Levitation, but Brandywine gently tapped my horn, scrambling my thoughts. He said, "Show yourself, inmate."

The rustle came from our left. A mint-green reptilian head with a red cockatoo frill and a matching long thread mustache rose on a long scaled neck. As slit emeraline eyes regarded us, an ominous shishing of a rattle started to our right. Smoke issued from the drake's nostrils. Its neck flattened into a hood of glittering crystal scales in a shifting hypnotic spiral pattern that reflected the sun behind us. The primitive horsey part of me screamed predator! Frustrated that Brandywine had prevented my spellcasting, I averted my sight to the creature's snake eyes and hissed between clenched teeth, "Look at her eyes not her throat!"

"Absolutely," he replied, then said conversationally, "I met Lady Jewel when I was a foal."

"It'sss been a long time, Brandywine," she said, "Long time." Definitely a she from the timbre of her voice despite the sibilant sound of her words as she spoke. She turned her gaze to me and wheezed, "We are well met, inmate."

The drake reminded me I was little bigger than a foal. "I—"

Brandywine butted my flank with his rear and interrupted. "It is rude to stare."

"In my culture, from which I was so impolitely ripped away, not ss-so much. Have you seen any rainbow crows lately?" She continued looking at me, now with a bit of a grin I would have thought impossible on a reptilian face.

"Less than an hour ago."

"Really? I was out looking for them to report a violation I witnessed."

"Have you seen my father?"

"I haven't seen Wolf Run since I last saw you. Speaking of which, where have you been hiding all these years?"

I said, "He's—"

He butted me again. He obviously wanted me quiet, but being so was hard when an adult said such stupid things.

Jewel continued, "This little fiend is too young for you. Such a tender tasty morsel! Pray tell, my dearie, what unthinkable crime did you commit for Princess Celestia to send a foal like you here?"

As nice as his flank was, I decided to look at him instead of opening my mouth. Without a beat, he said, "She made herself the Queen of Cliffside and when Celestia intervened, Sunset Shimmer here tried to pull off her wings like she was a butterfly."

He'd listened! I turned and gave Jewel my biggest predatory grin with plenty of teeth. "Nearly succeeded, too!" I added brightly.

"Sunset Shimmer, Baby Tyrant. Very nice choice, Brandywine."

"I think so."

That sent my heart speeding and I began to flush.

He said, "Now you'd better move along. Don't want the rainbow crows thinking you were using your magic, do you?"

"I'm going to find one, and not by doing my magic, either. Ask some questions, I will." Her tail curved up into the air as she deflated her hood, showing a corncob-like rattle as long as my leg. "If I see Wolf Run, I'll tell him you're looking for him." She finished rising until she formed a wheel almost the diameter of a second story house. She bit her tail and rolled away along the irrigation ditch.

"What was that about?" I asked. "Was she threatening to eat me?"

"Yes. She's a true bogey-mare story. She's also Tartarus' biggest gossip. Best not to say anything around her."

"But, you—"

"Now you have a reputation. Much better than being challenged to a fight."

Ha! Wasn't it I who always said that peace through reputation was better than peace through force? But, "I thought that they kept you from fighting in jail."

I followed Brandywine as he nodded at the distant dust wake that marked Jewel's path. She headed into town and we followed. He said, "That's the thing, it's Tartarus, not a jail. If you don't use magic, or your special talent which is the same thing, the place is pretty much self-governing. There are some ponies with authority that Celestia posts here for extended periods of time and escorts back. They don't govern, per se. The inmates run the asylum, as the saying goes, as long as it remains mostly civil."

He stopped for a moment to look at me from muzzle to dock. He continued, "And Jewel pegged you as special. Nopony foals here. Nopony ages, either. Were you to stay, you'd remain half-grown forever. Part of the ambient magic. Best that you have an untouchable rep when we get into town. If you're stuck here awhile because I can't get you out, ponies should think you can defend yourself."

"It's no lie." I grinned widely. "I fight dirty." I'd learned the term dirty recently; it was more nuanced than saying I fought to win.

He smiled back over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. "Really? I had no idea. I thought you'd said Celestia tamed you."

"She wishes! Don't worry, I'll remind you if you ever get physical with me."

He chuckled.

I blushed, again, realizing I'd lifted a double-entendre straight from Lost in the Woods that I'd read last week. Oddly enough, I felt none of the girly yuck I might have usually thought about thinking about getting physical in real life. Instead, I thought about how I wished I was just a few years older. He was a lovely sight walking behind him, the sun playing chiaroscuro across the muscles of his hindquarters. There! Art class wasn't a waste after all!

I sighed and flushed again.

"He's Mine!"

Considering the hot climate—with the sun beating down, I was already sweating even though it was only breakfast time—and Brandywine's implication that Tartarus was a lawless place, I expected Central to resemble Dodge Junction in southern Equestria. I'd seen pictures of the wood board buildings, boardwalk ramadas, dusty streets, salt lick saloons, stallions in tall hats, and mares in colorful cotton dresses.

Central wasn't Dodge.

I took time drinking at the public trough, looking around. The street, populated with pastel ponies of all races and a scattering of griffins, was paved with strange concrete of shiny mountain stone in a matrix of black tar. Nopony wore clothing, though most wore wide-brimmed straw hats. The squat buildings were built of baked mud brick, judging by where uniformly tan or brown stucco pealed off of the thick walls. Shed roofs of cracked red clay tile added a sameness rather than a spot of color. Under eave vents helped with cooling. Small chimneys smoked with the scents of fried hay and potatoes. For hearths only. Tartarus likely never froze over.

We walked into town, past boarding homes and pavilions that looked like tarp-covered flops. Unadorned communal housing, all of it. Toward the center of town, there stood a general store; a hoof-painted sign stated that, though the dark interior looked empty as did what might have been other abandoned shops. We approached a farmers' market stocked with stalls of lettuces, squash, and leafy shrub forage. A never ending dry wind whistled past the wood structures and snapped the edges of a shared beige canvas that provided shade from the sun. Our horseshoes clattered against the pavement and echoed.

Ponies, manes and tails mussed by the wind, quietly stared at me.

Green eyes. Blue eyes. Magenta eyes. How much had Lady Jewel embellished her story? The unnerving attention made me focus on the ground, manifestly the wrong thing to do entering a "lawless" town.

I heard a distinct splat.

Brandywine yelled, veered left, reflexively rubbing his left eye and face to remove what a glance told me was a gob of spit. A flitting shadow drew my gaze. A deep blue pegasus pony swooped from a roof-top perch in the shadow of a chimney. I'd been tamed three years, but reacted instantly—no street tough succeeded in ambushing me. I leapt high into the pony's trajectory.

Always endanger a pegasus' wings. It's the thing that'll dissuade any light-boned monster.

The determined pegasus braked, swerved, and alighted behind me, demonstrating acrobatic prowess. It was a mare. She had a dark ruddy fetlock-length mane shot with gold streaks, and...

…and bat wings.

Nopony beat Sunset Shimmer. No pony.

I cast as the night wing turned flank, bunched up her forequarters, and lifted her rear legs. The ambush happened so quickly, stunned Brandywine hadn't yet realized his danger. As she bucked, she had sufficient time to aim at his temple in what would most certainly be a fatal strike. Satisfaction blazed in her amber eyes.

Not going to happen!

I jerked her up in my magic, breaking her contact with the ground. With no bracing, her bucking movement instead propelled her forward, and—because she reflexively flared her wings—in a circle upward. I took that momentum, forced her to continue until she was upside down, then shoved her down, albeit not as forcefully as my spiked anger made me try to because, as happened when I tried too hard to hurt somepony, Levitation failed me at the worst moment. The spell snapped; she landed on her back. She made a satisfying whump as her spine hit the cement, and a whoosh as the impact knocked the air out of her. I hoped I'd broken something as her wings went limp. In fact... I found the recently learned spell mnemonics and the special shape of Force immediately at hoof.

"Brandywine is under my protection!" I yelled, "He's mine!" I'd make the mare pay for attempting murder.

"No!" cried Brandywine. "Don't!" He was at my side, having recovered his wits, his face still glistening.

I shoved him aside, interposing my body between him and her, despite the fact that both were larger and heavier than I. "I'll handle this!"

He reared and touched my horn, snapping my concentration.

With a loud, "Ugh!" I stepped forward and reared over her head, pedaling my hooves menacingly. "Don't even think of moving!" I shouted at the prone night wing.

Her slit amber eyes cleared, looked at me, and narrowed. "Don't let Brandywine's false smile fool you, Queen of Cliffside. He'll smile at you, but when you walk away he'll stab you in the flank."

"Nice... Mom," the colt said. "Real, nice. Mother, meet Sunset Shimmer. Sunset, meet Pear Brandy, my dear mother." The mare rolled her eyes. I noticed her cutie mark, a burning stick—a fire brand. How fitting. I stepped back, keeping my eyes on her as she looked to my right.

"How nice to see you, son, after all these years. Where have you been? Under maximum restraint? This capable filly is way too good for the likes of you," she finished, glaring at me.

My stomach soured. "You just tried to kill your son!" Again, reflexively, I interposed myself, pushing Brandywine back with my flank, snapping my tail at him when he tried to get by.

She scoffed, and with her eyes locked on mine, she carefully rolled over. Other ponies crowded around, murmuring. She said, "Our people, the Night Wing, and especially the Sisters of the Moon—"

"—Equidoran NIHList separatists—" Brandywine interjected.

"—can recognize betrayal when we see it. His is the worst. Like Celestia who killed Good Princess Rising Moon—her blood ally, her 'adopted sister,' to conquer Canterlot Mountain—he betrayed family!"

"Your son—"

She spat on the ground. "No son of mine. Not fit to have night wing blood in his veins."

I discouraged Brandywine from stepping forward with a slap of my tail on his muzzle as he angrily said, "I did it to prove Father's innocence—"

"Good lot that did! You said yourself, Cursed Celestia didn't believe him. Worse, your misbegotten fealty to the Usurper ruined a centuries-old movement short of wreaking overdue justice!"

"Justice?" I asked, "Really? Had your gathered magic collapsed Filly Stadium on Princess Celestia, how many ponies would have died?"

"Celestia's spawn?" She scoffed. "Who cares?"

She who had married one of that spawn and lived amongst them over a decade. The crowd gasped. Rightly so. This had to be why Celestia had sent Pear Brandy to Tartarus. That it shocked a crowd sent here for their crimes spoke volumes.

"And when Celestia cancelled her appearance, you decided to destroy a bridge instead?"

"Celestia's fault if she escaped and left others to die in her stead. You have to unearth the plant to eat the potato. And… Wolf Run had to be seen as responsible for something as we had committed everything to catching Celestia in Fillydelphia Stadium, and if not him, they would have figured out it was me and my family. For some unfathomable reason, Brandywine's aunts and I thought it important to get him back to Equidor."

She'd wrecked a bridge to incriminate her husband to save her son? For a moment, I just stared, suddenly understanding the logic of evil too well for comfort. "Hooves-down, Brandywine wins the bad-mom contest. At least mine only tried to kill me!"

"Step back!"

The phlegmy voice came from a rotund purple mare with completely white hair in her mane and tail. That grey salted her fur around her muzzle, below her magenta eyes, proved the white was due to age. The earth pony wore a steel helmet, and a khaki blouse under a breastplate. For effect, she reared—pedaling steel shod hooves wearing shoes that had a flange of wood to protect her ankles. Boxing, she could use the wood as a baton to subdue or the metal as a blackjack to do damage. No mistaking that her mass hid a good proportion of muscle. I recognized the star she wore as a badge from the cover of The Night Mare and the Sheriff of Dodge Junction. "Don't anypony move." Us three. "What happened here?"

Already, the crowd was fading away. An intrepid stallion said, "She picked her up in her magic and bashed her to the street!"

As everypony glanced upward to look for rainbow crows that weren't coming, I found my mouth and eyes wide, outraged, thinking, Way to be a biased witness. Good job!

"It was me, not her." Brandywine stepped between me and the sheriff. "Just a family spat, constable. The usual."

I fumed. "She ambushed you—"

"Sunset, please."

I shut my jaw and subsided, and not because of the command or because of the tone those words should have implied. After Flowing Waters, my adopted father, and Celestia had tamed me— convinced me that acting by the rules of decorum had benefits—I'd attended state events, a couple of Grand Galloping Galas, and quite a few dinner parties at her side or Father's. Precious few elite pony couples expressed affection or friendship in public. More likely anything but. But I had seen a few do so, and like any foal seeing a parent or adult act not-the-way-they're-supposed-to in front of a foal, I'd taken notice. When I'd greedily read the mushy passages in The Night Mare, I'd recognized the tone of such words in my head. Yes, that tone. Endearment plus a bit of an apology for having to say no.

I hoped Brandywine didn't misinterpret the burning flush on my face as anger. It wasn't.

The old mare said, "In all the years I've known Pear Brandy, she's never— Wait, you must be her son, Brandywine! That explains why the rainbow crows aren't mobbing you—though not why I haven't seen any today."

"I'm not staying long in Central, so it won't happen again. Have you seen my father, Wolf Run?"

Pear Brandy spoke up. "If he were around, he'd be at my side." Condescension dripped in her voice, but I could also tell she believed what she said.

"I've heard of Wolf Run, but from before I took this post."

I thought about how Brandywine had insisted he had betrayed his mother, and about his mother holding family fealty above all. I understood where his guilt came from. Like his father's odd loyalty, it was how he had been brought up. Talk about a tortured soul!

Sheriff Lavender Lather warned Pear Brandy to stay clear off her son or she'd find herself back in the "big house," which was apparently the factory-like building we walked to with the constable. Everypony here lived like earth ponies. The rainbow crows prohibited all magic, which explained why I'd seen unicorns use their hooves or mouth to manipulate everything from a tomato to a bag of flour. When Brandywine saw me staring, he added that rainbow crows often even chased pegasi and griffons from the sky because flight apparently required magic. Everypony looked somewhere between somber and sullen. Though many talked, none looked happy—though it might have been our presence.

Or that they lived in Tartarus.

Possibly that.

The only difference in construction between the big house and the rest of the town was five stories and bars on the unglazed windows. Inside were daubed-plaster walls with none of the flourishes back in Canterlot, and certainly no carved hearts or painted flowers, or painted walls for that matter. Lavender Lather had some paintings and a few photographs of ponies in her little office, but she was one of the ponies that had volunteered for the post.

Apparently, Celestia traveled to and from Tartarus, transporting volunteers. I gathered the attraction was immortality. Being here stopped the progression of non-communicable diseases, or aging.

That said, the group of khaki uniformed officers we were introduced to were inmates, ones that apparently acted reliably, keeping melees or other unpleasantness from breaking out. All shook their head that they hadn't seen Wolf Run. All nodded that they would tell Wolf Run about Brandywine if they found him.

A wary looking brown stallion with a tan mane, white socks, white hooves, and a matching white horn with an iron ring sidled up Lavender Lather and suggested the "vanguard" might gallop to the outposts to request that they be on the lookout for Wolf Run. The sheriff added, "White Stockings, also look for the rainbow crows," as she sent the volunteer on his way with a few of his fellows. The amber-eyed old fellow glanced at me before he and a group of officers trotted off.

Through the exchange, I got that Brandywine wanted me to say nothing. I just observed.

Lavender Lather asked Brandywine to do some magical repairs but offered breakfast in the officer's break room, first. I wasn't surprised when this consisted of coffee, beignets with barely a dusting of sugar, and sliced apples. The apples were sour. I could smell the sunflower oil in the square doughnuts, but they were very fluffy and good.

When the sheriff closed the door, I looked directly into Brandywine's amber eyes and whispered, "Nopony knows you can leave Tartarus whenever you choose, do they?"

Surprisingly, he started to blink. His eyes looked moist. The chair scraped the wood floor as he got up and stood next to me, awkwardly trying to look me in the eye, shuffling indecisively from hoof to hoof. He said, "Please don't take this wrong." He hugged me.

I heard him trying to hold back tears and failing. This was nothing I had ever experienced, especially to feel a tear drop splash on my fur and roll down my shoulder. I'd never had a parent, not even my adopted father, who'd physically tried to comfort me, not that I would have let anypony do that. I didn't do emotional tears— anger, fear, frustration. Emotion? No. I understood it, but until this moment, I realized I understood it only intellectually because I'd read about it, like in the Countesses of Horseshoe Bay in which the Heiress Miss Glamour was always on the verge of tears because of a groom, or a sailor, or some other hunky stallion who pulled her this way or that.

I didn't jump, and for awhile, I kinda froze. My dropped beignet made a soft plop on the table. I stiffly lifted a hoof to pat his back. His grip tightened.

He said, "Nopony in my life has ever tried to protect me. You saved my life."

"I did?" I said lamely. Well, I had. I lifted the other hoof and embraced him. "Yeah, of course. Protecting is what I do best, I guess. That foal surviving on the street schtick, being a queen, fighting to protect her subjects, ya know?"

He chuckled lightly and inhaled deeply. I did, too, and took notice of his warmth pressing against my neck and a comforting horsey smell that I decided to catalog as Brandywine.

Tentatively, I added, "I've never fought for a friend before." I'd never had one. Didn't really know what the word meant, really. But saying friend somehow felt right.

He released me and stepped back. He blushed faintly, and he scratched his ear. "I don't usually get mushy, you know."

"I don't usually let boys hug me, you know." I looked down and felt my face heat up. "But, that was okay. Didn't feel the urge for an instant to throw you across the room as I would have done had anypony else tried that stunt."

I looked up. He had a goofy smile on his face as I caught him drying a tear on his cheek.

He said, "But I get a pass? A permanent pass?"

Blushing again, I answered, "For a friend, yeah. Hugs are good." He lifted a hoof.

I tapped it, and laughed. "But I'm hungry now."

"Me, too."

We dug into the food, eating in companionable silence. I looked at the wall, blank but for two pictures. One was the typical official portrait of Princess Celestia, wings flared, a red-velvet gold-gilt throne framing her. The other was a tight bust of an elegant bluegray unicorn pony I'd never seen before, with a glittery deep-blue mane framed by a blue feathered background.

"No Ring Either."

The last thing I remembered when Brandywine left me on Lavender Lather's bunk was him saying, "One of us needs to be rested." That and he didn't kiss me good-night as would have the brave young colt in any romance novel at this point in the story. He did hesitate, smile, then close the door.

Almost good enough.

I slept instantly. Both my former queens-mare, Loquacious, and my personal trainer at the castle—one of the perks and downsides of being the princess' protégé—called it soldier-sleeping. Living on the street, especially in the early years, I had learned to snatch sleep any time I could, and to be instantly awake when anypony came in range.

I trace that to what I figure was a year after my mother abandoned me on the street in Canterlot. I'm not a fan of snow, because I have a visual memory of snow and an aural memory of hooves crunching in the snow. I suspect I had been abandoned originally with some provisions, food, clothing, and maybe a doll, because sometimes I get flashes of those things that were stolen from me. I never get flashes of my mother, though. What hadn't been stolen was a pendant. It was for this trifle of gold that a fiend a year or so later thrashed me to within moments of death. My memories of snow always get colored with flashbacks of red.

But it was good in the end. It was how Loquacious found me. Bleeding in the snow. And she nursed me back and, despite her living on an unseen dimension populated with the ghosts of her foreign legionnaire comrades, she demonstrated the value of protecting ponies.

As for that pendant...

The dream showed it as tantalizingly sun-shaped, not unlike my new cutie mark, but enameled with a black sigil that seemed to be floating within hoofs-reach as I strained to grab...

"That timberwolf led the army that devastated Equestria seven hundred years ago. Celestia would never let her out of maximum restraint. Never!"

I was instantly awake.

I would never know who my parents were. Stupid subconscious! It was my new tame-self fighting the old feral-self that had vowed to kill her mother if she ever found her but knew that wasn't right. What I would do were I to meet her, or him because there had to be a him, would remain for the day we met. I was at least smart enough to know that all logic aside, my emotions would drive me that day with barbed whips.

I pushed two hooves off the bed and stretched deeply that way, listening, before creeping to the door. A light brush with the frog of my right hoof opened it a crack. Two vanguard, one with a bandaged head, stood before Lavender Lather at her unfinished pine desk. Brandywine faced her on her side of the desk and I looked at his flank (okay with me).

What kind of pony was a timberwolf?

Brandywine clarified, "I am not arguing that a monster got out of maximum restraint or the coincidence that I showed up at the same time—"

"And I'm pointing out that one of my vanguard, White Stockings, my deputy no less, hasn't returned. Look at Crinkle Paper here. Her ear was bitten clear off. It could have been her head!"

Miss Paper glanced at me with violet eyes and Lavender Lather spun her squeaky chair to glare at me. "I dislike coincidences."

I took my cue and trotted out and insinuated myself between Brandywine and the desk. I liked that. That he smiled at me, despite my cheeky closeness, I liked even more.

Obviously trying to break the sheriff's train of thought, he asked, "Did you sleep well?"

"I did—!"

Lavender Lather said, "And you? Is Jewel's report about you correct?"

"Yes, ma'am!" I said brightly and pushed my luck to rub cheeks with Brandywine. Warm. Velvety. I hoped we weren't both blushing. "I am the Queen of Cliffside. I did try to pull Celestia's wings off. Sadly, I only dislocated one... but I did pull off all her flight feathers!"

I felt Brandywine's skin shudder against mine. Okay, maybe I ought not sound so gleeful.

The sheriff narrowed her purple eyes. "Funny, that. Celestia usually reports prisoners she's sent."

"Really? Too embarrassed perhaps that a foal—"

"No ring either."

Ring? I hid my confusion and just grinned toothily.

"And that name. Sunset Shimmer. I can't place the name, but I recognize it from somewhere."

If you're too stupid to not have heard of Celestia's one protégé, foo on you.

"Were you under maximum restraint? You act like a child, but that could be an act. Have you been here more than ten years?"

"Why?" I asked with as fascinated a "childlike" expression and tone as I could muster. I widened my eyes and blinked blankly.

"There was a fire—" She stopped herself. Adults can be sooooo predictable.

"—and you lost all your records?"

Her lips compressed.

"If I answered your questions, would you believe me?"

"No."

"No restraint zone can hold the Queen—"

"No. J-just, n-no. No."

I grinned. Well, because it was funny and because I had an inkling where her discussion of a rampaging monster was going. I knew my colt-friend's agenda. Find papa. Check. Travel home. Check.

I would help with that.

I used my shoulder and nudged Brandywine behind me as I backed past the end of the desk. I said to the two vanguard, "You two can go now." I gestured dismissively with a hoof.

They looked at Lavender Lather who stood unceremoniously. "Inmate," she warned in a growl.

"I am Brandywine's advocate and—"

"His special somepony, as if I couldn't see that. Many decades older, I'm thinking—"

"I have told you who I am, what I have done, and how I am going to act. I cannot make you think." This was almost a direct quote from a thinly-disguised "Celestia" in Her Mare and the Stallion by Lunatique. Locked in a steamy affair with a dark (literally black and gray) and dangerous prince, the protagonist also had to tend to her own lands and fight repeatedly to set limits. I'd stood tall as I imagined the fictionalized Celestia did and heard her no-compromise voice in my mind. "What we are going to say, you—" I scrunched my nose and pursed my lips, shaking my head. "You probably don't want inmates to hear."

We locked stares for a half minute as the vanguard shuffled uneasily and Brandywine prodded my flank, but demonstrated his intelligence by not intervening.

Her purple eyes blinked first. She turned and said, "Crinkle Paper, find a map and mark all the sightings. Marvelous, you round up ponies to set a watch at the perimeter of the town." She had to bellow, "Shut the door!" after they left.

Somepony bucked it closed.

Before the sheriff could speak, I cut her off and spoke as a teacher speaks to a class. "You're observant, or you claim to be. What in Tartarus has gone wrong?"

"Monsters have gotten out of the restraint zones—"

"Not it." By way of demonstration, I picked up Brandywine in my magic as I trotted to the front of her desk, stacked all the papers on its surface, and rearranged her book shelf at the same time. With Brandywine's loud whinny, I made the maximum amount of noise. The desk banged to the floor. Oops, I guess I picked it up, too.

For her part, Lavender Lather glared at me and didn't once look at the window where angry rainbow crows ought to be streaming in to "mob" me.

Nope. Not a bird in sight. Very silent long seconds later, still... no angry birds.

I stated. "You knew. And you hoped Brandywine didn't so you could convince him to protect Central with his lovely known-to-be-unfettered horn."

"I don't want the inmates of the town to get the idea they can use their magic."

"Lady Jewel, you know, the drake you hinted at, she passed word of me so swiftly everypony knew about me before I got to Central."

She harrumphed.

"You remember Pear Brandy? I dealt with her... magically."

She looked at Brandywine who grinned, caught in a lie.

I said. "It was reflex. He was trying to protect a friend."

"Ponies know Brandywine isn't an inmate. They'll assume you're like him."

"You really think that?"

"Whoever you are, Sunset Shimmer, I will figure it out—"

I shook my head. This is where I could pull rank, I suppose, but this mare was stupid and since she knew Brandywine had lied to her, she'd not believe his verification. I sighed as she went on.

"—and see that you are punished for whatever disturbance you cause, and if I find out you are responsible for—"

"What? You'll arrest me? You'll throw me in the maximum restraint zone? I am not responsible for these horse apples, though I do know who is breaking Tartarus. Wait!" I laughed before I could stop myself, which brought Lavender Lather up short in her next red-faced retort. I continued, "That goth purple runt! She made Tartarus friendly, removing everything that made it unique. She made Tartarus free like the rest of Equestria!"

All the blood drained out of the sheriff's face, turning lavender to gray. She understood she was surrounded by Equestria's worst criminals and monsters. She understood that all the safeguards that protected her were broken.

Brandywine said, "If you want me to help, then I must."

I turned to the golden-brown colt, his amber eyes regarding me under his fabulous red gold-streaked mane. "You could help... but what's the point? And what about your father?"

"Ponies could be hurt."

"Right. Persecuted ponies like your father—or the other ones?"

He compressed his lips. Indecision wrinkled his black beauty muzzle.

"This is not something one pony can do," I said and faced the sheriff. "As the Queen of Cliffside, even as a magically powerful foal, I understood I could not protect the homeless of Canterlot by myself. Sure, I could intimidate and break noses occasionally, but I had to get ponies to cooperate—to not cause the constables headaches, to not steal stuff especially from one another, to not fight—so they could pool resources. I made that happen. They coronated me, though I didn't understand the concept at the time, because with me leading them life became good. They protected me in return. After all, I was just a foal and I had to sleep sometimes."

"And? You're boasting about this, why?" She sat again and put her hooves on the desk, purple eyes narrowed, ready to pounce, trying to figure out how to wrest her authority back.

"This foal—" I tapped my chest. "—nearly beat Princess Celestia one on one, and that's not boasting; it's to make a point to the both of you. You can be powerful even if you're not if you make the right decisions and get ponies to agree with you. If you have Brandywine fighting for you, you have one pony fighting. He'll lose and you'll lose."

"Thanks, Sunset," Brandywine said sullenly. He lowered his head, ears drooping.

"If you explain Tartarus is broken, tell everypony it's temporary—and I'm guessing it is—and tell them, and mean it, that you and Celestia will fix any consequences for using magic that should occur, they will cooperate. You realize that rather than fighting, running from trouble, having ponies take as much food as they can carry, may be the best idea. You have plenty of ponies here with plenty of unique talents. Show them you want to protect ponies. They'll reciprocate. The few that don't will find they have no choice but to go along. It's pony nature. Go. See what I say is true."

Lavender Lather's mouth hung open.

"In any case, we're leaving, now." I turned and nudged Brandywine with my nose, getting him to turn and look at the door ahead of me.

He'd hung his head. His muzzle brushed the tile floor. I guess my comment had hit a soft spot. I spoke into his ear. "My point was how many monsters can you face until one kills you? I nearly beat Celestia and I am not an alicorn."

Indecision had turned him to stone. "But you tried. And I understand your point."

I said louder, "The sooner we go, the sooner Lavender Lather can help the ponies of Central save themselves."

"Huh?" he said with a plosive ha, perking up, nodding as he thought about it. "You do have experience in this and I don't. I need to trust you, Queen of Cliffside." He operated the door latch with his magic without hestitation.

The moment he trotted through, two things happened.

One: Lavender Lather said, "Sunset Shimmer, perhaps you're the better choice—"

Two: Brandywine turned transparent.

I lunged forward, assuring I was neck to neck with him as a frigid darkness enveloped us.

Lessons Half-Learned

"What just happened?" Brandywine exclaimed once we left the in-between, the both of us steaming with a dusting of frost.

We stood in a field of big pan-like leaves that shivered in a hot noontime breeze. I turned until I could see Central's gray "Big House" and the adobe red tile-roofed "suburbs" surrounding it. One second, one mile? "You traveled."

"I've never gone from thought to destination in— In seconds!"

I flung the frost from our coats with my magic. If one could say we started in the east when we had gone to Central, we were now south of the settlement. An immature squash popped beneath my hoof and I jumped back.

Brandywine laughed nervously and said, "For the first time in like forever, it wasn't like running uphill. It was like pushing against a brick wall and falling through. What did I do right?"

I stepped in front of him and looked him in the eye. "So, you would help other ponies against all odds before helping find your father?"

"He can take care of himself." He nodded and looked away.

"Right answer," I said, reaching forward to nuzzle him as the heroine in any romance story might to show her colt-friend he had done the right thing. His fur felt soft against mine.

He stepped back flushing. "Sunset! What was that for?"

"For proving that you are noble somewhere deep in that teenage male blockhead of yours. After Princess Celestia had beaten me, when she had then returned my freedom in hope that I might join her to help Equestria, she demonstrated to me that her goal was to protect ponies, all ponies. That doesn't mean she is perfect. She is a bit of a tyrant, but she often helps way more than she hurts. I saw that in her heart; I see it in yours. So, where next?"

"I guess I should say thank you." He still blushed, but began scraping a hoof back and forth in the dark soil. "Twilight Sparkle's gate, or the influence of her magic certainly messed stuff up. The rules I expected Father to encounter have changed. If the princess' power here is nullified, I think Father can handle himself." He looked down.

I blew air through my lips. "Honesty is noble, too. When a mare pays you a compliment, the right answer is 'thank you.' She's probably right."

He started to chuckle. He didn't say thank you, though.

I prompted, "What's the plan?"

"Cerberus is to the south. My father's pardon might convince Cerberus to let him through the gate. However, we really need to return you to Twilight's Tartarus gate so you can go home."

I shook my head. "I don't need sparkle pony's gate. I have you. We've proven I can travel with you."

"And if that fails when I leave? I really don't understand my special talent. It's wonky. I wouldn't make that decision."

"I'm Celestia's protégé. You understand now the ordeal she went through to choose me. What's the worst that could happen?"

"You get eaten by a monster."

"Well, there is that. But I can take care of myself, especially with that nifty spell you taught me. You know, Force."

"Which we need to practice some more."

My heart beat faster and I smiled. What? He said, we! Him and I. Together. "So if Celestia is miffed, she lets me stew here for awhile. In maximum restraint? She's not a disciplinarian. That means Central and I can wrap Lavender Lather around a spindle. And that's before I've explained who I really am."

"If she believes you."

I stared.

"You are determined."

"I am. And that looks like south." I pointed. Squinting, I could see the ring of mountains converging in a dark smudge. As we began walking through what became a field of cabbage, I asked, "And what's a cerberus?"

He looked over his shoulder. His amber eyes glittered. "Not a pony for reading the classics, eh?"

"Um—"

"History either?"

"STEM curriculum. You know: Science, thaumaturgy, engineering, and mathematics. And when I'm not studying, mostly trying to make inconcrete numbers make concrete sense, I read trashy romances."

"The trashier the better?" He snorted and looked forward. We were now on a road. I noticed his face had colored.

With a sing-song voice, I said, "Some-pony reads them too-oo!"

He sputtered.

"For research, no doubt. Or pointers—"

Something loud—and distant—sounded a long wailing shriek. A shocked sweat cooled on my hide as we both froze and looked east. In the haze, I could see a mote of tan against the gray backdrop of cloud shrouded mountains. It resolved into a shambling thing with short back limbs and massive forelimbs, and a green mop-like head with what looked like rolled horns that made it look like it wore a pompadour.

Brandywine breathed. "That... that's an arimaspi."

"I hope Lavender Lather takes my advice and leads her ponies to safety."

By unspoken consent, we fast trotted south despite the heat. I said, "Now might be a good time to travel to see a cerberus."

"I'm trying!"

Getting caught in the open didn't feel right, and I doubted all of Celestia's nightmares were as tall and easy to see. We went as fast as we could as Brandywine's efforts to travel proved wonky and fruitless as ever.

An hour later, huffing and puffing, lathered with sweat, my tongue sticking to my palate, we trotted under the cover of a forest of not-exactly-trees. While they towered to a sickly yellow-green canopy above, whirls of thread-like tassels or streamers of ribbons substituted for leaves and moved in the breeze with a wet sound reminiscent of a burbling brook. Depending on the type of tree, the outside varied from ribbed to pebbly, ranging from soot-color to silver. Whether it was a thorny shrub or a straight and commanding lodge-pole pine giant, the bark sagged like the skin of an obese animal.

I tapped one young willowy tree, expecting it to whip elastically about. Instead, it moved the width of my hoof and stopped, momentarily rock-like. Close-up, it smelled fetid, something like the fancy cheese Celestia sometimes tried to get me to taste.

"Sunset, over here."

I trotted toward his voice over the often crackly ground. Past a veil of brush, I found him drinking from a stream, the sound of which was masked by the trees. "Thank Celestia!" I cried and bent my neck to drink.

The cool water tasted cheesy, too. I didn't care.

Something made a soft crack. I brought my head around, spraying droplets of water that sparkled in the dappled light. A sound like cicada wings buzzed around behind me, but I lost its source as a I turned in the trees. "What?"

"Living creatures inhabited Tartarus before Celestia came here."

I shuddered. "Winged things—? Is this the world the breezies come from?"

"Father told me the chitter are kinda donut-shaped with legs and more than one head, and metallic-colored beetle wings. Animals, best anypony can tell."

"Why's that?"

"Not a lot of naturalists sentenced to Tartarus."

"Right."

"They bite."

"Oh, wonderful. Tartarussian chiggers."

We finished drinking in peace. As we walked from the brook, a short greenish ribbon leaf presented itself on a twig. Instinct took over and I bit. The ribbon turned crispy, like a cookie or cereal. I spat and kept spitting. It tasted like garlic and halitosis, and stale moldy cheese.

Brandywine chuckled. "It is edible. Mostly protein, like eggs."

"And disgusting."

He pointed along the brook. "It'll eventually take us to the lake we need to circle. Cerberus eats the branches and leaves of various kibble plants. I suppose they dominated the landscape once."

"But not anymore? She chopped down the forests to constrain the creature's food source, to keep this cerberus from roaming?"

He shrugged and I looked behind at a passing buzz. The forest was full of "bird" calls and "insect" buzzes, besides the swish of the wind. Thankfully all kept their distance. Answering my unvoiced question, he said, "Cerberus is a critter. He looks like a big black dog, emphasis on big."

Oh. Okay. Something named Cerberus. That made sense. "But shaped like a donut?"

"Well, he's so fat and muscular, you can't tell, or at least you'd not want to get close enough to try."

"Teeth but no wings. How big?"

"Bigger than you can lift."

I harrumphed. There was nothing I'd wanted to lift that I'd failed to lift, not that I'd tried to find my limits. Acting a muscle-head earth pony had never appealed to me.

Critters buzzed and slithered through the strange forest. I kept glancing about, my heart jumping now and again, as we journeyed through the crispy landscape. My being on edge made me hear something before Brandywine.

He pointed excitedly toward a cross-stream and a bright clearing ahead, but I shushed him; I put a hoof to his mouth and pointed.

His ears perked. His brow wrinkled as he lead us, wadding quietly through the faster stream to tangled brambles that served as a blind looking out at—

At first all I saw was a maintained dirt road with wagon ruts. It ran north-south on the opposite bank of what was now obviously a small river. I heard a clatter, almost wooden and musical like a marimba, very distinct from the crunch and thunk of treeish growths in the kibble forest. Celestia had a grove of giant bamboo in the royal gardens. In wind storms, it tonked and clanked like this. If a sound could be enormous, it was. As was this approaching wooden sound.

Something enormous and otherworldly strode around the bend. The dog-like creature, skeletal, bigger than a two story building, was composed completely of Equestrian logs, branches, and sticks. Leaves, still attached, fluttered at the ankles of its paws, along its tail, and the ruff of its neck. They created eyebrows and eyelashes around eyes composed of a greenish glow visible in the afternoon sun.

Predator, I thought. Not a dog.

A wolf.

It stopped about ten yards beyond our hideout. It lifted its muzzle in the air, sniffing with a nose barely implied by the stick structure of its head. It turned its head and looked around and past us.

It paused. Despite the sweltering heat, I shivered. I stopped breathing. I felt my heart pounding and heard the blood rushing in my ears.

The creature raised its head and howled.

After a few moments, it continued clattering on its way.

I breathed, "That was a timberwolf!"

"The timberwolf," he whispered, awed, though it was out of range.

I remembered. "The one that defeated Celestia?"

"Probably."

As we swam and walked through the mud of the slow river to the opposite bank, I nervously said, "It must be a little stronger than me if it defeated Celestia."

On the road, Brandywine shook himself out beside me and said, "You do realize that you almost won against Princess Celestia because she let you?"

I bristled—and I think my reaction was visible—but it started me thinking as we trotted south. He wasn't wrong, but he wasn't right, either.

I said, "Total power doesn't translate to ability. At the time, my ability to cast illusions outclassed the princess completely. She couldn't see me. She was always wrong where she thought I was, and she could not discern her own reality—and she's told me this—meaning that I could get her to stumble into obstacles. Learning to think in words has made it much more difficult for me to come close to being as good an illusionist as I was."

He stopped us, listened, then motioned ahead. Quietly, he said, "Yes, but at any time she could have cast Force and ended the fight."

"She did do something. She found me and caught me up in her magic, but couldn't stop me from doing magic."

He chuckled. "When I can simply flick your horn to distract you?"

"She shook me a lot and spun me around. I was angry, furious; I was fighting for my ponies! I was certain she had hurt them badly at the time. I was focused."

"You seemed focused in Central's market facing off my mother."

He'd flicked my horn, forcing me to threaten Pear Brandy with my hooves. What was different? Right! "It takes words to worry. Images—"

"—keep you focused... because you need to conceive failure to worry?"

I grinned as we watched something with two heads scuttle lizard-like to the river bank. When it was obvious something else hadn't flushed it from cover, I said, "Couldn't have said it better."

He eyed the twisted Tartarussian excuse for an iguana as we passed and said, "We need to find a place to practice your spell."

I nodded, then realized something. "At any one point in time ponies aren't just power and abilities. We are our goals, intentions, and fears. Combine all that and you get possible actions in any one moment. We're a different pony every interval between decisions. For while my goals empowered me and Celestia's inhibited her, I could win. Look, I could just spin and buck you into the river—"

"Thanks!"

"But I'm not doing that to anypony, especially a friend. Her goal was more lofty than mine. In the end, I cracked."

Did I really say that?

I cracked.

I shuddered and felt my ears flop forward. I lowered my head. I had cracked. What were these hot tears streaming down my cheeks?

I'd read enough stories about the hero who in the final moment failed because she saw the evil in her methods. Lacy "The Knife" Goring in Fate's Lessons Half-Learned came to mind. "I was twisting off Celestia's wings and pulling out her feathers!" I wailed.

"Sunset, please!" he hissed.

"I don't like hurting ponies. All she wanted was to make me surrender. In the end, I couldn't do what was necessary to win. She smothered me. I could have done worse to her, but I just... couldn't."

I found Brandywine leaning into me, warm, gently pushing me into motion as my thoughts kept twining and tangling, jungle-like and wild. Perhaps it was my wordy present-self reshaping the image recollections of my inarticulate past-self and it wasn't true. Lost or cracked, did it make a difference?

What was true: Celestia won.

And she had made sure I won, too.

I was such a foal! Intuition derided me with the thought that this too was also a lesson half-learned.

I found myself in a small clearing fully surrounded by kibble trees with a dim recollection of crunching over crackly bark and shouldering aside branches. I matched my body so that I leaned flush into Brandywine's, cheek to flank, and didn't care that it was just too warm to do that. Comfort had multiple levels. "You are sweeter than I deserve."

Gently, he said, "I thought the Queen of Cliffside didn't cry."

I sniffed loudly. "Problem is, I'm not her any more. Celestia tamed her. She made Sunset Shimmer in her place."

"The student? The protégé? Oh, I'm pretty sure you created that yourself. But—" He broke contact and moved so his amber eyes looked into mine. He grinned. "Sunset Shimmer, the student, needs to practice casting Force."

I felt like a rung-out wash rag. In fact, I felt like something substantial had fallen away, like a broken necklace dropped during the day and only noticed getting ready for bed. Lost. No chance of finding that again. I wasn't sure I was sad. Or that I missed the whatever-it-was. Or that I cared. I answered with a tentative grin, "Sure. I can do that."

After a bit of review and a demonstration, I cast Force easily, warping my raw magic into a glowing green cylinder, and with a minimum of power so I didn't drain myself. Aim was a bugaboo, though.

His jaw dropped. "That curved to the right almost 45 degrees! I didn't know you could do that!"

I hadn't either. It was like trying to keep marbles from rolling off a table with one short leg. I kept at it. More often than not I scorched a kibble tree, rather than blasting the branch I aimed at. I just couldn't figure it out, but decided to settle for close. Considering how erratic I was, Brandywine didn't dare get in the line of fire to help me figure out what I didn't understand.

As we crept cautiously to the road, he whispered, "It took me months to get it right."

"Curving bolts, scorches, and all?"

"Well..."

"I'm sure I'll get it to work when I really need it."

"When you need to focus, Sunset? You know," he said as we trotted down the empty road, "I think you will."

"We're Being Herded."

The only other inmates we met on the road were a pair of mantis-like creatures with brown carapaces but with horse-like faces and eyes. At sighting one-another around a bend, they froze. We froze. They then flew over us on roaring dragonfly wings with no interest in contact.

That got us to a slot lake at the base of the circular mountain range. The forest continued, thinning to scattered woods and copses that spread into the closer highlands and toward an unusual sight: waterfalls that ran uphill along the base of a cone-like caldera, the base of which descended gently into the lake. I had been hearing a strange crashing, hissing sound as we walked, one that periodically echoed and ebbed and flowed as we followed the widening river through the forest.

The volcano began to rumble, then with a growing boiling sssish sound, lofted a rush of foaming water that reached toward the weird dome-like sky. At the peak of the geyser's eruption, the frothy spew merged with a deck of cloud, adding to it. As some of the water fell back, it reversed the waterfalls. Dark storms spread like suds in a bath tub northeast and northwest to follow the ridges and peaks of the mountains.

In a world without functioning pegasi, something had to make the weather. And the humidity. The heavy air smelled of sulfur. I could taste an acrid taint of metals on my tongue. The air was so filled with moisture, I expected it would turn to mist as the sun went down. I'd never understood why Celestia liked to take steam baths those times she "escaped" to the spa with me. I preferred the sauna myself, but I wasn't getting my preference today.

Just walking out from the tree to the reddish-black pebbly shoreline, I began to sweat profusely. The lake was miles wide, east to west, but less than a quarter mile from this shore to the one beyond at the heel of the geyser. "Up for a swim?"

"Not a good idea— Better not!" he said sharply as my hooves crunched on the beach as I stepped from a berm of marsh grasses. I looked intensely ahead as he said, "Not all Celestia's enemies live on land."

"Sea serpents?" I asked, eying suspicious random ripples on a lake that criss-crossed regularly-spaced wind-blown waves. The water was black, probably not very deep. Bits of blue sky reflected in the distance and sparkled.

"Dunno. Maybe? There are saltwater restraint zones beneath the surface. Rainwater lakes in the highlands serve that purpose east and west of Cerberus' gate."

I peered at the geyser. At the bottom, it appeared composed of the same silver and gold pyrite as the other mountains. Something else clad its elevations that at first glance resembled snow—stained snow—with streaks of yellow, red, and brown. Mineral deposits, like those found around faucets and tubs. I asked, "Is Cerberus and his gate up there?"

"No. It's a few miles beyond where the sky meets the land at the most southern reach of the mountains. It's a blasted peak, leveled to a plain."

"And we'll find your Father there?"

He motioned me back to where the river still flowed and the sweet water hadn't mixed with the tiny rectangular sea. He said, "There, or gone through to report to Celestia." He lowered his head and sipped noisily. As I copied him, he looked at the geyser and added. "He went through a door in Twilight Sparkle's gate, sucked through just like us."

I swallowed the cheesy warm water and said, "I'm sorry I opened the door."

"Father's fault. You'd just earned your cutie mark trying to help. Not your fault he figured out how to trigger the gate. I've come to love your enthusiasm for life, Sunset. I hope one day I can learn from you to replace what I've lost since my mother proved she was crazy and evil."

When he reviewed his last words, he jerked his head to look at me. His cheeks lit up red. He glanced down and whispered, "Oh boy."

My face colored and heated up. That's pretty impressive when you consider the blazing sun that was almost ready to become lost in the ring of clouds, the ambient temperature, and don't forget the humidity that threatened to parboil us. I gasped and looked rapidly right and left and then down, too.

I didn't need the guidance of any contrived romance novel to gauge the meaning of my fluttering heart and the butterflies spinning in my stomach, or why my knees felt weak. His word. Love. It might have been an accident, a slip of the tongue. What it did reveal was his true sentiment—you know, what the blush that extended from his cheeks to his ears and neck confirmed.

I was probably his first mare-friend.

The word struck lightning into my heart and soul. I had no doubt that this is what love felt like. It wasn't a crush. That was non-interactive. Infatuation from afar. Here I already had a friend. Something told me it was indeed more.

Was it too soon to know? In dangerous and extraordinary situations, we'd learned so much about one another—what in storybooks ponies learned over months of dinners and domestic adventures and financial disasters that threatened his estate or her nation. I'd earned his respect, and he mine. We looked out after one another. He cared enough to comfort me and help me work through my horse apples. He even finished my sentences...

Was I too young for love?

A stupid question, of course—though a stray thought about lessons half-learned did bedevil me. I metaphorically and physically shooed it away with my hoof, spraying water with the gesture.

I said, "I will always be there for anything you want me to teach you." I took a couple steps toward him.

He had the body language of a colt affected by brain-scramble, mind gone completely blank. He shifted, stirring the river water about and clacking muddy pebbles together, his tail swishing of its own accord. He coughed and finally said. "Me too. I mean, I'd like that and—" He swallowed visibly. "I'd love to teach you anything I know, too."

He coughed. That word again.

He grinned.

I grinned.

He looked up and stepped toward me. When I continued to smile—despite the thudding of my heart in my chest which, in its sheer concussive force, threatened to knock me straight over—he closed the distance and reached down (he was a bit taller) to bring his lips to mine.

I reached up to meet him.

A loud wheezy voice cried, "Oh, isn't this a sweet tableau!"

I shrieked and jumped, landing with a splash. Brandywine whirled, yelling, "Sugar cubes!" Instantly, he jumped in front of me, between me and—

I jumped between him and a sea serpent, lowering my horn and preparing Force with desperate speed. When Brandywine tried to get between us, though hyperventilating, I said, "No."

Shoulder to shoulder we faced— "What is it?"

I felt Brandywine shrug. "Beats me."

I had thought the creature a sea serpent, but I could see evidence of a body below the waves. It paddled to keep a long neck above the waves. Actually, it looked like some crazy giraffe-porpoise chimera. It had a giraffe's hour-glass muzzle, face, and fuzzy nobby antlers. Its neck had giraffe spots, big splotches of black in a field of dirty sky blue. It had the teeth of a shark, visible as it grinned at us in delight.

It paddled its flukes faster, lifting its body high enough to expose flippers with which it clapped. Its stomach was a watery blue and its back the same as his neck. "Such a show! Such a show! Don't let me stop you. More. More!"

Sotto voce, I said, "Do you think Celestia also sends her most annoying adversaries here, too?"

The whatever-it-was kept paddling, looking credulous. With teeth like chef knives, it was hard to think of it as a clown. Brandywine had the same thought as me. Quietly, keeping the idiot creature in view, we walked on the margin of the forest and beach, maintaining as many pony-lengths between him and us as possible.

The creature followed, but at an unseen barrier stopped and whined. "Can't you do something? Pleeeeeeease!" I swear, he lengthened the syllable beyond my lung capacity.

"You're right about the annoying part," Brandywine admitted.

That instant, a huge fin appeared offshore, swimming rapidly. The giraffe-porpoise dove over, displaying whale flukes that smacked the water as he dove. The fin creature turned, frothing the water and disappeared.

I shivered. Consider me disabused of any thought that Tartarus might be a nice place whether controlled by Celestia—or made friendly by a goth purple demigod wannabe.

"I guess you can make all sort of enemies in a thousand years," Brandywine added.

"Judging by what I accomplished in twelve… yeah, undoubtedly. I'm going to have to ask Celestia about those nightmares, though."

We trotted as fast as we could, wary of shadows in the forest and the water, both of us quiet and me deeply disconcerted. Thoughts of love and having almost kissed seemed far from important at the moment. Soon, all this would be all over.

We could work out the fun particulars at our leisure.

The sun drifted behind dark clouds as we turned back toward the geyser. We immediately found a winding road that avoided it and led into the highlands. Steps to the left continued up to secluded mountain lakes. The kibble trees that veiled them soon hid the sea below. The hiss and fizz of the geyser dominated most of the time, but strains of an eerie beautiful harmony no pony throat could emit drifted through the trees and echoed off pyrite walls. Above, the clouds became increasingly darker. They were the same clouds as when we arrived last night, but in the daylight the wane restriction zone illumination did not light them. It felt like a gathering storm. The black miasma curdled in the sky and looked ready to spawn lightening with no pegasus to regulate its ferocity. Drops started falling, spattering on my nose as if to taunt me, and on the ground to make spots of mud.

A spooky feeling of dread filled me. I barely kept my gate from increasing. The quickly darkening dirt and gravel road was unsuitable for the gallop that I itched for.

I did not realize my cutie mark adventure had ceased to be fun until it wasn't any more. By unvoiced agreement, where the road became flat, we cantered as best we could, and finding a grassy knoll, we galloped across even as a light rain began to fall.

It was blood temperature. The wild, unpredictable, uncontrolled randomness of the weather wasn't missed by either of us. We hurried, looking for and taking short-cuts across fields and making a clatter that could not be mistaken for anything but frightened ponies fleeing.

I should have known that our intemperance would not be missed. As the Queen of Cliffside, I had learned what it meant to be thrashed to within a few breaths of life. Nopony could accuse me of being timid as a result. Observant and cautious, yes.

Today, that lack proved completely wrong-headed. And Brandywine sensed it before me. Maybe his Father had talked of his military or police training, or related stories that might be good at a campfire or a sleepover, but cautionary here. He slowed suddenly and said, "We're being herded."

I looked and realized we were on one of those grassy knolls when the road should have been the direct route to Cerberus' gate. We'd been subconsciously spooked.

We were being hunted and I had stopped thinking.

The mist had begun to rise. Tendrils of the gray stuff looked like ghostly cypress. The sun had fallen low enough and the clouds grown thick enough that twilight had essentially arrived. At least the rain had stopped. The air smelled of lightning, crackling with electricity though not one bolt had yet struck. The closest rumble was many miles away.

I spoke the spell mnemonics for Force out loud. When I saw the very real shape of the ready spell form a faint rusty hexagonal rod-like overlay on my sight, I asked, "Herded where?"

"Away from the station near the Cerberus gate. Just keep moving. The road's that way." He pointed with his black muzzle.

We trotted over real Equestrian grass, splat-splatting, looking warily about as we passed the columns and clumps of mist. The wet condensed and beaded on my fur and left me even hotter. The sound of our hooves was the only sound, and it intensified the sense of being watched.

I gasped when I heard somepony galloping behind. We turned to see a cyan pegasus with and absurdly long pink mane slide from under the branches of kibble trees, trip, and spin across the grass. She scrambled and flared her wings, until she got enough traction to get her hooves under her and gallop toward us.

"Thank Celestia!" she cried as she slid to a stop just beyond us on the slick grass, using her wings to brake. I could see a massive rope-like bruise around her flank and under her stomach, peppered with saucer-sized splotches; her fur was rubbed raw. Her mane wept a rivulet of blood. The bits of kibble sticks in her hair told the story of her pulling too hard to get out of a snag of branches. "I thought I was alone!"

She collapsed, sobbing.

I really wanted to keep moving. "Please," I said, nudging her with a hoof and desperately looking about, "Get up."

Brandywine glanced sharply at me, but to her said, "We can't stay here."

The pegasus wailed as I nervously stepped in place.

A drizzle began to augment the mist. "Oh, come on," I said and pushed her flank, albeit too close to her bruises. She had a broke-stem daisy as a cutie mark. She shuddered.

Brandywine gave me a look and hissed, "You're not helping," and folded down beside her to talk with her softly.

His "We're being herded" ringing in my head really wasn't helping either. I worked on keeping my spell ready and looking around as the two talked lowly. Mostly she cried. I was obviously not as empathetic as Brandywine. I didn't trust tears, especially ones that got in the way. With memories of seeing the timberwolf stalking pony-lengths away and thoughts of her wandering about, I had no patience either. When I heard the mare talking about monsters, I lost it.

"If you're thinking we can keep you safe—" I yelled, dropping Force and preparing Levitation.

Brandywine warned, "Sunset!"

"—here, you're wrong. We need to run."

Brandywine shifted and waved at me to back off, making it impossible to pick up just the mare.

The mare cried, "You can't just run from it!"

"But you have to try," I said, resolved to pick them both up and run when it hit me. "You're a pegasus. You could just fly!"

She quieted instantly as if her tears had held no significance. "It—it's Tartarus."

"For Celestia's sake!" I grabbed the pink-maned pegasus and my colt-friend apart and whirled her once above my head before putting her down beside a very shocked Brandywine as he struggled upright on the wet grass. "The place is broken. The rainbow crows are on vacation. How do you think horrors are getting out of the restraint zones!?"

She blinked. She looked sharply in the direction she arrived, getting us to look, too. Usurious tears forgotten, she flared her wings and hovered, the instant before she turned and bucked Brandywine over.

She shot into the sky.

Stunned by her betrayal of Brandywine's kindness, I didn't reflexively grab her. And she wasn't as stupid as she wanted us to believe; she got trees between us as she screamed, "Suckers! You deal with that thing!" She dove into and out of the mists on a crazy evasive course as if she'd done it before.

It was Tartarus. Of course she'd evaded being caught before. She'd probably only failed once.

I screamed inarticulately as I ripped my focus to what was important. I dropped beside my noble idiot where he lay flattened on his side, shaking his head, eyes white with disbelief, in pain. She'd connected just above his hip. Twin tracks of torn skin ran across his flank, from croup to dock. I pressed down with my magic to stop the bleeding.

"You were right," he said, closing his eyes and furrowing his brow.

"I didn't say anything."

"I can certainly read you—"

Exasperated, I said, "I don't want right. I want gone!"

As I began to levitate him, he flailed and said, "Set me down. I can walk."

He pressed against his wound with his magic as we started trotting, albeit much slower than before. I prepared Force again, scanning the trees and the sky as I let him pick our path. Cerberus' gate was two or three miles ahead. We found the road. Beyond the trees on the left lay a flattened mountain with two walls that probably housed a lake restraint zone. Our rocky path was muddy with gold-flecked gray stone dust.

We're being herded.

It would have been a excellent time to use Travel, but I refused to distract him if that meant me maintaining pressure on his wound and neither of us looking for or being prepared for an ambush. The two restraint zones we passed seemed eerie because they were silent as well as surrounded by concealing boulders and contorted wind-blown Equestrian trees. The hiss of the geyser behind us and distant thunder dominated.

We're being herded.

Trees and rock and mist confused the line of sight in all directions, cloaking everything in shadowy drifting pareidolia that hinted at spiders and timberwolves and hunchback ponies pacing our progress south. My heart beat way too fast. The heavy air smelled faintly of rotten eggs and rotten cheese. Add faint nausea to the list.

We're being herded.

I was so intent on looking and listening for an active enemy trying to corral us that I didn't see the one waiting motionlessly for us come to it. When Brandywine suddenly stopped, I glanced ahead.

I really wished he hadn't stopped.

I would rather have nonchalantly veered off to the rocks or trees, or at least gotten a chance to retreat smoothly to a place that was less of an ambush point before predator and prey became certain they knew who was predator and who was prey.

We were prey.

"No, No, No, No, No!"

I locked eyes with something ahead in the swirling mists.

By this alone, I could judge its size because all animals have eyes of roughly the same size. Little else about the titan looked familiar. The mists shifted and I saw gazelle-like legs and muscular hindquarters that made it more dangerously lithe than elephantine, this despite fan-like flares of webbed skin above its hooves. I could see bulking forequarters, also, but the monstrosity of its face hid much of that.

It was a ungulate chimera that was both elephant and octopus. Writhing tentacles and trunks reached all the way to the ground like a living beard in motion, hiding what I had no doubt was a vicious maul of sharp teeth. The appendages lead up to a monumental rock dome of a head with a gazelle's black nose writ large, and elephant ears and magenta eyes set forward in its skull. Its blue-grey furless skin glistened, making me think it was a denizen of the shoreline. Maybe the tentacles helped it swim, too.

The pegasus!

The wound around her barrel at her rear legs. The pulled hair.

Tentacles.

I swallowed hard. It had sent the pegasus to slow us down. Paranoid, maybe. But Equestria had few non-sentient monsters; Celestia sent none of those to Tartarus.

I wasn't going to ask why the hunter hunted us, either.

In a whisper, Brandywine said, "On three, we split up and run separate—"

"No," I said flatly. "It'll go after the weaker one and that's you. No."

"Then let's at least retreat."

"It can sprint faster than we can," I said, my eyes locked on its eyes. "For the moment, only us not moving is keeping it from attacking."

"And you're sure of this because...?"

"Instinct. Because I fought many times before. Opponents inevitably bigger than me. It's some sort of ungulate, not too different from a horse. I'm assuming, ok?"

"Then what are we going to do?" I could sense in his voice that his ears were down and that he was scared.

Me, too, that is frightened but not ears down—I wasn't foal enough to show it. "We fight."

"We—We? What?"

Still whispering, I said, "It won't move until we break. Maybe it will smile and offer a tea party and conversation. Prepare Force or Shield just in case, which ever you think would be most effective. I'm remembering a certain rock I blasted early this morning. We get just one shot before it overruns us."

Silence. After many heartbeats, silence; long enough for acid to crawl up my throat as I firmed up the hexagonal rod shape of Force in my mind. He whispered, "Remember to aim ahead of your target."

I smiled. "Tell me when you're ready."

"Never going to be, really, but— I've got Force ready."

I chuckled. "Break to the left when I move. Prepare to run away. And, wait for it..."

I continued staring unblinking into the magenta eyes fifty pony-lengths away. This chthonic horror from some dark abyss was scarier than a timberwolf by far, but oddly, I felt calm. Loquacious had called me her warrior queen enough times that I understood both words and had taken up the title. Hiding in the forest, looking through a blind of kibble trees across a river, I had then had no purpose other than to be an observer, nor other choice but to become frightened.

Now I sank into a role I knew well.

I protected ponies. I would protect Brandywine. I would put every last iota of my magic into the shot—I'd spare nothing. I'd ensure the monster would rue the day it thought to challenge a unicorn.

One shot.

And while Brandywine ran, I would charge. Queens did that. Mares did that. Real mares, not the ones in the romance novels.

I stepped forward.

It lunged at us as if launched from a catapult. It trumpeted through multiple trunks sounding less like an elephant than a runaway freight train roaring down hill with its polyphonic train whistle shrilling. The moment its cloven hooves struck the road, the shock thundered through the ground. Not only was it as big as a house, it weighed as much, too.

My thinking sped up because time, sure as Tartarus was real, didn't slow down. As the titan's rear legs touched down, I saw Brandywine break left and curve out of its way. An amber aura lit his horn, visible in the rapidly dimming daylight.

I leapt towards it, breaking only enough to the right to make me a clear target and the closest, the only one that need be defended against. As my gait lengthened to a gallop, I knew intuitively that the titan's only vulnerable spot would be its eyes. If the least I did was hit it with a breath of singeing fire, I'd have at least blinded it.

I should have told Brandywine. An amber bolt splashed below the titan's nose. Since the monster waved its mass of tentacles, it minimized damage to any one organ. Skin charred, it rampaged on…

And veered toward Brandywine.

Ice instantly clawed up my spine from my tail to my clenched heart. I lost my rhythm, stepped wrong.

Stay on target.

It took two crooked lopes to regain my gait. I turned toward the titan to intercept it, but it presented its shoulder in total disdain of the threat I offered. I couldn't cut it off!

Stay on target.

As the geometry of my horn and its right eye grew to nearly 45°, and I felt confident I understood its true size, speed, and distance, I began pushing against the spell shape, aiming, ready to squish it like a grape to smash all my magic through it.

Stay on target.

Its eyes weren't even on me! Adding annoyance to anger and fear, I pushed with all my might, aiming for the center of its left eye.

The spell skittered away. Nothing happened.

Not even a sparkle-pony spark.

I screamed my frustration, braking on wet grass, losing the optimal shot. I pushed, this time harder, aiming for the titan's ear, imagining its head to be the rock I blasted before. I pushed and shoved my magic.

Nothing!

Shrieking, I barely kept myself from losing traction as my hindquarters shimmied right and left. As the titan and I passed one another, I got back on the road and spun around, aiming a buck at the monster's back left hock—

—and kicked air.

I stumbled and hopped when my front hoof twisted on a small rock. I now looked at the titan's rear, protected by a furless deer-like flag tail. I'd lost the force spell completely.

On neither side of the retreating titan did I see Brandywine. Which meant—

"No, no, no, no, no!" I cried as I used every bit of what I had learned to recover from a fault during steeplechase. I got my legs behind me and leapt, kicking stones behind, pushing the fast sprint as far as I could with no thought of endurance. If I could not distract the titan, or something....

This would be really bad.

I had wits enough to cast the one spell I could depend on: Levitate. The spell instantly popped visually across my eyes, whirling with taunting fiery lozenge-shaped outlines. If I could just get a line of sight on Brandywine, I could whisk him from danger.

Unfortunately, any deviation right or left would further the titan's lead and dilute the effectiveness of the spell. Were it pony-sized, it would be slow. But house-sized, it had a gigantic stride-length. Galloping, one stride took over a second between the thunderous strikes of its front hooves, but the distance it covered was enormous.

As I drew even with its rear legs on the right, I yelled, "Brandywine!" Maybe if I could get an idea where he was, I'd be able to grab for him by sound alone.

He screamed.

The sound abruptly stopped, cut off.

I yelled, "You hurt him and— and—!"

It helped my advance that the titan slowed. I saw clearly from its right side as it whipped Brandywine upward like a foal's doll, wrapped in a loop of an elephant trunk. It encircled his withers, snugging its nostrils against his lower ear. Brandywine bucked ineffectively, but also struggled to push to free himself with his forelegs even though the fall could be fatal.

If I didn't catch him.

"Release him!" I yelled, though winded as the titan slowed. It heard; I chose to think that because its curve to the right also put me between an outcropping of rocks, a dense line of trees, and the monster itself, forming a cul-de-sac trap into which I galloped so hard that my front legs and rear legs crossed completely in an X. I flew through the air with each lope with no hooves on the ground. I reached out with my magic and slapped it near the eye to let it know I had power it might have imagined I lacked. "Release him!"

"No!" It rumbled deeper than thunder like the exhalation of a cavern. I felt it in my stomach.

Closer now as it slowed, I grabbed for the tip of the trunk that held Brandywine flailing over its head, at least three stories in the air. I tried ripping the thick, wrinkled hawser-like organ up and over Brandywine's withers.

And succeeded.

"No!" it rumbled, and faster than I could adjust my grip fully and snatch Brandywine more than a half a pony-length upward, tentacles, like the strike of half-a-dozen snakes, shot up and tangled themselves over him with the slapping sound of wet noodles. Rope-width wet noodles. The sound even hurt. As I struggled to pull him, then desperately to pull away the mess, further tentacles wound around his barrel and legs.

It all happened in the span of it rumbling, "He my little pony!"

The titan finished by tightening its grip. I clearly heard cracks and popping noises.

Breaking bone noises.

Despite having the breath squeezed from him, Brandywine managed a terrified, "Sunset!"

My heart broke. My pony body wanted to freeze, but rage burnt through all that.

Shrieking "Brandywine!" I did what street fighter-me would do. I grabbed the house-sized creature beside me as I would have any normal-sized pony who had ever threatened those I protected and lifted it skyward.

The sheer magnitude of the feedback of its weight sent a shock through my horn. My broken heart almost seized up. It sundered me. I lost my gait and lost my step. My legs tangled; I stumbled and crashed down, right shoulder leading to slide pony-lengths on the grass.

And I kept sliding.

Connected to the beast through magic, its momentum dragged me roughly along like a disobedient child's red wagon as I doggedly kept it levitated. I knew absolutely that if I let go, the creature would smash Brandywine as it crashed to earth and rolled forward.

The soaked meadow, however, was not a lawn. Prickly seed heads slashed at my eyes. Pulped grass slathered me with a slurry that smelled of Celestia's mowed bowling green and her favorite lemongrass tonic. Struggling, I nevertheless slid and shimmied toward knobby exposed tree roots, and an iron pyrite outcrop beyond that, and toward the road that would scape my fur off were I dragged down it. I peddled my legs and bucked for all I was worth. I flopped twice hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.

Being dragged by the horn would disorient you, too.

I managed the acrobatics just in time to hop the roots, but landed haunches down and had to buck to get myself airborne over the rocks. I wobbled as my hooves hit the muddy stone road, but that gave me purchase as it continued dragging me forward, the friction of my gold-plated horseshoes acting as increasingly hot, albeit ineffective, brakes.

Being bruised but upright, and nominally safe, gave me a moment to think about the dynamics of Levitation that essentially worked by pushing up against gravity but otherwise didn't violate physics. It allowed me to remember my observation about Shield when I instead warped Levitation when pressed by Brandywine to demonstrate I knew a combat spell.

I transformed the burning lozenge of the spell, warping the gravity shear upward as far as it could go without letting the spell shape fragment. If I could push opposite our direction of travel...

Ten seconds later, we stopped.

I stood, feeling overloaded as if lead packed my saddlebags and was piled upon my back. A gravity-like force pulled me with the magnitude of change I'd felt stepping out of a bath having soaked buoyant in hot water for an hour. My skin buzzed and crackled. My green magic aura had extended from my horn to envelop my body as I pushed relentlessly to restrain the titan.

It floated before me and swayed a pony-length in the air, as if on an unsteady ocean instead of in a single-sourced magical apparition, its antelope legs reaching and swishing uselessly for the ground it could no longer reach. It quickly realized it could push its mass against the spell like a foal could pump a playground swing, trying to drift toward the side of a mountain.

I warped the spell to compensate.

Weighed down by the magic, my heart pumping what felt increasingly like mud through my veins, barely able to get my breath—my head began pounding. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. I could hardly move, let alone trot to face the monster. I tried. Then rotated it to face me.

Tentacles wrapped Brandywine the way morning glory vines wrapped an unfortunate bush to strangle it. The golden-brown colt struggled in the mess of twining gray, only a rear leg free and his head and neck free. His eyes showed white. He breathed. I knew because he said, weakly, "Help me!"

I dimly recalled a teacher prattling on about reserves of magic, and another about sources of magic—enough so that I had concluded that Sparkling had to have stolen magic from Celestia herself. What I faced was the quandary my competition faced. Was she a magic stealer? Or had she found an unlimited depth in her own magic? Was that even possible? Like the sap that ran too strongly in the maple trees of Blueblood Park in early spring and dripped from the bark, my magic seeped, neigh steamed, from me. The spell shape in my mind wriggled and vibrated, wanting to explode to flinders. But my limits would be the limits of Brandywine's life. I must not find those limits even if I were destined to be trampled by them.

Panting heavily, I said, "Put. Him. Down!"

"My little pony!" rumbled the titan, glaring angrily at me.

I could not let the immediate thought I had in. I had to block it. Ugh! The abyssal creature could not be a child! Nothing could grow bigger than it already was.

Or it thought like a child.

Bad either way.

Every muscle in my body tensed up and I clenched my jaw, causing my breath to come out in bull-like snorts of vapor. I concentrated on Brandywine. Anger aided my concentration. The Queen of Cliffside's empathy—unproven conjecture at that—fought my concentration.

I squeezed out an ultimatum in a growl that barely reached audibility though it thundered through my heart. "If he dies, you die."

With it, came the realization that I could carry out my threat.

Goodness was ultimately weak. Sometimes you had to do the wrong thing for the right reason.

Oddly, with that thought, I felt a surge of power. The heady sensation lifted much of the crushing weight that smashed down upon me. The thought that a dead enemy could not come back to hurt you greased it further.

Stupid Celestia and her Tartarus experiment. If any creature placed in hibernation escaped her prison, ponies would die!

Who deserved to die, princess?

My eyes burned with a new magic and I looked back up to lock eyes with the monster, having dropped them during my epiphany. I hissed, "I can kill you."

My visualization of Levitation flared and flamed with green fire that wept black soot. The shape lost its round edges and grew crystalline spikes.

I pushed at the many new sharp levers of the spell until the titan swished higher in the air with a fluidity I'd never experienced before. I found myself cackling. A push or pull whirled it or tumbled it. Magic had never been this powerful nor this easy. In the euphoria, I had to stifle the impulse to smash the creature down.

I could fix Celestia's mistake.

I could fix all her mistakes.

I could certainly kill the titan. But that would be counterproductive if I killed Brandywine.

Chills ran up my spine. They allowed me to hear Brandywine 's pleas. His voice intruded into my sudden mania. He said, "Please, Sunset! You'll kill us all!"

Not him and the titan, clearly.

The three of us.

In his pain and fear, he still reached out to me. Wrapped in that deadly embrace, I would have been screaming for help, yet he saw something I missed.

I was willing to destroy everything to prevent defeat.

My new found energy drained as if my horn had become a sieve. The spell reverted to its red fiery rounded shape.

The titan, with a precious treasure wound in its tentacle grip, had floated fifteen pony-lengths up above the canopies of the trees.

That became untenable.

The pressure I'd felt redoubled. The Levitation shape shook like a pressure cooker ready to explode. As the titan fell, the spell smashed me to the ground, folding my legs painfully and bouncing my stomach off the ground.

Pure will, fueled by Brandywine's startled whinny, allowed me to keep the spell together, squeezed like a pillow to bursting. It was the same reflex that stopped my plummet from the balcony of the Luna tower.

The titan nonetheless walloped the ground, but only bruisingly. With a sudden sweat washing my face, I popped it back up just enough that it could only touch the tops of the grass but nothing more.

My chin in the wet grass, I glared up at my captive. Though it felt like in any instant I would be flattened by the boulder that it felt I carried, I levered myself up, eyes locked on those of the beast.

I pushed higher, but the spell petered out at barely half a pony-length. There was my limit. The same limit I'd faced enough times. Like the last time when I wanted to break Pear Brandy's back and could not shove her down hard enough. My Pollyanna subconscious. Limits. I just couldn't hurt ponies... badly.

Or titans.

But the titan didn't know. After that crazy I'd just pulled, for sure.

"Put him down!"

It must have been the right amount of authority, or confidence, or just mean growling that did it. The spider's cocoon of tentacles shifted and lowered gently. I facilitated the transfer to the ground by lowering the titan to the level of my fetlocks, but no lower. The tentacles untwined and a limp Brandywine rolled out on his back, legs up and then over on his side. He moaned and began shivering.

I lifted the titan back up and slid it away as I folded my legs under me beside my colt-friend. The cannon bone of his right rear leg was broken, offset, and swelling rapidly. The joints of his front legs were so bloodied, I couldn't tell what state they were in. Little saucer-sized bruised splotches dotted his hide where the tentacles had wrapped him. Suckers. With teeth. One had left a barb-like tooth behind. They all bled a tiny rivulet of red. The hoof tracks on his back wept, too.

I had been wrong about the sudden sweat on my face before. It was tears—and they streamed down my face hotter than the rain that had just decided to fall just to enhance my misery.

What kind of friend let her friend be mauled? I'd known the titan would go for the weakest of us, but I'd chosen the spell that could best aggrandize me, not be most effective. I had wanted to impress.

My pride had overruled my common sense.

I didn't know much about friendship, but trying to impress instead of protect was undoubtedly wrong.

I was wrong. I was no friend. I really didn't understand the concept of friendship.

He lifted his head and speared me with his amber eyes. His charcoal black lips opened to say, barely in a whisper. "Don't destroy your soul to save me."

The fact of the matter was, I'd have destroyed worlds to save him—had he asked.

I had to get him to a doctor. I had to get him to the outpost, station, or whatever the Tartarus it was, at Cerberus' gate. I tried to lift him in my magic.

The magic aura surrounding the titan sputtered loudly like a firework, sparked, and guttered. The beast's cloven hooves actually hit the ground before I could even surround Brandywine with my magic. I gasped and pushed, and—though the creature managed to get traction and clods of grass and dirt arced into the air and he got within two pony-lengths before I stopped him—stop him I did. I flung him back to the limits of my magic.

A rumbling voice said, "He my little pony!" It bounced around in my aura, trying to break it, trying to push any which way that could get it to something it could grab.

This did not bode well.

I looked at Brandywine who breathed in pained pants as he got his right shoulder to push his body half-upright so she wasn't flat, his front legs in before him, his rear to the side, his jagged broken leg shockingly visible on top.

Brandywine wasn't going anywhere if I wasn't carrying him.

I looked toward our tormentor. "Please. If I let you go, I promise I won't hurt you if you just run away."

"My pony!" it trumpeted, peddling its legs, lowering its head as if it could charge despite being suspended midair. Its tentacles and trunks flailed and grasped. It acted like a child having a tantrum.

Brandywine said, "Not good."

"No kidding."

He whispered. "You threatened to kill it. I don't think it believes you."

Again, that empathy thing I didn't have much of. And me being full of fight. Three years ago, had I just avoided Celestia, rather than provoking her, I would not have lost to her when she came looking for me. But that was after her constables had stolen the homeless ponies' possessions and rousted them from their encampments. Sure, I was full of fight, but not enough to win when I'd bitten off more than I could chew.

I swallowed hard.

I had to lift Brandywine. I had no choice but to lift the both of them to get to the Cerberus gate! Somepony had to be able to help me. Most unicorns could levitate. I couldn't solve the titan problem myself—that was manifest—but I could put it off if I could just lift the both of them.

Problem was, each time I tried to lift Brandywine, I couldn't keep the titan aloft. Time and again, the same result.

Though clenched teeth, I hissed, "Maybe I do need to kill it."

Again, the realization bolstered me. I felt the uncanny strength returning—

"No," Brandywine cried, then clenched his teeth in pain as he shifted a leg to touch my hoof. I looked into his amber eyes as he forced out his words, "Your eyes—Green. Purple-black smoke. Dark magic will crush your soul. You'll never be allowed to leave Tartarus. I'm not worth it!"

But he was. He surely was.

I moaned, stinging tears flooding my eyesight and emotion working to sunder me. The weight of unicorn magic saddled me again and I fought to concentrate as desperate anger, fear, and humiliation battled with a love that could kindle the worst hate that could transform a unicorn into—

"What should I do?"

I wiped away sufficient tears to see a wavering smile. He pressed at his wounds, despite his magic flickering like a candle in the breeze. He said, "I can help myself for a while. The gate is less than three miles away. Send somepony who knows first aid. Don't give in to the darkness. For me, please."

"For you," I said, my sight awash with tears again. I stood, despite the pressure. Perhaps my father was actually a mule, or a horse. Perhaps it was simply love that gave me strength.

As I stepped ponderously forward, Brandywine added, "If it is really a simpleton or a child, you may be able to release it when it can no longer see or smell me."

Maybe I could accidentally find a cliff and pass out. I was already approaching exhaustion.

Brandywine said as I trudged away, back on the road. "Please. For me, Sunset."

I gritted my teeth, but the royal bit of my soul spoke up. I said, "I promise." Or perhaps I did it because the one thing I did not want to do was disappoint my colt-friend. I would save him. I would do what he asked. And because I was a mare of my word, I promised. Out loud.

I was bound by honor. Every book I'd read said so.

No more hellish a three-miles could exist in a pony's life than those next miles. I felt my worry for Brandywine and the magic I expended eat into my vitality. Beside feeling as if squashed like a bug, and my heart laboring as if I might burst, and suffering a throbbing headache that wanted to crush my skull, I had to slog through rain and mud. One. Step. At a breathless. Time. Keeping the spell alive.

I did do as Brandywine suggested. I let the titan go.

Once.

It screamed about its pony doll and charged explosively past me the way we'd come. I snatched the titan up just in time in a renewed spell. That the momentum of it trying to gallop around a bend in the road then caused it instead to fly in a straight line and smash head-first into a rock outcropping—oh well. I shrugged as it dragged me down the road until it made a thud of a bag of beans hitting pavement, though much louder. Cindered rock clattered around its forequarters. I no longer had the strength to stop it from bloodying its many noses. Unicorn magic apparently had its own limits when it came to preventing its practitioners from doing harm.

I so much would have liked it to have knocked itself unconscious... but Celestia forbid my magic might really harm the beast! Oh, my. My laughter came out as a series of huffs and ended in a sigh.

Thoughts of mean things that-could-have-been gave me a lift, made the slog less arduous. A sudden gnawing hunger caused by the drain of my magic forced me to stop long enough to graze in a tantalizingly green meadow filled with tender herbs and juicy yellow dandelions. The greens did have a sulfury taint. As I chewed, a warm rain matted down my mane and tail, causing it to drip.

I didn't care.

Anything to keep me going.

Finally, I clopped across a wooden rope bridge to find a pair of ponies. The two of them stared downhill in the dusky light away from me. As the clouds above jostled for position and blew away some of the mists, I could see bits of the sunset beyond, streaming through what seemed very much like the wall of a gigantic glass arboretum. Really, though, it was the edge of Tartarus' sky where it was situated between time embedded in Equestria's nether dimensions. The glassy blue-tinted apparition (the edge of local reality) dipped toward the ground. Cerberus' gate could be only a few minute's walk away.

Perhaps it was the splat-splat of my hooves in the puddles, or some errant rumble or trumpet from the titan of whom I'd basically become obvious to in my misery, but the pair suddenly turned. Despite shadows, I recognized one of them.

Though it looked like somepony had splattered him with a bucket of blue-black ink, it was definitely the hefty half-Clydesdale workhorse pony deputy of Lavender Lather's. The one who'd gone missing. His khaki uniform shirt was soaked with rain and ink that ran all the way to his flank. The rest of his coat was brown, except for muddied white socks, hooves, and a white horn. I blinked—he'd had something on his horn before, but it was gone. Like Brandywine, his eyes were amber, though somewhat more of a reddish brown.

Beside him stood what I'd at first thought was a pony. My mind kept insisting he was a pony, but his outline was all wrong. He wore a concealing gray hooded cassock, but it made his neck look entirely too long. I got the hint of something in the shadows of the cowl that looked awfully like the nose of a goat. Oddly, his mane seemed to move of its own accord between his head and his shoulders. He had a very long neck.

No. He wasn't a pony. He was an inmate of Tartarus.

Nevertheless, I said, "Please." White Stockings. That was his name. I saw the outline under the ink stain of some sort of glassware cutie mark. "I need help."

The pair stared in awe. Not everyday do you see somepony toting a house-sized flailing angry monster behind them. White Stockings took a couple steps backwards. His companion did not and shouldered the deputy to break an impending panic.

Wait. Did the goat inmate have an extra set of limbs—?

Monsters abounded here. It didn't matter! "My friend needs help. I need to pacify this monster. I have to get back to him. Can you do something?"

As I got closer, White Stockings looked at his companion, who nodded. "Sure," said the deputy.

"Thank Celestia!" I cried as best I could, huffing and puffing.

His horn lit. I anticipated some assistance with the heavy lifting as his aura reached out as if some ethereal foreleg. Everypony had their own way of doing spells, especially Levitation, which all unicorns pretty much could do, but this was unusual. I was a half-dozen pony-lengths away as he touched me magically.

He said, "I can surely help you, Sunset Shimmer. All you need to do is follow me down this road—"

Something inside went click.

Wow. That felt—strange. Good…

But strange. Was he helping lift the titan?

I glanced. No, the titan had its magenta eyes on the deputy; it waved its tentacles and trunks, peddling its black cloven-hoofed gazelle-like legs and reaching for traction on the muddy stone road so it could run back to get its Brandywine pony toy. It was still only me levitating the chthonic monster. I looked into the amber eyes of the pony. I kept the spell going strong, but my gut told me to trust his guidance implicitly. I had asked for help and he was helping. I blinked, feeling... Disoriented? What was that feeling?

I gasped as joy overwhelmed me. It felt sooo good. I felt myself relieved of my burdens—of thinking about them in any case. I had had too many decisions to make! I'd made them all wrong.

Except now.

Now, I had made the right decision.

Trust.

That's it. I'd found trust.

It was like falling asleep.

Like falling into a dream.

A lucid dream...

White Stockings murmured in my ear as we walked and I knew everything was going to be okay.

"All Ethics are Situational."

Author's Note

In Twilight Sparkle's introduction to the first chapter, "Tartarus! It's Tartarus," she wrote:

"This episode is part of a much a larger on-going work. While the larger work is mostly in my voice, so very many others participated in this story that I have no choice but to include them. Today I relate somepony else's story, as is appropriate. Everypony has been very forthcoming—whether coerced in some cases or just via unexpected humility in others. "

Sunset Shimmer's was the first voice. The second is...

"All Ethics are Situational."

White Stockings

Relating the events in your life, even when somepony like Princess Twilight Sparkle assures you that the information you share will not be read for decades by anypony who doesn't need to know it... Well, it's still hard to do. Don't think is isn't. I wish to reiterate at the beginning to you who command my obedience that I will be as truthful as I can be, but I did see things differently than you ponies did. I will tell it as I saw it. Read whatever bias into it you like.

I first learned about Sunset Shimmer the way most Canterlot citizens did. One winter, in the decade prior to the 1000th Summer Sun celebration, Celestia became suddenly and inexplicably ill. There were rumors of sorcery and monsters in Blueblood Park, but, except for the splashy stories in the rumor rags, nothing was substantiated. For months, nopony saw Celestia much and then only wearing a voluminous black cloak and hood that hid her form. Nopony was allowed to approach closely. Affairs of state were postponed.

Nopony saw Celestia flying. That alone was as newsworthy as it was gossip-worthy.

The balcony of my townhouse in downtown Canterlot abutted the balcony of the Barnyard Bargains and Pony Prance department store magnate Stinking Rich on Neighlead Avenue, one street over. Every so often, we had our breakfast and read the newspaper at the same time.

This one morning, I had the Canterlot Inquisition floating in the air in front of me, my cup of Saddle Arabica Primo steaming in front of me. For a few years, back then, publishers enchanted the front page so that if you shifted the paper side to side it showed what happened about a second before and after the still picture, making it look three dimensional and shockingly alive.

I said, "She had a foal?" The long-distance hoof-tinted grainy black and white photo had clearly been taken from a rampart of the castle looking into the gardens. The headline read, "Love Child?"

Stinky put down his newspaper loudly enough that I looked. He was a slight stallion, golden-colored with a black ducktail mane peppered with gray. Oddly, his magenta eyes matched well with the purplish-red of his velvet housecoat. His orange juice looked unsampled. "Stockings! Why do you persist in reading that refuse?"

I held up the paper and animated it. The yellow foal with an enormous flip in her red and yellow mane walked, head held high, eyes-tracking everything, beside the still-cloaked princess. Her body language said she was in control, not Celestia.

Stinking scoffed then laughed. "I'd call you nouveau riche if it didn't make me think of my grandfather. Seriously, Stockings, if you had been living in Canterlot for more than a year, as presumably that foalish reporter for the Inquisition should have been, you would know that Princess Celestia is renowned for not being a particularly skilled illusionist. She could not have hidden a pregnancy 8 or 9 years ago. The foal is not hers."

"Then why are they together?"

"I go with what I've heard and what is corroborated by the Canterlot Court Scribe." He tapped the paper on the azurite terrazzo tile cafe table. "She is apparently the ward of the royal physician Dr. Flowing Waters."

Stinking sounded interested in the foal. In my line of business, information is as much a commodity as any other. As a colt, I may have thought myself too smart by far to learn anything from teachers or adults, but trying to make a living and the ramifications of my special talent taught me to listen whenever anypony volunteered to educate me.

Time isn't money. Knowledge is.

So I prompted, "But the princess is escorting around the ward of her physician?"

"Duke Pure Snow says Flowing Waters is one of the princess' Kitchen Council."

"The Duke. Big white fellow? Associated with the guilds?"

"The one."

"And I take it, this is an unofficial Privy Council?"

"Made up of interesting ponies all over Equestria. Red Rambler—"

I gasped, not completely unintentionally either. "The exchequer?"

"Look, Stockings, please don't take this as me dropping names."

I waved a hoof. "No, no."

"Just educating a neighbor and fellow businesspony."

I nodded. As I stated, I was good with that. I wondered if I could monetize these connections; I'd remember them in any case.

"Rambler and I attended Manehatten City College together. He went into the crown service while I took over my father's shipping company, but we still play Queens and Horseponies each weekend."

Cards. What was a few bits won or lost between financial wizards?

"Rambler pointed out that Flowing Waters is Celestia's conscience, and is responsible for the small tax levy we'll be paying to help the homeless this year."

"A quid pro quo that resulted in her tutoring his filly?"

"We're sure of it. The tutoring theory is supported by royal notices in the Scribe, but—here is where speculation can lead you astray, as it did the Inquisition. The Duke has noted that Princess Celestia seems preoccupied with the upcoming 1000th Summer Sun Celebration—"

"But that's not for—"

"If you've lived a millennium, what's a decade?"

I inhaled the aroma of my coffee. "Good point." I sipped it.

"Each time Princess Celestia gleefully goes out to battle some monster or deals with the aggressions of one nation or another personally, the peerage worries. Now the Duke thinks she's worried. The peerage theorizes the princess is training a replacement and will name this 'Sunset Shimmer' as the crown princess."

I worked really hard and made myself sputter. "Th-that's preposterous!" That something concerned Celestia about the 1000th Summer Sun Celebration would prove correct, however.

"I know it. You know it. The inbred aristocracy has more than its fair share of lunatics. In any case, this Sunset Shimmer is not Celestia's 'Love Child'."

With mock drama, I pushed my paper off my table to rustle to the floor. "Could I offer you some coffee?"

He smiled, showing his teeth. "Not supposed to... but I do miss it so. You would not tell my wife, would you?"

Not until the advantage of doing so was worth the cost. I smiled back as I levitated out the pot and a china mug.

Sunset Shimmer did go on to become a "big deal"... for awhile... but only in Canterlot, and then only if you were a royal-watcher or heavily into the magic arts and sciences. Her entrance exam into Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns made the news because vines overgrew the castle grounds and damaged the roof and upper windows of the Luna Tower—though the postmortems on that read her spells were mostly illusions—and Twilight Sparkle's literal explosion onto the scene some three years later minimized Sunset Shimmer's position as Celestia's first protégé further. That Celestia suddenly had an alicorn "niece" in Mi Amore Cadenza, despite reputably being made an alicorn and not born one, cooled the succession issues the Duke had brought up. The peerage would immediately recognize the alicorn as first in the succession over either commoner protégé.

Sunset had became mostly Celestia's spoiled prodigy "daughter" by the time I became a moth attracted to her flame. Her imperious attitude, relying on her association with Celestia—even after her reputation had deteriorated in a local scandalous public spat with the princess—had ceased to be even fodder for rags like the Inquisition. That didn't make her any less potentially valuable to me. The princess still coddled her in a way she never did her second protégé who proved incredibly scholarly, boring, and almost entirely non-magical. Sunset Shimmer understood magic. She used it publicly, and had contacts within the palace from the princess down to the royal guard and constabulary that when she wasn't—

Let's say, impaired—

Well, she had contacts that she could and did manipulate boldly, often with the pony's agreement. That made her a business asset I could use. All I needed was a way to make her a customer of my high-priced products so we could exchange... favors.

Successful business ponies always have multiple horseshoes in the forge. I could wait.

I did wait—until I heard about another high-level unicorn. She was a young mare who ran the security detail for one of my Hooflyn-based business associates who went by the work name Carne Asada. CA had told me herself that the security mare had come up the ranks through the Ham-Down Baltimare Mercantile Group as an obviously underage filly, but had become such a genius at battle magic that CA had snatched the filly from the ailing Group despite some reservations. With CA's shipment, being nosy and in full self-interest, I couriered her a question.

"What reservations?"

Her answer: "Esta mare is way too ethical."

I remember being nonplussed, sitting with my courier's transcription on my balcony at breakfast. When I waved off my winged employee, I saw my neighbor looking. Or rather, my neighbors. Stinky had his son Filthy—and this pink mare I later learned was his fiancée, Spoiled Milk—over for breakfast. Apparently I'd whinnied in dismay.

I asked, naively and innocently playing my assigned nouveau riche business pony persona to the hilt, "Can a pony be too ethical?"

The three looked at one another. It was as if I had asked for the meaning of life. Or maybe I'd asked the final exam question that the teacher had said she'd ask and my asking verified the question had to be a trick question.

Maybe it was a trick question.

Unexpectedly, the fiancée spoke up, indicating the attraction wasn't simply good looks. She said, "All ethics are situational," to which both Stinky and Filthy nodded uncomfortably.

A profound statement.

I actually visited the Canterlot University library where the very cordial librarian Miss Verdigris found me what she called "good books" on situational ethics. It was the closest I'd ever been to college. Book learning had never been my style, but what little I did read proved inspirational. It validated my business model. I pinned word of Carne Asada's security mare to the cork-board of important memories in my mind beside the list of Sunset Shimmer's useful attributes.

Not that security ponies had a long lifetime in the profession. As it was, Carne Asada's chile pepper-like temperament got the best of her. CA succumbed to "legal" pressures she could have avoided had she listened to her security mare. The resultant meltdown of her business lit the newspapers on fire for over a week, and the Hooflyn Royal Constabulary and Post Office literally on fire considering the photos that filled the magazines.

Surprisingly, her security mare survived the conflagration unscathed, neither mentioned in any newspaper nor in reports my Hooflyn factor could dig up.

When the mare showed up in Canterlot the next month, I was intrigued.

"Like a Timberwolf."

Carne Asada's former security mare trudged into Canterlot penniless and looking for work, apparently having walked, worked, and hitch-hiked across the continent in late winter. From what Streak, my youngest employee, could find shadowing her in the university district, she was looking for a change of career. She had applied for admission to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. She'd have to wait months until enrollment started.

I saw leverage and a desirable new hire.

Why would I want a security mare who failed her last employer? Well, in CA's case, sometimes you can't save a pony from her own stupidity. I also visualized a different employment for the mare's "special" talents.

I gave orders to ensure the mare's efforts in finding a job to pay room and board would be marginally fruitful. I provided strategic services to many businesses; they usually respected my opinions on such matters. The mare seemed reluctant to venture into downtown or suburban Canterlot. Perhaps it was that she was shy about being noticed as the failed security mare for Carne Asada. Perhaps it was because visibly healing wounds, time pounding the pavement, and days exposed to the sun and the elements made her look like a vagrant. In any case, she restricted her search to the less-structured more-freewheeling Lower Canterlot where I conducted my core business. Her life would be hard.

Surprisingly, this stoic mare didn't break. She saved the minimal bits she made first sweeping floors, then, when pushed out, cleaning ovens at a bakery, then later hauling garbage, and after that painting walls. She literally performed a dozen menial jobs before the proctors at Celestia's School granted her admission when the spring session opened later in the month.

And during those months, she spent nothing. Instead, she lived homeless in encampments in the Cliffside-adjacent warehouse district. She never visited the homeless shelters paid by Celestia's homeless tax levy. She grazed in both Palisades Park and Blueblood Park, even bathed publicly in the freezing cold Blueblood pond as did the other hard-case homeless ponies. She even endured a week of strong spring storms, sheltered beneath the eaves of warehouses or restaurants after they closed, often soaked to the skin.

The latter drove my usually hard-flanked pegasus transport mare to tears one evening. The only thing I could do to stop Streak from taking the unicorn to her "nest" that last dark rainy night was to relent and promise to offer the former security mare a position in my organization the next day. I wasn't pleased to accede to upward pressure from an employee, but the unicorn had experienced enough hard times that I could possibly convince her to do anything.

As dusk settled in and the next work day ended, the weather team settled a dreary bank of gray clouds weeping disconsolate drops and drizzles over Canterlot. Drops from eaves went tick, tick, tick. You could hear occasional ponies galloping, splashing through puddles. A gentle wind swirled a patchy mist that made the warm spring day feel too humid, and intensified a mildew scent too many days of rain often brought. Even wheels made a sishing sound as increasingly fewer late wagons and buses clip-clopped by.

I didn't often walk home, but I sent my coach ahead and strode along levitating a black umbrella, shadowed by a couple of security ponies, through the Lower towards downtown Canterlot. There weren't many routes from the street repair contractor with whom I did business to the homeless encampment the mare frequented. I heard Streak cough loudly, her agreed upon signal from her perch on the limestone cornice of a building on the corner of Commerce and Flower. I sped up and soon heard the hoofbeats of a lone mare. I shook my head pointedly to stop my security from closing in.

The lavender mare walked into view and I slowed so our paths would intersect. She looked tired. Her green-striped purple mane hung limply as she hadn't bothered with an umbrella—cost no doubt—looking as if the weight of the world weighed it down; but really, it was only water. Her head did not hang down as surely mine would have were I so miserably wet, nor did her eyes look glassy. The opposite. She displayed a presence, an affirmation that she was her own mare and that the weather simply was. Any other pony's annoyance at weather, work, or bad circumstance was her acceptance.

Stone cold.

Her purple eyes locked on me almost as I began to slow down, then flicked to Punt, my brown mare in a black rain slicker who was smart enough to not linger but to trot ahead, but it was already too late. The security mare pegged her.

A narrow-eyed glare met mine as we closed. I smiled as I kept contact, predator to predator. She did not speed up nor change direction. Time felt like it slowed, as if the rain drops became lazy, somehow defying gravity to move like glassy streamers to the wet cobbles that consumed them. I could feel the blood pulsing in my head and throat as her stare reflexively intimidated my subconscious. I could smell her unwashed, wet laborer-horse scent. Her scars had healed; only dirt streaks marred her coat. She looked fully grown, now, her youth only visible in the teen beauty of her face and her surprisingly muscular youthful form.

Attractive, I thought as I let her pass before me. Academically— like a timberwolf.

Fascinating. Amazing.

I wanted her— Even as she turned her head to keep her eyes on me as we passed. As she swept behind me, did she look back? I heard her hooves clatter serenely as she splashed in a puddle a pony-length onward. One way to find out.

I stopped.

She stopped.

I looked and found her eyes on me, flicking just once to my other shadow, Fletching, a red stallion in a yellow slicker. Arguably hard to miss. Her tail swished once.

I said, "I was wondering if I could have a word with you—" I used her work name: "—Grimoire?"

She instantly disappeared in the pop of a lime-green magical sphere. Teleport. Before I could fully motion to Streak to dive after her, before the pegasus could even begin to leap from her perch, I heard an exit pop a block down Flower followed by another in-teleport, then another on Corral Street two streets north... and yet another who-knows-where further away.

Only high level unicorns could master Teleport. I could master only Levitate and Illuminate, and neither well. Everypony knew you had to think about a spell to cast it. It was inconceivable that she could have cast one after another so close together. That meant she'd had to have mastered an even higher level multiple teleport spell—news to an unschooled magician such as I.

I grinned from ear to ear. I would employ her. I had no doubt I'd succeed, but I would have to make her an offer that she couldn't refuse. A part time job earning bits enough so she could afford a flat near downtown and blend in like every other student at Celestia's School—likely in exchange for keeping to myself information about her past (and her new job). She would drive a hard deal. Perhaps she was already too skilled for Celestia's School, but I knew she absolutely wanted to attend it at all costs.

I had leverage.

All I had to do was put Grimoire in the same vicinity as Sunset Shimmer and they'd surely bond. A twofer.

My transactions with Grimoire, whose chosen name I had learned was Starlight Glimmer, are an example of my overestimating my influence on ponies with expertise different than my own... and that was undoubtedly due to situational ethics, which was possibly Grimoire's special talent.

I didn't have a clue when I next met the dangerous filly midmorning outside the Hooflyn Delicatessen. The restaurant was situated at the edge of a park called The Edge, which stood between Downtown and Lower Canterlot. She'd thought she'd eluded me last night, but I'd dropped a "boomerang" at her hooves as she exited the homeless encampment the next morning. The day had dawned bright and blustery, with plenty of fluffy little camouflage clouds scudding through a blue sky, which gave Streak plenty of opportunity to mysteriously return the gift she kept trying to discard. She got the message pretty quickly when she arrived at Street Lamp & Friends Construction and found a sign reading "Sudden Emergency - Closed Today" in the window. She found all the shades pulled down, and none of her co-workers in evidence.

In the end, she did not evade Fletching or Tailor when they intercepted her heading out of town on Ponyville Way. She even pocketed the gift, which, as she approached my standing table outside the deli, she levitated out of her woven-straw saddle bag with her green magic. Her eyes flashed angrily in the sunlight, gleaming a unique tourmaline purple-blue. Surprisingly, she put down the pouch of ten gold bits on the table so lightly that it made no sound, making her voice sound loud.

"These, sir, are yours." She turned and began to walk away.

I smiled, pushed aside my plate of kippered onions, potatoes, and eggs, and replaced the pouch with one containing twice as many bits, assuring that it clinked loudly when I did so.

She kept walking even as Fletching started to step into her path. I shook my head and he stopped.

I flung the pouch at her head.

She caught it in her magic without even looking at me. As if her magic were a wall, the pouch dropped to the cobblestones with a loud ching. She didn't teleport.

So... This salespony still had his audience. Interesting. Without turning, she said, barely veiling her anger, "I am a failed bodyguard. You don't want me. Let me leave Canterlot in peace."

"Why would you want to leave Canterlot?"

She stopped. The muscles on her back bunched and twitched.

I reached out for her with my magic. I wasn't ready to coerce, yet. I wanted to make a deal and for that I needed an exhibit.

I opened her saddlebags and pulled out her possessions: a brush, ponytailers, a water-stained notebook, a green library card, a dozen bronze bits, and a letter with her name on it with a royal seal in red wax. All of it dropped inelegantly and noisily to the cobblestones because I wasn't good at holding multiple things—except for the acceptance letter from Celestia's School. She was shaking explosively as I shoved the letter in front of her face.

She ripped it from my magic and shouted, "How dare you!"

Wait. What? Her accent changed from non-descript to something patrician like out of Horseshoe Bay. Her history implied she was a runaway. Positing her a runaway from old money answered her disdain for it.

Still, she didn't teleport.

"Please, Grimoire." I used her work name as you don't use leverage until you must expend it. "I have no desire to keep you from your dreams. Any choice to leave Canterlot will be yours and yours alone."

"I won't be your bodyguard."

"Even part time?" I teased.

"No."

"Pity. I would have gladly welcomed you, but as I said, I don't want to interfere with any schooling you may want."

"Then what's this?" She tossed the purse of bits. I didn't have to attempt to catch it as it wasn't thrown at my head as I had thrown it at hers—and my levitation spell wasn't that quick in any case. It plopped in the plate of eggs and splatted my white tie and yellow tweed jacket. She emitted a single smug short grunt of satisfaction.

It had landed dead center.

I levitated away the gunk before it could stain, then said, "Canterlot is an expensive place to live and well-paying jobs are hard to come by. Except for her protégés, I've heard Celestia gives no full-boat scholarships. Look at your notebook."

She glanced at the yellowed, dog-eared thing at her hooves. Even the black cover was water-spotted.

"Even if you can afford textbooks, would you expose them to the elements or theft?"

"Nopony steals from me." From her deep tone and her piercing glare, it was a threat leveled at my employees. Her notebook and other items shot into her saddlebags.

"I just want to help you pay rent and buy some clothes, or to replace those saddlebags. You're going to have social issues with your fellow classmates if you go to school looking and smelling like a vagrant."

"I don't need any silly friends. Friends are highly overrated." There was that patrician accent again.

"Well, think of your books then—"

"What do you want?"

A chartreuse mare chose that instant to exit the deli. Tailor reversed his billed cap and deftly intercepted the lady, escorting her away. I chose this location because the collection of restaurants didn't have windows you could see through because of the iffy neighborhood. The cafe tables outside the Hooflyn Delicatessen were private off-hours, surrounded by brick and green painted wood walls in an alcove formed of other buildings, perfectly out of view of the park.

I answered, "To offer you a job."

"From you?" She huffed and smiled with obvious disgust. "Right. I've made many mistakes in my life. I suppose I deserve this. I've undoubtedly earned it, but no thank you."

"So you're going to leave Canterlot?"

In a low voice, she said, "Yes."

"You do know I knew Carne Asada and the Ham-Down—"

"I'll leave Equestria! I have a childhood friend who I've just learned left for Saddle Arabia where he escorts mega-caravans. I'll go there."

Childhood? She was still a child, fifteen-sixteen tops. And with her disdain for friends, possibly spurned by the one who went to Saddle Arabia, who, by her tone, she wasn't convinced was even there or remotely findable—nuh-uh. I'll go there. Not, I'll join him. I would never have given such valuable information away for free. There are times when experience trumps youth. "So professional security is in your blood... and that of your colt-friend's?"

That should have spooked her, but again, no teleport. She clenched her teeth and said nothing.

"Look," I said, "I really want you to go to school, have a good time, and make special friends." One Sunset Shimmer in particular. "Let me help you."

"How?"

Bingo! I had my yes. "It's pretty much an acting job. No fighting."

She lifted an eyebrow.

"I need a pony who knows how to look, let's say, fearsome to convince ponies who have agreed to pay what they owe but refuse to honor their contracts. It'll be strictly on-call, rarely more than once a week, and you hurt nopony."

"In other words, you want me to pretend to be your enforcer?"

"Convince whomever I send you to—"

"Only deadbeats."

I nodded. "Only deadbeats. I don't care how, even if you break stuff, your choice. Not my problem. If you do it without hurting ponies, more the better. Nopony wants trouble. When they pay, I pay. Causing no trouble gets you bonuses. You game?"

She looked down and scraped a hoof on the cobblestones. "Only deadbeats?" she whispered.

"Yes."

"Nopony needs to know my past." Statement, not a question. A requirement.

I smiled on the inside. She was sharp. Sharp like a knife. "Nopony."

Situational ethics, I thought when Starlight Glimmer whisked away the purse with twenty gold pieces and stuffed it into her saddlebags. She cracked an evil grin. "And for whom am I working, sir?"

"I go by the name, Running Mead."

"I Want to Jump!"

Regarding Grimoire, I should have thought, Too dangerous too associate with.

I finally met Sunset Shimmer when my plans came together. I do wish they had all been my plans. It took until that autumn, and I had to coerce Grimoire a bit to do it. Even though circumstance left her sharing Sunset Shimmer's ivory tower (and according to servant gossip, her bed) on the Castle grounds, and Grimoire unwittingly managed to introduce Celestia's first protégé to one of my highest priced products called nettle-ewe, Grimoire had an ethical compass that prevented her from being completely coerced into anything. She represented perhaps the hardest subject for my special talent, the pinnacle of its application against its grain—and ultimately my greatest failure—but I get ahead of myself.

In grade school, I wasn't much of a student. I had sports on my mind, hoofball mostly, though I was big, graceless, and a poor athlete. I also liked to take things apart, though I wasn't so good at putting them back together, even something as simple as grandma's wagonette. The love of taking apart stuff extended to bucking trees in the city parks, digging holes, and pranking. That extended to the Hooflyn street maintenance works and sometimes the constabulary, or the coppers as we called them because of the copper badges they wore on their hats.

Did I say we and my colts were original thinkers? And in our group, I was the least of such. I was there because as a half Clydesdale pony through my dad, I was the most imposing of our lot. We wimps were definitely not into fighting; I helped prevent that by being a wall if anypony wanted to give us guff. I was part of the gang because of that big something else.

Though our objectives were fun pranks, games, and questionable horse play, we were particularly good at it when I was around. I'm not boasting. I'm observing.

I got my first lesson in the part I played one day when we gathered on the corner of Flatbush Street and Myrtle Avenue, beside that gray building designed with the weird crushed walls that looked like somepony had stomped down on it. We studied a constable with a powdered sugar donut cutie mark in his blue uniform as he watched the traffic of wagons and lorries rolling by the brownstone across the way. It was hot, humid, and noisy—a typical sunny Hooflyn summer day.

Buster, our tiny white-maned golden palomino friend, said, "I want that guy's baton."

He was referring to the wood tube hung on a hook by a cord on the constable's hip belt. The orange stallion sweated visibly and looked exhausted. Being as this was after school, it was probably the end of his shift.

I was too busy to contribute, eating a heavenly Nathan's Famous smothered in onions and horseradish mustard (nopony in Canterlot understands how to make a Hooflyn carrot dog, even the Hooflyn Delicatessen), but when Haul suggested I stumble before the copper while Buster replaced his baton with a stick on a loop of twine, I thought it sounded as close to genius as anypony amongst us was capable, but then Lair started talking about tripping the stallion, which was stupid.

It was all stupid, but still, I told Buster with as much emphasis as I could, and a bit of wheedling, "You can have that baton if you go with Haul's plan. Just find a stick with a loop and we can do it." I wasn't very loud, but I spoke into his ear, which flicked against my face. Afterward, I popped the last of the carrot bun in my mouth and chewed with satisfaction. I felt like I'd just lifted a weight I'd never succeed with before. It felt good. It felt right. Just the right amount of push to rack the bar.

He blinked, his blue eyes unfocused. I'd say he looked dazed, but his voice sounded decisive. "Haul, I think your plan is great! Let's—"

I won't go into the particulars other than to say Buster's levitation spell was less up to snuff than mine. And the pipe we ended up replacing the wood baton with was too cold. The copper rounded on my buddies, the four of them, his horn alight, both his baton and the improvised pipe replacement instantly menacingly above them. They froze and I walked on. I could have gotten away, but the copper just looked disgusted not angry, and tired. "So much fo-ah me getting off shift oily."

I'd guessed right! And I couldn't leave my friends, but charging in would make things worse. Moreover, while I might be a wall, this fellow with a tattered cauliflower right ear was the entire building up close. A few well healed scars despite him maybe being only twenty implied he was a bit of a bruiser himself, certainly a boxer off-duty, and no stranger to roughhousing growing up.

Intuition said he wanted to send us away, but Buster's big mouth was about to to nix that.

"Constable, oh Constable!" I said, limping with my right front leg, as I approached. "I think I may have sprained my ankle." As his hard green eyes focused on me and narrowed, I touched his shoulder to steady myself and said, "Those colts were just pranking you. You can help me, can't you?"

He blinked. His irises grew larger and he got this crooked smile.

I added, "Like you were at their age."

Bam. And there was that tingle like I'd pushed something in place where it wanted to be, like a shower door onto the track.

The constable chuckled and pushed up his cap with his baton and dropped the pipe, kicking over the curb. He chuckled. In his thick accent, he said. "Haw haw. Gooda one. Some pranks can get yo hurt, son. I'm letting yous go wit a warning—"

Well, that was that. They bolted, going from cowering to a gallop in a second. I endured a slow stroll toward the nearby hospital, thinking about what had occurred as the constable prattled on about pranks he'd done that I must never do under any circumstance. I realized in both cases, I'd hit on what each pony wanted to do and somehow given them permission to do it. It was like my dad when he was all upset about the sales force he managed at a Manehatten insurance company and unwilling to do anything when he got home. Mom knew what to do, though. A glass of his honey wine, Trottenham 8 Mead, usually did the trick. Loosened him up, made him fun again.

I remembered Dad's eyes and had an epiphany (though I didn't know the word at the time). My words, telling ponies they could do what they wanted had made them drunk.

Giving ponies what they wanted made them feel drunk. Wow!

I stumbled and fell to the pavement for real this time. And I too felt drunk. (I didn't like Dad's mead; it was too sweet, but I understood what drunk felt like.) The way things had felt right when I'd spoken to Buster now felt that way again. Revelation enveloped me in a supernatural glow of warmth and knowledge.

"Son, son! Ar-a you o-kay?" The constable shook me, breaking the effect, finally stopping to say, "Woah. Whata'd we do?"

A crowd gathered, as will happen in Brooklyn anytime anything happens to anypony, from getting run over by a bus to getting splashed with paint. Some mare with a whiny Queens accent said, "Oy, he just goyt hes cutie mauk!"

I looked at my brown behind. A spilt mug of gold liquid seemed to gleam with incredible newness. Spilled mead. I could make ponies feel drunk?

What the—? What had just happened?

My audience began to stomp the sidewalk and clap. I managed to escape the constable with no mention of sprained ankles. Dad wasn't amused at the allusion to his favorite drink; all bottles of which disappeared from the flat to the detriment of the family peace. Mom was disappointed that I didn't get a useful talent. My last year as a teenager at home wasn't as easygoing as when their dumb-flank colt had had a possibility of a talent to make up for none in school.

I had so weirded-out out my friends, having handled the constable so deftly that I got my cutie mark out of it, that they called me a freak and wouldn't talk to me. I did do a bit better in school as a result. Still, my parents' reaction made me think I might have to take care of myself soon. About the only thing I was good at was with numbers—most unicorns are—and I thought maybe accounting or statistics could open a career path. I learned that with a cutie mark and a polite demeanor, you could ask for help and your classmates would often take you seriously even if you were a big lug nut like me.

That's how I met Creme Puff and Sea Foam, and other ponies who did things like study their books, sell lemonade at sidewalk tables, and put together swap meets so they could earn spending money. Junior entrepreneural ponies. I could fetch and carry, and nopony bullied them when they had a "wall" around. I soon discovered I could learn things by watching and paying attention.

Sea Foam was always gung-ho and can-do for any endeavor, until it proved very important to her personally. Her pale-blue color with a dirty-white curly mane was a perfect metaphor for her way of being, and one day when she had senior exams that put her entrance to Canterlot University at stake, she made like that last wave of the seven retreating way down the beach, leaving it bare. I heard crying in the library and found her on her head-down on her notebook, surrounded by books, unable to lift her pencil.

She heard me, looked up with her washed-out looking blue eyes, and turned to hide her face against a bookcase. "I can't do it," she moaned. "It's too hard!"

"That's my line," I said.

I got a chuckle between sobs. Her mane looked tangled from pulling and was wet by tears. This is where a confident stallion could step in to comfort his mare, but I wasn't confident and didn't know how to comfort, really, and wasn't going to touch a filly for fear of frightening her away. I did reach out with my wimpy magic to squeeze her shoulder as I said, "You're going to ace the tests and you know it. It's going to be so easy, and you're going to do so well, you're going to earn a scholarship, too."

She quieted. She sniffed loudly and squared her shoulders. I stepped back as she stood and looked around at the library, as if surprised to see herself there. She blinked and looked a bit dazed. She said to herself, "I need to review my notes." With her gray magic, she slapped on her white saddlebags and inserted her notebook before trotting out of the library.

I'd turned invisible. Obviously.

Oh, and she did get that scholarship because she earned the highest test score at Hooflyn Equestria High, well, because she really was that smart when she didn't make herself crazy—and I'd used my sweet talk to remind her she could be confident.

She never said thank you.

It was a common theme. Whomever I helped. Nopony remembered I'd helped them. Perhaps because they appeared dazed or drunk or living in a dream. Some special talent I had! I could watch all the ponies I helped get what they wanted, but that was all I got. It felt good, for awhile, and then not so much.

But finally there was Creme Puff. He could imagine things. Sometimes he built Ruby Gold Iceberg machines from welding wires, hamster wheels, and propellers through which ball bearings could wander for minutes. Or painted murals, like the one out behind the gym of Celestia rearing, mane waving, in her triumphant battle against the Timberwolves. An engineering-artistic type, but sensitive beyond belief. He lived with foster parents who were only a step better than his own crazy ones. Anything could rile him and make him feel like he had been shot with a dozen arrows. He'd been sighing more than usual one day, gesturing as he worked something through in his head until he spilt a bottle of ink over a machine he had been drafting on his desk. He'd cried, "Ugh!" and just walked out of history class. I followed him, first out of the school where the proctor at the door didn't stop him because, well, he was one of the good students and not a truant so it was probably okay. I followed him, trying to get him to return to school, but he pretty much ignored me… until we got to the Hooflyn Bridge and he started talking about not being able to take it any more, which began to worry me, but then he often blew things way out of proportion in convoluted but always imaginative ways. I couldn't tell when he was serious, though I could tell he was as distressed as ever I had seen him.

He stopped suddenly when we had ascended the span of the bridge. It was big, with flagstone siding, huge gray suspension cables, and brick arched footings. Wagons and busses thronged the roadway. A big clipper ship sailed underneath in the stiff sea breeze. I ran into him, and, without bucking me off, he said, "I want to jump."

I said, with a bit of frustration but, yes, earnestness, "If that's what you want to do, maybe it would be the best thing you could do."

That may sound crass, but this is the Hooflyn Bridge. It's got fencing to make jumping pretty much impossible except for a pegasus. Sure, I'd given him a push with my special talent, but I figured the impossibility of him trying would scare him back to his senses.

The lime-green earth pony reached his head into his book bags, pulled out a set of weird hook-spiked horseshoes and jumped into them. I stood blinking, not quite comprehending what they were until he reached up and hooked himself on to the links with his right front leg, then dragged himself up the fence and hooked his left on, then with his earth pony strength started to ratchet the rest of himself up.

I tackled him.

He was badly bruised and I was bloodied, cut and stabbed—admittedly because Creme Puff had lost it and the horseshoes he'd engineered were sharp—by the time the constables came galloping and helped me out. When they had him pinned to the sidewalk, he snapped out of it.

He was surprised I was even there, as if he'd woken from a nightmare. He did realize what his horseshoes had wrought on my hide and thanked me. He did say he hadn't wanted to jump—he was clearly lying to himself. He said that building them had just been a way to scare away his demons.

I never saw him again.

I realized something. Not everything I suggested had to be something good for a pony. It was just something they could be convinced into wanting, or something that deep down they wanted but wouldn't admit. While I didn't want what happened to Creme Puff, I soon discovered that if I stated it properly, my talent could get ponies to do stuff I wanted, too.

As happened after I met Carne Asada when she was trying to become one of her boss' lieutenants. I helped out and made sure that she knew that I'd helped her with her confidence and goals (which we shared). She helped me and I learned many things.

"The Lesson I Forgot."

By applying my special talent on many ponies, I learned I could find a chord to strum in any pony who proved difficult.

For example, Grimoire, after I learned she had met and befriended Sunset Shimmer. Apparently, Grimoire had suffered a magical misfire in class. Word was that Sunset had pressured her to perform a spell and she'd ended up burning much of the fur off her face around her horn (in a doubled star-shaped pattern, no less). Weeks later, I got a report that Sunset had taught Stun on the occasion and had staged a tag-you're-it battle as a TA for her underclassponies. While the faculty might dislike Sunset's teaching style, they felt constrained by the young mare's connections to the princess. What she hadn't known was that Grimoire had fought in a notorious, let's say, urban skirmish that resulted in Carne Asada's sudden, uh, retirement despite Grimoire's best efforts.

I'd bank post-traumatic stress had caused her misfire. The Hooflyn conflagration was four months ago and likely a regular nightmare.

High level unicorns are prone to magical misfires, I understand; I wouldn't know from personal experience. A bad one could cripple a unicorn's ability to do magic, or destroy it completely. Somehow Sunset had saved Grimoire from losing her magic, but the former security mare's pride had been getting in the way of her thanking her. With Sunset feeling super-apologetic, and Grimoire feeling pressured to reciprocate, it seemed like a perfect time to introduce Sunset to nettle-ewe—an expensive herb that greatly increased a unicorn's ability to think quickly and accurately, though using it did make them really want to use it again and again. Grimoire objected; selling herbal products was a step further than helping me collect my debts, a step over her ethical line.

Deep down, she really had wanted to thank Sunset Shimmer, though. And— I convinced her that she could thank Sunset and do what I asked of her because Sunset wanted to out-perform Twilight Sparkle in Princess Celestia's eyes. Nettle-ewe could aid that.

Streak reported that Grimoire got all kissy-faced with Sunset, leaning into her side provocatively, publicly, in restaurants and on the streets downtown, pretty much completely inebriated—which would have made for a great fly-on-the-wall moment when Sunset took her home to her ivory tower. That the fillies started to pal around the next day and to tutor each other showed I'd gotten them to bond.

Grimoire was the ultimate experiment of the limits of my talent. While Sunset didn't get to try nettle-ewe that night—that happened months later—Grimoire had piqued her interest. Grimoire had done what she wanted subconsciously—yeah, teenage hormones and she was way too tightly wrapped—but wouldn't break her deep-seated ethics. I should have considered her a great mistake, but that would be the future-me's evaluation of my greatest mistake.

I was having fun.

That should have been a warning bell. Business is serious and sober, but I forgot that. I had forgotten that my special talent was to help ponies be happy.

Feeling cocky, when I discovered I had a pony scoping out the Lower to set up a competing business—a two-faced stallion from Fillydelphia named Good Fellows with double-headed cutie mark—I got overly creative. I had Streak herd Grimoire to the Cliffside warehouse district, assuring my "pretend" enforcer that I wasn't asking her to sell product, that instead I wanted to "eliminate" a pony.

Aren't euphemisms a great way of letting other ponies decide what you mean? And for the record, I don't kill ponies as such poor business practices are what get the constabulary or the EBI after you, but it was fun to see this runaway aristocrat from near Horseshoe bay—probably Market's Vineyard, Grin Having, or Baaah Harbor—squirm as she choked on saying she didn't kill ponies. I knew that.

But I told her convincingly how truly horrible Good Fellows was, that he was the scion of a crime family from the island of Sizzling, and that he was beating up my clients saying that only he could protect them, for a price, of course. It was only time before Good Fellows would trample my benign businesses that kept the peace in Lower Canterlot. Good Fellows had to be eliminated.

With righteous anger, Grimoire had stormed off.

I'd concocted my story from a Bridleway hit play I'd seen. In reality, I suspected Good Fellows might be an EBI agent, though he seemed rather incompetent. Sweet Celestia, what a show that turned out to be! Grimoire completely trashed Good Fellows' flat, breaking out windows with flying furniture and starting a two alarm fire. She rampaged after him all around his neighborhood, wrecking signs she pulled off buildings to heave at him, scorching brick walls and street posts as he dodged, and frightening restaurant patrons when she chased him through at least two late night noodle shops and a curry joint, all the while stalking him while yelling long-winded patrician curses in the streets about his base "dirt-grubbing" ancestors and how he could clean the sewers with his— Well! Anyway. She'd stunned the constables that had shown the temerity to investigate the ruckus, all before they could get a good look at her.

Streak lost the pair in the warehouse district.

I later learned they'd trashed the factory floor of the Sofa & Quill. There'd been blood tracks everywhere, but because of the lack of published news, and Streak's brief sighting afterwards of my bloodied over-enthusiastic enforcer, I'd known she'd snapped out of her mania.

And healed quickly.

Nopony died—obviously, as there was no further investigations. Nopony was hurt, either, despite the commotion. Fellows disappeared. Who knew that deep in her psyche that Starlight Glimmer was a vengeful crusader!

I had a good laugh. Ironic—really, considering what would happen later.

I had to coerce her again.

That happened when the smug filly showed no inclination of giving up or feeding Sunset's penchant for drink. She who had thought friends were "highly overrated" seemed to be trying incredibly hard to help her friend get over her problem. Futile, of course. Celestia's first protégé was hungry for power and wasn't actually an alcoholic; she was frustrated in her goals and acting out. I wanted Grimoire stuck closer to Sunset and poor again so that she'd have to listen to Sunset whine, which by then might become reality soon. You see, Sunset had found my unambitious amateur competition who worked the Downtown clientele. Realizing my opportunity, I found my competition's supplier, bought him out, and replaced her herbal supply chain with mine.

Right. Coercing her again...

I told Grimoire that a comedian who had refused to pay his loan, even after she had "performed" her "act" profitably for him some months before, had turned informer; I convinced her that he might have learned her real name and needed to be eliminated. (I had hopes she might drop her given name in the process and sent her with companions.)

Well, that time Streak and Tailor reported that Grimoire actually performed the foul deed.

Remember my dislike of trouble? I sent Fletching to investigate immediately and found evidence of...

Minestrone soup.

Grimoire had skillfully cleaned the crime scene, which smelled of bleach over the faint scent of oregano, but had left an oddly dented stock pot and chopped vegetables on the cutting board that ought to have been returned to the ice box. She'd even left a red herring of a chef knife with a drop of blood on it, implying a cut that might have forced a pony to visit the clinic. But, not only did the cheap black pot have a slight barrel-like flare as if it had contained an explosion, scorches and melt lines marred its mouth, showing it had been subjected to extreme heat from above—as from the plasma blast of a Force spell. A rock embedded in the bottom of the pot and a broken window verified that Grimoire had blown up the comedian's dinner, causing the emptied pot to shoot into the street (where she failed to clean up a burnt soup spill).

My witnesses had seen flying minestrone not pony innards, but hadn't looked long enough to see through the charade (which incidentally worked for me as now my low brainpower stooges thought they were accessories to a murder and wouldn't leave my employ if they wanted to). When Streak's wagon was stolen from the garage of my safe house by a unicorn who could break locks, I realized somepony too-confident in herself had spirited away the comedian in the night.

Certain that the murder would never be investigated because it wasn't one, Grimoire returned to Canterlot and to Celestia's School. I paid her to make her think I was clueless. Scared that I might eventually see through her ruse, she quit. Unemployed, she abandoned her flat in the Lower for a spot in Sunset's bed in her ivory tower on Castle Canterlot's grounds.

I don't think she had further plans after having sent notice with Streak that she quit being my pretend enforcer, other than to graduate Celestia's School and attend university. But Sunset had finally tried nettle-ewe about the same time; she briefly surpassed Twilight Sparkle's scholastic prowess and demonstrated the potential the magical community had only expected from Celestia's second protégé.

Temporarily.

I bought out Deep Thinker's dispensary business for silvers when copper bits were its true worth and gave her my Las Pegasus factor's address to send her packing. I dried up the supply of nettle-ewe in Canterlot. I waited a week for the veggie stew to simmer until Sunset became an obvious wreck.

Sunset knew Grimoire had access to the herb. I was certain that Grimoire had returned to her senses that first time I coerced after she'd explained what nettle-ewe was to Sunset, before destroying my starter sample.

I sent Grimoire a missive. It read "Sunset Shimmer." I was greedy. I wanted both fillies in my stable.

Contrary to popular opinion, greed is not good. When you take away everypony's pie, they get hungry and they work together to eat yours. That was one that Stinking Rich taught me. It's the lesson I forgot.

It didn't take more than a week before I got word that Grimoire—disguised in her full black "work" stalking cloak, fake make-up toothed-book cutie mark (because she was a blank flank), and piled-high Baltimare gangland bouffant—was leading Sunset Shimmer into the Lower after the dinner crowd had cleared. I swiftly set up at the Hooflyn Delicatessen with a celebratory bottle of vintage claret. I had a bottle of dill pickles, sauerkraut, and fresh-baked Hooflyn corn rye with a pot of soft butter. The autumn fireflies swarmed near the park this balmy night. The air smelled ripe for success.

Grimoire marched Sunset up to me so coldly she might have been a livestock merchant. The hard-case then turned flank and told me we had a deal, that she'd fulfilled it, and that she'd quit. I threw fifty gold coins in a pouch at her head and explained quitting wasn't an option. She held the pouch midair, looking ready to bean me when Sunset apparently broke, spooked by Grimoire's transformation from standoffish protégé-material student to a criminal enforcer.

Sunset cried, "I have bits. Lots of bits! A simple transaction and I'll leave you to your business with G-Gr— Grimoire."

I had to explain to her, "You don't understand, my little filly. This isn't a business deal. This is an employment interview."

When she became skittish, studying the envelope of nettle-ewe on the cafe table, looking ready to do a snatch-and-teleport, I had to use my talent on her. I spoke about a royal guardsmare officer who had yet to earn her "pay." She sounded practically gleeful she could twist the knife in the pain-in-the-flank ner'do-well officer.

It was then that the EBI Agent Good Fellows trotted out of the park, fireflies swirling ominously in his wake.

It all made sense, suddenly: Grimoire's desire to quickly leave, the week it took for her to bring Sunset, and why Good Fellows had "disappeared" without a trace while Grimoire had escaped covered with a convincing amount of blood and affecting a limp, only to heal surprisingly quickly. Sweet Celestia! It was Grimoire who had turned the comedian to an informer. She had needed to rescue him from my stupidity!

No wonder Grimoire hadn't been written about in the Hooflyn or Manehatten press associated with Carne Asada. No wonder she had shown up in Canterlot, enduring my manipulations that kept her from a paying job. She'd played along, choosing to be homeless, defenseless, needy, and available.

She'd become an EBI agent.

Bait. I'd taken tasty bait.

I had done what Carne Asada had done, but nowhere as spectacularly. At least she'd lit a city block on fire and started a gang war that would fill history books as it did the newspapers.

I'd walked into a sting operation.

When Fletching began casting Force to give me the chance to escape, the royal guard and city constables descended. My bottle of pickles hit me in the head before I could more than flinch.

While Grimoire froze before fumbling a teleport that drove her into into the ground, Sunset Shimmer had broken out of my talent-induced inebriation. Though she jittered and looked sick-to-her-stomach from nettle-ewe withdrawal, she'd nevertheless knocked over a wrought iron cafe table with a loud bang and cowered behind it as she threw things. The shock of being hit by the pickle jar she'd thrown slowed me enough that I practically stumbled into a constable.

I touched the mare and cried that I was innocent and that turncoat officers were trying to kill me. She shot down a pegasus royal guard while I dodged a flying cafe chair, then got pelted with rye bread slices. I had no choice but to coerce other officers while force bolts of purple, yellow, and pink crisscrossed the courtyard outside the restaurant. I even tried and failed to coerce Grimoire.

The ensuing mayhem gave me a chance to escape, but then Grimoire pulled an eye-catching trick, floating toward me in a shield spell resistant to the brilliant bolts of everypony's Force and Stun spells. It caught my eye long enough that I failed to run and missed yet another chance to escape.

Then somepony threw me bodily into the blackened glass wall of the Hooflyn Delicatessen.

I slid to the ground, stunned for precious seconds. Before my face, the pickle jar lay in a smelly pool of its own juices just perfectly positioned for me to see the reflection of Sunset Shimmer with an expression contorted into a furious mask, her horn alight. I felt my weight plummet, just before a force bolt splashed the ground before her. She yelped and hid her head.

I had missed Grimoire's landing, and my turncoat constable blocked my escape by shielding me, noticing the threat of my erstwhile enforcer.

What Starlight Glimmer did next I did not understand until later. She threw a spell at me so evil that it should have sent her to Tartarus to rot in isolation in the highest restraint zone for eternity. I felt the destruction of my sense of destiny and the loss of all the happiness in my life, as if the essential me that made life worth living had been ripped from my body. The shock devastated me—and spooked me on such an instinctive level that it it didn't matter I was down on the cobblestones where I'd collapsed after being smashed against a wall.

I bucked. Stupidly, the motion required me to flex my back. I threw my head against the stone pediment of the restaurant.

The next thing I knew I sat, feeling dizzy, my soul and destiny miraculously restored, but with this backfire ring attached to my horn that made it painful to think about spells or numbers. I vaguely heard Starlight's voice, getting louder and quieter and louder, warning my talent would work without my unicorn magic. I'd never thought of it that way, but since it did work through touch alone she was probably right.

I looked up in time to see Grimoire land on Streak and teleport her down the block, then with her multiple destinations spell, far away. No doubt, Grimoire's evil spell caused Good Fellows to order her arrest, too, despite her also being an EBI agent.

Good riddens, I thought, just before Sunset Shimmer's horn lit in my peripheral vision. When I made eye contact with her emeraline eyes, the grinning minx threw me into the wall again. Since I was now a couple yards from the wall and hobbled, her vicious attack knocked me out cold.

I understood her intent; it should have killed me. But I understood why it failed.

Fletching, who specialized in combat magic, once told me the prevailing theory. Unicorn magic was made from rainbows (and giggles, though that was patently absurd). A unicorn could not use magic to directly hurt or kill a pony. Thus Sunset's levitation spell had broken under her intent, sparing my life. And it probably hurt her, to boot, with a back-splash of magic. It was why, Fletching explained, that you aim your force bolt before of a target and let the superheated air inflict damage beyond the end of magical apparition itself. Doing otherwise caused the spell to fail.

It was strange that Sunset Shimmer didn't know this, but then everything I'd read in the newspapers and had been told by ponies that had met her, even in passing, had insisted she was full of herself and not willing to understand things she didn't already know.

It was probably why Celestia had taken on a second protégé and might have taken a third if super-competent Starlight Glimmer hadn't proved herself so corrupt.

Starlight Glimmer was corrupt. Very. Evil, in fact.

She had ripped my cutie mark out of me. Nopony had noticed, nor would they believe me when I tried to mention it.

That she used the spell at all was undoubtedly an application of situational ethics.

"To Bring Light into Infernal Darkness."

It amazed me how much Good Fellows and the Equestrian Bureau of Investigation had learned about my network and business. They had wanted to interrogate me more, but then I met an extremely cross Princess Celestia—who had failed to raise the sun until past noon.

I knew.

I sat in an ugly green interrogation room that had a clock, a two-way mirror, and a dirty skylight that brightened so late that we all commented.

12:34 PM, in fact.

I was hobbled behind a table so I could touch nopony, the ring on my horn hurting whenever I reflexively reached for my glass of water or tried to calculate things like the bits it cost to shutter a street maintenance business to force the city to pay more to another I influenced. I had been told cooperation would ease the sentence given me. I had been about to relate information about my zebra herbalist Zecora in the Everfree when Celestia burst in. Her yellow magic held the door open and lifted Fellows, and his rapidly peddling interrogation assistant who had played the role of good-copper to his bad, into the hall.

She slammed the door hard enough to rattle the frosted panes in the skylight and to make the two green saucer-shaped lanterns sway.

After a flash bang, the mirror found itself covered in soot. My heart raced in dread.

"Princess!" I bowed my head and tried unsuccessfully not to cower.

The white alicorn stood in full gold regalia, crowned and armored, tall and elegant—and as scary as Tartarus. Her violet eyes, outlined in black mascara, pierced me as her mane waved around her in an ethereal zephyr. She ignored the too-small chairs as she folded between them, her legs underneath her. Even so, she still looked down on me—and I was a big pony.

"You," she said flatly, "What is your cutie mark talent?"

I explained. As I did, she materialized a scroll and a red feather quill with a gold nib. She scribed notes, scritch-scratching the surface loudly.

She remarked, "All ponies get cutie marks to help other ponies."

"Yours?" I blurted in sudden nerves, adding, "Your Majesty."

"To bring light into infernal darkness. Yours is special. Too bad you did not see how useful it could have been to encourage others to achieve their dreams."

She wrote on the scroll quietly until I asked, "What about my dreams?"

Her eyes narrowed, almost as if she had taken my question personally. Her jaw tightened as she thought further about my question, like she could find the right words that could get by a strict political censor, until she answered, "I got what I gave—why should yours be any different? What do you know about the Countess— about... Starlight Glimmer?"

"That she can take anypony's cutie mark away—"

Celestia rose with incredible swiftness, flaring her wings and knocking the interrogators' chairs against the walls hard enough that they splintered loudly. I froze in awe, then, splashed with a spell, I found all my muscles locked. The sheer burning anger that spread across her face made me fear she might simply crush me.

An alicorn was manifestly not a unicorn. Immortal, nopony knew an alicorn's limits, nor that of one's magic. More than rainbows and giggles. Stinking Rich's pals in the peerage speculated that alicorn magic was some baleful terrifying power, perhaps even dark magic kept under control by will alone.

"You are evil," she stated flatly with a finality that went against everything I had heard about her being a soft and loving princess. Her magic flared and I heard flames roar hungrily behind me. I tried to cringe, but couldn't, still frozen. Her magic made me weightless and rotated me so I could see a square golden mirror floating mid-air, framed in fire. The police hobbles crashed to the floor. As I floated closer, it cleared to show a bleak grey landscape that I'd soon learn was Tartarus.

As she pushed me through the glass as if it were a vertical pool of quicksilver, proceeded by a now wax-sealed scroll, I heard, "Think long on your crimes and what you could have done better. One day maybe you can yet be of service to Equestria. Forget Starlight Glimmer."

Yes. I really had ticked her off!

I arrived in a cloud-shadowed land, gray mountains looming to my right and left, and fell legs out, spinning on my belly across a white illuminated glassy surface that for my momentum was as slick as ice. The instant I stopped, chains materialized and clicked closed to secure me, hobbled again, to the ground. Stretched out, I couldn't even stand; there was no slack in the chains. The air was neither hot nor cold, but it smelled of something burnt, something faintly sulfury.

Something, not too distant, gave a trumpeting roar like its owner wasn't sure if it were a lion or an elephant. It was probably a chimera of both. Princess Celestia sent the monsters that invaded Equestria here.

And now she had sent me.

I was a monster.

I had suspected as much, but being tied down with something that sounded vicious and hungry near-by, having lost everything… I began to cry.

Before the tears pooling on my cheeks hit the glass ground, dark wings battered my face and body. Outraged caws echoed against the silver pyrite walls. A murder of crows mobbed me!

I screamed and thrashed, despite the cuffs of the chains that dug deeply into my legs. I was going to die. I knew it. I screamed and flailed out with my magic, despite outrageous stabbing pains and bright lights behind my eyelids because of the ring, but I was going to protect myself even if with the dimmest hope. I even bucked, which twisted me belly up, but at least I could bite at my attackers. Even in this state, I still remembered ghost stories about black monster birds that ate your eyes before eating you alive... and then remembered something by Eager Angry Pool that crows, more insidiously, caused you to fall into madness.

Nevermore.

And, like that, they stopped. I kept thrashing, and I'm pretty sure spraying foaming spittle from my mouth. They formed a line that circled me far enough away that none of my spit could reach them. Though I had pulled half the muscles in my body, and smeared the glassy surface with blood from fighting my restraints, I found pause in the sudden military perfection of their formation.

I was in Tartarus.

I quieted. Pinioned upside down, I peered at my…

Accusers? Judges?

The crows examined me with black beady eyes. As the dark clouds scudded away from the sun, a sudden break brought bright light that slid in from what I'll call the east, like a spotlight beamed on down from above. The birds went from black to prismatic, turning into all the colors of the rainbows the pegasi created. The brilliance and color made me gasp and try to protect my eyes with a hoof, but the chains rattled and prevented that. I squinted to protect myself from being dazzled.

One crow stepped forward, looking first red, then orange, then yellow. He stepped on the scroll Celestia sent ahead of me. He examined the seal with one eye for a moment, then peck-peck-pecked the wax free with powerful thrusts of his weathered beak. Clicks echoed around my prison. The wax jumped upward and landed on my flank, then bounded away on the glass.

Stepping on the edge of the scroll, the leader of the rainbow crows unrolled it with the opposite foot, jumping forward to read the Alicorn's writing in brown ink with a birdy, one-eyed tilted-head gaze.

He looked at me and jumped aside. The scroll closed itself with a loud thawap and spun away.

The leader said in beak-mangled Equestrian, "Using magic is prohibited. For you, using your special talent is prohibited. We see, hear, smell, and feel magic. We will know. We will attack you as we did today if you use magic, but we will hurt you next time. You see your chains? You are now under maximum restraint. Use your magic and you will experience it again, for hours the first time, then days or years as is necessary." The creature ended with a loud caw, echoed by his brethren.

The chains holding me down disappeared in a puff of smoke.

As I rolled over and stood, The crow intoned, his voice changing as he spoke, transforming into something pleasant and pony-like— "White Stockings… Running Mead." —and recognizable. It was Princess Celestia's voice! "My most honored Rainbow Crows are my eyes and ears in this pocket world safely removed from Equestria. You may have a chance of parole if you come to understand your mistakes and can make yourself of service to Equestria. Remember this."

The rainbow crows bowed as a group. Cawing, they cried, "Your Majesty!"

In pairs and in groups, the five dozen crows took flight, fluttering loudly skyward until none remained save the leader. He hopped, ready to take flight himself. I said, "Sir. What do I do?"

The now blue shimmering creature gave a birdy shrug. "Don't use magic. Don't get eaten. Don't cause anypony trouble." He leapt into the air, but circled me to say, "And don't forget anything Princess Celestia told you."

Oddly, that made me think of the last thing I'd heard before I landed in Tartarus.

"Forget Starlight Glimmer."

Why? Why was that important?

"I am The Timberwolf."

[Edited for space. White Stockings spent time not finding anypony in the Twin-Horn pyrite mountains or grassy piedmonts of the Rim, learning he could graze in isolation, and pretty much becoming bored with a Tartarus that seemed sinisterly benign. He began to explore the restraint zones. - Princess Twilight Sparkle.]

...And then I climbed to a restraint plateau filled with what appeared to be an exploded log cabin. A rainbow crow, reflecting red, greeted me with an unintelligible caw from a rock ledge as I climbed off the last step.

The logs looked broken by storms or burnt by lightning, so perhaps the cabin assessment wasn't correct. Silver-brown bark clung to the rim of more than half of the wood, except for areas that looked gashed by claws, bashed by other logs, or just worn away by a bear scratching himself on a tree. Moss and calcified lichen dressed the bark, but otherwise the wood looked fresh and green. None of it looked rotted as a pile laying in a forest might. On second thought, it really did look like storm wrack, consisting everything from tree trunks and broken branches to twigs. Many of the thinnest sported a few leaves, all oval and seriated, likely an elm; I'd seen plenty of elm trees up and down the east coast.

So why did dismembered elm trees lay in a disarranged heap at the center of the glassy arena? A head scratcher. I laughed, musing that perhaps some red-eyed demon beaver had escaped here—though, considering my short instruction as to how restraint zones worked, that didn't make sense. Magic would prevent any escape. As I walked around the margin, I noticed chains that ended in logging hooks that dug deeply into four of the biggest trunks.

A cloud rolled across the sun and plunged me into shadow. A faint green glowing miasma clung to the pile and swirled in the breeze. The sight distracted me enough that I stepped into the arena.

I felt a tingling and saw a gleam, like you would see on a glass bell jar as you pass between it and a light. It was a shield spell. Other than the tingle, it had no effect on me.

The pile, on the otherhoof, began to rattle. Bits shivered and branches clacked against one another. The din spread across the entire collection of logs at it started self-assembling.

I backed out beyond the shield spell. In less than a minute, the whole thing became a monstrously large and lanky dog. The leaves created eyebrows and filled the ears of a log-snouted canine face, but also decorated its spine, and added fluff to the bottom of its tail and tassels where a pony had fetlocks. Enormous scythe-like claws formed on its paws and peg-like teeth arranged themselves in the jaw of a head that turned to follow my movement. The miasma filled in the interstices that would flesh out an animal shape. The stuff glowed like green fire in the eyes that opened to regard me.

The hooked manacles that dug into the creature's lower legs went to chains exactly long enough to keep it anchored in the restraint zone.

Oddly, it did not frighten me, though I did back into the pyrite mountain side. The creature's calm regard seemed calculated not to spook me. It had the form of a predator and seemed to know that was how I regarded it. Form. It was logs. And it wore them like clothes. Despite having teeth, what could it eat? The creature was the greenish fog. My guess, anyway.

A gravelly, thoroughly female voice asked, "Do you come to taunt me? Why do you wake me from a sleep of pleasant eons?"

A warm breeze ruffled my fur. I answered, "I'm not here to taunt you. I'm merely exploring a lonely world. You're obviously a light sleeper—"

She lunged. With the grace of a pegasus flinging herself into the sky, she came up short exactly at the margin of the glass floor. Where her muzzle touched the shield spell, sparks of burnt wood, like coals snapping in a campfire, popped and sailed to my side, skittled on the ground, and smoked. Her silence was eerie. Only her chains rattled. The wood composing her body made no noise.

My heart raced and I stared for a moment. It jogged my memory. I remembered one of my friends from my blank-flank days—Marlin. She had this thing for taunting junk yard dogs. She would figure out the maximum length of one's chain, then taunt it so it bark and jump and slaver, throwing spittle. When it realized its limits, she'd reach in with a hoof and touch its nose with the frog of her hoof and say, "Boop!" At that point, she would—every single time—get a "you stupid horse-face" look and they'd settle glaring at her.

I stepped forward, reached up to the two-story creature, reared, and touched her nose. She did not flinch. I felt the splintered wood and a bit of heat from the shield spell. I could smell her breath, which was as rank as it was green-colored. I pushed her back. Unlike a real dog, the geometry of her mouth made it impossible for her to snag the margin between my hoof and the shoe to grab me.

Her green glowing eyes narrowed. She stepped back so her chains allowed her to sit. Conversationally, she said, "You're new here.".

I sat, too. "How do you know?"

"The same way I know you never studied history."

I didn't concede anything. All information is valuable, but she powered on.

"I'm one of the biggest exhibits in Celestia's zoo and all inmates visit eventually." She leaned in and sniffed. "You smell like a pony."

I sniffed my shoulder, thinking Miss Compost Pile Breath was one to talk. "What I need is a bath. Does it ever rain in this desert land?"

"Weekly, so you've been here no more than six days. What did Celestia send you here for, Newbie?"

I huffed. I didn't consciously square my shoulders, but realized I had when I said, "She said I was evil."

I grinned widely.

"Pffft," she sneered, making raspberry sound though she had no lips. "All she told me was that I was dangerous." She shook her head and snorted. "I was, of course. As far as I know I was the only one to ever defeat Princess Celestia. She has no sense of humor."

I chuckled. "From personal experience, I'd agree, though the Canterlot Inquisition paints her as a practical joker." A bit of information in trade for, "The Princess didn't remain undefeated?"

"She does love her ponies. Have you never heard of the timberwolves?"

I remembered out loud and chose to narrow what I knew by equivocating. "Other than the street term for somepony who prefers to work at night with a few of his friends...."

"Your modern pony educational system must be failing. This is the first time I've met a pony who didn't know."

I stood, my heart beating faster. "There are other ponies in Tartarus?"

Her glowing eyes rolled. She didn't have to say newbie!. "I've been around awhile."

"Who are you?"

"I am Princess Forest Green. You may call me 'Princess.' And you?"

I touched a hoof to my chest. "I'm White Stockings. My friends call me Stockings. My business associates call me Running Mead."

"Sir Stockings," she said.

I bowed. "Princess."

"Are there any wild forests left in Equestria, Stockings?"

"Geography—"

"Is not one of your better subjects?"

I grinned and finished. "I only know of the Everfree Forest south of Canterlot. It's so dangerous and wild that nopony lives there, except a zebra I used to do business with."

The princess lay her head on the ground and sighed. "You have given me great hope, Stockings, that I may have saved some of my descendants. May hap I am not the first and the last of my kind. You are very nice."

"Not as in tasty, I hope."

She chuckled. "Do I look like I eat?"

"Actually... Not efficiently. I gather you're a 'timberwolf?'"

"I am the timberwolf. Before me there were none. The kindly wolf witches of the Auroral Forest found and condensed my soul from the ambient magic; I took their form in gratitude. I protected them for many years."

"I've never heard of the Auroral Forest."

"Even were you a genius in geography, you would not know of it. Between the dark-hearted Crystal Ponies who first settled the north and the later wave of far-eastern pony settlers who followed Celestia, they decimated the old deep wild woods."

"I see a conflict here."

The princess chuckled. That chuckle became laughter, but not the good kind. Lots of pain. Could wood weep, there'd have been tears.

"I'm sorry, princess. Nopony has ever accused me of being nice before and I guess I'm not really gallant."

"Then you do not know yourself, Stockings."

I had an insight. She really wanted a friend. In a place like this, I needed one, too. "I will hazard a second guess. When ponies chop down wood—"

That earned me a very long evaluating stare. I stopped there. My comment wasn't nice.

She sighed loudly. "Not so much the cutting but the gathering. If there aren't fallen trees or broken branches, there are no nurseries. The teeth in these jaws are for protecting. Silviculture is genocide. Evil—"

I gasped so loud, I interrupted her. "Evil is relative. And ethics is situational. I'm here because I didn't fully understand the concept. We may have a lot more in common than you might think!"

We talked for many hours. I would return regularly. She taught me ancient history and geography. I taught her to play cards—I'd gotten Stinky to teach me Queens and Horseponies so I could join his weekly game—and chess. She taught me how to make the glass restraint zone floor produce any food or drink I wanted, or any simple toy. We philosophized. Things friends do.

She obviously didn't eat me despite me giving her ample opportunity to do so.

"Some Big Baddie I am!"

Over the next few months I settled into my new life. My life as a hermit grazing in the foothills lasted a week. I despised sleeping in the rain, forced to stand upright and dripping, despite needing a shower. Lukewarm rain wasn't comfortable.

I'm not a good companion for myself. I got tired of second and third guessing my actions leading up to ticking off Princess Celestia. Other than a certainty that the princess cared more about Starlight Glimmer than she did her first protégé, I'd discovered no lessons to be learned. No amount of rumination could change the past.

Time was immutable.

Finding other ponies proved easy. I headed away from the ring of mountains and found a dirt road. After about eight hours of walking, two days of travel since I wasn't used to all the exercise, I found an agricultural colony surrounded by green fields of alfalfa, borage, and cabbage—almost anything a pony could want to eat, including sugar cane and wheat, but no apples. Obviously too warm year-round for them.

What are ponies without apples? Cross? Mean? Sad?

Whomever had developed the settlement had built all the squat one-story buildings of the same brownish mud-brick, tiling the roofs with the same red tile. The walls showed major cracks repaired with crumbling whitish mortar multiple times over many centuries. Same with the roofs, some of which had been painted half black with the tar used to repair pulverized sections. The rest displayed yellow and blue lichen growth or brown stalagmites of mineral growth. Nothing was painted the pastel color ponies usually preferred.

No pride? Apathy? Punishment? No building supplies? The one six-story warehouse-like structure in the "civic center" looked no better.

At first everypony stared. Earth ponies raised their heads in the fields and soon I had a train of gold, pink, and minty green Earth and Pegasus ponies trailing me. Griffons and unicorns jogged toward me at the edge of the fields, joined swiftly with others as I sauntered down the main street. Their murmurs swiftly became a roar to drown the clip-clopping of my shod hooves on the silvery rock and tar pavement. None wore clothing, in contrast to my worse-for-wear yellow tweed jacket and torn dirty business shirt. Most wore wide-brimmed hoof-woven straw hats.

I decided to say nothing until addressed and kept on moving forward.

A snake as thick across as a big dinner plate slithered out of a glassless window. (I saw no glazed windows—couldn't be broken or used as a weapon, I suppose. I saw weathered wood shutters everywhere.) This snake had the same coloration as a dewy weed infested lawn, shades of green about her head shading into yellow and brown, but with scales that sparkled as she slithered into the sun. A rainbow of crystals, mostly blues shading prismatically to a smattering of red, crusted her under her neck and formed a crewcut mane of sorts that ended in a widows peak a hoof-length from her nostrils. She had a red cockatoo crest of feathers that slowly stood at attention. It made her look interested.

I stopped when she blocked my path and rose to address me. She said in a surprisingly pleasing contralto, "My name iss Jewel." Yes, she hissed the S sound. Yes, she displayed a red forked tongue. And teeth, stiletto teeth. Long enough to skewer zucchinis and onions for a barbecue.

Made me wonder what she ate. Suddenly I realized I'd seen no foals. Or elderly ponies for that matter.

I shuddered despite my better instincts before replying, "Appropriate name, Lady Jewel." Lady, by gender alone but a very fine thread mustache made her look subtly villainish.

Oh. Was that a blush. Interesting. She continued. "I'm a glitter cobra in case you didn't know. And those craven ssissies aren't talking to you because of that gnarlly ring on your horn. It's one of the few magickss allowed to work here and everyponyelse with one is under restraint." She looked up briefly. "There'ss two, I think. Three! Prong iss an oyrxicorn."

It would be interesting being an information broker in a town with a blabbermouth. Might be my number one client. Jewel could serve as my teacher, in any case.

She added, "They don't know what kind of baddie you are. For the record, I can protect myself." She snapped her jaws a few times, which sounded like steel clashing, and snapped her rattle-tipped tail a hoof length from my nose like a whip. It help also that, considering all her coils, she out-massed Celestia.

Yes, I had done bad things. Celestia had made the point I'd gone down the wrong path with a talent that was designed to do other ponies good. No need to tell anypony that my talent didn't require my horn, either—not that I'd ever risk being mobbed by a murder of rainbow crows ever again.

What to say to my new compatriots? "With this ring I can't lift a spoon to feed myself. Some big baddie I make!"

"You should remember this," a voice above me rumbled. I looked up to see a pepper-white griffon with golden lion haunches and a black crest. As he landed, he added, "No inmate may do magic, even pegasi who must use magic to fly."

He wore a gleaming bronze helmet, through which his crest of black feathers threaded, and a breastplate peppered with dents. He examined me with uncaring chocolate-colored eyes. He stuck his constable's baton against his chest armor.

That begged a question. "Sir?" I asked. "You fly."

"I'm the Warden and my name is Sharp Beak. Of course I can fly—Princess Celestia appointed me to administer the Tartarus province. I see you're never going to do magic. Don't fight, either. Pass me your commitment paper," he finished, pointing to the bulge in my jacket.

Like an earth pony, I bent my neck down to get my teeth into my pocket. Though the stiffness in my neck that had become chronic back home had gone away, it was a feat of manipulation I hadn't yet mastered. I snagged it, but it fluttered down to my hooves. I remembered rummaging through Starlight Glimmer's saddlebags and dropping her ponytailers and books to the ground and felt suddenly embarrassed. The warden tapped with a back paw, sharp claws clicking on the brick. I bent, bit the scroll and passed it over.

His was a power move, but ripe with information.

He took out a second scroll and wire-rimmed glasses. These were no ordinary glasses in that they had lens like soap bubbles displaying a prismatic sheen. He examined both scrolls side-by-side. The writing wasn't modern Equestrian and written in a strange cursive. Ten to one, the glasses were magic and they translated the script.

He eyed me and let both scrolls close with a thwack. "The rainbow crows will punish using your talent like any other magic." He put the glasses and both scrolls in his saddlebag.

"Sir. May I have mine back?"

He stopped, blinked, and glanced at the parchment. "Why? It's of no use to you."

"It's a reminder of Princess Celestia's instructions to me. Please, sir?"

Chocolate brown eagle eyes regarded me. He shrugged and flipped a scroll at me as he took flight.

Any of the earth ponies that had worked for me would have caught it with a mouth grab, but I let it tumble to my hooves. It bounced, making the popping noise cardboard tubes make when struck. Jewel swooped in. She grabbed it in a coil of her tail, which rattled faintly as she waved it before me then tucked it into my pocket.

"Thank you."

Her reptilian face appeared a half-pony-length from my face. Her scales resembled colorful terrazzo tiles and formed a hypnotic spiral around her neck. She said, "Sss-Celestia the Dark gave you instructions? That's reserved for the warden."

Two bits of unsolicited information there. "You can't use your talent, either." I pointed my nose at her neck. She'd likely used it to hypnotize prey and enemies, not to help anypony—but still.

"S-sad." Her tongue flicked out.

Though the crowd of villagers were closing in now, I whispered, "You share what you know with me first and we'll become fabulous friends." I could recognize a gossip hound, even in the guise of a snake.

She gave a decisive single shake of her rattle. "Instructions?" She had to know every first.

I hissed, "Promise."

Nictitating membranes blinked across her eyes as she regarded me. She glanced at the crowd and brought up the rattle end of her tail which resembled a small mummified spiral beehive made of the same stuff as a hoof. I tapped it with my hoof.

"Yesss," she said.

"Princess Celestia instructed me to forget Starlight Glimmer."

"Who?"

It was the start of a good business relationship with ready clients to which to sell a rare commodity and a lieutenant who I could depend upon to tell me juicy information first (often before blabbing in indiscriminately afterwards, alas). Unfortunately, there were no bits in Tartarus, certainly none in the agricultural colony which proved to be something of a commune. I confirmed quickly what I guessed: new inmates, especially pony ones, were rare. The last set had consisted of a Fillydelphian constable named Wolf Run, followed a few years later by his wife, Pear Brandy, and, surprisingly, by their son Brandywine. Nopony had seen the husband nor the son in four years. I found five-hundred ponies, assorted griffons, and token pony-compatible denizens such as antelope, golden stags, oyrxicorns, pachydermoseros, in addition to my new friend the chatterbox glitter cobra. They called the place Central City, though it seemed more like Morose Town. Little news of Equestria filtered into Tartarus. It made me a celebrity and as an information broker, I knew how to take advantage of it.

Like in any small town, everypony knew everypony else. Everypony worked; those that did less got less. Fortunately for me, I had workhorse blood in my veins. After an achy week of getting used to laboring, I could pull most any wagon. Tartarus had a magic that cured most ills and stopped aging. The creeping arthritis that had afflicted me in Equestria vanished in Tartarus during my first month.

Tartarus had other banes. Mostly unending routine and sameness. The oldest living pony here was a white unicorn stallion nopony remembered the name of. He had the closest thing to a solar cutie mark I'd ever seen save Sunset Shimmer's—obviously a ball of fire. The irascible cuss never spoke to anypony, but his magenta eyes followed you and if you encroached, he bellowed inarticulately. The word was that he was around five hundred and consumed by anger and resentment. He drank himself unconscious every night at the common kitchen.

It took me years to discover his name was Blare.

A few ponies recollected they had been here over three hundred years. Most inmates had lived here more than fifty years. I was the baby, except for Pear Brandy—and her son, who nopony had seen in a long time.

He was amongst the disappeared.

The longer an inmate lived, the more likely apathy sunk in. A red earth pony who everypony called Bauble was expected to disappear next. She had stopped talking the year before and had gone from corpulent to skeletal. The former jewel thief had specialized in magical amulets at the end of her career and had found one that allowed her to enslave anypony she touched with it.

Bauble often forgot to come in from the fields, even in the rain. I knew this because I tried to bring her in one day. She wouldn't budge. She was obviously half mule. Ponies figured she'd wander off one night. There were plenty of cliffs and other deadly places in Tartarus for the impatient.

The story was that the rainbow crows took care of the remains.

Nevermore.

"The Rarest of Commodities."

Author's Note

3/16/17 - Revised Crinkle Paper's tidbit about Sunset Shimmer to correct what White Stockings knows and doesn't know.

"The Rarest of Commodities."

Celestia's prison enforces being nice.

It worked. Until you grew sick of it and lost the will to live.

The pocket world could easily have served as a go-to destination where ponies could find a cure for any injury or infirmity—though not diseases. Being here stopped aging. All that I'd learned of Princess Celestia, including during that one fateful meeting, had left me unable to believe that she could be that cruel. Tartarus could have hosted a sanitarium, a convalescent hospital, a spa, and so much more. It could have generated incredible wealth for the royal treasury. I could not understand the princess' priorities.

Nevertheless, she had reigned for over a thousand years so I guess inscrutable worked.

To stave off boredom, I worked to become everypony's friend. Surprisingly, most everypony was willing to tell me amazing things about their past if I listened quietly, asked rare questions, and smiled or looked shocked as appropriate. Though I made friends for my own reasons, it soon became the real thing.

The stories quickly became too much to remember. The scroll I'd saved proved useful for taking notes, though I had to relearn a skill I'd last used as a foal. Everypony called it hoofwriting or longhoof though in Tartarus even unicorns had to write manipulating a quill with lip and tongue. Inmates got neither pens nor paper. I made my own ink from berries and vinegar. You could trade pegasi and griffins for quills. I practiced long and hard on dried leaves and bark before micro-writing on Celestia's gift to me. There's plenty of time to learn any craft or to perfect any skill in Tartarus.

When I took time to visit the mountains, to visit Princess Forest Green to play cards, and then to visit her neighbors, I realized I was on to something that could prove interesting for many years. Ponies would pay (such that they could) for entertainment; learning about the monstrous inmates in the uncounted restriction zones served me well. I made many friends. While few monsters spoke Equestrian, many tried their best, or used sign language, or drew in dirt or mud with hoof, tentacle, or claw, anything to make themselves known or to vent centuries of bile and vitriol.

All of it proved interesting in one way or another. Besides biographies, I gathered the histories of cities, nations, and cabals cross-referenced between ponies who lived in the same place at different times or lived during the same times but in different lands—a dark geography of the spread of ponies and monsters across Equestria from their origins on every continent and ocean. I learned about forest canopy cities, desert caravans, pirate fleets, fairy castles, and windigo-loving queens.

This lead to the second time I spoke to Warden Sharp Beak. A pegasus deputy lead me to his office on the top floor in the "Big House", the multistory jail, factory, and administration building in the center of Central City. Though it had a big unfinished pine desk littered with papers and folders, the only other furniture consisted of a manger that wrapped around the room like a horseshoe and was stuffed full of fragrant hay and positioned against the desk. A wide window he could fly through stood unshuttered behind him, showing the circle of blue dusky mountains in the distance. The old griffon lay there, checking lists and doing whatever warden-y things wardens did. He said, "Yes?" He didn't look up.

I eyed the scattered papers with so little writing on them. "Sir. I was wondering if I could petition you to receive some of the paper you import from Equestria?"

"You can wonder."

I reached into the pocket of my now tattered jacket and pulled out the half-pony-length scroll now covered in purple berry-ink notes. I made sure it made noise as I opened it and got him to glance for an instant. "I am interviewing the inmates in the restriction zones. It occurs to me that I could write an encyclopedia about the history and behavior of the various beings that live in Tartarus."

"That's nice."

"How may I go about getting some paper?"

"You can't," he said, opening a book to compare a table with his list. When I didn't budge from his obvious dismissal, he added, "Paper costs bits and you have none."

"Sir."

He sighed, put down his pencil and sat up so he could look down into my eyes with an unblinking slit-pupil raptor gaze meant to rattle me.

I quickly said, "Princess Celestia clearly instructed me to find some way to make myself useful to Equestria when she sent me here. This, I think, is what I can do to fulfill her order."

He shook his head. "When the princess sends new immates, she sends all the information we need about them. In your case, EBI records and history. Even for the hard cases that will never leave the restriction zones, she sends some documents. We keep the information filed in the records room downstairs. Anything else?"

I tamped down on my anger and frustration, working to process the information given me freely until my subconscious... Bingo! "How do I get bits?"

His eyes narrowed. "Become a deputy. Considering the animosity you doubtlessly have for the constabulary, not to mention your extralegal business dealings in Canterlot and Manehatten, I doubt you'd be interested."

He lay back down and grabbed another folder.

I left. He'd given me much to think about.

The instant I left the Big House, Jewel poked her forked tongue in my face, tickling my nose. "Did he give you paper?" She glittered in anticipation.

There had to be something I could do, short of becoming a constable. Work in the constabulary; wear the hat with the copper badge; yay!

I did not see myself doing that.

I remembered the bruiser copper back in Hooflyn when I got my cutie mark. He'd been a loser.

I'd been a loser then and didn't yet know it. More so now. With every dawning day, Celestia slowly won. I shook my head, my hooves crunching in the gravel as I walked away alone.

I'm not sure what drove me to choose the specific topic I chose for storytelling that night in the common kitchen. The roofed open space provided protection from the sun and the rain for as many as fifty long tables, as it did this evening, and included a dozen wide hearths for communal cooking. The smell of leek and parsnip soup, with roasted caramelized hay, filled the area in my quadrant because that's where a yellow unicorn named Sawhorse had placed a soup tureen and a heaping plate of browned alfalfa before me. (She'd sawn through one-too-many bridges to draw business to her carpenters guild when one collapsed under Celestia's army as it headed out to fight a border incursion of the Oryxian Elite Force.) Maybe it was her yellow fur and unicorn horn that prompted me.

Maybe it was the rare appearance of one of the deputies in the kitchen. Except for the warden and a couple of adminstrators, the entire staff of the Big House, really the government of Tartarus, were inmates. They had the privilege of eating at work where some of the food was imported from Equestria; this included the only apples in Tartarus. Still, I imagine, even the privileged wanted to eat out occasionally. Or to slum it.

I loudly sipped the leek soup—made creamy with cumin potatoes and rosemary infused sunflower oil—to show my appreciation. I lowered my hooves and the bowl and wiped my green mustache with a foreleg (which passed as manners here and I'm one to follow convention). A dozen flickering vegetable oil lamps lit my silent audience. I paused dramatically, while moths fluttered around the lamps making a faint patter with their wings on the glass, then added, "Would you believe it? The newspapers declared Sunset Shimmer to be Princess Celestia's love child!"

That received a roar of laughter and a thunder of hooves on the brick floor. I'd reported this one before, but the joke I manufactured from it was well loved.

Deputy Crinkle Paper, a pale flaxen-colored earth pony mare with a long limp platinum mane, had a pained expression on her face as she contained her laughter and snorted daintily. I had learned from two stallions that she had been caught having forged documents that allowed ponies to collapse the economy of a small dukedom. Ponies had starved as a result of her greed. Forgery seemed the opposite of her crushed ball of paper cutie mark, but there you are. Her violet eyes locked on me and I knew she had something to say.

"Crinkle Paper?"

"That pony was crazy from the beginning! She attacked Princess Celestia in front of everypony. The princess should have seen it coming. Sugar cubes!"

It might sound cliché, but the crowd went so silent you could actually hear crickets chirping. Then somepony dropped a mug of beet juice. A new roar rumbled through the our shabby supper palace.

I got up and walked up to her. She was a petite pony and I lowered my head to speak on her eye level. I asked as guilelessly as I could, "Sunset Shimmer did many things, including having a public spat with Princess, but 'attacking' the princess is one I've not yet heard. Wow! When did that happen?"

"Um—"

A sudden silence of the nosey audience stopped her cold. She looked around, suddenly grinning guiltily. Such big beautiful teeth.

"You know," she said quietly, "That's something we keep amongst ourselves in the Big House."

"Did it happen before the royal court?"

She made a zipping motion in front of her mouth. Shaking her head, she backed away to a loud chorus of "Awww!"

I followed her into the night. Never discreet Jewel nevertheless managed to slither along in the shadows. Central had no street lighting, but cloudy moonlight and the wane illumination of lanterns in unglazed windows and through wood shutters provided enough light to see. Most ponies I knew saw well enough in the dark.

Trotting up beside her, I said, "Sunset and I have a history."

She chuckled. Kind of a tinkling sound. "Sunset Shimmer, the princess' first protégé. I know. I've read your record."

Got one free there: the warden's inmate staff had access to the background files. I said, "I'll run and fetch for a week for that story."

"Really?" She snorted.

"Cook."

"Oh?"

"I'll dip shower water from the well— How about daily?" She was fastidious and made sure she aways looked nice; hard to do in rustic dusty Tartarus.

"You're trying to bribe me?"

I stopped long enough to thump my chest. "Me? There's no such thing as bribes in Tartarus. We have nothing. We share everything."

I already suspected this whole dropping a lure into calm waters had to do with my visit to the warden today. When she shook her head and laughed, I added, "I'll do anything you ask of me. Keep you warm at night. Anything."

I wasn't all that in demand with the mares—since nopony could foal in Tartarus, it was a thing; stallions had to play the game. It was pro forma offer.

She stopped and looked at me with a smile. She then walked slowly around me, stopping a moment at my flank to admire my spilt mug of mead cutie mark as I swished my tail, before finishing the circle. She said, "One day. Sure." She laughed. "Not today." She reached into a pouch strung around her neck, catching a sheet of paper with the frog of her hoof. She presented the sheet. "The warden thought you might want an application."

I said, "Not really interested."

"You said anything."

"Huh. I did."

She sauntered around to my side and unexpectedly leaned against me. Her sudden warmth and weight shocked my heart into a double-time beat. She reached up to my ear and I felt her breath as she said, "I'd be glad to keep you warm at night, and that wasn't the warden's suggestion, either. Not only are you nice, you're a smooth operator and would be make a better partner than some of the dunderheads we've got in the Big House."

I actually blushed. She looked less than half my age, but Celestia had caught her in her confidence scheme more than a century ago. "Uhhh..."

She pushed herself upright and waved the application. "Here you go. The offer stands. Mine and his."

"Do I get to keep the paper?"

She smiled showing those pearly teeth again and tucked the application into the tattered pocket of my jacket. "Sure, Sugar Cube. Sure."

As she walked away, she swatted my nose with her platinum tail and I got a good whiff of pony scent.

I said, "Touché."

She stopped. Looked at me. "Come again?"

"Tell your boss, 'Touché.'"

As the light-color pony retreated into the darkness, looking like a ghost, I heard the faint sound of dust and pebbles from beneath a considerable weight. It was no surprise when Jewel hissed beside me, "She's one tasty morsel."

I shuddered. I could not be entirely sure that she meant the remark as salacious innuendo. The glitter cobra was a real boogie-mare. She had told me that she was "thought responsible" for the disappearance of foals and small ponies when she acted as a spy on Equestria's southern frontier over two centuries before. I hadn't gotten her to spill her full story, yet, but some ponies had said she had been in league with the Tolltech Empire and a shady monster known as Ahuizohtl. I gathered that was a title, like chief or king, not a name.

I said, "It's all about the rarest of commodities."

"Ooo. What?"

I took out the application. It fluttered in a dry breeze. "Paper."

"Ah. How s-so?"

"Me getting some, and me learning about everypony in Tartarus. It's too many details for one pony to remember. If I can't write it down, I can't show it to Celestia."

Oh. I said that aloud. I blinked, trying to focus outside of my head and on what my audience, which I needed to control, would think.

The snake spat. An unlucky dandelion began to sizzle, the yellow flower leaning over. "We need to know. Concentrate on that."

"Well, the warden wants to make that difficult. Even if I accept the job—" I pocketed the application since it slurred my speech. "He may still not give me any paper. Sharp Beak made a point of telling me he has a room full of records all about us. Doesn't need no stupid research. With him satisfied with his records, no paper. Nopony in Tartarus knows how to make paper. No paper, no encyclopedia—

"You do aim big, Mr. White Stockings."

I huffed. "Not sure I'm willing to do it any more."

She said under her breath, "Some pony speaks with a forked tongue."

Jewel remained silent beside me as I walked to the dorm I shared with her and a pair of griffins. She shared my bed. She insisted on the 'payment' for her investigative services; the desert denizen liked to keep warm, and Tartarus at night got cool. She also wanted to smell like ponies so they wouldn't be instinctively skittish around her. All the same to me.

Her scales glittered in the moonlight as she said, "Sss-sad." Her tone sounded the opposite of sad. Thoughtful, maybe?

Alone the next morning in my bed—a euphemism for a trough of hay—I stared at the application. I could fill the page with days of micro-notes in my invented shorthoof grammar. If I knew Sharp Beak's type, very much in the mold of Carne Asada and so many other power-broker ponies I'd met, if I decided to join he'd only accept this application. My notes—

—or a job.

I had changed a lot in the past couple of years or so! I used to hire ponies to research things for me so I could make decisions.

Bad decisions as it turned out.

And now, he who couldn't be bothered to read books in school, or afterward when in business, wanted to write an encyclopedia? Maybe Sharp Beak was right. I pegged the paper to the inside of the trough with a splinter and stared at the print. I remembered the indecipherable brown cursive scratches Celestia had made on the scroll when she committed me.

"No," I said. "It is important."

Really, it gave me purpose. And without purpose, Tartarus and Celestia would destroy me. With it, I might yet contribute to the society I had so disdained and disrespected.

I jumped out of the trough, grabbed myself a sack of bread and a quarter-bale of hay and headed up into the mountains. My intuition insisted I had a way of getting around the paper problem.

Princess Forest Green reconstituted herself, listened intently, and asked the restraint zone for paper. It produced single sheets without hesitation. My quill skipped on the rough stuff, but by refining the request we got china-white bond paper that was both fine grained and minimally absorbent. Perfect for shorthoof.

It dematerialized the moment I took it outside the restraint zone! Little puffs of ink dust wafted like smoke on the stiflingly hot day. My scream of frustration echoed though the adjacent hills, as did the timberwolf's unrepentant laughter.

I stayed in the mountains for weeks, trying all sort of things, even to the point of getting the magic in the restriction zone to duplicate Celestia's scroll—to no avail. The best I could come up with was asking the interviewees to keep my notes with them.

In the end, it proved a frustrating exercise. Few inmates could be trusted. I mean, well, we were all sent to Tartarus for a reason, weren't we? Even kept under a rock, the wildly unpredictable winds grabbed some of the sheets. Rain blurred the ink on others and would completely erase them eventually.

I decided to eat my pride after much prodding from Forest Green. She very much wanted to hear everything I would learn from my research. I wanted to make ponies happy, including her.

When I returned, hot and sweaty on a hot hot cloudless afternoon, I headed immediately for the warden's office with my filled-out application. Jewel slithered up to meet me at the red brick steps of the central warehouse-sized building.

She hissed quietly, "I thought you might want to know. There was a fire in sss-some of the s-storerooms of the Big House. Who knew they were filled with such flammable sss-stuff?"

"That (So-and-So) (Thus-and-Such) Daughter of a (Whatever)."

Yes, joined the force; wore the hat. Yay!

No copper metal badge, though. We didn't need one since everypony knew everypony. Sharp Beak informed me that I would eventually patrol to ensure nopony got into fights, and to break them up when necessary. I would eventually be sent to the other settlements (more like camps for less gregarious ponies). He'd sent Crinkle Paper to the Cerberus outpost, apparently to check that nopony got into fights but I suspected he had other reasons. My first staff job, however, turned out to be less constabulary than janitorial.

The griffon passed me a broom in his talon, which I had to carry in my teeth as he led me to the back of the building. The records storeroom smelled like an old trash fire and was still smoky enough to make me wheeze. Fire had scorched the dirt brick walls. Wet charcoal littered the remains of the closely packed library stacks-type shelving. I blinked at bits of melted metal glittering amidst the soot. Right. Nails. Ponies had shoved new posts in place to shore up the ceiling around scorched beams. If you're an earth pony or a pegasus, you already know how hard it is to sweep.

I grew to hate black.

The warden undoubtedly thought, though he never accused me, that I had been responsible for the arson, perhaps Crinkle Paper, too, but I had been gone in the mountains and he couldn't pin anything on me. Technically, I wasn't totally innocent. I had explained my paper issues and Sharp Beak's. Jewel had spread the news. I had created a network of friends who liked to do things with me. Treated right, your network will look after you.

Apparently, mine had. So I paid the price happily.

After the cleanup, I proved not only incompetent with a hammer, but dangerous to my fellow carpenters. Yeah. A unicorn swinging a two-pound hammer using his teeth and neck. Good idea! I ended up hauling lumber then supervising the factory jail on the middle floors.

Tartarus paid for itself by manufacturing a crunchy meat substitute for the carnivores of Equestria made from the bark and leaves of native kibble trees. It took machinery run by ponies and powered by ponies on treadmills and pony-wheels. Scrappy idiots who fought ended up working here. Others volunteered; something to do, they told me.

I made sure nopony fought on the factory floor. The place smelled of oil, which I had to apply to the flywheels and camshafts now and again. Sometimes I pulled the wagons down the ramps. I checked the sleeping cells, and sometimes swept or mopped them.

Terribly cerebral stuff.

I kept my head down, did the work—even though Sharp Beak didn't pay me. I was on "probation." I did get access to apples, however. Fresh apples, apple cider, apple strudel, apple pie, apple butter, and apple sauce, even an occasional staff party appletini.

Frankly, apples were good but tiring after awhile. I avoided the beignets. Donuts by any other name… Wasn't going there.

Eventually Crinkle Paper returned from her patrol of the hinterlands and I advanced to probationary patrol officer. In our case, it meant that we got the graveyard shift, missing the communal dinner and too tired by breakfast, walking around town and patrolling the fields, maintaining order while struggling to maintain consciousness.

By the second week, I ceased to be an unpaid rookie and became an unpaid patrolpony. Sharp Beak gave us different rounds so we rarely encountered one another. Well, in theory. It was a small town. Late one night, my ears perked. I heard a scream.

Crinkle Paper.

I galloped toward the sound, around a corner and across the kitchen commons. I actually leaped a table. The few late ponies stood, having heard the scream. Though for them, calling it standing was generous. Fermented distilled potato juice, or sugar beet flavored with juniper, lubricated most midnight discussions in Central and none of the wobbly ponies seemed ready, let alone able, to help anypony.

I heard a crash as I skidded and turned right onto Central Avenue. A flaxen pony lay on the ground in the doorway of the rowhouse that a former king of highway-ponies, Rough Road, had converted into a club. In the street, a blue nightwing pegasus reared, peddling her hooves threateningly, bat wings flared, yelling invective in a language that wasn't Equestrian. Thanks to the years I associated with the late Carne Asada, I understood what the mare said, mostly. None of it was good.

Though winded, I said as calmly as I could, "Chiquitita!" My horrible accent sounded more Hooflyn than Caro-bean, and certainly not Equidoran.

It worked. Shocked, Pear Brandy turned her vertically slit amber eyes toward me and said, "¿Qué?"

I continued in broken Caro-questrian as best I could while I interposed myself between the mares, standing over Crinkle Paper as she scrambled, actually more like flopped, trying to get herself up. She'd been knocked down, I judged. To Pear Brandy, I (think I) said, "You are beautiful when you get angry."

Considering my size, she had no choice but to strike me with her hooves or step back. She stepped back. Compared to a pegasus mare, she was husky with long legs and a thick neck, but was nevertheless still light-boned as were all flying ponies and griffons. Compared to me, she knew herself outclassed and out-massed.

She returned to all fours, snorted and spat words at Crinkle Paper I won't translate here. Eyes still wide with anger, she added, "That (so-and-so) (thus-and-such) daughter of a (whatever) started it!" She began to hyperventilate and flap her wings.

I'd learned that she had blown-up a bridge and collapsed part of a stadium in Fillydelphia. It had been in revenge for a murder her people claimed that Princess Celestia had perpetrated a millennium ago when the princess conquered the lands around Canterlot. Pear Brandy claimed that she and her family of zealots were responsible for the deaths of dozens and hundreds of injuries (according to what the princess had told her; "nothing publicized"). Of course, thanks to a certain recent fire, nopony knew if anything she spouted was true. She looked down on non-nightwings as inferior creatures and specifically hated Equestrians. During our first interview, she'd boasted she'd spent a year in a restriction zone. To my thinking, she did control her overheated temper to the very edge; she didn't want to go back. Even so, I felt certain she'd kill if it suited her purposes.

And, oh yeah, she was the best chef in Tartarus. Nopony wanted to provoke her.

To Crinkle Paper I said, "She says you started it."

Her platinum mane covered her eyes. Red moistened it by her ear. She shook her head, as if to clear it, as she finally got out, "I did."

"What?"

She coughed, got her legs under her finally, and retreated beyond the door. "I started it. And I'm sorry."

The night-wing cursed again, spat, and folded her wings. In heavily accented Equestrian, she added, "Don't push me again, Estúpida!" She glared at me and I met her gaze, before she stalked off.

Limping with her right front leg.

My petite partner had gotten in one good hit.

I chuckled and turned to look in the storefront. Inside, one of two hurricane lanterns lay smashed on the ground beside the wreckage of two chairs next to an overturned table. Other tables showed abandoned mugs and scattered potato chips. Judging by the mugs, about five others had recently fled, unless Crinkle Paper had been one of the group.

She sat now on the hay-strewn dirt floor, on her haunches like a dog. I pushed aside her limp mane. She bled from ripped skin below her ear. She probably had a light concussion. I sniffed her muzzle.

She immediately said, "Sugar beet alfalfa malt beer—and Puma and Fortuitous Event offered it to me."

"And you accepted?"

She said, "I heard a fight, but somepony heard me coming. Rough Road waved a hoof when I noticed the broken lantern. They were nervous, so I'm sure he was just watching in case we came by."

"What happened next?"

"I'd rather not say."

I looked skyward and sighed.

"Help me up."

I got her upright. She wobbled slightly as she closed the shutters and shut the doors. No locking up. Nothing in Tartarus had locks.

As we walked away, she said, "Thank you."

I glanced at the side of her head which dripped red ever so slightly. "Let's get Bone Saw to bandage that," I said as I turned toward the Big House.

"No. To my place."

"I don't understand."

"Pear Brandy finds ways to make trouble. Nopony wants her in the Big House sabotaging the machines or stirring up trouble. Trust me on this."

"She could have killed you."

"But she didn't, and she won't."

"What happened?"

"Thank you for—"

"—saving your life? You're welcome. But you're changing the subject. What happened?"

"I... I don't want to say."

"Won't or can't?"

"Won't. Let's not make it worse than it is. Remember, we're in Tartarus. I won't bleed to death from this scratch; by morning it'll be healed. One of the few benefits of living in this bland world."

I sighed as we approached her place. Many deputies stayed in rooms in the Big House, but she lived in a tiny dormitory house that I realized housed only her when we walked in. She struck a match and I saw a manger bed, a little hearth, and a table with no chairs. She lit a wick in a cup of oil to provide a wane light that smelled of soot. An ivy plant grew in a corner from a mud-brick container of dirt. She, of course, had no bandages. Clothes weren't made in Tartarus because no common inmates needed them, so there weren't rags. Before I could do something chivalrous with my khaki uniform shirt (which might get me fired), she put some hay against her head.

"You did save my life, or at least prevented a real beating."

"This worries me."

"It is what it is, Sugar Cube." She drank heavily from a misshapen pail with tarred cracks filled with well water, then climbed shakily into her bed. Once settled, her violet eyes caught mine. She tapped the bed beside her. "I'm feeling tired."

"I understand that after getting hit in the head you shouldn't sleep for a while"

"You can help me with that."

"Someone should patrol."

"You really think anypony will notice?"

"No. But—"

She tapped again. "Come hold the hay against my head."

When I looked dubious, she said, "Please."

I climbed in beside her. Even beat up and dirty, despite the slightly sour fragrance of week-old hay, her pony scent smelled marvelous. She noticed that I noticed. Once again, her laughter reminded me of tinkling bells.

"Sunset Shimmer."

Around dawn, I woke up with Crinkle Paper's head in the crease of my haunch. Her stomach growled and she smiled as she moved her head back and forth to shake me awake. As she'd predicted, the broken skin on her head had sealed. She'd pealed off the scab. Except that the resultant area, a hoof-length pink line, was hairless there was little clue she'd been in an altercation.

She hummed a bit and smiled at me. "You sell yourself short with the mares. You do know how to distract a filly."

My face heated up.

"And he blushes, too. So cute!"

Between my receding mane-line, the sprinkling of white hairs in the brown fur around my eyes, and the wrinkles of a fifty-year old lacing my muzzle, her words held implied meanings. I blushed more.

"You saved my life."

"So you keep saying."

"Sunset Shimmer."

I tensed and narrowed my eyes at her non sequitur. I judged her look. Not jealousy. Contrition, maybe. Confession.

Her violet eyes studied the sooty hearth, then the weathered pine table as she inhaled sharply. "Yeah, that night I gave you the application... Sharp Beak told me some old news, but instructed me not to share any of it with you, or any of the other staff. He said to say no more than I said. That griffon 'is a cruel one / no nice pony, he,'" she finished, quoting some obscure piece of literature that for obvious reasons went by me. She looked me in the eye. "But he's on the way out, thanks to the fire."

I felt my eyebrow go up.

"I figure I can tell you more."

"Okay. I wasn't going to ask until you volunteered. Nice that you explained what happened to keep you from sharing."

"I do like my apples," she whispered. "Wasn't going to cross him, but then I found something better than apples." She grinned at me.

I coughed. "Go on, go on."

She snuggled her muzzle against my flank. "Really, there isn't much to tell, much that he shared anyhow. Sunset Shimmer really did lose her cool. It was the day that Twilight Sparkle blew a rift from Canterlot Castle through Canterlot, all the way to Tartarus."

"When Twilight Sparkle passed her entrance exam for Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns?"

"Yeah. That day."

"I had heard that she and the princess had had a 'public spat.'"

"More than that, White Stockings. Mostly only the royal guard saw what really happened and the princess admonished them not to speak about it. The constablulary had been clearing the hall when it began; the public didn't see the actual 'spat.' After Celestia had cleaned up Twilight Sparkle's mess, she had just finished a public announcement that still left everypony in Canterlot half-panicked. Then in teleports Sunset Shimmer, spouting nonesense. She challenged the princess and they came to blows. Kicking like earth ponies, mostly; it's what Sharp Beak said, anyway. The two held their own. Guess they were evenly matched, unlike Pear Brandy and I. What was interesting or plain weird, Sharp Beak told me, was that Sunset Shimmer was babbling something about Cerberus. It was remarkable at that moment because it was the same day that a unicorn foal had touched Tartarus through the physical world. I think eventually Sharp Beak might have asked you to explain if her babbling meant anything since you know so much about Sunset Shimmer."

"What specifically did she say?" I asked, very intrigued. I'd been obsessed with the filly; I saw that now. I had to know more.

Crinkle Paper smiled. "She babbled, 'Cerberus is running in the grim glimmering starlight toward Ponyville,' over and over and over again. Sharp Beak insists that's an exact quote, notable because she mentioned Cerberus. But Ponyville? Just a bunch of barns with a couple of houses!"

The words went round and round in my brain, spiraling and spiraling like moths about to immolate themselves in the candle's flickering flame. My mouth, oddly disengaged, said, "That was a century ago. It's now a big town—"

And... I started shaking. My skin went ice cold. The fur on my spine rose.

My intuition screamed at me and it made no sense. I mean, Starlight Glimmer, a refugee from the Hooflyn Gang War that claimed Doña Carne Asada's life, arrived in Canterlot years after Twilight Sparkle's so-called magic storm. But there it was, a stilted phrase with the words 'glimmering starlight,' essentially naming Starlight Glimmer. To certify the authenticity of the origin of the message it included the word grim, as in Grimoire. These are three words that have no reason to be together. They were no cliché, no common phrase. They had but one coded meaning that probably only I, a few EBI agents, and the princess would recognize, namely that Starlight Glimmer, failed body guard and former enforcer, was known "professionally" as Grimoire.

Cerberus is running in the grim glimmering starlight toward Ponyville.

I grunted as a shock of pain shot through my horn from the magic damper ring. It prevented the calculation that led to magic warping reality or any advanced math. Tortured, I still estimated the the statistical probability of that combination being random.

Zero.

Forget Starlight Glimmer. Celestia's orders.

What the hay?

Crinkle paper physically shook me. "White Stockings! White Stockings! You're starting to scare me. Are you ill?"

I shook my head to clear it, blinking rapidly. The headache subsided. I said, and meant it, "Reality just shattered."

Cerberus is running in the grim glimmering starlight toward Ponyville.

Were I to encode a message to ensure that nopony but me would notice Starlight Glimmer's name when it was blurted repeatedly in front of a thousand ponies, but would be repeated as news through out Equestria, to filter eventually to the ears of the staff of Tartarus and then inmates, to get to my ear, I would have done exactly what I had done to craft this phrase.

Had done? Would do? Would already have done in the future?

Maybe I was going crazy. The day Sunset Shimmer had uttered that phrase I had known nothing about Tartarus—other than mentioning it made a good way to cus—nor certainly Starlight Glimmer. Which meant...

I hadn't said it yet, but I could see that I would say it were I to know I faced the need to communicate back in time.

Which meant... I smiled. Maybe I might do the one thing nopony had ever done: "Escape from Tartarus."

"What?" Crinkle Paper said. She'd jumped out of bed and now held my head between her hooves, squishing my muzzle, looking into my eyes, actually crying.

I began to laugh. I kissed her. "Oh, I am very much okay." I kissed her harder this time, wiped her tears from her flaxen cheeks, then said, "I'm hungry. Are you hungry? I heard your tummy. My blood sugar is low. I could eat— How does that phrase go?"

It took me a few days to work it out in my head, after getting Crinkle Paper to clarify everything she had been told as best as she could remember, which meant until she started growling at me. It took me that long to really believe my conclusion, even if I might eventually prove delusional. It made sense. And I shared it with nopony.

That rift that Twilight Sparkle caused between Canterlot and Tartarus—it must have contained more than just the air between the two separated sides of the crevasse. Whatever it was, it would —had sent Sunset Shimmer to hell.

Twilight Sparkle had broken space and time, broken cause and effect. It all meant that one day I would meet Sunset Shimmer again in Tartarus when she traveled to meet future me. When that happened, I would send a message to past-me to arrive a few days ago.

When Sunset Shimmer showed up, I would send Cerberus from the gates of Tartarus to Ponyville, possibly with her assistance, leaving the only direct access to Equestria unguarded.

"He's Mine!"

Years passed. Princess Celestia replaced Sharp Beak with a succession of wardens. Her second protégé proved her mettle by defeating a monster of prophesy and breaking a thousand-year curse. We received a second picture for the Big House refectory wall depicting a blue-grey alicorn princess. I got my paper and compiled my encyclopedia. I became the expert on almost everypony and every creature in Tartarus.

I became the most trusted inmate in Tartarus. Both by the inmates who knew me because I told their stories fairly—ferreting out even the most unfortunate truths to provide them catharsis and relief from hiding guilt—and the staff because I made sure I had the answers to any pony-resource question. I learned to be humble and was— mostly.

Warden Lavender Lather chose me as her chief deputy with the authority to do anything short of traveling back to Equestria. I endeavored to remain both humble and ethical. I remembered a very important lesson: all ethics are situational.

Life was... strangely, good.

I often woke before dawn when the air felt cool and the world, small that it was, held hope. The dawn painted the east vaguely purple with a splash of orange. I simply dumped a cold pail of water from the well by holding the rope and lightly kicking the bucket to splash me from dock to muzzle. I'd practiced for weeks, years ago, and now never missed.

The cold shocked me awake and got my heart pumping. I felt better than I had at twenty, though I'd recently celebrated my sixtieth. I reared, shook the water from my mane, and whinnied as the pail swung, clunking the sides of the well as it descended by its own weight down the shaft, the weighted crank slowly unwinding and squeaking as it did. In so doing, I glanced at the cloudless sky.

"Uggh!" I cried, stumbling and bashing my side on the well post and stubbing my knee on the stone wall. For an instant I hopped around, trying not to fall but straining like a contortionist to look skyward.

Stars!

I saw stars!

And I don't mean phosphenes at the back of my eyeballs, either. Real Equestrian stars and constellations.

Tartarus's sky formed at the interface between realities. It looked like the shell of a turtle painted in abstract. It had plates. At night, illuminated by the restriction zones and often at twilight before a rainstorm, you could see the lines as light refracted along the surface of the dome. The sun and the moon cast light into Tartarus, but tunneled here by magic, so I had been told. Tartarus' sky was a skylight tube into the basement of reality.

Ceilings had no stars.

But suddenly— stars.

I started vibrating in place, twitching, a thousand thoughts and actions flitting through my brain, none of which got a modicum of control. I screamed in frustration.

Another early riser approached with raised eyebrows: Chocolate Chip, a pony who had spent his life subtly breaking things and chipping at the minds of ponies throughout Equestria. I understood Chip's schtick, as did most ponies now that he'd confessed all. I trotted in place for a moment, then cried, "I forgot to bank the hearth fire! The bed's going to catch fire!" I galloped away as the shocked brown-speckled white pony jumped aside and started laughing his flank off.

"Stars, stars, stars!" I muttered myself as my body, still glistening wet from my rustic shower routine, began to cool uncomfortably. Like a train on the track, I unerringly approached our house.

Could I tell Crinkle Paper?

I slowed to a trot as the fields ended and the the city began. Walking past the familiar dilapidated adobe buildings, smelling the early morning porridge on the hearths, I knew that everything I had thought I would do this day was like ashes in the wind. Everything felt different.

Something had broken Tartarus. I knew it in my heart.

That meant my theory was true. Over the years, I'd become less certain. It became more of a wish or a belief like "Tomorrow would.be better." Suddenly my doubts had vanished. Today I would meet Sunset Shimmer for the second time; it would be the first time for her. She mustn't recognize me three years from now as she perceived time as being from her past.

Could I tell Crinkle Paper?

Would she believe my story, even with the evidence? Could I convince her to go along with my plan?

I had stopped and found myself trotting in place again, filled with incredible nerves, like a 10 year-old colt.

If what I believed was about to happen did happen, I would soon become the most infamous fugitive in Equestria. I'd need to the leave the country immediately.

But I would be free.

One side of me thought, Well, you've grown to like it here. What I did. How I felt. Who I knew. All my relationships. My friends.

The other side thought, You did this already. Time played itself out irreversibly. I would succeed.

When filly Sunset Shimmer arrived (note, not if), no matter what I did it would end up with me escaping Tartarus and sending the filly back to confront Princess Celestia. This had already happened. Time had pretzeled.

The question was, how soon would anypony notice my disappearance?

Well, ponies went on walk-about all the time, didn't they? Who would believe anypony could actually escape?

True. Cerberus would need to visit Ponyville. But still.

Maybe this thing could work.

But if it didn't. If I got caught—if we got caught, did I want to sentence Crinkle Paper to my fate? Celestia would not be amused by my antics.

But— if it succeeded, could I bear to be separated from her forever?

No.

I'd tell her as soon as I could support my claims—

—When I could prove it a fate accompli.

—That we lived in a time paradox.

—That it was our destiny to leave Tartarus, then Equestria for good.

I found myself sitting, clacking my hooves together as I thought. The dawn had brightened as I looked about me. The pale blue sky washed out the stars unless you looked carefully, and nopony would. However, more early risers had come out and about. One, a mint-green pegasus named Ladle (a poisoner) slowed as she caught my eye in her emerald gaze. "Ya learn something interesting, there, Stockings? Spit out."

I grinned way too widely. I stood and said, "Soon everypony will know. It will be momentous!"

"Wow. Can I tell everypony?"

"Nah. Let's let them be surprised by the events of the day." I winked.

She winked at me as she trotted off excitedly.

The best way to manage this would be to stay aware. I could not check all 1363 dry land restraint zones, nor just the 405 that were empty. Were Sunset Shimmer and I to interact, and we had to, she would come to me. Somehow. To Central. Had to be. I put on my khaki officer uniform, leaving Crinkle Paper sprawled adorably legs up in bed and snoring lightly, and raced out to find Jewel.

"Someone new is showing up today," I told her. She lay coiled in the morning sun on the black pavement that sparkled with gold and silver mountain rock, absorbing the new day's warmth. She'd taken being kicked out of my bed by Crinkle Paper as a snub, but didn't let it get in the way of her business of gathering information and disseminating gossip.

She tensed. Her head rose from the center of her coils to look into my eyes with her slit whiteless emerald-green ones. Her irises pulsed. Her neck flattened. "Who?"

I shrugged. I didn't want anypony recognizing Sunset Shimmer and connecting her to my past. I had ceased mentioning Sunset the day Crinkle Paper had given me my revelation; the better part of a decade since Twilight Sparkle's magic storm. Pressed, ponies might remember the Sunset Shimmer I had interacted with had been nearly full grown when I'd ignored my better judgment and gotten caught. This Sunset Shimmer would be a very young filly. It would make no sense to connect the dots. Importantly, ponies shared names. Tartarus housed two Cornstalks and three Bright Blazes.

I didn't want my past nor her future explained to Sunset. I needed every opportunity open to deal with what happened after she arrived.

I added, "Just look for them coming to Central." I used a plural to obscure what I knew. "When they do, find me. She's a dangerous one."

"Sssh-she?"

Oops.

Jewel chuckled and nodded her glittery cobra head. "We're all dangerous here, White Stockings."

I could not help but act preoccupied as I went about my rounds. When one too many ponies, including the warden commented about my absentmindedness (I almost walked into a closet door), I hid in my office and reviewed my research. Lavender Lather had mentioned my The Denizens of Hell on her last trip to Canterlot. I didn't think she'd showed it to either princess, though. She might trust me, but ultimately I was an inmate.

I proofread my biography of a royal golden stag trying to improve my concentration. That the stag was female was my intro into another story of culture and habitat clash between ascendant Equestria and others of the Hoofed (which I had wrote into a proposed doctoral thesis, not because I had hope but because I had time). The golden stag's story wasn't unlike Princess Forest Green's story, but also a story of empires and deep suspicion of the Eugenic-Touched. That meant ponies (from horses) and cattle (from aurochs) and a few lesser "domesticated" sentients. Celestia had barked a lot of hooves while she built Equestria in what was called the new world by the oldest of those inmates who slept the eon away in the restriction zones. It lent credence to the speculation that the princess originally came from the Saddle Arabian peninsula.

I stopped.

If I escaped, what would come of all my work? I stacked the manuscript and stared at the five reams of hoofwritten paper. Princess Celestia had dangled the idea of parole before me even as I so infuriated her that she sent me to Tartarus.

My actions in the next hour or days would determine my fate, or seal it. I could easily imagine her placing me in maximum restraint for years... decades, even.

I found my hoof tapping manically on the table top. I growled, separated the stack to show my contents page and studied the list. If Tartarus was really broken, might the restriction zones fail—?

My heart seized up.

I knew these monsters! I began to shake. I rubbed my face, trying to prevent myself from running to Lavender Lather and blabbing everything I knew. I forced myself to review my red-star inmates. I did that for about half an hour until I was so full of nerves that I went for a run to exhaust myself.

Jewel found me late morning. She intercepted my path by springing at me such that I skidded and reared at what my horse-brain considered a snake strike. She yelled, "What's the matter with you, and more importantly, how did you know? None of the deputies were told to expect new inmates!"

I settled to all fours, breathing hard and sweating. "You startled me."

"I had to. You galloped by me on Second Street. You never go galloping!"

"Uh, yeah. Too much coffee?"

"Am I wrong? No filly has ever been committed to Tartarus, correct?"

My heart skipped a beat. "As in young pony or young creature—"

"Now you're acting weird."

"Can't say historically because of the lost records, but other than Brandywine—"

"He's a colt. I can see tell difference between mammalian genders, not just between ponies."

"—who was a colt, not that I am aware of."

Jewel swayed. An oh-really gesture for her. "Speaking of Brandywine, he's escorting the new inmate. I guess he evaded your search or Celestia has some extra secret restraint zones."

"Brandywine? Brandywine!?" I began trotting in place. "La Loca vowed to kill—"

"Her son?"

"This isn't good. This isn't good!" Or maybe it was. Pandemonium might make good camouflage. I dashed in the direction Jewel had sprung from.

"Are you interested in who he escorted?" she called after me.

I ought to appear so. I stopped and she pointed the opposite way with her rattling tail, toward the southside where ponies held a produce trade-and-swap today. As I trotted after her, she said, "Celestia forbid you ponies should lose your favorite chef. Taste is highly overrated," the glitter snake said, her scales grinding loudly on the ground as she made haste.

"A filly?" I prompted.

She looked back at me. Were her reptilian face capable, her eyes would have narrowed. "Are you being upfront with me?"

"What? You're a truthsayer, now?"

"Now you're definitely acting weird. You're going to love this—she's a real piece of work—calls herself 'The Queen of Cliffside.'"

My throat closed up. Bad since we were really hoofing it. I quickly got that tickle that would turn into a guilty cough I needed to suppress. I'd heard that phrase, somewhere. Sure, I could see Sunset calling herself a queen.

When I said nothing, she clarified. "She calls herself Sunset Shimmer."

I snorted.

"I know."

Absurd, isn't it? I self-censored and didn't vocalize, but a thrill galvanized me. It was real. Everything I'd deduced was real. Something—really, one specific alicorn-powered unicorn foal—had discombobulated time badly. What would happen had happened.

I had hopped on the pretzeled-time train nonstop to somewhen.

I prevaricated, saying, "A wannabe imposter foal turned megalomaniac villain?"

"Is that you trying to be hyperbolic? Seriously? White Stockings, are you okay?"

I shushed her as I noted somepony jumping from a produce table to an awning, then flapping and fluttering briefly to reach a tile roof with a minimum of clatter. I stopped. The hair on my spine rose and my ears went down. Usually, even that small attempt at flight brought the warning caw of a rainbow crow. The nightwing hid behind a chimney; Jewel swiftly figured out where I was looking.

She said, "And you didn't notice the lack of rainbow crows flying over the city? What's—"

I waved a hoof and snuck around so I could keep and eye on Pear Brandy and get closer to the street. I picked my way past produce stalls. Except for when I squished a tomato and had to give a hard stare to quiet an albino mare named Red Eye (a former demon wrangler), I made it forward without alerting anypony and looked down the street at an approaching new inmate.

Their reticence made me remember my somber arrival. I whispered, "You, of course, told everypony."

She chuckled quietly. "Sunset Shimmer, baby tyrant. She got sent here for trying to pull off Princess Celestia's wings. Like a butterfly. Mostly succeeded, too."

I cringed. If true, this was real news. Nothing I'd heard before. Or it wasn't my Sunset Shimmer...

The clatter of hooves against the stone and tar pavement grew louder and the hushed crowd even quieter. Two sets of hooves. And...

That looked like Brandywine from the descriptions I had of him, but he looked less like a foal and more like a full grown colt on his way to being a stallion. He had a distinctive gold-brown coat burnished as if to reveal black metal at his hooves and his nose. He sported a copper mane shot through with lines of gold—just like Pear Brandy.

I gasped when I spotted his companion.

She was very obviously still growing into her hooves and arguably still a foal, but large for her proportions. Her coat shined a pure shade of yellow, as did her mane. Distinctive red streaks reminiscent of tongues of fire made her unmistakably the Sunset Shimmer I knew.

If asked, I could claim it was dye, of course. Nopony here but I had ever seen her. Not the same Sunset Shimmer. An imposter.

The filly's turquoise eyes alighted on everypony in her mute audience as I retreated further into shadow. Her suspicion looked very much like experience to me. Experience fighting. This "queen" thing… It implied evil.

She failed to look where I forgot to keep looking.

A big gob of spit struck Brandywine in the face. In the eye! He reared, then stumbled, as Sunset Shimmer instantly reacted. She swooped her head around, jerked as she saw danger from above, then leapt upward as a shadow streaked across the road.

Pear Brandy only just dodged Sunset Shimmer's lunge, barely keeping the filly from connecting and likely completely ripping apart her left wing membrane. La Loca did a barrel loop and spiral, and as Sunset Shimmer's front hooves hit the pavement, so did Pear Brandy's.

In one athletic motion, as Pear Brandy's back legs touched down, she swiveled and aimed a furious buck directly at her son's temple. I was so stunned by her actions, I barely flinched before—

A green aura surrounded Pear Brandy, pulling her up and away.

Pear Brandy reflexively flared her midnight blue wings. Sunset Shimmer—for who else could it be?—used her bucking motion and the aerodynamics of her wings to force the nightwing to circle upside down, then slammed the mare down with such force it could have broken her back. Could have, but her aura flickered and the spell broke as Sunset pushed downward.

I laughed in sudden recognition. So it began—the filly didn't understand the limits of unicorn magic; back now three years before she threw me into the wall, trying to kill me and only succeeding in knocking me out.

Jewel reached in front of me to look me in the eye.

I waved a hoof. "Quiet," I hissed as Sunset declared—

"Brandywine is under my protection!" She yelled, "He's mine!"

Sweet Celestia. Young love! Had I know this before—

Brandywine recovered his wits and pushed in front of Sunset Shimmer to prevent her from killing her adversary. She shoved him back as her horn lit again.

The colt reared and touched her horn, flicking away her magic aura.

The filly screamed. She stepped forward and reared over his mother's head, pedaling her hooves threateningly, yelling, "Don't even think of moving!"

The nightwing, stunned, wings splayed limply under her, nonetheless spat out, "Don't let Brandywine's false smile fool you, Queen of Cliffside. He'll stab you in the back!"

I whispered. "You didn't tell them she was—"

Jewel said, "Sunset Shimmer? No. Didn't think you wanted me to."

I started to thank her when Brandywine introduced his filly-friend by name. Oh, boy. I soon learned that Pear Brandy was a member of the Equidoran NIHList separatists. She accused Celestia of killing "Good Princess Rising Moon," an adopted "sister" of Celestia. That gave me an epiphany the zealot would never accept. I would have bet at that moment that the hero of the nightwings had indeed been Celestia's real sister, Luna. Both had been banished or vanquished a millennium ago. I reached for my pen and the sheet of paper I always carried. I had to write it down.

I pretty much missed the rehash of Pear Brandy's crimes, though apparently nopony had told Brandywine the truth that his mother had killed dozens when she framed his father.

A rotund purple earth pony mare with a flowing white mane galloped up. I watched as Brandywine prevaricated in front of Lavender Lather and made it seem that he had handled his mother with his magic, and with nopony disputing it the warden accepted the ruse. Ponies had claimed he was exempt from the no-magic rule. This proved he knew it and so did the warden. He didn't want her to realize something had happened to the rainbow crows, which Sunset Shimmer pretty much proved had happened.

Indeed, with the warden's arrival, ponies were already retreating and scattering. I definitely did hear muttering about the crows. When it looked like Lavender Lather would invite the pair to the Big House, I bolted to assure I got there first.

I rushed into my office and scribbled notes on the manuscript before witnessing the arrival of the guests from a doorway. I did my best to be present but in the shadows. Lavender Lather didn't ask for me. When she ushered the pair into her office, I cringed and started trotting in place.

The same picture of Princess Luna that hung in the refectory hung next to that of Princess Celestia on the warden's wall. If Sunset Shimmer figured out the time aspect of her appearance now in Tartarus, she'd break the continuity of the flow of time. What would happen?

Nothing.

I gasped as I realized the enormity of it. Of course she wouldn't twig to the second princess. There were no titles on the photos. They were tightly cropped bust portraits. There was no context for Sunset Shimmer to think she looked at a picture of an alicorn, let alone recognize the incongruity of it.

And now was already the past, so it couldn't happen. I'd be safe. I was safe. Until I told Sunset Shimmer the message she'd deliver to Princess Celestia and assured she returned to Equestria through whatever means she'd gotten here, everything that would happen would lead to what had happened.

It was destiny. Virtual immunity.

Did I have any free will?

It felt like I did. I waved a hoof. I stuck out my tongue, then had to chuckle at Crinkle Paper who gave me a weird look. I blew her a kiss as she took the stairs up to the lockups and factory floor.

I immediately felt sick inside.

Would I tell her?

I might make the choice, but whatever choice I had made would already have been made. I was really not wanting to do this all of a sudden.

But I had to. Sunset Shimmer had to return with the message to destroy her career as a protégé. I had to assure that happened. Not because I wanted to do so, either, but because I had already done so. It had happened long before I met her.

My head began to hurt.

I stood kneading my forehead when the warden opened her door. The purple earth pony spotted me and shouted, "Stockings! Gather staff to my office, stat."

"I Really Hate Dogs."

The six of us squeezed into a small room with a desk, a bookcase, a window, and our two young guests. Crinkle Paper took the opportunity to lean against me; I'd normally appreciate the intimacy but it made me more nervous. She gave me a look and I smiled, taking deep breaths through my nose.

Lavender Lather asked, "Anypony see Wolf Run? No? White Stockings?"

I stood face-on in the middle of the six, my cutie mark hidden. I hoped that with the khaki uniform shirt and the straw hat I'd purposely put back on after relaying the summons, I'd be a fully forgettable functionary to Sunset Shimmer, despite her turquoise eyes alighting on me. I carefully hid my slight Hooflyn accent as I said, "No ma'am. Nopony has seen him in a while. Nopony has mentioned seeing him." I looked directly into Brandywine's amber eyes and added, "Sorry son, I've searched all the restriction zones and he's in none of them." In other words, presumed dead. "Ma'am."

"Yes." She coughed and I expected her to give the unfortunate news, but instead she stepped from behind her desk between us and the youngsters. "Here is a fact, one that nopony needs to know except you, and by nopony I mean Jewel Fang most of all. Princess Celestia pardoned Wolf Run. Brandywine here believes the stallion got sent—"

"Not believes," stated the colt over Sunset Shimmer saying at the same time, "Was sent." The couple looked at one another. Adorable. Sunset Shimmer pursed her lips contritely as Brandywine continued. "I watched Celestia send him. He's here."

"Well, then—sent. If anypony sees Wolf Run—"

"Ma'am?" I prompted.

When she looked at me, I stepped out enough to speak into her ear. "The colt looks distressed. It would be a small gesture to gallop to the outlying settlements and the group of restraint zones the Princess typically uses for landings."

"Yes, I think we can do that. Crinkle Paper, go to the Cerberus Gate." Crinkle Paper shuddered at the news as the warden named assignments, finally sending me to the western mountain restraint zones I'd reminded her of.

Wonderful! This did not seem to go with the put Sunset Shimmer, White Stockings, and Cerberus in the same place at the same time plan destiny-thing. And, as little as Crinkle Paper shared about her courage issues, I knew she didn't like going south.

After being dismissed, I stopped Crinkle Paper in the hall outside. "Wait," I said.

"No. I'd rather just do this." She turned away, hiding her eyes behind her mane as she tried to walk away.

I stepped in front of her.

Before I could say anything, Lavender Lather stepped out of her office, saying, "And we need help fixing some of the equipment upstairs. With your unfettered horn, Brandywine, you could be a great help."

The warden stopped at the refectory, operated the door with a hoof, and looked at me as she ushered them inside. I turned to Crinkle Paper and said, "You don't have to—"

I stood between her and a dead-end hall behind her and the refectory and the stairs behind me. She said, "I may look like I'm still twenty-two but you know better, White Stockings." She lowered her head and moved as if to push me out of the way.

I stepped backwards, slowly. "You don't understand," I said, but I couldn't add that I really needed to go to the Cerberus Gate.

She said, "Do I make a fuss when you go on walk-about for weeks?"

"No."

Lavender Lather took that moment to back out of the refectory. We didn't quite bump, but she turned quickly and said, "What's this?"

"Ma'am," I said, "Send me to the Cerberus Gate."

"No."

"Why, ma'am?"

"Are you giving the orders, now?"

"No, ma'am. It's just—"

The warden addressed Crinkle Paper. "Is he trying to protect you?"

"Absolutely not!"

Lavender Lather narrowed her eyes, looked at Crinkle Paper, then me. "She didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

To Crinkle Paper: "You didn't tell him about you and dogs?"

The flaxen mare hung her head and groaned.

The warden said, "Maybe now she'll grow up. And no. Most importantly I am sending you to the western mountains because you've explored the terrain. I'm sending Crinkle Paper because she knows the area and the ponies who live there, and other things."

The warden marched away as Crinkle Paper stood gasping.

"Dogs?" I asked unthinkingly, really putting my hoof into it.

Crinkle Paper turned and bucked me in the flank hard enough to sting. She hissed, "I was mauled by Duke Baying Hound's dogs when I was a foal. I lost a leg. When I came here, I was horribly scarred, crippled, and monstrous. I really hate dogs, even things that remind me of dogs. And every warden has passed down that fact since I arrived. And, if this shows up in your encyclopedia I will never speak to you again!"

Sobbing, she galloped away.

"I'm sorry!" I called after her, then kicked the wall putting a horseshoe-shaped dent into it. I'd have to fix that, assuming I was here tomorrow.

I had to have faith that today had to turn out such that I gave Sunset Shimmer the message. Grumbling all the way to the supply room, I checked out a canteen, filled it, and galloped off. I ignored Jewel completely, even when she did her hoop trick, biting her tail and rolling like a wheel. She kept up with me until the ground became uneven outside the last field of cabbage.

When she stopped, she shouted invective at me.

In considerably better physical shape than when I arrived in Tartarus, I reached the first foothills in about an hour. There weren't many Equestrian trees in the central region, but they became more numerous with elevation. Windblown oaks dotted the landscape. I approached a group of them to find shade and to satisfy my curiosity.

I looked into the canopy, trying to adjust my eyes to the shade. I found no rainbow crows. Jewel had observed earlier that none were overhead. You inevitably saw a few on roof tops or in the fields. They liked trees.

I saw none. Had seen none.

Very strange. Heartening, though. It supported my time theory. Anything that disrupted time could disrupt anything, which meant the more things were disrupted, the more likely I was going to succeed.

I drank some water and stared across the dry grass plain, watching the dry wind wave through the seed heads causing them to make a random sishing sound.

Lonely. It felt isolated and lonely.

I'd miss Crinkle Paper. And now I'd pissed her off.

I felt rested. I needed to get my survey done quickly so I could return to Central and find my opportunity to interact with Sunset Shimmer to do what time required of me.

I sighed, capped my canteen with my hooves and swung it over my back messenger-bag style.

I didn't need to go much further to figure out that going into the western mountains to visit the restraint zone was an exceedingly bad idea. I heard the ripping thumping sound of something running through the grass, then saw movement and shadows. I was close enough to a big isolated tree that I slipped into the shade to hide.

Dharg!

What little I had learned about the weird creature (creatures?) I'd learned from Phospher and Marvelous, who'd been committed a few years after the Dharg had landed their raiding ship outside what was now Vanhoover. What I saw resembled the auburn ropey-hairy leg of a yak or a bison. Just the leg. It was as wide around as a small tree with a shiny black cloven hoof. Where the upper leg should have connected to a body, an eye-ball with a magenta iris scanned the horizon. My observations showed that a "disassembled" dharg could breathe and travel, and fight, but nothing else. The communal-mind animal need three or more dharg to form something that could eat, a tripod somehow making a mouth with teeth and a stomach. Six or more could talk and reason. Larger combinations sometimes occurred, but seemed ungainly, and, if anything, less smart.

The princess had captured the raiding party of two dozen "pieces." The sixes often threw themselves at the magic bubble around their restraint zone and babbled when I spent time watching them. The singletons just kicked things. They had a strange center of gravity and always managed to instantly roll back onto the hoof.

The nightmares were deadly. They liked to kick their foes (obviously) to death, then eat them. And now I saw one roaming free across the savanna. It stopped and I ducked deeper into the shadows, heart pounding in my chest. I could hear its weird clopping cadence as it continued on its way. I was breathing fast like I'd run a marathon. I felt the rough bark of the tree backed around to stay out of sight until I judged the dharg had disappeared over a hill.

Had I sent Crinkle Paper this way— I shuddered.

What would she find heading south? I shuddered again.

I cautiously headed back, after looking for and not finding rainbow crows in the tree. Tartarus' protection system had stopped working—the law of unintended consequences had taken control.

I found myself reflexively feeling guilty. After wallowing in it for five minutes, I realized I hadn't caused this. Twilight Sparkle had.

I had to deal with it.

At least until I gave Sunset Shimmer the message nothing would kill me.

I saw a trio of aurochs, deep brown ox-like bovines with great upwardly curved white horns in the distance. Aurochs were sometimes referred to as cave-cattle. They were giants, easily a couple pony-lengths at the shoulder and massively muscular. They weren't anywhere close to as smart as cows or bulls, but they did like to create territories and these brothers had no compunction about goring intruding ponies. They'd told me plenty of stories that almost inevitably ended with some-aurochs gloriously goring some other aurochs, or somepony else.

I veered south, unprepared to find out if they were still friendly. Even were my horn unfettered, I was a magic wimp. My special talent required contact, physically or magically, and time to convince or coerce verbally, and only worked on one pony at a time. It might not even work on non-ponies! I gave the Brothers Moo a wide margin, though they looked very happy grazing on real pasture land.

Having left the western road long ago, I ended up quite a bit south when I met the outer circle road. I could follow it around going north to meet the east-west spoke or going south to meet the north-south spoke. I had no doubt that some other pony would return with news that the restraint zones weren't working. I figured that Lavender Lather wasn't expecting me back yet, either, so I chose south. I might be in a position to intercept Sunset going south, as she had to go to find Cerberus. As I galloped along, I also thought about Crinkle Paper, what I had learned and what I had done.

Her route included the Kibble Forest, a minor barrier against wandering high security inmates. However, the road dead-ended in a saltwater lake and restraint zones for oceanic denizens. Some of those monsters were especially dangerous.

I galloped faster.

When I got to the crossroads, I galloped south on the north-south road through fields of wild wheat and oat. The still distant forests formed a dark brown and green blotchy line on the horizon with the curved blue gray mountains beyond. Geyser Peak seemed to steam; it was the source of the dark clouds that spread as a dark gray line east and west over the circle mountains. I continued only five minutes before I spotted a shape in the waving golden grass. It would have blended in perfectly had I not been moving so fast that I noticed a flash as sunlight reflected off something glossy.

I slowed, trying to make it out. When I saw the bright reflection had sparked off of a platinum mane, I dashed off the road to find Crinkle Paper lying sprawled on her side.

"We're Friends, Right?"

Crinkle Paper shivered, trying to hide in the grass. As I got within pony-lengths, I saw her violet magic aura pulsing, sparkling around her horn and bright around her right ear.

Where her right ear had been.

Blood wet the side of her face and spattered her mane. Platinum hair half-covered her face as she lifted her head. Streaming tears, her violet eyes focused on me as she cried, "White Stockings!" She lay there shaking and shuddering.

I landed beside her, pressing against her despite the heat of the day, giving what comfort I could. With the ring in place on my horn, I could not help her staunch the bleeding.

"Is whoever did this near by?"

"No," she said. "I should have let you try to trade assignments." She hid her face under her front legs. "Why didn't I do that?"

I lifted her face with a hoof. "Because we can't see the future." Well, a bit of the lie, but, "I'm a flank for not taking a hint."

She chuckled. Her shaking diminished. "You are incredibly dense."

"You wouldn't have wanted to go west, either. I ran into Dharg and the Brothers Moo."

"Sugar Cubes!"

"You can't stay here, you know."

"I know. I know. I'm not so shaky I can't stand, but, Sugar Cubes, it was horrible. I thought Cerberus frightened me, but he's basically an ally. This, this thing— I've never seen something more horrifying. A rampaging timberwolf! I thought my heart would stop. When I tried to warn it away, it attacked me. It bit my ear off!"

I waited quietly, remembering her all but calling herself hideous when she arrived in Tartarus. She'd suffer nightmares from this attack for months. When she took a deep breath, I said gently, "It'll grow back."

"I know," she whispered. She then nuzzled me. "Tartarus has been good for me."

I kissed her head beside the wound and nuzzled her back.

My heart tightened with unexpected sadness. Why would Crinkle Paper accompany me on my escape to Equestria? In Equestria, her ear wouldn't grow back and she'd grow old. My heart wanted to think that Tartarus had been good for her because of me, but I'd heard enough of her history to know she'd been happy way before Celestia sent me here.

"Let me look at it."

She let me tilt her head and I felt a tickling sensation as my face impinged on her aura. The little popping sparkles felt effervescent. Despite the smell of blood, which I suppose as herbivores we are evolved to notice, she smelled very nice. The timber wolf had shorn off my little filly-friend's ear like a badly torn piece of paper. The thickness of a horseshoe remained above her head. A crust of scabs matted into her bright mane and filled her ear.

"You don't need to apply pressure anymore."

She let go. It didn't bleed as the same fresh wound would have back in Equestria. I helped her clear the crud from the inner part of her ear, and off her mane, functioning as a talking mirror for her magic since this was something one couldn't do with the frog of a hoof. She stopped shivering.

I stood and she followed as I said, "Don't use your magic around the warden."

She leaned into me and I supported her. "I wouldn't. Why so adamant?"

"You noticed the rainbow crows didn't mob you; of course you did. Something badly broke Tartarus and frightened the rainbow crows away. Princess Celestia will assure it's fixed, however it's to our advantage that Lavender Lather doesn't realize she has no power over us. First of all, she could assure you're mobbed after the fact or she could send you to a restraint zone. Second, until the crisis is over, we can act to prevent her from doing something, um, counter to our interests without her knowing our full strength."

Crinkle Paper nodded.

"I'd still go to Bone Saw and get that bandaged."

"So the warden doesn't ask how I stopped the bleeding? Right."

I looked at the line of forest and the gathering clouds that made the Cerberus Gate almost perpetually overcast. "I'm going south."

"Uh—"

"I know that timberwolf. We also need to warn the outpost ponies at the gate, which is on the other side of the aquatic restriction zones from Central. And do what we said we'd do for the colt. If his father—"

"You said the landing zones are in the west—"

"Those are only the most typical ones. Bones, Planking, and Salt Spume all landed south. I even landed southwest—"

"Near the timberwolf."

"I'll be back as soon as I warn Ice Arrow and the others. Don't tell the warden."

"It's too dangerous."

"Don't tell the warden. She's under too much stress—will be anyway. Last thing we need is her firing me."

Crinkle Paper compressed her lips and began shaking her head before she faced north. "You be careful," she said and trotted to the road. She added, "I love you."

My throat constricted. I felt the warmth from her leaning into me dissipate despite the afternoon heat. Even when she had retreated beyond earshot, I didn't reply. Today had been the day I imagined years ago, that first night Crinkle Paper and I had started sharing our lives. Triumph and victory.

Why did I have a feeling of foreboding?

I galloped south to the forest and continued along the wood path, crossing bridges as streams gathered into a slow moving river burbling beside the road. I went as fast as I could on the dried mud surface, a growing certainty that I would do the right thing until I sent Sunset Shimmer on her path to shame. I didn't want to hurt her. Not doing so would change my life immensely, sure, but even with knowledge of her future in my past, the fighting hellion I'd watched this morning would be broken by my actions or inactions. I felt as if I had no say in the matter.

Nor responsibility.

That thought made me feel like I was losing my mind until this next thought passed through my head: if I try to kill myself, even jumping off a cliff, I'll fail to do so.

Whatever I would do I had already done. I would not kill myself. Of course, I wouldn't. Stupid thought.

I galloped on, nevertheless feeling invulnerable.

Tempting fate.

I made it to the end of the forest where the kibble trees thinned and became a sand and pebble berm along a shoreline. I knelt to fill my canteen from the sweet water of the river and rest long enough to catch my breath. Across the water, Geyser Mountain erupted mildly, preparing to produce the storms that would rain on greater Tartarus tomorrow. The clouds were mostly fluffy white with nimbus thunderheads just pushing up like seedlings. The bottoms were merely gray.

I looked over Little Sea, the oceanic lake that stretched east and west for a few miles and just a half mile to the opposite shore. Fourteen inmates lived under these waves, all dangerous.

The kraken was the least of them. Basically an chartreuse underwater dragon with multiple wings evolved to wrap around prey. She sung haunting melodies to attract ships and if none of the sailor ponies aboard could sing as well in return, she sunk the ship to take any gems onboard. Casandra would tell her story to anypony willing to listen to her soprano compositions, then sing for her. I couldn't sing. Melody, who had kidnapped many opera singers so she could fill in as their understudy, had done so at my request and regularly visited.

The worst was Chthony (k'tho-nee). Not his name, but he answered to it. I named the species a Chthon, from chthonic, because he lived in the deepest darkest restriction zone, in an abysal cavern lit by what I gathered was bioluminous or magic seaweed where he played with his "toys." He had the mentality of a child. He might well be stuck at his age by Tartarus' magic; I didn't want to imagine him growing into an adult. Saying he was stunted in his development was wrong in too many ways. Chthony looked like a hornless antelope with obsidian cloven hooves, but when he stood dripping on the pebbly shore, he stood taller than a two story house. His head looked like somepony had melted an octopus over his antelope features, leaving only his eyes, the ridge of his muzzle, and black nose normal. A squishy gray octopus dome rose back from his brow while a mass of tentacles and elephant noses hung down to the ground. I'd once asked him and he lifted the writhing mass. He had an antelope jaw filled the yellow chef-knife teeth.

I did not want to meet either of them free.

Nevertheless, I turned right, to the west, intending to circle counterclockwise around the sea where Chthony lived in the zone furthest west. Submarine movement roiled the black surface of half-mile deep lake, causing blue reflections to circle out until they lapped on the rocky beach. I thought I caught sight of the cyan and pink crests of seaponies, but the exiled evil king and queen were rarely interested by me as a commoner. My hooves crunched upon silver and gold pyrite pebbles. Too noisy. I moved to the sandy berm, feeling exposed regardless of any invulnerability I might assert I had.

Tempting fate.

Going considerably slower than a gallop slogging through the sand, I got all the way around without anypony greeting me, and continued north on the shortest route to Cerberus Gate (there was a road on either side of the geyser). I wasn't sure whether or not to feel relieved. Otter and seal-like inmates were amphibious. From what I could piece together from his childish stories, Chthony could travel across an isthmus, and had done so forcing Princess Celestia to act on his second appearance to protect wagons, livestock, and ponies from becoming his drowned toys.

As I climbed the foothills to the west of Geyser Mountain, the sky became overcast. The terrain of jagged rock gave way to dark soil, Equestrian trees, oaks at the lower levels, and some sort of pine or fir at greater elevations. Scattered trees became pockets of thick woodland. Everything looked green. Like Equestria, not Tartarus.

A loud resounding wooden crack ahead of me got me to jump and whinny. Bits of splintered tree shot out; I skidded to a halt and shied backwards.

From woods at a bend in the road, a storm wrack surrounded by a green miasma in the form of a wolf crept ominously out of the shadow. Her failing restriction zones had freed Princess Forest Green and she stalked like a wolf would, head lowered and spine stretched, coming directly at me.

This death was not for me. I knew my destiny.

My body wasn't so confident, though. A sweat broke around my neck and flank. Trying for composure and failing, I held my ground until she was a couple pony-lengths away and could smell the rancid compost smell of her gusty breath. I gulped twice, trying not to breathe through my nose before saying, "And what are you going to do, Princess? Bite my ear off, too?"

She coughed. No, I misinterpreted. She chuckled, then began laughing.

"You are brave for a pony," she said, sitting before me with the cracking sounds of trees crashing in a dense forest. She laughed some more. Her tongue might have lolled out like a dog had her skeletal tree body had such an appendage. I didn't point it out. She added, "I wasn't trying to bite off any appendage, but the mare was throwing big rocks at me. Her magic's strong; the moment she saw me she threw rocks, a tree trunk, dirt—anything she could grab, screaming. Why couldn't she just run? I don't have ears, but the noises she made were so shrill they hurt!"

"That's my filly." I thought about Sunset hitting me in the head with a pickle jar. "Throwing stuff must be a mare thing."

"So that was Crinkle Paper? I had to stop her; her aim was too good and it hurt. And I did not 'bite her ear off.' Her ear got caught in a twig when I tried to swat her away. Had I tried, I'd have bitten off more than a ear."

I told her about seeing the Dharg and the Brothers Moo. I suspected that Chthony and other dangerous creatures, including some restrained evil unicorns, might be out for a bit of revenge. I finished by saying, "I'm glad you're not rampaging."

"I do not do rampaging."

"Tell Princess Celestia that."

"I tried!" She banged the ground with a wooden paw. "I fought a war, one that I will remind you that she started by encouraging stupid ponies to plunder our nurseries."

"I know, I know."

She muttered to herself about hoof-centric immoral ponies, then sighed loudly and disconsolately. How she could sigh—let alone have bad breath—without lungs…?

"So, if you're not into rampaging, can I make a suggestion?"

"Hide in the woods until whatever went wrong here fixes itself?"

"That, maybe, or perhaps you could go to Central City—"

She sat straighter and gyrated her head like a foal might having gotten one over her parents. "—and rampage?"

I rolled my eyes. "I'd suggest not. But, this could present an opportunity. I don't know if it will work, but... What if you went to Central City and protected the city and the ponies from the Dharg or anything else that might rampage? Maybe, just maybe, Princess Celestia might view that favorably. You've read what I wrote about you in Denizens. She will undoubtedly read that after all this is over."

The princess stood. Strangely, she managed to do so soundlessly, which made her even more scary. She said, "Sir Stockings, your heart is not as cold as you often profess. I will do this thing, even if I suffer the consequences."

"Because it is something to do?" I grinned. Boredom was the worst punishment in Tartarus.

"It might be fun."

I held out my hoof and she tapped it with a paw before padding by me, headed north.

I sat. I took out my canteen but found it hard to drink for a sudden fit of shakes. I might be invulnerable, but that didn't mean I couldn't be frightened.

The top clattered as I snapped it on and heard the princess' praise repeat in my head. I didn't have a cold heart? What did she know? I couldn't say "I love you" back at Crinkle Paper when she suddenly offered something she'd never offered before. It was I who would doom Sunset Shimmer to a horrible destiny. Princess Forest Green had no conception of what was in my heart at all.

I strapped the canteen back on and continued toward the Cerberus gate. I was lost in thought, and that much was stupid. I missed the first huge hoof print in the dirt. The second one had been in nearly hardened mud and I tripped over it.

I keeled over, slid onto the wet grass, and, with the smell of a mowed lawn to remind my stomach that I had missed lunch, struggled upright. I looked and saw two crescents the size of a really big dinner plate pushed into the mud almost as deep as a pail. I could have broken a leg. Beyond that was another pair of crescents. And another.

They were the tracks of an enormous ungulate.

A suckered tentacle wrapped around my rear leg so suddenly, I jumped. More tentacles slapped themselves around my waist and I found myself hoisted into the air, whirled about and supported by an elephant trunk that connected to Chthony's monstrous baby face. He had stood silently in the trees beside me.

Great. He was stealthy, too. Boys did like to play soldiers, didn't they? Where he'd slapped me, it stung but didn't hurt. He wasn't squeezing, yet. Thankfully.

I looked into his magenta eyes. I could see the pulse of blood in a vein on the right side of his octopus skull. My thudding heart and his seemed in sync, mine beating thrice for each of his. "Um... Chthony. Put me down."

"My little pony."

Tempting fate.

Invincible. Invulnerable.

Keep telling yourself that White Stockings.

"Put me down," I said slowly, tamping down as hard as I could on the quaver creeping into my voice.

Chthony shook his head and said, "Nah uh, no." He began to walk north toward what he referred to as "the pond." You'd think that something so huge as a Chthon would be ungainly and ponderous, but the grace of his antelope form, long legs, and very slow but incredibly long stride made him glide like a cloud despite the bang of his hoof falls on the path.

"We're friends, right?"

"Uh huh."

"I'm not a toy." When he didn't immediately answer, causing me to breathe faster, I added, "Right?"

"Uh huh, Brownie," he said. Brownie is what he called me as he could not or refused to remember my name. I didn't like that it made me sound like dessert.

"Ok, then. Put me down and we can talk."

He swayed exuberantly. He giggled. It sounded like like the exhalation from a haunted cave. "We are talking, Brownie!"

"I'd talk better on the ground."

"I hear you good, Brow—"

"Son, put me down, now."

"No," he said angrily and spat. Liquid spattered me and I blinked just in time. Most hit my neck. I looked and saw purple-black oily goop seep down my back all the way to my flank. Disgusting. I'd been slimed.

It would never come out of my khaki shirt. It would ruin Celestia's scroll which I always kept in the pocket.

Great! The unwholesome brat! Calm, I told myself. Slow breathing. Slow breathing. No panic. I could deal with this. I had a special talent and if the rainbow crows chose to mob me now, I'd worship them forever.

We were touching.

"Chthony?"

"Yes, Brownie?"

"I know what you want."

"Ooooooo." It sounded like a foghorn. "What?"

"There are other better toys out there than this old raggedy stallion. You want to go out and wait for them to visit you at the pond."

"But I like Brownie."

I pressed harder to convince him. "Why, just today, I saw a golden brown colt with a red mane with gold shot through it. And he's not the only one, Chthony. They'll visit you. You're more comfortable there, aren't you? Not like this yucky dry air."

"I like my pond muchly, Brownie."

"And you'll like your new friends."

His eyes got that far away look that ponies always got when my talent worked. Yes! My talent worked on non-ponies, thank Celestia! I guess the poor guy really wanted friends. I'd feel more for him if he were in the pond and stuck in his restriction zone behind a magical barrier that would repel ink spat at his guests. But, I would take what I got.

"You want to put me down first."

"Thank you, Brownie," he said.

Putting down was a relative term. He unrolled the tentacles without thought and tossed me. Stupid me for not being specific. I landed, rolling, in a grassy meadow. He'd been moving at the speed of a gallop. I rolled about five times, slid awhile, and fetched up at the base of a pine at the meadow's edge.

I scrambled upright. Bruised more from slapping than the landing, I stood panting. Yes, and shaking, as I watched the abyssal antelope disappear as the road turned though the woods. I could see his head over the first trees, then other than what sounded like distant syncopated thunder, he was gone.

"Ha!" I laughed, fueled by the suppressed fear for almost a minute. Finally, I took a deep breath and said, "Invulnerable. Invincible. Tempting fate." I grinned.

I saw a nice patch of juicy dandelion with big green leaves that showed purple edges, full of yellow flowers. Suddenly hungry, but likely craving the reassurance of comfort food, I craned my neck down to graze.

Delicious. Tangy. Mildly sweet. I closed my eyes. A little slice of heaven!

"How did you do that?"

I whinnied and jumped a pony-length from the voice which sounded old. I looked up and saw a cowled figure in a cassock fringed with dewy beads of water from a recent drizzle. In his vestments (his word), he might look at first glance like a long-necked pony, or a goat if you saw his hooves. He was neither. He was a centaur.

"Lord Tirek," I said, and bowed my head slightly.

"We Have the Same Goals."

"White Stockings," said the alleged Prince of Midnight Castle, recognizing me, granting me the right to speak in his presence, to answer how I had mastered Chthony.

As a pony who understood the importance of controlling information to control ponies, I recognized the signs in others who operated the same way. The centaur asserted claims of being a royal, a prince, and an ambassador to Equestria along with his brother Scorpan. He claimed that Princess Celestia had falsely imprisoned him during the first decade of her rule and that the "Royal Sisters" had killed his brother.

Since he had mentioned the "Royal Sisters" before anypony had known about Princess Luna, it lent credence to his claims. However, the existence of Tartarus and its sometimes too-evil-to-live inmates gave lie to his words that Celestia and Luna murdered his brother and co-ambassador. Nopony in Tartarus had ever heard of his land, not even the earliest of inmates of which he presumably was one of the first.

The steel ring in his bovine nose made me even more skeptical. A prince's nose ring ought to have been made of gold, but worse, it seemed like a symbol of enslavement or servitude, not of power. I'd learned that nose rings had been invented to be tied to a rope; some stupid instinct allowed cows to thusly control their bulls and make them docile.

Besides steel gauntlets, he wore a triangle medallion hung by one apex on a black bead chain. It wasn't gold. It was pitted brass.

I believed the mannered ruffian lied about most things, including why he was imprisoned. Once or twice he'd boasted his power was more powerful than that of an alicorn, but had never volunteered details. I'd written everything he said into Denizens verbatim, followed by my negative opinion about its veracity. I, of course, never showed him the latter section when allowing him to review what I'd written.

As I reviewed what I knew about Lord Tirek, his yellow irises reflected the overcast sky from under his hood, set in obsidian-like sclera as dark as the shadow inside of his cassock and likely his heart. I may not have liked Celestia for imprisoning me here, but my research left me confident that she condemned nopony that wasn't a danger to Equestria. Lord Tirek's eyes narrowed and he used the claws at the end of his first forelimbs to lower his hood, revealing a white bearded gray-maned ruddy-skinned bovine head and stubby aurochs upturned horns. The wrinkled centaur stood about the height of an large mare, which made him, with his upright body extension, even less massive than an average one.

I wasn't so stupid as to discount power based on stature. I'd heard Twilight Sparkle had been both a runt as well as a foal when her magic blasted though Canterlot, through reality, and through time as was manifest today. Twilight Sparkle was the most powerful being in Equestria. This fellow? Not so much.

He stiffened the longer I silently evaluated him.

His voice lowering menacingly, he said, "I asked you a question."

"Yes you did."

"Despite your office, White Stockings, we are both inmates of this infernal land, improperly and wrongly imprisoned. Strong magic has sundered its defenses. This is our fleeting opportunity to escape Tartarus. I wish to return to my home. You wish to escape pony oppression in Equestria. We both crave freedom. I propose an alliance. I want an answer and I want it now."

He spoke like a well-educated prince, both in his use of vocabulary and in his imperious tone. I wasn't buying his attempt to elevate himself and I had no interest in sharing the extent or limits of my cutie mark talent. I smiled. "I'm a constable without weapons of coercion. No weapons other than my words. I listened when my partners taught me to speak convincingly," I said, shuffling one hoof in front of the other and affecting somewhat unconvincingly a blush of recognition for having been able to handle a monster.

I played the game of masks.

Again, I did not know what magic he had, if any, but… well, if I could take on Chthony, I might well be made invulnerable by the inevitability of time. I lifted an eyebrow as he considered my response. I knew him well enough to understand his body language. The lowering of his shoulders and his eye-lids signaled skepticism.

"It is a talent," he asserted of me, blandly.

We let the accusation hang in the air about a minute, neither of us speaking. Insect-like donut-fairies buzz-buzzed in the woods.

Finally, he said, "I will first issue a threat, then offer you a gift, and then propose an alliance. Listen carefully Chief Constable and former business mogul White Stockings. If you ever use the means you used to control that imbecilic monster—"

"Chthony?"

"That imbecilic monster. —on me, I will rip from your soul the one thing a unicorn, indeed any Equestrian pony, holds dear. By that I don't mean your worthless life. You will suffer. Do not test me."

I thought, Don't test me. Now that I could touch him with my horn by simply lowering my head in a bow, it might well have been the best strategy to use my talent at that very moment. He wanted to return home; the suggestion would likely work instantly.

Intuition goaded me to do nothing, though. I just nodded.

"As for the gift to affirm my sincerity, I give you this." He reached up with his third set of limbs and touched the ring upon my horn. He inhaled deeply as he did so. I sensed an aura condense in his breath like moisture on a frigid day. The gold of the aura looked familiar. Not only was it the same color as my magic, it was also the color of Celestia's. Instead of sparkles, painful streaks of red herded the magic like coursing wolves.

The ring went ping. Like cooling metal.

My head cleared instantly, which felt strange because I had not felt fogged.

He said, "The magic of the ring is one of Celestia's strongest and darkest magicks. She used it to conquer her native land from and to defeat its rightful queen, and with it to counter the windigoes sent by the Queen's ravaged neighbors to quell the malignant pony threat. Much research by my mentor and teacher taught me how to disable and disassemble the spell. I have now temporarily disabled the spell; it feeds on your magic. At the end of the alliance, I will destroy the diabolical artifact."

I'd pondered the ring many times in a mirror. At night, the runes on it glowed red like coals in a distant fire—and made a passible albeit dim nightlight. Despite the obvious magic, I'd thought it worked more by contact than by magic, like when you touched somepony's horn and broke their spell. Tentatively, I cast Levitation.

No headache. I could sense the numbers implied by the spell equations spinning and saw the traces of digits, like flitting neon traces, streak across my field of vision. I reached out and grabbed some dandelion flowers.

I ripped them free, then lifted them to my mouth. The milky stems tasted real. "Thank you," I said, chewing.

"Last, I propose that we work together to escape past Cerberus who guards the gates of Tartarus. Your knowledge of the ponies that minister to the dog-monster's needs and your ability to sweet-talk the monster may well provide us a method for escape. I can counter magic if it is strong, as I have with Celestia's ring. When we escape, I'll remove all the Equestrian magic that makes the ring function."

I would have laughed in Lord Tirek's face if it weren't that I knew that Cerberus was involved with the message I would send back with Sunset Shimmer, and that I trusted that I would not have sent back a message that said Cerberus was going to Ponyville unless he would indeed be going to Ponyville. I'd lived so long without my magic, I was essentially so dexterous with the frogs of my hooves and my lips that I might as well have been born an earth pony. I had immense respect now for the pegasus and earth pony tribes, as well as for the sea ponies. My magic was so wimpy as to be a joke. I missed my magic, yes. But not enough to sell my future to swap for the convenience of its return.

The centaur's plan was obvious. There was every chance it was coincidence that I had thought the same things. But I was willing to go with fate, destiny, or the hard logic of pretzeled time.

I said, "We have the same goals. That being true, I warn you— If you use whatever power you have on me, you will likewise regret the consequences. Neither of us will know if the other is bluffing. If you accept my caveat, I will accept yours. Freedom is our destiny."

"It is."

"I agree then."

"As do I." He reached out with the knuckles of a fisted claw.

I recognized the hoof bump and reciprocated. Still, without the clack of hooves, the gesture seemed hollow.

I wouldn't trust him any further than my magic could toss him. (I'd never lifted more than a fat cat or an exceptionally big high school history book. Yeah, I was the doofus who packed my saddlebags piece by piece.)

I jotted down what Lord Tirek had told me after ensuring that Celestia's scroll was not actually ruined, other than oily stains on the outer roll. I'd long ago copied the content elsewhere. When I gauged Lord Tirek's patience would soon run out, I started walking. We continued along the west north road as it crested the pass between the mountain restraint zones that I knew housed about a hundred inmates. Dual peak mountains bulked ominously on either side of our path. The overcast became thicker and dark enough that you could see places where the restraint zones faintly lit the billowy clouds. The sparse forest dominated at the crest, providing cover for any inmates who might have had the temerity to leave incarceration. I felt watched.

Lord Tirek did not patter. Silently, he followed, his white hooves making the faintest clatter on the mostly stone surface. I could hear his heavy breathing. I assumed he was completely out of shape, made weak by a millennium of no exercise and hibernation; Tartarus cured all ailments due to age, so it wasn't that he looked older than most inmates. For all I knew, centaurs all looked wrinkly like him. His breathing and slowness grated on me. When I stopped often because he kept falling behind, he did not complain.

A mist rose as we descended, drifting in clumps from the woods and meadows that became more common. The air cooled. The mist was due to the influence of the gate and the air it sucked inside during Tartarus' day.

As the mist thinned near the bottom of the hills, I looked where sky dipped below the cloud cover like a fancy glass roof on the world. The sky in Equestria is infinite. Both the Equestrian sky and the Tartarussian sky shared the same cerulean blue, but what I looked at seemed more than a mile away and that couldn't be. It was how my eyes focused. I felt it. Some force gave the normal Tartarussian sky presence and location, but no depth, like the canvas of a painting. This vista had depth. It was like being in a train car, looking outside. And… in the beyond, I could see pegasus-created clouds! I stopped.

Lord Tirek asked, "What is the matter?"

My heart beat faster as I looked up to the very edge of the sky. "I was wondering whether what I saw was Celestia's sun in the sky. I saw the stars this morning, so, thinking about it, probably yes."

"Be sentimental all you desire once we have returned to Equestria."

I huffed. "The outpost is around this bend, down the switchback."

As if to emphasize my point, I heard a bark echo off the sky and the hills.

"You first, Lord Tirek. Best that we imply you're my prisoner."

He stepped forward and we navigated the switchbacks cut through most gold stone and red rock. Soon the outpost slipped into view, consisting of a large ten room adobe and stone building with a red tile roof attended by a dozen small thatched huts. Beyond that stood an enormous silo capped with a rusted metal conical roof for storing kibble manufactured for Cerberus.

The gate came into view.

Except for today, you could look at the odd tortoise shell structure of the sky, especially at night, and realize you weren't in Equestria. The blues, the dawn and dusk colors, and dark nights were convincing, but subtly wrong if you stared too long. And besides that, the Tartarussian moon appeared featureless.

What I looked at went beyond that and felt viscerally wrong, like if I looked at it too long I might become sick to my stomach. It manifested itself like a horizontal spiral of water slowly, ponderously, flushing down a sink. It looked impossibly deep. Dizzying perspective brought the churning tunnel between realities to a point in the distance. At the upper edge of the circular apparition, a full third of its radius, it impinged upon the sky. The rest of it grew out of the mountains, which simply ended at a flat wall. The edge of apparition swirled inward, causing the sky to smear counter-clockwise into the mountain and, along the circumference of the mountain, into the sky. It was like the earth and sky at this place had become nothing more than watercolors painted on a piece of paper, dripping and mixing as the painter spun the paper.

Down the center ran a bridge. Doric columns stuck out in an X-configuration to stabilize the improbable construction. The ends of the columns, like the sky and the mountain, smeared counter-clockwise. Indeed, the bridge itself formed a corkscrew ribbon. I had no doubt standing on it always felt like down no matter how it spiraled relative to level in Tartarus or Equestria.

Somepony had to have built the portal. Could this really be an example of Princess Celestia's magic, or had she found it already built? In which case, who had built it?

It made me dizzy.

I shifted my eyes and spotted a slightly contorted black dog. He lay with his three heads on his paws, looking with beady black eyes unsettlingly in my direction. His perked ears rose as I watched above the height on the main building, swiveling toward me. He had the conformation of all Tartarus life, but his muscular bulk filled in the hole in his inner-tube like abdomen and made him more dog-like—that and his obviously sharp teeth sticking up and down out of his slobbery jowls. Somepony had displayed a sense of humor by putting a brown collar with steel spikes around his neck. As always, that dog-pen smell grew strong as I approached. It made me feel sorry for the ponies tasked with cleaning up after the creature and pulling wagons when he wasn't walked.

I swallowed hard, though I'd seen Cerberus almost a dozen times. Three bites. One in each mouth. I'd be gone.

Now that ponies had noticed my approach and called Ice Arrow out of his Big House, I gave Lord Tirek a shove and got him trotting down the last incline into the outpost. For a moment, the buildings and huts obscured the gate and all but the ears of the beast beyond, providing a relief as I calculated what I needed to say to send the staff running to Central.

A gruff old pegasus with a pale bushy blue fur, a completely white Mohawk mane, and short tail glided toward me. Ice Arrow looked ready to take on the wintery north and was probably overheated here in Tartarus most days, though it was cooler at the gate than elsewhere in Tartarus (but correspondingly more humid). His steel-gray eyes complemented his cold demeanor and the icicle encased arrow of his cutie mark. Like Lavender Lather, he served in Tartarus as Celestia's volunteer.

"Inspector," I said as he landed with a gentle clop of his hooves. Inspector might be his title, I had no idea what he inspected. I held out a hoof in greeting.

He ignored it, eying Lord Tirek suspiciously.

I said, "The restraint zones stopped working."

"In one instance."

"And the rainbow crows have taken a vacation."

He blinked. He glanced at his staff of three mares and two stallions who had galloped over and arranged themselves around him in a rainbow from blue to red. I mentally applauded him for not flaring his wings. Ice cold nerves. "I see. Did the warden send you—"

I interrupted so I would have to lie. "Yes, to ask ponies if they'd seen the stallion Wolf Run. Have you?"

"No."

"I've encountered the timberwolf Princess Green Forest and the Chthon—"

Lord Tirek said, "He saved me from its rampage—"

Ice Arrow yelled, "Quiet, inmate!"

I inhaled sharply. "Well, as you can see, Tartarus' safeguards aren't working."

"So you claim." He pointed a wing at Cerberus, who still looked at me, then gestured at the twisted spiraling portal beyond. His underwings were pure white. "The gate looks unchanged."

"I am Lavender Lather's chief deputy."

He raised an icy white eyebrow. "And?"

"The rainbow crows—"

"I won't risk my staff to test your preposterous theory."

Okay.

I looked pointedly at the surrounding rooftops, mountain ledges, and the pine covered slopes to the north. You learned to ignore the crows, even their occasional caws, but there was always one if you looked.

There were none. Everypony followed my gaze.

Might as well go for broke. I spoke beyond him at the others. "Everypony is clearly in danger. Seems to me that everypony should gather in Central City where we can mount a mutual defense."

His staff grumbled as he narrowed his eyes, not missing any nuance in my ploy. One brave stallion, a blue one with a rust-red spiked mane asked, "Are they all free from restraint?"

In an odd synchrony, both Ice Arrow and Lord Tirek shouted, "Enough!"

Ice Arrow reared in anger. "I have the magic to send you to a restraint zone. Do not cross me!" With his right wing, he flipped a steel medallion hidden in his chest fur, revealing a glowing red sigil. I knew that Lavender Lather possessed the same amulet, but kept it locked in her office desk in the top right drawer.

Lord Tirek hissed, "Powerful magic..."

"Your ponies aren't safe," I said loudly to drown out my centaur companion, when it occurred to me I could demonstrate that the rainbow crows weren't on patrol.

I reached for a stone with my magic, to the simultaneous gasp of the staff. That same instant, Lord Tirek jumped toward Ice Arrow, his mouth gaped open, inhaling deeply.

Ice Arrow didn't hesitate. He yelled the name of the embedded spell as he swatted the amulet: "Incarceratite Maximumus two inmates!"

The world went black and absolutely cold. Oh, yes, and there was no air and I'd just exhaled. My lungs struggled painfully. My heart raced. I panicked and flailed.

After less than five seconds, reality returned. I landed with a whump on the glassy floor of a restriction zone, gasping for air, frost steaming off my legs and muzzle as I lay shaking from an adrenaline rush. A loud crack echoed through the hills. The frost smelled like winter.

Lord Tirek landed on his side, perhaps unbalanced by his ungainly body form, striking his horned head against the glass, jerking then still, stunned but also gasping. Frost painted his cassock white and thick ribbons of steam rose from the clothing.

I scrambled up and out of the glass area of the restriction zone, well cognizant as I did that I might find a barrier that had bloodied the noses of various vicious inmates I'd visited that had more hate than sense when they saw a pony approach.

I breezed right through, of course.

Tartarus was broken.

I looked around and up. I recognized the dense clouds above, and the angle of the sun through a few distant cloud breaks, and the twin sides of the mountain that made it seem like it had twin horns or perked ears. I walked to the edge of the flattened mountain top to the steps downward, then went left, trying to see due south. Straining over the drop, I could see the southern sky and barely the drippy watercolor paint influence on the blue where the Cerberus Gate warped the sky into the silver mountain below.

I looked at Lord Tirek who shook himself and used his clawed forelegs to help himself upright. I shouted, "What were you doing to Ice Arrow?"

My voice echoed back accusingly.

He dusted himself with his claws.

Angry, I pushed. "Tell me. Tell me!"

He paused. I could see his left eyebrow raise. "Disable his magic," he said in measured words. He did not like to take commands from ponies. I knew this. It colored his tone.

"No." I said. "No, you weren't. You did this inhaling thing." I made a long gasping sound. Like he had done with the ring on my horn.

He blinked and slowly approached me. He stopped when he successfully crossed the glass boundary, possibly fearing my talent. He tapped the silver stone with his white cloven fore-hoof to assure himself, then said, "I tried to remove his magic."

I felt myself moving my eyes right and left as I thought intensely about that, and it made sense in the context of what he did to the ring (which did feel like it was fighting my magic again, slightly) and what little I had learned about him for Denizens. If he could remove magic from powerful objects, he'd be able to break wards and magical bonds. Celestia could have sent him to Tartarus for breaking into places and stealing things, or destroying magical structures.

"Powerful things?" I asserted.

"Yes. I can only sense powerful things." In that he held on to the S-sound at the end of his sentence, he emphasized things. I suspected he'd left out something. Probably "for now." No doubt, a millennium of hibernation would have left anypony weakened. No doubt he would be scary once he regained his full strength.

I did not trust him any further than I could throw him, and you know now how far that is.

I said, "Listen carefully. If you try that stunt again I will—"

"What?" He laughed. "What, White Stockings?"

I felt my face heat up. No need to remind him. I knew one thing though. Until I gave Sunset Shimmer the message, nopony would stand in my way. Invincible. Invulnerable. "You know who I am, right?"

"Chief deputy to the warden." He crossed his forelimbs over his upper chest. I paused for an instant, wondering if he had two sets of lungs and two hearts. Frankly, I though he had no heart, but that was figuratively. I needed to spend a coin to bind him to my purpose.

"I'm the pony who knows how to get Cerberus to abandon the gate. I can see how your talent might help me with Ice Arrow, but I won't fail without you. Don't be stupid again."

He sputtered, then pursed his lips. Inhaling deeply, he said, "You need me to remove the ring on your horn. You can feel it recovering, can you not?"

"Can you do anything about a unicorn?"

He said nothing.

"Fine." I walked to the stairs and stepped on the first narrow one headed down. "Go it alone—"

"Only if they are powerful."

Ka-ching. I looked back. "If we are fighting, or I direct you, feel free to use your talent. Otherwise—"

"Not?"

"That's the general idea. And keep your mouth shut, in all senses of the phrase. We are about two miles northeast of the gate as the crow flies."

I climbed down the meandering stone stair. A few moments later I heard his hooves clattering behind me.

"I Need Help!"

The return journey looked to be considerably longer than the two miles flown by a rainbow crow.

We'd been teleported to the least accessible southeastern restraint zone. That left us to navigate a maze of unmaintained access roads, all full of potholes and broken paving stones, often having to push through bramble-choked paths to the scratched and bleeding detriment of my hide when my magic proved insufficient. Lord Tirek let me blaze the way silently but, despite my growing frustration with him, I cordially held thorny branches for him to pass.

The early afternoon clouds building around Geyser Mountain gradually grew thicker, mammiform, gray, foreboding, and almost black. It could have been dusk, except for a sliver of blue I caught to the south, now and again, between trees or as we walked far enough beyond this or that mountain top.

That smell of impending rain made me look up. My mouth dropped open. The Canterlot Inquisition weatherpony had called it virga: streaks of rain falling from a cloud that evaporate before hitting the ground.

Unfortunately, the mass blue-grey streaks overhead weren't evaporating.

The cloud burst instantly drenched us.

"Ugh!" I cried, my mane plastered across my eyes. Coughing water I'd breathed in, half-drowned, I released a sapling which hit Tirek like an angry teacher's switch.

"Ow!" he yelled. "You cur!"

The torrent sundered me to my knees by shear weight of water, followed by an almost simultaneous lighting strike on the closest horned peak. The rain for the next few minutes battered the leaves and dirt path, accompanied by peals of thunder.

The rain grew gradually lighter. I decided I could get away without an apology and proceeded, holding branches aside. I heard the patter of his hooves following. When we approached a meadow, I glanced back to see a satisfying raised red welt across Lord Tirek's left gray-furred cheek.

Served him right for trusting me.

My soaked uniform khaki shirt stuck to me as if glued and showed I'd grown the muscles I'd never had as a youth. Chthony's chthonic ink hadn't washed out, though. The dye stained me black all the way past my cutie mark. The soaked notes in my pocket were a total loss.

Trotting ahead, I said, gesturing with my nose, "That's the main east south road. See it? Between the trees at the edge of the meadow?"

"Sweet Celestia!"

"Are you trying to be ironic?" It was a mile away.

He didn't answer.

A half-hour found us stopped beyond the southern side of a bridge crossing a rift filled with a raging stream, overlooking an S-curved road that descended to the Cerberus Gate. I could see neither the huts nor the little Big House. I saw a cyan earth pony mare struggling to pull a darkly weathered pine wagon loaded with...

Whatever— She didn't see us and disappeared beyond view.

It had become dark beyond the clouds. We'd taken so long to get back that the sun had finally set. I murmured, "She's not here."

Lord Tirek asked, "Who's not here?"

I mentally kicked myself. "That mare was Sweet Onion, a mare who can make anypony cry." She had once caused entire villages to grow depressed enough to migrate so that her guild underlings could plunder the land. "If the timid thing is still here, they're all here."

Certainly, Sunset Shimmer would have stirred the pot had she arrived with Brandywine. She would have brought news of the emptying restraint zones and pointed out the dangers of being a small group of ponies alone where an aggressor with a chip on his or her shoulder could easily lurk and plan an ambush.

As we were doing.

Except that I had no plan. Standing in a miserable steamy drizzle didn't help me think of one, either.

Lord Tirek stiffened. "I sense powerful magic."

Cued, I flicked away the drops hanging on my ears and swiveled them around. I heard hoof falls. Distant, ponderous ones. Measured. Heavy. Not clattery at all. Easily missed at first and echoing faintly as they closed.

Then I recognized hooves striking the wet wood of the bridge. I turned.

I gasped and froze—and found myself trembling as an improbable glowing sight passed from my spooked horse brain into my consciousness. My mouth dropped open.

Chthony flew at me...

Wait. No.

A bright yellow aura shimmered around the Chthon. Suspended half a pony-length in the air, he peddled his webbed antelope legs and writhed his tentacles as the whites of his eye grew larger. He croaked, "Brownie!"

A more terrifying sight followed him.

A yellow unicorn filly advanced slowly, carefully placing each hoof as she stepped off the bridge. Her aura enveloped her like a bonfire, issuing from every follicle and pore—not just from her horn—like flames that pulsed and fluttered as they burnt in an ethereal wind. The same wind caused her red-streaked yellow mane and tail to wave in an imitation of fire. So much magic streamed outward that it beamed from her mouth and her turquoise eyes, turning them white. Her magic swarmed with swirling sparkles. A shrill ringing accompanied her like the sound you hear in the aftermath of listening to very loud music.

The apparition saw me. Whimpering, she cried, "Please!" She breathed in heavy terrifying puffs like she existed on the cusp between life and death. "I need help!"

I saw this.

I heard this.

But my eyes had already gone wide. My heart raced and the roaring of my blood in my ears swamped all sound. I stopped breathing. Shaking, I backed, one step, two, ready to leap away—

I bumped into something soft but unyielding. A claw clamped onto the fleshy part of my withers, grabbing and pushing back as I reflexively shied, rotating away. I gasped, unable to yell, forced to stay on four hooves, forced to glance over the precipice I'd been prevented from diving off of.

Shadowed jagged rocks lay tens of pony-lengths below.

Lord Tirek shook me, then shook me harder until he—and what I had almost done—became more real than my fear. I began to breathe. As I pushed my panic down, he whispered, "Stupid equine! It's only a unicorn. Show some courage. It's the 'she' you've been waiting for."

Yes...

Yes, it was...

...Sunset Shimmer.

Think.

I was trapped in a pretzel of time. The exigencies the future, already cemented in the past, forced this very moment. As a pony of information, it occurred to me that if there was any free will in my situation it was in what information that escaped from our encounters today to the ponies of the past. The more I avoided the meeting, the more catastrophic the next encounter might be for all of us. Sunset Shimmer's alicorn-like powers might be thanks to time compensating for its increasing pretzelization! All Tyrannus Tempus required naught of insignificant me other than I relay one simple message with my dying breath while using my talent.

I took a deep breath, then another longer one. I shook my head to clear it.

I wanted to live. I saw flaxen Crinkle Paper in my mind. I had a part to play and wanted to be the hero in the drama.

Hero...? That probably wasn't going to happen.

My heart raced, but at least my brain had checked back into the hotel (though not my queasy stomach). I looked at the ill-fated filly and realized she'd been speaking. "...help. I need to— pacify this monster. I have to get back to him. Can you do something?"

I glanced back at Tirek who'd retreated into the shadows of his cassock. To her I answered, "Sure."

To him I hissed, "She is the one. Behave yourself." To emphasize the command, I kicked his fore-hoof before stepping to meet my destiny.

Sunset moaned. "Thank Celestia!"

I reached out with my magic, unwilling to touch her directly. She rotated Chthony safely and deftly out of the way, and incidentally to the edge of the cliff where she could have instantly "pacified" him. Rolling downhill would likely snap his legs if not break his every bone. In that she didn't see her opportunity, she wasn't evil and remarkably like her mentor.

I felt an exciting electrical tingle as I projected my aura of Levitation into hers. I could sense her unlimited magical potential and overwhelming determination. I touched her cheek remotely and said, "I can surely help you, Sunset Shimmer. All you need to do is follow me down this road—"

I continued to speak even as her fire-bright eyes acquired that patented glazed-over look. While I finished my instructions to follow the path down to and to deal with Cerberus, she reached up and tapped my horn.

No, she tapped the ring. It clicked. She said in a distant voice, "Oh. It's transparent now."

She walked on past, porting squirming Chthony over her shoulder. My throat closed up and I choked on an odd emotion.

Celestia had said, "Too bad you did not see how useful it could have been to encourage others achieve their dreams."

I saw Crinkle Paper in my mind, wearing her work khakis, shaking her head in disgust. Tears rolled down my cheeks. In Sunset Shimmer's future, I would again coerce her one more time—yet, were I to have caught any pony doing to Crinkle Paper what I had just done to Sunset Shimmer I would have throttled him.

Celestia had said, "Think long on your crimes and what you could have done better. One day maybe you can yet be of service to Equestria."

I had thought about it. I had forgotten about it.

"I am evil." I said it out loud—the better for me to hear my confession that way.

Lord Tirek put a companionable claw on my withers. "In equine terms that goes without saying, White Stockings." I sensed a bit of awe. "What is the plan?"

I took a deep breath. I had tangled myself up in magic beyond comprehension so terrible that it had broken time. I saw the horrible pony I could be, had been, and would be in Sunset Shimmer's future. My past. And our present.

What choices did I have?

"Squeeze past her," I replied. "Try not be be seen. Can you make that amulet turn transparent and stop working like you did my ring?"

"I can. I will."

"Good pony!"

"Don't push it, White Stockings," he said, but with the barest of laughs. He clopped ahead and squirmed by the slow marching yellow filly, putting his goat hooves to good use on the narrow path, then slunk silently out of view. I did not trust him, but did trust him to do this.

Ahead into the crucible.

"Miss Mean Pony Won't Let Me!"

The bit of light afforded by the twilight rapidly dissipated, causing the illumination from the mountain restriction zones to predominate. The wan light resulted in a ghostly pale colorless landscape of shadowy trees lit brighter than a full moon because of the reflective cloud cover, despite the drizzle.

I heard Cerberus growl and stones fly as he stood before I could see him. He'd seen Sunset Shimmer; couldn't miss her, lit up like an eldritch golden lantern by her aura and her eyes. I heard ponies shout. Two furiously flapping pegasi roared into the sky so rapidly that I heard their slipstreams whoosh by. I ducked down to the muddy road.

They weren't doing reconnaissance. They flew north and disappeared.

That left three earth ponies and Ice Arrow.

I waited long enough that I wouldn't be illuminated by Sunset Shimmer, then crept off the road toward the buildings. The filly closed on the dark Tartarussian dog, herself not larger than the lower part of a foreleg. Cerberus' growl grew ominously louder like a stampede rushing down the gully you happened to be trapped within. The bass rumble resonated uncomfortably in my body. A stallion and two mares yelled at Sunset Shimmer to stop, but lingered near the huts. The red stallion and the cyan mare showed the whites of their eyes, looking half-spooked. The other green one danced on her hooves ready to bolt.

Chthony could scare anypony. Sunset shoved the Chthon, legs racing, tentacles and trunks flying every which way, into Cerberus' face.

And dropped him.

Her aura flicked off. Its finality made me gasp, like the lights going out late at night during a ghost story. It was my cue.

Cerberus' angry triple polyphonic barks shattered the night. While Chthony could trumpet, the only sound he made were resounding thumps as he whipped the watchdog.

The red stallion and cyan mare spooked. They whinnied as they galloped past the little Big House toward the east south road and disappeared into the incipient night. The other earth pony had simply disappeared.

Cerberus yelped with eardrum-shattering effect. Having delivered blows that surprised Cerberus, Chthony backpedaled. The creatures looked matched in height, but not in their physical builds—the solid Tartarussian canine out-massed the antelope chimera. He made Chthony seem delicate by comparison.

As requested, Sunset Shimmer flared her magic and shoved Chthony back at Cerberus who now growled and barked again. It surprised me that she'd accepted the suggestion of letting Cerberus "pacify" the Chthon. I'd thought she had meant the word "pacify" as Celestia would have meant it, but, deep down, she must have hated the creature or was simply heartless.

Shoved over the line into the territory Cerberus protected, the dog finally attacked. It reared and pushed itself back from grasping tentacles and bashing trunks, stepped back, crouched, and leapt. It snapped its jaws viciously. Front legs held wide, he hugged his opponent. The collision shook the earth. Then he bit with all three heads, one-two-three.

A moan that could lift storm waves on the ocean echoed across the valley and off the hills. I feared for my ears more than I feared that one of the behemoths might misstep and leave me a puddle of goo as I raced into the melee.

I galloped around in the dark until I passed around Chthony and came up beside his bristly coal-black haunches. I reached out a hoof. I had to touch him. I needed to make it work immediately.

He dodged aside, suddenly pushing forward, barely missing my head with a back paw.

Of course he missed. He had to.

Keep telling yourself that.

Hooves dancing, I found another opening in the titanic fight and lunged. At the same time, Cerberus stepped back. The dark shadows of his bulk rushed toward, then past me. The wind of his passing, tainted more with a burnt latex scent than wet dog scent, whipped my mane and threatened my stance. Worse, another dark limb rushed directly at me. Toward my face.

I felt my heart beat hard, possibly for the last time.

Tentacles lashed out, barely missing me, to wrap the deadly leg that rocketed toward me. It whipped around again and again, with a rubber snap. Cerberus' foreleg shot up and away as my reflexes took hold and I hopped aside when it should have been too late.

Cerberus tumbled over, Chthony tangled around him, following him down. The ground jumped from the thunderous impact. I scrambled forward and touched the frog of my hoof upon the temporarily sundered dog's chest.

"Such a good dog. No fighting, Cerberus. You want to go for a walk, don't you? Don't you? Can you sit boy? Can you sit?"

Like that, Cerberus shimmied back.

A relieved Chthony unwrapped his bleeding limbs and collapsed on his haunches in an exact mirror of Cerberus. For her part, Sunset Shimmer stood a couple of pony-lengths behind, glancing from one to the other looking thoughtful, but not shoving them together, either. She had done precisely as I had suggested she do.

I looked at Cerberus. Dark eyes, reflecting the illuminated mountains behind me, focused on me as any dog might on his pony master. I glanced to Chthony. He sat gasping and moaning, his steel eyes also on me as he shivered. Some of his tentacles were bitten through. Gouged flesh hung limply torn from his forehead. Sunset Shimmer's turquoise eyes also focused on me, but seemed to be clearing. I stepped quickly forward, reaching out with my magic to say, "You've pacified the Chthon exactly as you wanted."

She smiled.

I let out a long breath. As I turned toward Chthony, he shook more. "I'm hurt, Brownie. I'm hurt real bad."

Why was my heart breaking? "You need to go home, Chthony."

He moaned. "Miss Mean Pony won't let me!"

I addressed Sunset. "Please let Chthony go home. He promises he won't hurt anypony, touch anypony, speak to or even get near anypony." I faced Chthony. "You promise?"

"I promise, Brownie. Ponies aren't toys, are they Brownie?"

"They feel just like you do. They can hurt, Chthony, just like you do now. They are not toys."

"Okay, Brownie."

"Go home."

"I will. I promise." He stood tremulously, shaking enough that I worried he might collapse. Were he, it would have been on top of Sunset Shimmer; my past guaranteed that wouldn't happen. He widened his stance, turned, and limped away.

In the sudden quiet—well, calm, but for the gentle panting of a dog behind me—Sunset Shimmer turned and watched his retreat. In that pause, as my heart rate gradually lowered and I began to realize that the hardest part was finally over, I also realized I hadn't seen Ice Arrow.

I turned and found somepony beside me. I gasped and jumped back before I realized that a cassock enveloped the stallion-sized shadow. I blinked. I would have sworn Lord Tirek had been shorter.

I said, "You are quiet."

"I cannot fault your bravery," he said in turn, pulling back his hood so I could see his face. Again, I got the impression of change. Fewer wrinkles. Less infirmity. A darker mane. Clearer eyes. Then again, I looked at him in the monochromatic light of evening.

"Ice Arrow?"

The centaur huffed and passed a necklace holding an amulet. The magic object didn't look exactly transparent, but it has ceased to be metallic. It resembled a tourmaline, clear in places but mostly dark. Undoubtedly, it was "disabled." I threw the cold silver chain around my neck. The amulet thumped in place across my heart.

He said, "I took care of a green mare, too. She had grabbed a weighted net and was about to throw it. Do not worry. The pony will survive. It's Tartarus."

"Thank you."

Lord Tirek pointed a claw at Sunset Shimmer who stood, hindquarters facing us, tail swishing worriedly as Chthony disappeared, climbing the east south road. "That female is incredibly powerful. She will cause problems if I do not drain—"

"No," I said, facing him. "She and I are—"

"What? Special someponies? Do not expect me to suffer another pony with us."

"No. She—" I could not explain the truth; he'd disbelieve, then there'd be trouble. "If I don't handle this right, the Equestrian authorities will realize what we've done and catch us."

"Is that so?"

"It is."

"Pity."

As Sunset Shimmer turned to face us, she began shaking her head. Her eyes didn't look as distant. She began saying to herself, "I came here to get help—"

Right. That was the other thing she wanted. "Yes," I said, walking up to her. I hadn't wanted to touch her before but now had no choice as I had to assure she had no time to remember me. I touched and pushed with that certain something that I knew engaged the intent of my special talent. I had to make her happy or at least satisfied with what I told her. "I can surely help you. How did you get to Tartarus?"

Calming, she said, "Twilight Sparkle opened a gateway. After Celestia closed it, I used a sulfur match and sympathetic fire magic to reopen it. I earned my cutie mark doing it."

I felt my eyebrow rise. "Congratulations. And you need to get back?"

"I do. Before the clock ticks down." She began to look very nervous, like an elder pony who'd realized she'd forgotten something very important. She brushed her front hoof before her, saying, "And, and, and something else." She blurted, "I need to get help—"

I gasped. "For Brandywine?"

She nodded, more and more dazed as my special talent worked its wonders through the frog of my hoof against her shoulder.

I said, "To get help, go as quickly as you can back through the gate. Once you pass through, find Princess Celestia. Only she can help you. Tell her that Brandywine needs help, but most importantly tell her—"

I choked on a sudden lump in my throat. I looked at Cerberus. I looked beyond at the gate. Despite the overcast that hid the moon, the bridge in the tunnel of warped reality receded into the distance lit by a moon under a clear Equestrian sky. The spiral glowed an ethereal blue-white, checkered by moonlight and its own shadow.

If I said the words, was my part holding together the fault in time over? Or was it done when I sent Cerberus on his way? If I said the words, did I cease to have a role to play.

Would I become vulnerable? Normal? Did I regain free will?

I had assumed she'd come here using some sort of gate. I now knew it to be a fact. If I did not act now, when it was obvious that I should do so, I suspected the warring past and future would find another way. I'd skirted death today. The dharg. Cthony. Him twice, actually. And who knows, Sunset Shimmer herself or perhaps Lord Tirek? He was no predictable pony.

I gulped. Best to be done with it.

I said, "Tell Celestia, 'Cerberus is running in the grim glimmering starlight toward Ponyville.'"

Sunset Shimmer blinked at me. The drizzle had stopped; strands of her mane had dried enough that they waved in a stirring breeze. Water dripped from the eaves of the little Big House. I repeated the phrase, then said, "What are you going to tell to her, yell at her if necessary, to make her help you?"

Her eyes locked on mine. Cold. Angry. Determined. She yelled, "Cerberus is running in the grim glimmering starlight toward Ponyville!"

I pointed past the outpost. "Take the west south road toward Central. It's shorter and less hilly than the east south road you took before. Go to your gate. Gallop if you can."

"I will," she promised in a shout. She took off at full speed, her hooves kicking up mud and stones as she rushed, her muscles rippling under her yin-yang solar cutie mark. She repeated the phrase. Within a minute, she passed beyond earshot and was soon lost from sight in the dark.

A gruff voice said, "I don't understand ponies."

I sighed and I looked at Lord Tirek. His skin seemed redder, too. Impressive considering the light. I said, "You never will."

"Probably right."

To Cerberus, I said, "You want to go for a walk?"

A tail, thicker than the hawser that tied a ship to a dock, started thumping.

"A walk, Cerberus? A walk?"

Thump, thump, thump.

"Go to Ponyville, Cerberus. Ponyville."

"Ponyville," Lord Tirek said, "Interesting." He looked the direction Sunset Shimmer had disappeared in. It made me think of the message Celestia's protégé would deliver; maybe he did, too.

Cerberus whined. He tilted his head at me and lifted his ears.

Yeah, what made me think the dog understood geography? How could I get him to go where he needed to go? I tried, "Canterlot. Cerberus, go to Canterlot."

He seemed excited, more from my tone than anything. He kept tilting his head. He was a dog. What did dogs understand?

Scent. The Tartarussian certainly had three enormous noses. What else?

His pony masters.

"Celestia. Cerberus, find Princess Celestia!"

He stood and barked. All three heads bayed like a pack of hounds. Their necks lowered his muzzles to the ground. Tail wagging like a windmill, it cut swaths through the air audibly, as deadly as a giant's whirling club. He began sniffing. He sniffed and snuffled while facing the gate; his motion moved him toward it.

"Go! Go!" Lord Tirek shoved me on the shoulder before running to follow. "I tried the gate already but it was locked. We need to go through with Cerberus."

He'd tried to escape without me? Of course he had. Stupid me to think he would not have tried.

I galloped after him.

"Thank You, Fluttershy."

Cerberus bayed triphonically. The excruciatingly loud sound bounced off the edge of the world where pyritic rock made a thin veneer over the end of one reality and the beginning of the other. Stone that looked like the lower part of a hill or a mountain instead thrust out of a flat surface, a surface which smeared and swirled like watercolors applied wet to a painting.

The gate appeared to be transparent. But, as we galloped after Cerberus who thundered ahead of us, having found the scent he desired, it still looked like a wall. The gate looked painted on, like a trompe d'oeil.

Cerberus hit the gate like an accelerating locomotive. His body jerked as if he had forced himself through something vaguely substantial, like stiff draperies. Literally at the heels of his rear paws, I nonetheless cringed as I leapt forward and turned my head aside so that if I hit something solid, at least I wouldn't smash my muzzle.

It felt exactly as when Celestia had pushed me through the quicksilver surface of her fiery Tartarus gate. Since I massed way less than Cerberus, the drag of the transition changed the arc of my leap. I quickly lifted my forequarters to compensate, but I came down hard on the bridge. At my velocity, the dark-veined white marble surface proved slicker than ice. I danced to keep upright, to get traction, but failing that I braced myself and went skidding along, flexing my muscles to keep from spinning.

Lord Tirek, with more goat-like hooves, kept going, but noticed my misstep and turned. "Come on. We must keep pace."

I slid to a stop, puffing and trying to catch my breath from the sprint. "Seriously? We're never going to catch him."

"If he has to open the gate—"

"He did."

"At the other end of the tunnel, you stupid weak-minded—"

"There is only one Cerberus Gate, Lord Tirek."

"It's called The Gates, plural, of Tartarus."

"Regardless. Why would Princess Celestia need two, anyway?"

Lord Tirek's eyes became lidded. He turned toward freedom, eyeing the spiral bridge and the squat black behemoth dog. Cerberus had already traveled far enough along the bridge that it was tilted 180°, causing him to rush ahead upside down from our perspective. I trotted up behind the centaur and, without further word, he trotted fast enough to stay ahead of me.

I had wrecked Sunset Shimmer's life. Worse than that, I would never see Crinkle Paper again. Yeah, I could just turn around and head back to Tartarus, but I wasn't doing that. I simply wasn't. Even if they caught me and Celestia threw me back into Tartarus, how could Crinkle Paper ever forgive me for all that I'd done, the least of which was not including her in the escape?

Why hadn't I listened to Princess Celestia's advice?

Why?

Princess Celestia, whether inadvertently or intentionally, had given me a life that had become genuinely good, which, despite being in a cruel land and serving others, was more rewarding than I could have ever asked for. And still, I hadn't understood, really understood.

Why?

I was evil.

I silently thanked Lord Tirek for maintaining the lead. It saved what little shred of dignity I had left as I trotted along, head down, tears streaming down my cheeks, struggling not to sob aloud.

Eventually, my emotions wrung me dry. My eyes stopped burning and I paid attention to more than following the lead pony in the train. Morning sunshine streamed up from the sky directly below the bridge.

I whickered in surprise, stopped, and peered over the edge.

I'd been overcome for fifteen minutes, max. This made no sense, but as I looked down I had zero doubt that I saw the sun, Celestia's sun. Scudding fluffy pegasus clouds drifted lazily as they tumbled across a cerulean sky. The marble felt cold as I kneeled and shook my head at the sight.

"Fifteen minutes?"

Lord Tirek said, "While you were overcome by your inferior pony emotions, Cerberus escaped into Equestria. It's been twenty minutes." When I didn't look at him, for some silly reason hiding what had to have been obviously bloodshot eyes, he said, "Look back the way we came."

I did.

The spiral path continued back down the tunnel. Were we in the real world, standing on a mountain like, for example, Palisades Park in Canterlot looking down the precipice at the Ponyville plain, you would see drifting clouds casting deep shadows across the landscape. What I saw from my current perspective wasn't clouds, though. Far behind us, at what I judged was just inside the Cerberus Gate, lay a bridge veiled in the midnight blue of a moonlit sky under prismatic wisps of thin cirrus clouds. In between I saw gradations of passing time, color, light, and weather—dawn, sunrise, morning…

"Time? Again, time? This thing is a path between yesterday and tomorrow?" From outside I'd seen only now. Inside, the bridge had swapped distance for time and become a frozen river of when.

"I do not know what you are blathering about White Stockings, however, if we do not start moving, the whole day ahead of us may have passed. I do not want to be found by any authorities who might investigate Cerberus' appearance in—"

"Ponyville!" I jumped up and looked forward. Indeed, the steeply angled morning light below changed ahead of us to a harsher noon angle. Beyond that, afternoon.

My brain began to hurt, not only because of the pretzeled nature of what my eyes told me and how my brain interpreted the madness, but because I tried to calculate how fast we needed to go to get to the end before nightfall.

Thinking in numbers had started to sting again.

What would happen if we walked back toward Tartarus? Ow.

I shook my head and said, "We'd better get moving!"

"Yes, I agree."

After traveling an even-dozen spirals—after the bridge had straightened out into a tongue of marble that transitioned into what looked like sandstone—day had progressed to late afternoon. The very end wasn't so much the terminus of a subway tunnel as it was a fissure in the rock. Vertically stacked plates of brown and red-streaked rock precariously formed a triangular passageway. I imagined the great weight of rock overhead and nervously trotted the final hundred pony-lengths through a half-dark that smelled like a musty tomb.

No unseen barrier stopped Lord Tirek. (I'd let him go first.)

We walked out into dazzling sunshine. Shading my eyes with a hoof didn't help. The gritty stone surface beneath our hooves looked unworked. Our steps echoed off the rocky hill ahead. Four quick pony-lengths plunged us into a shadow from where I could see the hill of sandstone before us was only one wall of an enormous sinkhole. The passage to Tartarus was a mound in a roughly conical depression. To the north, a peak lay a few miles beyond. Nearer was a rim dotted with windblown arid oak, scraggly thorn bushes, and clumps of dusty juniper.

It was hot. And it stunk. To alls sides, rainwater pooled in stagnant blue-green pools, crusted with white minerals.

It had been a long day; I felt exhausted, physically and emotionally. Nevertheless, we had to escape this last place in which somepony might trap us. I said, "It's about an hour to sunset."

Lord Tirek pointed a claw at a series of terraces. I nodded. I took off my canteen, which was still strapped on, and emptied the contents in big gulps. I didn't feel generous. As I slung it back on, I felt the incarceration amulet and on impulse I flicked it up to look at it.

The click my hoof made sounded both metallic and glassy. The artifact looked barely transparent now; more silvery. If I understood the centaur correctly, it fed on my magic and would eventually restore itself. My horn ring would do the same.

Lord Tirek leaped the stagnant water. I crinkled my nose as I splattered through the noisome fluid. He forged ahead, his hooves faintly clattering like castanets as he picked his way. Unlike a goat, he had an unwieldy second torso. He had to lean back before jumping, pulling back his top forelegs to flail with both them and his tail to keep balance. Overall, in the climb, I judged myself more nimble.

Along the way, the arid land proved surprisingly bountiful. Little bushes of leaves that smelled aromatic like caraway and occasional tufts of grass proved tempting. As we went, I stripped branches with my teeth and tongue or bent my neck down to wrestle out a clump of exotic desert hay that clung strongly to the dusty cracks in in the rock. I chewed as we went, and gradually felt better. I did my best not to dwell on decisions I could not unmake or the ones I had had no choice but to make.

At least I didn't feel sixty years old. Belly happy, I felt reinvigorated. I felt like I should have felt at the end of my teenage years had I lived like an earth pony using his muscles instead as being a slug of uninspired unicorn flesh.

Okay. —of lazy unicorn flesh.

We scrabbled the last pony-length over a jumble of rocks and entered a scrub forest of oak surrounded by red-barked stunted evergreen trees and thorny silvery-green shrubs. The vegetation combined to block the view of the westering sun but for dapples of sunlight that played into our eyes as the wind buffeted the plants. To our right, an array of boulders resisted the encroaching flora, but looked easier to thread through than the forest would be. All along the rim, it appeared to be the only clear path to the lowlands to the south.

I pointed with my nose, but Lord Tirek put out his claw to stop me from passing him. He hissed, "I sense something powerful near by."

"An object or a pony?" I knew he considered both objects and ponies things.

"Equestrian magic—a pony. Could Sunset Shimmer have returned to hunt you for your crimes against her?"

I wasn't going to clarify that she had returned many years in the past, after which she had faded from the news. Since Princess Luna's return, she may as well have not existed in our universe, and from what I had known of her subsequent self-abuse, which I had fostered, she might have actually died. "Extremely unlikely."

The centaur folded his legs beside a boulder and pressed an ear to it. He stood almost instantly. "Something massive this way comes. Take cover."

We rushed into the trees and knelt. We could still see, and probably could be seen, but as the sun continued toward setting, dancing shadows and thin leafy trunks camouflaged us well.

I heard large rocks being shoved aside and clacking like monster billiard balls. Heavy, rhythmic thumping noises gave me a premonition we were about to have some very bad luck. Thunderous barks announced my worst expectation. I whispered, "Cerberus."

Lord Tirek glared at me to remain quiet.

Another group of barks— Closer this time.

I saw a flitting shadow. I looked above as a low flying pegasus glided by. The yellow mare flew slow enough that her extremely long flowing pink mane and tail waved gracefully in her wake. She looked... perfect. She was possibly the most beautiful mare I'd ever seen. Her nicely proportioned legs and wings were the right amount of long and lithe with a face and musculature that looked sculpted as if imagined rather than merely crudely born. Breathtaking blue eyes flashed in the late sun as she braked at the rim, turned to face Cerberus, and hovered expectantly. She used the minimum energy necessary to maintain position, her wings flapping leisurely up and down. She was a delicate golden hyacinth flower supported by the lightest of breezes.

I'd ensured I met models during my time in Canterlot and Manehatten. I judged modeling agents and fashion photographers were falling upon each other fighting to sign her to a contract.

Lord Tirek shoved me to break the enchantment and pointed. Not far downhill I saw ball floating and bobbing. It looked like a yellow foal's rubber ball with a blue stripe. A purple aura suspended it ten pony-lengths in the air. I could see the aura because the sun had fallen far enough that the ball was passing in and out of the late afternoon shadows.

A unicorn.

Cerberus came bounding up behind the ball. He lunged and caught the ball with his rightmost head, then tossed it dozens of pony-lengths in the air, droplets of drool sparkling and flying. The unicorn caught it, shook it, and levitated it toward the yellow pegasus.

"Twilight," the pegasus said, "I think maybe we're here."

Twilight?

Twilight Sparkle?

My heart seized up. The Twilight Sparkle!? Princess Celestia's second protégé? The mare who conquered Nightmare Moon? The bearer of the Element of Magic of the Elements of Harmony?

No, no, no. This was not good.

But it made sense. I had no doubt it had been foal Twilight Sparkle who'd blasted through time to allow Sunset Shimmer to travel to Tartarus. This was the other bookend of the curse upon time the foal had perpetrated.

That implied that the yellow pegasus was another bearer of an Element of Harmony. Her name escaped me. These ponies were the powerful magic Lord Tirek sensed. Whatever crimes Lord Tirek had perpetrated to make Celestia commit him to Tartarus, the one thing intuition told me at this very moment was that the centaur could pull the magic out of powerful objects and powerful ponies.

Would I add to my crimes by letting a monster stab at the heart of pony civilization, at the one pony who Celestia had groomed to save Equestria when she did not have the power to do so herself?

I did not want to put ideas in his mind so I settled on whispering, "Let me handle this, if we need to." I touched him to emphasize my point as he seemed intent on the ponies' approach.

He flinched away, fortunately quietly. A faint breeze rustled leaves and clicked shrubby branches together, but even so. He glared. "You will not touch me, even with magic," he breathed barely audibly. Implied: he thoroughly understood my talent.

"Obey me," I returned, despite a scary yellow-irised glare from motes of black.

Cerberus climbed to the ridge, tongues out, panting. The yellow pegasus waved a hoof and he sat smartly. She flew behind his heads and alighted at the, well— W of his necks; the action alone should have caused the beast to go berserk and attack. Instead, she lay there and reached forward with her hooves and wings to scratch the creature behind various ears. "Such a good good boy. Who's a good boy? Who's a goooood boy?"

Cerberus whined and actually smiled in a doggy way, the tips of his tongues rolling upward almost touching his noses. He even scratched the air, so much like a real dog that I suspected that Princess Celestia had enchanted him, to enhance his dogginess.

A purple unicorn with a dark purple magenta-striped mane and tail jumped atop a nearby flat rock illuminated by the sun. She judged wrongly and scrambled the rest of the distance, then had a problem balancing and waved a fore and the opposite rear hoof as her tail spun, vocalizing, "Whoah, whoah!" She precipitously laid down and sighed loudly. She said, "Thank you, Fluttershy. I couldn't have done it alone."

One had a cutie mark consisting of pink butterflies, the other a doubled composite of two six-pointed stars that reputably signified great power. Following her magical mishap, a very powerful Starlight Glimmer had burnt only a doubled four-pointed star in the fur of her forehead. My bodyguard, Fletching, had told me the theory about cutie mark stars. For added significance, Twilight's main double-star was accompanied by an orbit of five extra little white six-pointers.

Fluttershy looked down from her perch, beaming. "It was a pleasure and I think all my animals will be just fine if I hurry home when we're done. I have never seen a three-headed dog. That I could help you only made it better!"

"You're too sweet, and I am completely exhausted. At least, when we get Cerberus back to Tartarus, it'll guarantee no epic pony war or disaster will come this Tuesday morning. Future-Twilight will become a figment of my imagination."

"Um. Twilight— Are you sure it isn't a figment now? Spike's been complaining about your lack of sleep."

"Cerberus proves it, I think."

"Oh, such a good doggie!" she cooed in a paroxysm of scritchies. "Okay, Twilight, if you really think so."

A wind shift brought me the smell of sweaty ponies, that latex scent of Cerberus, and that of creosote from the native trees. Lord Tirek shifted uncomfortably. His tense attentive body language made my imagined scenarios too real. In my mind, I urged the ponies to send Cerberus away already and to quickly leave.

Twilight Sparkle was in no hurry. "I'm just glad we found the cause of the time disturbance soon enough to protect Equestria. He's barely been loose an afternoon. This could have been way worse, especially had he become hungry."

In a low pet-lover voice, Fluttershy said, "But he knew better, didn't he?"

"There's that, but the princess is going to have to pay to fix Strawberry Shortcake's house where he gnawed on the roof finials."

They both tittered like the young twenty-somethings they were.

Oblivious.

Twilight took a deep breath. "Raising public safety awareness wasn't a waste, either." She stood and raised a hoof over the rim to point. "Okay, Cerberus, time to go home."

One drooling head looked at the unicorn, two looked toward the gate. He gave the barest of resistant whines.

The yellow pegasus cooed and began massaging his neck again. She lifted into the air, languidly flowing on the breeze to within inches of teeth that from any of three heads could have made a quick snack of her. "You've had your fun day and a really good walk but you know it's time to go home."

The beast seemed to understand, wagging a tail that could demolish buildings. He whined again, lowering his heads submissively before laying down stubbornly.

Fluttershy gave a little tinkling laugh. "I think we are going to have to take him to his door."

Twilight glanced down the path we'd just navigated. She hung her head as her horn lit. The ball rose. The last bit of sun left her as if on cue to emphasize her exhaustion.

"Twilight. I'll take him. Um, visiting Tartarus is a bit scary. You do think it's safe down there?"

The unicorn smiled, lowering herself to the rock. "Of course it is. His collar is the gate key. It would take days for anypony to figure out how to operate the gate lock without Cerberus to let them through. It's perfectly safe."

"Cerberus!" Fluttershy said. "Up boy!"

He was up so quickly, stones exploded outward. Twilight fended them off with her magic and some came bouncing into the brush near our hiding place. The dog barked, and when the pegasus gestured and flew below the rim, he jumped after her, his tail a-whir.

Twilight Sparkle sighed loudly. As she folded her legs below her, she said, "Nice warm rock. Nice little Rainbow Dash nap." She rested her head on her forelegs and shut her eyes. "Perfectly safe. Just want to forget this day."

The forgotten ball fell, bounced, and rolled into a bush halfway between us and her.

Lord Tirek stood.

I hissed and shook my head.

He whispered back, "The ball."

I didn't trust him and crept behind him. While I had to concentrate hard not to step on a stick or gravel, his stealth seemed nonchalant and instinctual. Why could we not have walked the other way? The bush had little serrated elm-like leaves and plenty of thorns. He stood beside it and the ball below it.

I snorted my annoyance quietly and cast Levitation. A stab of pain shot through my forehead. I couldn't make the ball more than sway, let alone lift it. I took a deep breath and glared at the centaur.

He shrugged.

I was going to have to talk to him about removing the ring completely. With a slight sigh, I maneuvered to the side of the shrub concentrating hard on silence. Positioned on my stomach, I reached out a hoof under the branches—

Against the still bright blue sky, I saw an on-rushing shadow. His right rear hoof, I think.

"Nopony Hurts My Friends!"

Nebulous pale purple and blue phosphenes swam in my vision and my head ached and my ears rang with the half-remembered wet thunk of my skull being hit. Multiple tightening muscle pulls on my neck and chest showed I'd reflexively jerked away. That Lord Tirek didn't wear horseshoes had also helped save my life.

How long?

I scrambled from under the bush and stood, wobbling. I shook my head to clear my vision, and then a second time, despite the pain, to focus and get my balance.

Lord Tirek stood beside the rock on which Twilight Sparkle now lay on her side. His claw encircled her muzzle as he pressed down. Her long red tongue lowed out. Like he had me, he'd obviously stuck the unicorn unconscious. He'd positioned her head so her horn pointed toward his gaping mouth and inhaled a thin thread of magenta energy the same color as her magical aura. As before, flashes of red circled the wan stream like pangs of pain made visible.

I leapt forward, galloping without regard to thorns nor safety, yelling. I tackled him, bouncing him against the rock with a meaty thud, breaking his hold on the unicorn.

His upper forelimbs freed, he pummeled me with fisted claws then grabbed me by the neck as I screamed and bucked ineffectively. I tried to bite, but he shoved me so hard that I tumbled toward the rim.

I wasn't imagining it. He had grown stronger.

Rocks ground together and shifted below me. Stones bounded away from under my legs to clatter into the depression as I slid toward the drop. I hooked my forelegs, shoving desperately downward into a crevice. I lost a horseshoe but anchored myself with my rear hooves dangling.

He glared, breathing noisily through his nose like an angered bull. His aurochs horns had lengthened side to side while the skin on his face had darkened. He looked less wrinkled. Younger. More muscular.

"Stay down," he growled. With his claws, he snapped his cowl so his cassock again covered his face and larger body. The magical fabric had also grown to cover him.

The way my concussed head whirled nauseatingly, and judging by the iron taste of blood coating my loosened right teeth, staying down would have been good advice. I wasn't taking it though, reaching to find purchase with my back hooves. He again grabbed the unicorn mare by the muzzle and loudly inhaled a wan thread of magic from her horn.

Before I could finally thrust myself upright, another dove to her rescue. The yellow mare, whose flying I'd described as languid and leisurely, dive-bombed him suddenly; she actually snapped her long tail across his forelimbs and muzzle like a whip before he even realized she was there. He yelled, staggering back, as she zoomed around, up, and in a long curve back, raging.

"Nopony hurts my friends!"

Lord Tirek righted himself as Fluttershy attacked again, amateurishly diving with the sun in her eyes and with her target in shadow. He jumped and swiped at her. She shrieked as she flew past, less a couple of see-sawing feathers—but made a determined barrel roll to hurdle hooves first at his face. He ducked about a pony-length. She only skimmed his flank, but like a crow harrowed by a sparrow, he looked more annoyed than hurt.

As I got my rear hooves on solid rock, Fluttershy alighted atop Twilight's rock. "Nopony hurts my friends. Nopony."

The leggy pegasus close-up looked almost my height, though she probably massed half what I did. Breathing heavily, she stood her ground, even as Lord Tirek stepped closer.

"No! Stay back!" she persisted, and when he continued, she craned her neck forward and gave him an incredibly harsh stare.

Even I could sense the power in her attack. It reminded me of what Jewel, the glitter cobra, could do with the flashing scales on her neck.

"No means no!" she said in that dangerously low tone mothers used, guaranteed to turn a foal into gibbering jelly.

Lord Tirek was no foal.

He inhaled from her also. He'd said he could only sense powerful magic. Being one of the bearers of the Elements of Harmony probably meant she was immensely powerful. It was her magic "stare" against his magic-stealing, and though he shook his head to fight her terribly disconcerting glare, I knew who'd win.

I heaved myself at him.

This time Fluttershy distracted him and I didn't yell to announce myself. I managed to spin and buck before he could fully react. He reared to avoid me, but not fast enough. My hooves plowed deeply into his muscular withers. The combined force of his dodge and my kick lifted him up onto Twilight's boulder mini-mesa.

He collided with Fluttershy. She squawked and tumbled hooves over hindquarters backward and out of sight. Before he could recover, I kicked him in the lower chest, cracking ribs. I threw him to the ground and pinned him with my weight. We deputies practiced our constable moves… occasionally. He may well have magically grown, but I still out-massed him.

Pushing with my talent, I said, "You hate ponies, don't you?" Coercion worked best if initiated with agreement. I knew he thought this for a fact.

He opened his mouth and inhaled.

A thread of amber magic swirled down from the area above my brow. It felt like he'd opened a vein. My body went cold; invasive exhaustion gnawed at my muscles and ability to think... but my magic didn't matter to me one tail shake. I'd lived as an earth pony so long, as I've said, that living the rest of my life with magic would have been little more than a cruel joke compared to failing now. I'd lived forty-five years with a special talent to convince ponies, which Starlight Glimmer had realized had nothing to do with my unicorn magic. Let him delude himself about his attack.

Just this once, I would use my talent for the right reason.

I added, "You want to leave this land you despise. You've escaped Tartarus."

Nothing. His eyes burned like tiny yellow suns.

"Isn't it time you went home?"

He halted an instant. He exhaled in a cough, then inhaled with further determination. He started kicking, trying to roll me beneath him. I leaned closer, pressing a knee into his upper diaphragm, fighting his ability to fill his lungs, slowing the magic he stole from me to a dribble. I dipped my horn toward his throat.

Not yet. It wasn't right thing to do. Yet.

Instead, I said in as friendly a tone as I could manage, "Time to go home. Home, Lord Tirek. To your home—to Midnight Castle."

I pushed.

He shuddered. The balanced boulder of his resistance toppled over.

He closed his mouth. His face looked distracted, contemplative. The tension in his body drained, but I held ready. I would not be fooled.

Then his eyes turned distant.

I stepped back. He blinked and stood. He glanced west toward the sun, not even seeing a disheveled Fluttershy who—smeared with red dust and shaking—had climbed back to crouch protectively over her friend.

Sotto voce, I said to the still thoroughly radiant pegasus, "I'm a constable," which wasn't exactly a lie. She nodded and looked relieved.

Lord Tirek looked east. I asked, "You miss the lands of Midnight Castle, don't you?" I pushed aside the opening in his cassock and touched the bristly short fur hidden in shadow below his upper chest. I'd imagined he'd be as cold as stone, but he felt no less warm nor cold than a pony would have. I felt him breathe.

His words came out as a whisper, sounding awed, "I never thought that I would return, or want to, but I was lying to myself."

"It has been too long?"

"Much too long."

"You want to go back. You want leave this unfriendly land of ponies."

"I do."

"Then leave now. Avoid all the annoying ponies so they won't get in your way. Don't stop until you get home."

"I shall do that."

"Go."

Without even a good-bye or thank-you, he picked his way through the maze of paths around the rocks. Fluttershy scooted back as he passed her, then watched him askance, grimacing as he retreated.

He never once looked back. They never did. I'd become meaningless. Cancelled out in an epiphany of self-absorption. Pretty much forgotten.

It was a gift, and a curse.

Fluttershy stroked Twilight, got her tongue back in her mouth, and put an ear to her to chest to listen to her heart. She didn't look at me, perhaps the shy part of her name taking over. Finishing her medical exam while alternately assuring herself that Lord Tirek wasn't turning back, she finally asked, "Should you not arrest that bad po— whatever he is? I mean, I don't want to be pushy, but he might hurt somepony."

I touched the yellow pegasus on her shoulder, which under the frog of my hoof felt exceptionally downy. I said, "This has been very scary for you, hasn't it?"

By the time she turned to look at me, her eyes had taken on that distant gaze. I also noted they were a paler blue, not the deep blue I'd seen before. There could be no doubt Lord Tirek had done this. Hopefully, he hadn't depleted her pegasus magic beyond her reserves. I examined her from nose to cutie mark, but she looked otherwise unharmed. What magic Lord Tirek had stolen from the ring had regenerated in half a day. She probably felt the same drained feeling I felt now as I spoke to her, but she'd recover.

It didn't take much to get her to talk about her animals and how they'd be waiting for her and how she wished she'd never gone along with Twilight Sparkle and Cerberus. The sticking point was her friend, but I delicately and slowly talked her through her concerns and let her assure herself that Twilight Sparkle wasn't so much knocked unconscious as now asleep. The unicorn had begun mumbling to herself about spikes and books and time paradoxes.

Finally, I said, "It's best to go home where your animal friends are and to forget today happened at all."

"That would be very nice."

"Go then. Count this day as a nightmare you can forget."

She nodded. "That would be wonderful. Thank you."

Thank you? Nopony had ever said that to me before.

She flapped her extraordinarily beautiful long wings, blowing dust into the air and leaving me coughing. With considerably more difficulty than before, she rose into the sky until a thermal rising from the entrance to Tartarus hurdled her airborne. She glided away into a glorious sunset like an angel.

The sky had turned purple and orange by the time Twilight shook herself awake. She rubbed her jaw and flinched when she saw me.

"I'm a constable," I said reflexively.

"What happened?" She rubbed her head. "Ow."

I could sympathize. My head still pounded and my—everything—really hurt.

I answered, "You may have fallen over." Or been throttled by a magic stealing centaur. "How are you feeling?" I asked, touching her outstretched hoof.

"Very tired. Like I haven't slept in a day and my body has transmuted to lead." She sat up, looking toward the sky. I reached to keep contact as she said, "Where's Fluttershy?"

I said, "Where's who? Flutterguy? I don't see any stallions."

"Wait? What?" As she looked at me, I saw her eyes were bloodshot. Her irises were a gray-purple, recognizably an abnormally pale shade like Fluttershy's. To be sure she wasn't hurt elsewhere, I glanced about her face, head, side, and past her gathering-of-stars cutie mark. I saw no contusions or cuts. I said, "So… You herded that big black three-headed dog and sent him down into that cave down there?" I pointed with my nose.

"I did." It was and wasn't a question, but I felt my idea taking hold. She had herded Cerberus. That was true. I reached out with my magic for the ball, but nothing happened. I grunted, feeling as drained as she probably did, and trotted over to the bush. I dribbled it like a hoofball toward Twilight. She caught the ball up in her magic, which sputtered at first, but with a frown, she brought it before her, placing it between her forelegs. She looked down at it like she hadn't really seen it before. "She hides balls all around Ponyville in case of ball emergencies." She lay back down and rested her chin on the pliant rubber sphere.

She continued. "I could have sworn Fluttershy—"

I touched her again and said, "Herding that big dog was quite a feat. He looked ferocious. You may have saved Equestria."

"From Epic Pony Wars or something. Right. I have. It's all about time. It's undoubtedly what Future-Twilight was trying to tell me before she returned."

"And now you want to go home and forget the whole thing."

"Until Tuesday, when I'll try to warn myself of some disaster. You're right about one thing, Constable. I need to go back to Ponyville and ensure everything is all right." She yawned widely and smacked her lips. "And to tell Fluttershy—" Another yawn. "—I dreamed she came with me."

I pushed harder and said, "You probably want to leave the dream part out. Forget it." Too pushy. "You want to forget it anyway, right?"

"Riiight?"

"It might scare her."

The unicorn looked past me, her gaze turning distant. She nodded. "Most things scare her, except all animals, except of course dragons, except for Spike because he's a baby dragon." She chuckled at an in-joke. "I keep telling Rainbow Dash it's bad sportsmanship to scare Fluttershy, but she doesn't listen—" She let go of the foal's rubber ball and when it rolled to her hooves, she pushed it toward me. "Keep the ball. Pinkie has hundreds."

I let go of her and put a hoof atop it. "Go home and tell everypony you returned Cerberus to Tartarus safely."

"I will," she said brightly. My string of suggestions suddenly aligned with the actions she wanted consciously and subconsciously to do. She forgot me completely, hopped down from the rock, slid on the gravel gracelessly as if on roller-skates, then trotted through the maze of rocks to appear lower down on the dried grass hill headed west. She headed towards Ponyville.

I stood, an increasingly cool wind blowing my mane. The forgotten ball rolled away, dropped, and bounced like a billiard ball down the rock-strewn hill making a lonely sound. I looked at the colors of the sunset and the red-tinged clouds hovering near the horizon. It had been a long day.

And I stood alone.

My shoulders slumped. I'd done the right thing, hadn't I? It felt like it. Would Princess Celestia be proud that her lesson had finally sunk in? Of course, considering that I wondered about it probably meant I'd really misunderstood the whole concept. Not the best of students, remember?

Of course, I could have told Fluttershy or Twilight Sparkle what had happened, but it hadn't occurred to me. I had still been in a fugitive-escaping-Tartarus mindset.

I reached up and touched my horn, or rather the ring that was still there. Lord Tirek had welched on his promise. No telling if it had become transparent again or if he had taken my magic; using my magic didn't hurt but didn't work either, so maybe taken. Really—didn't matter, did it?

The question was, what next?

I could walk south. There I'd learned I would find badlands, swamps, or jungle. A railroad linked Appleloosa with the Democratic Oryxian Republic, Equidor, and the Land of Silver.

Or I could walk east. I didn't dare contact former business partners in Baltimare or Manehatten, but I knew a few ponies who owed me favors who might visit a safe deposit box for me. I could then buy passage on a ship to the Griffon lands and from there take a caravan to Saddle Arabia or Mareitanea.

Further north, I could take the ferry to Trottingham. Lots of possibilities.

And I hadn't a clue to what I would do when I got to any of those places.

I didn't think anypony, except upper-echelon officers in the constabulary or EBI would recognize my magical accessory, especially if it were as transparent as quartz.

I was free.

Yay me.

Going to none of those places seemed worthwhile. Friends who really liked you for being you really did make a difference.

All those years thinking about what I would do when I got out... I huffed. I felt empty. Here I stood under an Equestrian sky, inhaling cool air, wind in my mane, free and unfettered—and all I felt was empty. I had not known what I would make of myself getting here, or what getting here would cost.

Running Mead was finally dead. So who was this White Stockings fellow?

He stood alone.

The goal had turned out to be meaningless. Only the journey made it worthwhile. And it was over. I started laughing.

Princess Luna raised the moon in distant Canterlot. I watched the white orb rise above the cloudy horizon until it slowed a quarter of the way into the sky. That blue-gray mare was one troubled pony. She'd been sent to the moon for her crimes. For her, even Tartarus hadn't been secure enough. Instead, she'd suffered a thousand year imprisonment, a curse that I suspected had been shared by both princesses. Yet…

Yet, thanks to the strength of the petite little purple unicorn I'd saved today, even that nightmare terror—who had frightened Princess Celestia into searching for crown princesses who might succeed where she failed—had found redemption.

I remembered something that hung around my neck. My heart sped faster as I took the fully silver amulet off and placed it with a click atop Twilight's boulder. It twinkled in the moonlight as I rubbed it with frog of my hoof. Body heat had warmed it.

I had a choice.

I chose a little white lie. By putting the incarceration amulet upon the rock instead of around my neck, it wouldn't follow me. The same way it hadn't followed me when Ice Arrow had used it to spirit us away.

I'd been careful not to be seen by anypony. Except Lord Tirek. Except Sunset. The former had gone to Midnight Castle, the latter back in time. Neither of the Element Bearers would likely remember me. If they did, I'd be a random constable. As I would be to Sunset, the way I'd played my part.

I did have a choice.

I made it. I touched the amulet and said, "Incarceratite one pony."

Remembering the dark frosty vacuum during my last teleport, I inhaled deeply first.

"I've Waited Too Long to Ask."

By the time somepony found me in the southeastern restriction zone, to which Ice Arrow had originally sent me, I'd figured out how to make its magic make a bright red Mareitanean caravan master's tent accented with gold tassels. I'd filled it with slate tables, brass bowls, and wooden spoons for the food I'd asked it to conjure up, as well as a fluffy royal blue wool carpet (without patterns because that was too hard to express), and a four-poster bed replete with a feather mattress, gauze curtains, and gold satin sheets. Outside I hung a large-circumference bamboo wind chime that, in the constant mountain breezes, provided a bass resonating musical accompaniment to push aside my loneliness. I'd figured out how to make pencils and paper long before; this was an extension nopony had tried. I lay in a mound of pillows by the light of vanilla-scented candles (my tent was otherwise intentionally dark because of the carpet) and wrote things I'd learned in the last few days in my most cramped encrypted shorthoof on the paper I always kept with me.

My ears perked. I heard hooves climbing the stairs, then strolling to the edge of the restriction zone. Crinkle Paper's steps had a recognizable cadence. She said, "Of course, that has to be you."

I parted the fabric doors and pushed aside the curtain of beaded amber. I smiled at the flaxen mare. She pushed aside her platinum mane to reveal violet eyes that, despite the white light of the restriction zone floor in the late orange sunset, sparkled in the two dozen candles behind me. Her ears perked and rotated toward me; one, shorter, was obviously growing back. I said, "Just because I'm restrained doesn't mean I shouldn't work the system."

She chuckled.

I placed a hoof on the barrier. It went zzzot against my horseshoe. I didn't even feel the shock the way I held my hoof. "Tartarus is working again."

"It is. Fully."

"Did anypony find Wolf Run?"

"No. We did find Brandywine, though."

Since that connected me to Sunset Shimmer, a topic I wished to avoid, I instead asked, "What about Ice Arrow? Did he heed my advice? Did he evacuate the outpost?"

Crinkle Paper looked at me as if she was evaluating me like an untrustworthy inmate caught mud-hoofed. Her violet eyes dilated as she looked me up and down.

"What?" I asked.

"Not your style."

"Again, what?"

"Yes, the ponies abandoned the outpost when a titanic monster attacked Cerberus. But not Ice Arrow."

"The prig. He sent me here."

"He did?"

I sighed and rolled my eyes. "I'd found Lord Tirek. He used his Incarcerate Amulet on the both of us." I left out the rest. Equivocation, obviously. And one day I would tell Crinkle Paper (and did).

Again, a pause. She looked me deeply in the eyes, evaluating. I could see her emotions play out in her irises as she thought.

She knew me well. "Not your style. We found Ice Arrow with a bucked hip. Cracked bad. Worse, though Dr. Bone Saw set it, the inspector can't even flutter, let alone fly. It's very odd. Not medical. He's forgotten how to fly. And— he's become a blank flank."

"That's... weird."

"His eyes have gone completely colorless, like ice. I remember them being steel-colored. He has no idea what happened, who attacked him, or what happened to his amulet."

"He is still a prig."

Crinkle Paper chuckled. "I'll ask Lavender Lather to release you."

"If she will. She's probably wondering how I ended up south when she said 'west.'"

Crinkle Paper walked through the restraint zone's magic wall. A green line outlined where she pushed through, but she passed without resistance and I stepped back. She touched my ink-stained shirt, then ran the frog of her hoof lightly along my back and my flank—causing me to shiver—tracing the flow of the midnight blue secretion Chthony had vomited on me. She tapped my spilt-beer-mugs-of-mead cutie mark. "The Chthon chased you. End of story."

"Or the beginning?"

"The beginning?"

I hooked her hoof and together we walked three-legged into my tent, the clatter of beads welcoming us. Vanilla-scented air greeted us as the glow of the flickering candles lit up the gold-trimmed rose interior space. I said to the floor, "Two tubs, very warm water." I looked at her and said, "You've been hiking all day. You must be tired."

"I am."

The air went whir-whir-whir as two white porcelain slipper tubs—which I'd gotten the zone to finally craft correctly after over fifty tries—shimmered into existence within a firefly swarm of sparkles. Daisy motifs decorated the green exterior. Steam rose lazily into the air. She smelled dirty and dusty and of pony sweat. Having lived in Tartarus all these years, this was perfume to my nose, but I wasn't going to say that. Crinkle Paper was a fastidious pony; she might take it wrong.

She removed her uniform, as did I, and we sank into our respective tubs, breathing in the glorious steam, not minding that some water lapped over the edge and fell with a splash on the carpet. She sighed as she submerged with only the tip of her muzzle above the water, then slid up and whipped her wet mane aside. Dripping, she sniffed the air. I'd successfully gotten "tub of water" to mean filled with lavender oil water.

Laying back, she gave me an adoring half-smile and closed her eyes for about a minute. I waited until she stirred and looked at me before I reached across and touched her cheek. I said, "This is about as romantic as you can get in Tartarus."

She actually giggled. Her smile filled the tent with a light surpassing that of the candles, certainly the moon, and possibly the sun. "This may be true."

"In that case, I've waited too long to ask. Will you marry me?"

Well. No suspense here. She did. Though the wedding didn't happen for a year because, well, nopony did marriage in Tartarus. It waited for Princess Celestia to officiate it. After she read Denizens of Hell. After she'd released Princess Forest Green for her bravery in saving Central City from the attack of various titanic beasts and the ravening Dharg. The princesses used the word détente. With an understanding that the timberwolves could live unmolested in the Everfree and that nopony would ever harvest deadwood nor fallen branches from the forest without permission, Princess Celestia's ancient enemy promised friendship and the return of civilization to her daughters in the forest—whether they liked it or not.

Princess Celestia even found how I could be of service to Equestria and incentivized me by not only pardoning me but also Crinkle Paper.

And marrying us…

… and sending us on a special mission the very next day—the bitch. But that's another totally different story.

[After reading this chapter and discussing it with Fluttershy, I do now remember what happened the day I returned Cerberus to Tartarus. I do wish I'd remembered before Lord Tirek returned, but I do agree with White Stockings' assessment that he had thought he had successfully solved the problem by sending the monster back to his homeland. Lord Tirek had probably gone all the way there before learning his civilization had fallen less than a century after his departure. Weakened by travel, he might never have returned. Had White Stockings not intervened when Lord Tirek attacked me that first time, Equestria itself would have fallen. Still, his confession would have made a difference in the end. White Stockings truly is an expert in situational ethics, as is Princess Celestia. — Princess Twilight Sparkle]

Author's Note

Next up: Sunset Shimmer returns in "I Am Having a Very Bad Day!"

"I am Having a Very Bad Day!"

Sunset Shimmer

Disjointed events are a sure sign of being aware in a dream.

I coughed as a titanic thud reverberated through my chest in the cloudy dusk. It was as if a wagon full with flour sacks had collided with a lorry full with bags of beans. Yet, I focused on a silvery finial that skipped across the dirt toward my hooves. It had a point, a thick waist, and a skinnier edge that looked fractured. Intrigued by the shiny thing, I picked it up.

Sometime later, I trotted up a narrow stair. Midday sun blazed on my back. The air felt sticky. My ticking clock had expired; I was desperate to hurry, but unable to move faster. I had somewhere to be. I felt in my bones that a clock ticked on relentlessly. I could hear it. I could see the ticking gears chock and turn relentlessly in my imagination. Frustration almost woke me up, but then from the top of the twelfth stairway I'd climbed—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12—I saw a square mirror embedded in the side of the restriction zone wall.

My heart skipped.

Standing before it, I had a wad of straw kindling tied with flexible sticks. I levitated the metal spike.

Tick tock, Sunset, tick tock!

I struck the spike against the sulfury brimstone mirror frame in order to shower sparks on my kindling. No sparks, not even a one—but instantly the mirror cleared from reflective to transparent. A vista grew bright across its face, showing gleaming Canterlot with its unique spires, onion domes, and waterfalls. In the distance rose Canterlot Castle and in the foreground stood modern white and lavender buildings with blue and gold lines providing details of hearts and stars. The pegasus-eye view sighted down Alicorn Way and a huge crevasse that ran ruler-straight down the cobblestone road from the V gashed into the Canterlot mountain cliff at the east end of Palisades Park.

As suddenly as the reflecting glass became a window, I stood against an intense gale that whipped my mane across my eyes and beat my tail against my side, inward toward the mirror. Stones and pebbles pelted me, vacuumed up by the wind. One slapped my flank. I reflexively bucked, lost my grip, and sailed hooves over hindquarters through the portal.

I fell or I flew. It felt the same. I had no will; I flailed, but could not wake. I was a self-aware toy posed and manipulated by a foal I could not see, even as I tumbled and spun toward Canterlot mountain. The wind of the passage blew my mane and whistled, pushing back my ears. My growing hysteria should have woken me, but some part of me also knew I flew where I needed to go. I needed help I could find only in Canterlot.

It was a dream for in it the sun dropped toward the east, the sky became briefly rosy with dawn, then dark with night and stars that wheeled backward like comets as the moon raced through the sky toward the red of the previous sunset and became the old tired day. As a rejuvenated afternoon raced toward noon, I reached the city and my progress slowed. The woodsy Palisades Park zipped by high above my head, individual trees whizzing by loudly in syncopated gusts, followed by the warehouses of Cliffside whooshing and whooshing by, then the townhouses of downtown, blocks of them separated by cross streets and parkways that all made their own distinctive winds sounds in passing—all from the low perspective of the rift the runty foal had cleaved toward Tartarus. I gasped and cringed, seeing the jagged rock of the crevasse passing by. Were I to veer into it, it would rip me into bits of bloody bone and skin.

Still slowing, the breached double wall of the castle bailey wall barreled past, followed by the sundered solarium, and finally the cracked limestone brick of the Luna Tower.

I stopped like a sticky ball thrown into an elastic net to oscillate upside-down in front of the opposite end of Twilit's Tartarus Gate. The time confusion didn't stop. Though flares of spell shapes and gusts of blue-white magic flew from the suspended purple foal's aura as Celestia battled them with her sun-bright horn, bricks and stones flew from the jumbled mess strewn on the floor to attack the guards only to be batted away to stick into their proper place in a wall, arch, or overhead. Unicorn mages pulled apart the tower that, were it not happening in a dream, they ought to have been rebuilding.

Like an unwinding clock, the pendulum beat of the backward events ground to a halt. Nothing moved, except me. I peddled my legs and floated upright. Rocks stood suspended midair. Energy hung like sheer draperies stretched between ponies. A cold seeped in, like an encroaching in-between of a teleport. As the timeless moment stretched, I prepared Teleport when waking would have been the better choice.

Funny. I seemed to understand Teleport better and saw a two-ended daisy-like flower bloom in my head—the spell shape.

After a frightening minute, time renewed itself without preamble, zipping forward doing what my oscillating entrance from Tartarus had undone. Fate had become real and destiny manifest. The royal guard fended off brick and stone with magic, shod hooves, and the intervention of armor breastplates. The Collegiate of Mages restored the tower walls, inside and out. Princess Celestia called the energies of the magic pulse and pushed the bright magic storm back into the tiny magical foal until her spotlight eyes dimmed and the lightning crackles dissipated. The gate disappeared. The last ambient spells dissolved with pops like soap bubbles.

Time slowed toward normal speed. I could not follow Princess Celestia's high-pitched rapid orders, but I saw rubble pushed back and the dragon restored to hatchling size in a rainbow tornado of an age spell to sit in the shambles of its straw nest within a splintered wood cart. Princess Celestia deftly cast an illusion that masked the broken walls, made the cracked floor look newly waxed, and gave the rafters under the shadowed balcony above a freshly painted look. Even the broken windows gleamed. I nodded, oddly pleased. The illusionist Queen of Cliffside had taught her student much about illusion-casting in the year following their battle.

The chaos of the east tower faded into a nightmarish memory.

The foal floated in the Princess' magic even as the Princess restored sparkle pony's parents from a potted palm and a fern to flesh and blood. They whinnied in unison.

The chilling sound nearly woke me then and there.

In quick zipping moments, the proctors rushed in. The foal woke and noticed her cutie mark. She and her parents jumped up and down, then everypony rushed out. In an apocalyptic instant, the tower transformed from illusory perfection to devastation.

Time slowed from fast toward normal. A team of hard-hat unicorns raised a scaffold and propped beams against broken walls. They departed and the sun lowered toward the horizon.

I drifted to the floor. Unlike most of my dreams, my sense being present in the moment returned with my weight. Salty dust floated in the air, illuminated in shafts of afternoon sun through the cracks. Devastation smelled like lightning after a storm and charred wood. The newly cut pine beam shoring ticked ominously. I stood fascinated. It was a dream, after all. I watched at the dust motes dance and play.

I should wake up, I thought.

Then: Why?

Then: Oh, no. I need help!

I found myself running across the ramparts of the castle, my hooves thundering so loud that my ears began to rang, galloping toward the inner keep along what seemed like endless paths of marble and travertine stone. On and on.

Then, without transition or the required seven flights of stairs, I found myself careening through the royal audience hall, screaming. As I skidded, trying to stop, I at first thought the room was empty. I spun around and spotted its sole occupant. I threw my momentum into a spring and galloped again. As I crossed the length of the hall, Princess Celestia sprang from her throne, her wings flared.

I need help!

Gasping for breath, heart speeding, I shouted for her to help me. All that came out was frustrating gibberish as I slid to a halt ten pony-lengths before her. My ears still rang loudly. I may as well have been deaf. It was a totally unmitigated nightmare.

I so needed to wake up!

The Princess approached, ears forward, her mouth moving but I could not hear her. Anger made her purple irises narrow and her jaw muscles bunch up. Guards materialized from nowhere and galloped toward me. I reared and shoved a spell-shape at them, sweeping them aside with a shield spell. When the Princess tried to bind me and muffle my pleas with a transform of Levitation, I reacted. Still rearing, I caught her in my magic and shoved with my front hooves.

She skidded back, sparks flying from her horseshoes all the way back until she hit the carpet runner from her throne. She responded by pushing me down.

I could cancel spells. She'd just taught me that trick. I flexed my shoulders and it felt as if I were tied with a rope. With the gesture, I mentally caught the weak spots in at the interface between tetrahedral shapes in the spell binding. Her whole construct snapped and shot away in shreds. I yelled that she had to help.

She shot another spell at me.

I reflected it upward with Shield, causing banners and flags hung near the ceiling to crack and tear and come tumbling down. The broken wood should have clattered on the floor, but for me it made no noise.

I had to make Princess Celestia listen.

I grabbed for her.

Another pony's spell knocked me aside, sending me sliding across the marble on my left side.

Frustrated, still on my side, I grabbed for Celestia's wings and with all the force I had expended lifting the titan, I spun her like a doll into the air.

Suddenly I remembered... In Tartarus, I had levitated the titan. And thrown him at Cerberus. What? Why?

To free me from the burden because…

Because the titan had crushed...

I choked on a sob, not remembering but knowing I'd forgotten something essential.

A piece of Cerberus's collar had broken off. It was how I'd made the gate open.

I'd fought for help to save…

My heart seized up. With a gasp and a shriek, I woke from my nightmare, eyes so open they hurt. Jumping upright, I screamed, "Brandywine!"

Ponies yelled at me. Princess Celestia shouted my name. I looked up. I had actually flung her upward; it wasn't a dream. I had caught her and was shaking her like a dog's toy.

What in Tartarus was I doing!?

I instantly lowered the princess and set her gently on her hooves, dropping my shield, blushing, instantly contrite, unable to look at anything but the black-veined white marble floor. As the enormity of what I'd done sank in, I lay down as submissively as I could, shuddering. I heard an echo of my gibberish words in my head.

Cerberus is running in the grim glimmering starlight toward Ponyville.

What did that even mean?

"Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry…" I mumbled because I could get nothing else out.

I had gone gibbering mad.

I shook bodily, hyperventilating. My hearing had certainly returned. I heard a crowd of guards, their armor clanking, grumbling.

I had to explain. Somehow, I got out, "I was in Tartarus! Brandywine!"

I looked at the princess who approached encased in a bubble of her golden magic, spell after spell triggering to make layers, one at least causing the marble titles to go crump as she anchored each hoof as she walked. Her royal guard—ponies and a pair of griffons wearing heavily dented armor, faces in a couple cases visibly bruised, and one with a broken rear leg held to his side—cordoned me off with spears, steel tipped and razor sharp, hoof-lengths from my body. City constables stood at the far away front entrance to the hall, shoving back a milling gawking murmuring public of pastel ponies that had come to petition the princess about what could only be perceived as an attack on the capital. Hundreds of eyes, a glittering sea of multicolored gems, had seen me go mad.

Gulping, as the princess towered above me, I continued, "He was attacked by an inmate. He's bleeding to death! No! No! I've got to help him. What am I doing here?"

The white alicorn, who had become my mother for all intents and purposes, glared, her right eye ticking. She looked exceptionally tired, as well she should have been having contained the magic storm that had damaged Canterlot. She asked, skeptically, "Tartarus?"

I launched into a story that sounded like the worst of foalish excuses I could spout as I spoke. "Twilit's gate broke Tartarus. The monsters are loose. We were searching for Wolf Run when a house-sized octopus-antelope chimera attacked and—" I moaned, again in tears,"—because I couldn't cast Force correctly I couldn't save him. The thing crushed him. He's bleeding. He's dying!"

Gasping and crying at the same time, I moaned some more and made to cover my face with my forelegs.

I hit something with my knee.

Levitating above the marble, I found the bit of kindling I had gathered to create my fire magic and the finial from my dream. I had held on to them throughout my attack. Though I didn't remember seeing the monstrous dog, I had no doubt it was a piece broken off Cerberus' collar.

Cerberus is running in the ... light toward Ponyville.

I looked up at the princess and cried, "Ponyville. Cerberus is loose! Tartarus is unprotected..."

I ran out of steam under her withering purple-eyed gaze. I'd never seen her like that, even when I'd pulled off all the feathers on her right wing and had even tried to pull her wings from their sockets.

In a whisper, I breathed, "I'm not lying!" I dropped the stuff. The spike clanked on the floor. I unconsciously started rolling the key to the Tartarus gate with my hoof because I was aware of the distant snickers and jokes of the public that had come to hear their princess reassure them after the chaos that had rocked Canterlot today.

Had it all been a dream? Was the broken steel spike something I'd grabbed to make my story seem real? It felt very much like the alternate reality young foals were supposedly prone to creating. Had I never gone to Tartarus? Maybe I had found props and made up a story, trying to get attention—to assure mama didn't lavish it on a new baby sister.

It sounded like that type of story. It even made sense. The problem was it wasn't true (except the attention part). I looked back at my flank, now adorned with a brand-new red-yellow yin-yang solar cutie mark.

Proof. Proof that something had happened.

To my enduring shame, I whined, "I was too there."

I was. I had been. And Brandywine was bleeding and broken! He had asked me to save him and I had abandoned him!

Princess Celestia flared her wings and compressed her lips. She snapped an order. "Bring me sergeant Wolf Run. And back off with the spears."

Notably, she didn't drop her magic shields.

I stood slowly, stared at by a hundred unhappy ponies, shaking, debating in my head what I remembered, the sounds of Brandywine's bones cracking, and the agony of his screams, my willingness to edge into dark magic and kill to save him at the price of my soul. He would die and it would be my fault if—

A stallion called, "Your Majesty!"

The guard made way for a trotting mauve stallion. The sergeant, in a perfect red uniform, bowed deeply, one leg extended. "My liege!" he said.

The princess told him to rise.

I said, "We tried to find you, but you weren't anywhere in Tartarus."

He looked down with calm green eyes. He said, "The gate opened in Central City. It would have been the place to look."

I blinked at him, speechless.

Celestia asked, "Did you find any problems in Tartarus? Were the restriction zones working?"

"According to the rainbow crows, all zones were functioning nominally."

"But, but—" I sputtered. "The crows couldn't be bothered with doing their job—"

"Sunset Shimmer. The Rainbow Crows are some of the most honorable creatures in any world. Do not disparage—"

"You can't see through their eyes?"

Shocked, she gave me a look that crystalized into belief—for an instant. "An issue because of a rogue Tartarus gate, which has since been dispelled. And while I think it's great that you've found a good book to help you with a prank, this prank has gone on far too long!"

"Cerberus! He's loose."

The Princess' violet eyes met the sergeant's green ones. He said, "Despite the report the crows gave me, I granted a deputy pegasus inmate leave to fly to confirm the integrity of the gate. Tartarus was so peaceful that I even found a few minutes to visit with my wife." His lips mouthed, Still crazy. "Apparently Cerberus was napping."

Tears ran down my cheeks. "B-but B-b-brandywine, your son, is crushed and bleeding. We have to help him."

Wolf Run breathed deeply. He looked solemnly to the princess. "He hasn't returned, yet."

Celestia stopped with her mouth open, about to say something to me. She looked at the stallion.

He said, "It's probably a prank."

I cried, "You, me, Brandywine— We were all in the gate tunnel together!"

"Yes, and I used your fire magic to send myself through the out-of-spec gate into Tartarus and to push you back home. Princess. Brandywine is upset because you assigned the Tartarus recon to me. The lad has not yet learned to trust. These two have obviously colluded." He sighed. "No doubt, the colt has run away again."

"No! No, Wolf Run, you're wrong!"

"Sunset Shimmer!" Princess Celestia shouted and stomped a hoof. My jaw reflexively shut, my teeth clacking. The guard reflexively stepped back. The faraway crowd went silent. "You will cease this prank, now."

"But it's not—"

"You will stop. If you say one more word about this or continue this disruption while Equestria demands my attention, I will send you home to Flowing Waters with instructions to keep you there."

Brandywine! Brandywine! A flood of tears turned my world into a wet wash of prismatic color.

"I am training you to serve a purpose, to help Equestria—"

But…

The princess continued relentlessly. "—but your attitude makes me think I may have chosen wrong."

She doesn't love me.

And no wonder. I thought only of myself. I ruined the lives of the ponies around me. The colt I loved would die because of my inability to see past myself.

Crack. Like that, I was broken.

I heard the laughter of the palace audience crammed into the entrance way. They'd witnessed the well deserved dressing down of Celestia's protégé who had once had the hubris to think she could become Celestia's first crown princess and had acted as if it were already so.

They did not know the truth. Only Brandywine's dead body would provide that.

He was...

Abandoned...

Monsters running amok...

And there was nothing I could do about it! I rolled the fragment of Cerberus' collar below my hoof. It felt cold. It was a key to a gate to Tartarus. It represented a mockery of an opportunity to return though a gate that no longer existed.

I screamed so furiously that the guards flinched. Celestia stepped back. My voice echoed back at me from an audience hall again suddenly silenced.

I picked up the spike and threw it with all my might. The missile struck a four-story stained glass window and shattered it. As the colored glass rendition of prancing ponies and stars disintegrated, tinkling down, a thought hit me.

Throwing stones.

I could have thrown stones at the titan!

Mistakes. So many mistakes! The worst—I couldn't even get the one pony I thought had loved me to help me.

Trust? Friendship?

Without power? Worthless!

I screamed. I wanted to be anywhere but here. Anywhere but here!

The world went black as a shock of crackling lightning wrapped itself about my body, lifting every hair in every follicle, letting inside the incredible frost of in-between. I knew the in-between place, the dead zone. Brandywine had taken me there enough times. In less than a heartbeat, before my irises could fully react, sunlight bathed me. The crack of air sucked into the vacuum bubble created by Teleport exploded about my ears. My weight pushed me down against—

Cobblestones.

The wheels of a coach-and-four bus screeched. The metal rims threw sparks as the four Clydesdale ponies veered the long yellow-painted wagon aside. Reflexively, I threw my magic between me and the oncoming vehicle.

This should have been where nothing happened and my magic ceased to work when I needed it most. This should have been where my brain exploded doing a half-imagined spell. This is where I should have been trampled then run over and had all my bones broken to match my shattered heart.

Instead, the bus and the ponies pulling it found themselves shoved left onto the sidewalk, shoved into each other, and yelling in outrage as the bus tilted and tried to fall over. Passing me, managing to brake, the team brought the rig to a halt on two wheels. They twisted the wagon traces and jerked the tack in unison, and the bus righted itself with a bang of overworked springs as I looked around. Some desperate hybrid of Levitation and Shield had pushed aside a small vegetable wagon and a postal van, and all the ponies on the storefront side of the street. Many had hit the glass and I heard those sick bangs in my memory. Some had hit a wall and slumped in confusion. A dozen pedestrians on the park side scrambled upright, having been bowled over. Ahead I saw the portcullis to the east entrance to Canterlot Castle. A white stallion in full brass royal guard armor galloped toward me; he did not look happy at my stunt.

I had landed in the middle of Castle Way.

Could I do nothing right? I could suddenly intuit Teleport and reflexively save my worthless self with an adhoc shield spell, but could I throw Force the one time it would have mattered? I reared, legs peddling and screamed, "Why was I even born!"

I might be edging on insanity, but nopony was going to humiliate me except me. The guard—his name was Chrysanthemum I think—yelled at me to stand down and bank my magic as he leapt to tackle what must have looked like a truly mad pony. I had had the few seconds for me to hitch my magic around the directionality mnemonic for Teleport, to see the two headed daisy spell form and bloom, and to imagine the sidewalk at the corner of Ponyville and Alicorn.

I did not humiliate myself. Possibly I overreached myself. I remembered the Collegiate of Mages arguing that some spells were a request to the universe. I stepped out of in-between, my fur steaming with frost on a corner and on the sidewalk, only a block away. Around me, shocked ponies jumped out of my way. Traffic stopped, too. I looked over my shoulder and could see the snarled traffic and commotion on Castle Way.

Only high-level unicorns mastered Teleport. Besides a score of professors at the university and a few teachers at school, and the Princess herself, I knew no one else who had.

I was so incredibly good at useless things!

With a scream, I teleported twice more until I realized my subconscious direction: Cliffside.

Cliffside was my real home. A place of low expectations where the burnt out and damaged went. I soon trotted down Elm. Having returned during the evening rush had the benefit of the warehouse district having shutdown and the homeless returning to their encampments.

The sudden disappearance of the sun, without a proper dusk or any twilight, testified to Celestia's anger and pique. To Tartarus with her. She was as damaged as I was; worse, she was blind to it.

The smell of a garbage fire brought fond memories of home, support, and companionship and gave me a beacon that saved me from wandering for more than ten minutes. Today's encampment was past General Firefly Parkway in an alley off Cedar.

I stopped at the entrance to the alleyway. My emotions had cooled and I felt the presentiment of something that might melt the iceberg in my heart. The homeless camps were the only home I knew growing up. A dozen ragged ponies worked setting up tents. A few tended a barrel fire to toast bits of scrounged bread and vegetables on sticks while caramelizing some hay. More and more faces looked at me. Few looked familiar. I noticed a golden stallion, the Duke's fallen uncle. I smiled and trotted in.

"Well, isn't she a real cutie?"

I halted and looked to the shadows to see the stallion who had the audacity to address me. Another, to the opposite side, my right, said, "You look like you could use a strong guy to keep you warm at night, sweet filly."

I rounded on him. The red stallion sported a dirty ragged blond mane cut like a serrated knife. In the firelight, I saw the healed scars of a dozen hoof fights. "What did you say?"

His hooves clattered against the pavement as he shoved off from the brick wall he had leaned against and approached. "I'd love to keep you warm tonight." His green eyes sparkled with the same intent telegraphed by his crooked grin.

I ground my teeth, thinking, Newbies! They'd slunk from society after my reign had ended. I wasn't queen here any more. I had enough problems.

His buddy behind me wolf-whistled and said, "Sweet Celestia! This one's as fiery as her mane looks."

I shouted, "That's it!"

I reared in the face the unicorn who'd wanted to keep me warm. As he flinched, I grabbed him in my magic and turned to find a lime green white-maned pegasus, his wings already in a power stroke thanks to his shocked flight response. I snatched him up, too, but only by the wings. Still rearing, I spun the ridiculously light pair—considering what I'd levitated this afternoon. The thought of the titan's remembered weight made me even angrier. I shoved them against the wall of the windowless brick building hard enough to stun. I heard the grunt of the breath struck from their lungs. "I am having a very bad day!"

"My Queen," a calm elder voice said beside me. Deer Tracks, Duke Pure Snow's uncle, was as close to a father figure or advisor as I'd had before Celestia's intervention. "Please, dear heart." In my head, I heard Brandywine's voice echo in my head, saying, "Strong magic doesn't give you the right to hurt ponies." I could feel a ghost hoof reaching for my horn.

I almost screamed, but then I took a deep breath. I could do only what I could do.

And, right. I was not a monster. I knew what monsters were. They had octopus tentacles and alicorn wings.

I sighed, but nevertheless grinned. "You, Red. If I ever see you again, I will tear out your horn by its root. And Limey, I'll pull off your wings. I nearly pulled off Celestia's. You are not as powerful as she is!"

Proper PR, that's the key to real power and peaceable relations.

I nevertheless dragged the two ponies down the wall, scuffing their fur on the way down. Both were already shaking when I placed them on their hooves. Red galloped from the alley and Limey shot upwards, though he struck the opposite wall in his haste, knocking free a puff of little green feathers. Recovering from the tumble, he flapped away over the building, yelling, "You're mental!"

Following him with my eyes, I shouted back, "And don't you forget it Stink Feather!"

A hoof touched my shoulder. Deer Track's.

I took a deep breath as I looked at the old stallion, expecting the rebuke I deserved. Instead, I saw his pale blue eyes and gentle smile. I remembered. I had always been surprised how he managed to defuse my foalish rages and helped me firmly guide the homeless of Cliffside into peaceful coexistence with themselves and the constabulary. He was a rock to bank my fire, a calm in the middle of my raging storm.

He said, "I may never get used to hearing you talking like any other mare."

Flowing Waters and Celestia, and her handlers, had convinced me not to visit my subjects in Cliffside after Celestia had tamed me. I had bowed to her authority. Deer Tracks had accepted Celestia's offer for help and a position in the castle, but after a week it was obvious there was a reason he had joined the ranks of the homeless. My memory in words from that time is poor, but I remember something to the effect that there were things nopony wanted to remember. I hadn't seen him since.

I huffed. "I can barely remember before I didn't know how to speak, only that life had seemed a whole lot simpler back then."

"Yours is a fine voice. It suits you."

I started blinking as my eyes began to burn. I looked around. The few ponies I remembered from three years ago went about their tasks with food or bedding. The dozen newbies stared wide-eyed.

Deer Tracks add, "You will always be the Queen of Cliffside to me."

That did it.

Snap! The weight of undeserved respect added to the heartache of losing Brandywine, knowing he was dying somewhere in Tartarus and I could do nothing to help him, together with Celestia's betrayal, crushed me like a walnut under-hoof. Tears washed down my cheeks and in an instant, I felt a drop at the end of my nose while I heard my voice wailing in pain. Had the unicorn stallion not leaned against me and helped keep me upright with his weak magic, I would have collapsed in a heap.

He led me to the closest raggedy sofa and eased me down, where I lay sobbing for who knew how long, relating the events in the castle and this afternoon in Tartarus, and the psychotic break I'd experienced after finding the ink-stained deputy and the centaur he held prisoner. So much had gone wrong. Limey was right. I was mental. And I was broken.

Behind my closed eyes, I began to imagine Brandywine as a distant ghost looking down at me, shaking his head—when the smell of tea intruded on my pity party.

It had to be pretty strong, considering my sinuses were dripping. The smell was nothing to compare with the fine darjeeling Celestia would put in a perfect porcelain tea kettle when she shared an afternoon conversation with me. This had a strong tang of steeped caramelized hay and second-use common tea scavenged from a friendly cafe's back stoop.

Ambrosia. A remembered act of comforting kindness shared with an inarticulate foal when the nights had been wintery cold and her coat hadn't yet grown thick enough yet for the season.

I snuffled grossly and wiped my nose with the knee of my right leg. I took a deep breath—and started hiccoughing. I felt like a foal, a completely spent foal. Since the time I had looked down from the balcony on Twilit Sparkle to the time I teleported away from Celestia, more than a day had passed with me mostly on high alert. I began to shake in addition to hiccoughing. I finally had to hold my breath as I whisked away the tears with my magic. Before me stood Deer Tracks with a tin cup with a horizontal handle held in his teeth, patiently watching. All his drinking made his casting of Levitation rather too wonky to be reliable enough to hold a full cup of liquid.

As the last spasm faded, I thought about how ridiculous I was, acting like a foal now but having always acted as if I were grown up, until today. I managed a weak chuckle and Deer Tracks grinned. The problem was— I didn't fit anywhere. I did my best, and time and again ponies or events proved it wasn't enough. Could I be forgiven even if I failed? Could I forgive myself?

"If—" Mucus stuck in my throat and I spent a few moments hacking and sniffing, feeling even more ridiculous. Finally, "If you were left behind, injured, and the pony you sent to get help never returned, could you forgive that pony even if it wasn't her fault?"

He mumbled something, jiggling the cup. When I grabbed it in my magic, he said, "If it wasn't her fault, I believe I could get over it." I smelled the cheap liquor on his breath as he talked, then brought the cup near.

Of course, Brandywine might already be dead. Unfortunately, I suddenly believed in ghosts.

I sniffed the cup. He'd poured something in with the hobo tea. That sparked a memory of me with the flu and a similar tea that at least made me not ache so much. "What did you put in here?"

"Sometimes a touch of brandy wine is the best medicine."

I started blinking. My eyes began to burn. Can you imagine this: for some unfathomable reason some crazy parents had gone and named their golden-brown foal after a some sort of gold-brown liquor. Why would anypony do something so stupid?

I said, "He may never know one way or the other." There was no reason that Wolf Run would lie about his son. The only explanation was that Brandywine was lost in an alternate Tartarus. The best I could hope was that Celestia was right, that it was all a delusion, and that Brandywine would show up tomorrow in class and not actually be the first pony to consider me a friend.

Some friend I was. I really didn't understand the concept.

Deer Tracks sagely said nothing. I sipped the hot tea that steamed and warmed my nose. I looked at him as I tasted the strong mediciny component of the amber liquid under the mix of street light, moon light, and fire light.

Brandy wine.

It suddenly all made sense and I understood Deer Tracks. He had said that there were things he didn't want to remember.

I so didn't want to remember the last 36 hours. I knew I would forever love Brandywine, but for the sake of my sanity, I so did not want to remember him either. I felt stricken like Jewel in Lula McDoddle's Don't Die, My Love, when Low Mulberry died of a incurable disease that even love couldn't cure, except I hadn't learned anything! I didn't want to remember Brandywine when his father would come asking questions and would believe I was making up stories of his son's disappearance and lying to him. I didn't want to remember the pain of my magic not working at the critical moment. I didn't want to remember failing everypony.

Including myself.

And enough with the stupid romance novels! They did nothing but tear me apart. Never again. So done with that.

Deer Tracks wore a tidy little golden-brown vest with odd streaks of dirt that made it look like some design, but it wasn't. Something square bulged in the pocket that he wore the vest to provide. I levitated out a pewter flask and swished the contents.

"Does this really help you forget?"

He sighed. "Some ghosts need to be washed away."

The tea cup clanked when I put it down on a packing crate table. You never threw away something a pony of no means gave you. You didn't. You didn't take, either, unless you wanted to fight. I asked, "May I?"

He nodded, but said, "It's a solution only for the irreversibly bad things."

As I unscrewed the cap on a chain, and the top clicked against the side, I said, "I've been a bad pony."

I coughed, choked once. The fumes burnt my throat and my sinuses. I persisted. The heat seeped to all parts of my body, like oil dripped into a pond to foul the entire surface with a prismatic sheen. I drank the entire flask.

Strangely, I felt tingly all over. The skin on my face felt like it wasn't mine. Very strange. Not so bad, really. The warmth enveloped me like the embrace of the mother or father I should have had, had they not thrown me away like last week's trash. When I looked around, I didn't see Brandywine's ghost. I couldn't even remember who ruled the place I lived in. Maybe I just didn't care.

I gasped. Brandy wine was my cuteceañera present!

I passed out. It felt good to forget.

Author's Note

But that's not all, ponies! Sunset has some explaining to do in the epilogue. One. Last. Chapter....

"Was it Satisfying Anyway?"

Hay. It's me. Really. You know, the one who worked out her demons, literally, on the other side of the mirror enchanted by Celestia and Star Swirl the Bearded. I now play guitar in the Rainbooms and help save the world, stuff like that. After Princess Twilight read White Stocking's contribution to her research surrounding the effects of her "magic flare," she invited me to comment on one passage.

She wrote me telling me that the Changeling Ponies, a race of ponies I'd never heard of, had almost conquered Equestria a second time. Though she promised to tell me the whole story one day, she did say my contribution to what could have become a final history of Equestria was incomplete.

She wanted me to report on what had happened when Starlight Glimmer had lured me into her EBI sting operation.

Something new had come up and Twilight had "conflicting accounts of my actions." I was of half a mind to refuse to answer, but I had already experienced the cathartic effect of spilling my tragic history with Brandywine. Princess Twilight Sparkle was a good friend, the best, so I picked up my favorite gel pens (the gold and the bright red, of course), turned the paper black (to fit my mood and for appropriate color contrast), and wrote into the never ending supply of pages in Celestia's magic book.

Dearest Princess Twilight,

I hope everything is going well and you've worked out your issues with Starlight's unexpected talents. It's good that she helped you solve your problem with those shapeshifting ponynappers. While I love you both, two Twilight Sparkles I already know is sufficient for any linked universe!

Sorry! I know that's a bad joke, and if I could erase the ink I ought to have, but remembering anything about how I lost Brandywine really ticks me off.

Even with the girls in this two-legged world there is an enormous number of romance novels, and Rarity and AJ keep shoving them in my face! The theme of first love lost and how it effects the survivors is a pretty big genre in itself. Silly me. I'm an avid reader with an addictive personality.

As a myriad of authors on both sides of the mirror have written, I'd like to say "everypony has moved on."

I haven't.

As for the passage you shared from your book: I certainly had not moved on then. You exorcised the raging she-demon years later, but even these days I blame your Celestia for the finality of her judgement though I better understand my contributing faults. Maybe one day the coward will she'll write me and explain why she wouldn't believe me, or look for an impossible truth when she had her own impossible truth hovering over her in in the form of a thousand-year curse she shared with her sister foretelling the rise of Nightmare Moon. She needed us—you and I—desperately but never said so.

I'm still amazed by your inspirational story of Princess Luna—and that I ignored the clues that a simmering tragedy existed when I entered CHS and realized it was a mirror world to ours in so many ways. Even after meeting Vice-principal Luna, I still didn't see it. So my principal, who looked and acted like Princess Celestia's good twin, had a sister? No biggy.

I'm avoiding your question.

When Agent Fellows showed up, yes, I was in some sort of dream state, a type of pony hypnosis. I'd probably have forgotten, just like when you wake from a real nightmare—and I don't mean the type Princess Luna assists you ponies in today—but I had been thinking of a particularly odious royal guard I knew and suddenly there was a pegasus royal guard in the sky and constables all around—and they were shooting off force bolts willy-nilly. The transition between that dream state in the real live nightmare was as harsh as it was jarring.

Even as I pushed over a cafe table and hid within the Farrier Day magic cage the woven metal slat surface provided, it knocked something loose inside. Just as I remembered the dream of leaving Tartarus, I remembered a certain deputy I had met beyond yet another, albeit flaming, mirror. I'm still not clear how deputy White Stockings and Starlight Glimmer's Running Mead could have been the same pony (nopony returns from Tartarus, right?*), but they had the same unique spilt beer stein cutie mark. At the time, I felt as if I'd been struck by a bus thanks to the nettle-ewe I wasn't ever going to obtain again. In my fogged state, in the sudden battle, puzzle pieces clicked together: a coincidence that couldn't be a coincidence. This stallion, this evil crime boss, was the one and the same scum I had encountered locked away in Tartarus after which I'd awakened with a big gap in my memory from a nightmare that proved to be real, screaming toCelestia what proved to be insanities, eventually not only to lose me the only mother figure I ever knew but Brandywine, too. Please share this with Princess Celestia, even if I don't understand the circumstances.

Maybe she will.

That ink blot spelled Brandywine, by the way. I just started crying. You understand.

One thing Starlight taught me successfully, if not spell queuing, was concentration. Yes, I threw the bottle of pickles and winged his noggin. But then I saw him do the unspeakable. He touched the constable blocking his way after which she inexplicably turned and shot down the royal guard pegasus, Green Gabbles, who was supporting the raid. I knew then. I really knew. He was my worst nightmare manifest in the waking world.

I transformed into the Queen of Cliffside one final time. Starlight Glimmer did go on to be all sort of rotten as you've told me, but she was a real tortured soul in the worst literary sense; to the Queen of Cliffside, Starlight was my subject and I understood her twisted logic and I had to protect her. That night, Starlight had made sure I'd have no choice but to confront my drinking and self-abuse. This was her way of saving me while saving herself, but she had no conception of how far she had actually pushed me. She'd shown me only the second example of true friendship I'd ever yet recognized. Today, I understand it was the highest degree of love she was capable of offering. It overwhelms me.

Wait. I'm crying again. I'll be back to finish—

Sorry.

No. I did not try to kill White Stockings. Even the raging she-demon would never be that evil. By then I understood the limits of unicorn magic and why I'd failed Brandywine, which didn't make that any better... nor does it assuage my guilt. Even if Starlight hadn't broken through my psychological block in using Force, she had reinforced Brandywine's initial targeting lesson that I couldn't actually hit a pony, or a sentient being, directly with the spell—the lesson that immature foalish me had totally ignored.

Had I wanted to kill Running Mead, I would have thrown him at the wall with a higher arc and let the spell short-circuit drop him to the ground as it had Pear Brandy, only from a lethal height.

Was it satisfying anyway? Well...

Yeah it was!

*[It's complicated, Sunset, but both times you met him he hadn't escaped Tartarus. —Princess Twilight Sparkle]

Author's Note

The short story Prance is another epilogue to this novel in a different point of view. Check it out.